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Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Wednesday, 22nd March 2017, 22:52
by Rast
Remove scroll of amnesia.

Give all characters the (a)bility to forget spells, at the cost of min(3,spell_level) temporary int loss. The ability would always come with a confirmation prompt: "Are you sure? This will cause X points of temporary intelligence damage!"

Suppress that ability for characters who have no spells memorized or any temporary int loss.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Thursday, 23rd March 2017, 01:39
by mrob
DCSS is supposed to limit spoiler dependence, and this would mean you'd have to plan your whole build from level 1. Amnesia scrolls are common enough that it's rare you'll be stuck with spells you don't want, but you still need to think about it a little. This seems good already, but if you're going to change it I'd rather have at-will spell forgetting than spell forgetting with such a serious cost.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Thursday, 23rd March 2017, 02:20
by CanOfWorms
Rast wrote:Remove scroll of amnesia.

Give all characters the (a)bility to forget spells, at the cost of min(3,spell_level) temporary int loss. The ability would always come with a confirmation prompt: "Are you sure? This will cause X points of temporary intelligence damage!"

Suppress that ability for characters who have no spells memorized or any temporary int loss.

this would work if spell lists were tactically relevant (i.e. you want to change your spell list several times in a single fight), but they're not

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Thursday, 23rd March 2017, 19:59
by mattlistener
@Rast I find the idea interesting. What problem is this intending to solve? Are scrolls bad? Are there too many types?

@mrob To me Amnesia scrolls feel too rare on characters with slow spellslot growth.

@CanOfWorms Memorizing new spells takes too much time to be done in combat. I really don't think Rast's suggestion had the intent of creating a new mid-combat option. (For that matter, we can already forget spells mid-combat using the Scroll of Amnesia, so I guess I don't understand your post at all.)

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Thursday, 23rd March 2017, 20:18
by Rast
mrob wrote:DCSS is supposed to limit spoiler dependence, and this would mean you'd have to plan your whole build from level 1. Amnesia scrolls are common enough that it's rare you'll be stuck with spells you don't want, but you still need to think about it a little. This seems good already, but if you're going to change it I'd rather have at-will spell forgetting than spell forgetting with such a serious cost.


Temporary int damage is not a serious cost. You get it back with some kills.

Matt, the problem with amnesia scrolls is they are nearly always irrelevant. Most characters never cast, or have a small number of utility spells that don't come close to the slot limit, or have a straightforward spell build that never requires forgetting spells, or are with Sif Muna. They are essentially an alternate version of scroll of random effects that never even summons butterflies.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Thursday, 23rd March 2017, 21:57
by watertreatmentRL
There is a lot of value in reducing the number of types of items, especially types that are ordinarily subject to autopickup and are frequently useless. Anything that consistently induces a trip to the autotravel menu each game should be eliminated.

This would be an excellent change for hellcrawl if it is not forthcoming in trunk.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Friday, 24th March 2017, 05:18
by prozacelf
I always have to go manually remove them from my auto-pickup, because I've been too lazy to make the change in my rc. Obviously, the problem can be solved on my end with fairly minimal effort, but if we don't want to remove them could they at least not be on auto-pickup as a stopgap? I could count on one hand, or possibly one finger, the number of times I needed an ?amnesia and didn't have the leisure to go track one down.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Friday, 24th March 2017, 19:26
by ddubois
What's the .rc line to turn off auto pickup for a specific object?

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Friday, 24th March 2017, 20:17
by Sprucery
ddubois wrote:What's the .rc line to turn off auto pickup for a specific object?

  Code:
autopickup_exceptions += amnesia

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Friday, 24th March 2017, 20:38
by Shtopit
Right now, if you want to cast a spell, you need the right XP level, skills, attributes, equipped items, to have found and be adjacent to a book, the spell levels, and the free spell levels or a scroll of amnesia.

There are already enough gates to being able to use a spell. Just have the I o be r M menu show a F option to forget spells.

If it has to be limited to avoid micromanaging, then yea, INT penalty is probably the way to go. It surely is more interesting than a flat "wait before you can forget again" status.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Sunday, 26th March 2017, 17:33
by Speleothing
Rast wrote:Matt, the problem with amnesia scrolls is they are nearly always irrelevant. Most characters never cast, or have a small number of utility spells that don't come close to the slot limit, or have a straightforward spell build that never requires forgetting spells, or are with Sif Muna. They are essentially an alternate version of scroll of random effects that never even summons butterflies.


L O Fucking L

Have you forgotten what it's like to be a newbie? Just give every book start an amnesia scroll in their starting inventory.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Sunday, 26th March 2017, 20:08
by ion_frigate
Speleothing wrote:
Rast wrote:Matt, the problem with amnesia scrolls is they are nearly always irrelevant. Most characters never cast, or have a small number of utility spells that don't come close to the slot limit, or have a straightforward spell build that never requires forgetting spells, or are with Sif Muna. They are essentially an alternate version of scroll of random effects that never even summons butterflies.


L O Fucking L

Have you forgotten what it's like to be a newbie? Just give every book start an amnesia scroll in their starting inventory.


If this is the case, then spell slots themselves should be removed. Pure newbie traps have no place in Crawl, and this is a particularly nasty one. We should be encouraging new players to try out new spells, not potentially crippling their characters for doing so.

Re: Remove scroll of amnesia

PostPosted: Monday, 27th March 2017, 13:09
by Speleothing
All the suggestions here would be worth trying out. Spell slots can be a big problem for some people, and I definitely miss being able to destroy extra books to get rid of low level spells.