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Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 20:03
by duvessa
Because of how allies work in Crawl, spells that make allies and appear in starting books are nearly guaranteed to overshadow everything else in the book once they're available:
Wz - has Conjure Flame a.k.a. the best conjuration spell in the game and is still defined by imps instead
Cj - fulminant prism has (at least the pretense of) a unique gimmick, nobody uses it because battlesphere exists
IE - summon ice beast is all people talk about, even though throw frost and throw icicle are very good
AE - the AE change is what prompted me to make this post.

I'll excuse Ne for now because it's not clear to me what the gameplay objective of the Necromancy school is, Tm because its summon is at least consumable, and Sk because the rest of the background actually works alongside the summon.

I suggest the following replacements:
Book of Minor Magic (Wz): None needed because the book would still have 6 spells. If you want a replacement anyway, Passwall is appropriate as it fits the theme of spell school diversity.
Book of Conjurations (Cj): Force Lance. Alternatively, none, as the book would still have 5 spells.
Book of Frost (IE): Ice Form.
Book of Air (AE): I would much rather have Airstrike or Mephitic Cloud in this than lightning spire. Hell, I would rather reintroduce Repel Missiles than have lightning spire in this book, and I really hate Repel Missiles existing, as you all know.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 20:45
by Doesnt
As RMsl is dead, cutting Call Imp would reduce the book of minor magic to 5 spells. I could see it getting Sticks to Snakes as a replacement, or maybe having a cost attached to Call Imp?

Strong agreement with regard to AE change causing issues, though I think any solution should also make Bolt of Lightning not a completely terrible spell since even Airstrike obsoletes it.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 20:54
by Siegurt
Doesnt wrote:As RMsl is dead, cutting Call Imp would reduce the book of minor magic to 5 spells. I could see it getting Sticks to Snakes as a replacement, or maybe having a cost attached to Call Imp?

Strong agreement with regard to AE change causing issues, though I think any solution should also make Bolt of Lightning not a completely terrible spell since even Airstrike obsoletes it.


Bolt of lightning does a truckload more damage than airstrike, and is a beam. That statement is just flat out incorrect.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:03
by Doesnt
Lightning Bolt is a level 5 dual-school spell that when multi-bounced, does zero damage 2-3 times because it has no to-hit and makes a truckload of noise. It checks rElec.

Airstrike is a level 4 single-school spell that ignores EV. It checks rWind and does extra damage to fliers.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:45
by CanOfWorms
yeah, so you use lightning bolt on monsters that have bad EV

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:46
by TeshiAlair
Agreed with literally all of these changes. I don't think Wz really needs another spell, neither does Cj. Ice form would be lovely for IE because if you don't pull a good weapon but can get that online, it leads to an interesting decision point. And for the love of god give me airstrike.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:54
by Brannock
I pushed a branch with these changes, as they were trivial to implement. If a few other devs think this is a good idea then it'll go into trunk.

fwiw when we were discussing whether to lift Lightning Spire or Airstrike from Book of the Sky to fill the RMsl hole, I decided to go with Lightning Spire for thematic reasons and because I didn't think a starting background should have access to a smiting spell. Of course, Poisonous Vapors exists now. I didn't have a strong opinion on either choice, really.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 22:09
by njvack
Doesnt wrote:It checks rWind and does extra damage to fliers.

Wait, is rWind actually a thing?

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 22:16
by NhorianScum
Yes.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 22:24
by duvessa
njvack wrote:
Doesnt wrote:It checks rWind and does extra damage to fliers.

Wait, is rWind actually a thing?
it's so that air elementalists can use tornado in tandem with summoning air elementals using the removed summon elemental spell, or the removed fan of air elementals, or the fan of gales that no longer summons air elementals

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 22:47
by Doesnt
Yeah twisters, air elementals, ball lightning, and anything casting tornado have wind resistance and are thus immune to airstrike, tornado clouds, and whatever an air beam is (wind drake breath?).

I thought wind drakes were immune too but apparently I'm a crazy person and they actually don't. (edit: they used to have it but lost it half a year ago)

Thanks for the really ninja explanation of why this actually exists duvessa ^^

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 23:01
by Brannock

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th February 2017, 02:10
by Gorgondantess
Doesnt wrote:As RMsl is dead


Sorry for slightly off-topic, but what's this about RMsl dying?

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th February 2017, 02:26
by chequers
RMsl is now a scarf ego/brand, the spell has been removed.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Wednesday, 8th February 2017, 10:46
by Gozigzag
light spire on AE's book, how did this happen? another charm removed, why does this keeps happening?

edit: Also, thanks for making a element choice irrelevant by granting a starting spell that ignores its school's elemental resistance, never it has been so easy to dispatch sky beasts, gargoyles and even ice statues on a AE before.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 11:07
by GordonOverkill
Yet another change exclusively for the veterans. The summons were pretty popular because they were pretty strong. Now they are gone. Thumbs down.
Anyways, gonna give it a try...

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 15:26
by dracos369
GordonOverkill wrote:The summons were pretty popular because they were pretty strong. Now they are gone.

You can still play Su, though.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th February 2017, 01:59
by tasonir
Ice form in IE's book makes it an interesting alternative to Tm for races that would like to go ice form, such as octopodes and felids, and to a lesser extent, everyone else.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th February 2017, 02:29
by Siegurt
tasonir wrote:Ice form in IE's book makes it an interesting alternative to Tm for races that would like to go ice form, such as octopodes and felids, and to a lesser extent, everyone else.

My problem with ice form in the IE book is that ice form is terrible if you aren't already training like a transmuter, and why would you do that if you were an ice elementalist?

If your attack or damage in ice form was proportional to spell power, it'd be interesting, but as long as transmutations are primarily reliant on unarmed, it's hard to be interested in them if you've got another primary offense.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th February 2017, 03:51
by duvessa
Ice form has good defenses for some species and works well with refrigeration.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th February 2017, 07:26
by Hurkyl
Doesnt wrote:Airstrike is a level 4 single-school spell that ignores EV. It checks rWind and does extra damage to fliers.

While it's sold that way, it would be more accurate to say that Airstrike suffers a penalty against non-flying monsters.

While the literally the same thing, the latter description carries the more accurate connotation, since only against flying monsters does Airstrike do decent damage for its level; against nonflying it's fairly poor.

Admittedly Airstrike does become halfway decent against non-flying at very high spellpower -- e.g. you're casting Tornado at things.

(but the same could be said about Lightning Bolt's accuracy problem, which is something that can be fixed by mid-game)

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th February 2017, 07:35
by Hurkyl
Also, in my opinion, the AE start has a distinctive feel of being fairly active and erratic; Airstrike is the epitome of everything the AE start is not.

I'm not entirely certain if that's an argument for or against including it.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Sunday, 12th February 2017, 13:07
by lethediver
Anyone else feel like maybe this is stage 1 in OP's diabolical plot to have summoning removed from the game?

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Sunday, 5th March 2017, 07:53
by TonberryJam
I don't see a point to removing a summons school from the wizard book. I find imps is only useful against early game threats now, things that would trouble you to take down with Dart or lure into CF like Uniques as one example. CF has always been good at what it does best. And, you should know dart or imps sucks at doing what CF can do better.

Fulminate Prism's attribute of taking damage makes it weaker against packs, which make the AoE part of the spell difficult to maximize. Removing Battlesphere makes Dart useless sometime at or after lair, now forcing excessive use of FM for range attacks b/c Mystic Blast is best used at close range.

Ice Beasts sucks against Blink Frogs. And by the time IB sucks icicle is pretty good. Ice Form would probably make icicle not even needed, b/c it's like making yourself 3 Ice Beasts in one.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Sunday, 5th March 2017, 21:24
by prozacelf
I always felt that the primary use for Imps as a wizard is dealing with adders. Or just them getting poisoned so you don't have to in general.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th March 2017, 14:56
by mrob
TonberryJam wrote:Removing Battlesphere makes Dart useless sometime at or after lair, now forcing excessive use of FM for range attacks b/c Mystic Blast is best used at close range.


Magic Dart remains useful the whole game as a cheap and quiet luring spell.

Re: Remove summons from Wz/Cj/IE/AE starting books

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th March 2017, 15:14
by VeryAngryFelid
There is nothing wrong with level 1 spells becoming useless late game, similar to weak weapons like whip or falchion. We do need a reason to go for higher damage spells/weapons.