Make Still Winds a player spell

[Leszczynek]

...to join the already existing Silence as "potentially bad but sometimes useful".

Level 4-5 (not sure, I think 5 should be right)
Hexes/Air (or Charms/Air, or Air)
Player status, for the spell duration disallows all clouds except Tornado
Can't be cancelled once used, has to run out
Rather low duration

I'm actually not sure if it's a good idea, but I think it would be an interesting spell. At the price of being unable to use fog, some evokers and some other stuff, you cancel out all clouds, including * Cloud spells, Glaciate, Firestorm, miasma breaths (death drakes), chaos (apocalypse crabs), draining (ushabti) and holy clouds (holy pan). Making ?fog unusable is very often a deal braker but I think you'd sometimes appreciate taking out an apocalypse crab in Abyss or removing a lot of draining from Tomb. I'm somewhat opposed to making the spell manually cancelable as it would disable some attacks too easily, but maybe it's necessary to make up for no fog.

Potential problems/conflicts:
- lack of rPois no longer a problem in Swamp, swamp drakes become more of an allies than enemies.
- disables death drakes and apocalypse crabs entirely (I think it's a good thing but maybe it's not)
- yet another mid level Hexes/Air spell for making Tomb easier
- probably should be disallowed by Qazlal
- probably should disable Ring of Flames, including Asmodeus'
- probably should disable Dithmenos' blood smoke, whatever it's called.

[Baldu3]

Players can currently cast ring of fire/tornado or worship cloudgod to fully ignore all clouds, and can cast/evoke clouds/fog on self as well (including the lv3 mephitic).

Knowing this I'm having a really hard time figuring out when i'd learn that spell. You would learn that new spell instead of using other ways?

This kinda makes me think maybe lowering the spell level of ring of fire could be good, even if it means weakening the spell somehow, considering how infrequently players seem to learn it.

[Shard1697]

I don't think I would ever learn Still Winds.

This kinda makes me think maybe lowering the spell level of ring of fire could be good, even if it means weakening the spell somehow, considering how infrequently players seem to learn it.

I'm still in favor of lowering ring of fire's level and removing the enhancer+resistance changing aspects of it, so it's just a "burn things next to you" spell which is reasonable for hybrids to learn.

[duvessa]

I think any form of ring of flames where the flame clouds are actually the focus is going to promote lots of kiting.

[PleasingFungus]

the suggestion also seems like it makes ring of flames have all the traditional charm problems of basically being good to have on all the time. current ring of flame is at least (a) high level and (b) gives rc--, which mitigates those issues to some extent; lowering the level and removing the drawback would probably not be a move in a good direction

[Siegurt]

Still winds would be a bad player spell (i am not really convinced it is a good monster spell, shutting down one subset of a type of offense just makes that critter harder for a very small subset of players)

Shutting down a very very small subset of monsters, and an oddly specific set of dungeon features is not good design for a player spell (nearly everything that did so in the past ha been removed or reworked because it is bad)

[duvessa]

the suggestion also seems like it makes ring of flames have all the traditional charm problems of basically being good to have on all the time. current ring of flame is at least (a) high level and (b) gives rc--, which mitigates those issues to some extent; lowering the level and removing the drawback would probably not be a move in a good direction

In practice the rC-- "drawback" is irrelevant, since even if you encounter one of the few monsters with a cold attack, the flame clouds destroy incoming cold bolts. If it were remotely convenient to keep ring of flames on while exploring, I would do it in the few games where I learn the spell.

[Siegurt]

the suggestion also seems like it makes ring of flames have all the traditional charm problems of basically being good to have on all the time. current ring of flame is at least (a) high level and (b) gives rc--, which mitigates those issues to some extent; lowering the level and removing the drawback would probably not be a move in a good direction

In practice the rC-- "drawback" is irrelevant, since even if you encounter one of the few monsters with a cold attack, the flame clouds destroy incoming cold bolts. If it were remotely convenient to keep ring of flames on while exploring, I would do it in the few games where I learn the spell.

Unless i am misremembering, fire clouds reduce the range of bolt of cold by one extra, so a monster standing just outside your clouds can hit you... it is possible i am misremembering.

[bcadren]

I made the same suggestion with the Spriggan Air Mage Spell that dispels current clouds without an extended status...as a level 3 (primarily utility) spell WAY back (before Clouds were buffed all to hell allowing you to just break LoS with them to dispel them) [Seriously 5ing to wait for your clouds to dissipate used to be so annoying I'd gladly have paid 3 more MP to end it in a hurry-. But that was denied then and this would be less powerful now (though it would be an alternate way of dealing with enemy cloud spells, I guess...but those RARELY come up).

[and into]

Maybe ring of flames could give --Scroll (mirroring --Potion from ice spell Oz's refrigeration) and lose the cold vulnerability penalty

Anyway, as for OP topic, I agree with other posters that still wind would not be a good player spell.