Book wielding


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Slime Squisher

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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 05:29

Book wielding

Right now, characters specializing in one-handed weapons have no reason to not (eventually) train and wear some kind of shield. I propose that characters be able to wield a spellbook in place of a shield. This would create an alternate choice for spellcasting characters, similar to the existing choice between melee weapons and magical staves.

Characters would be able to cast a spells they had memorized or that were contained in their wielded spellbook. Spells that were memorized and wielded would have a reduced chance of failure, independent of Wizardry/Vehumet.

The UI for the spellcasting screen would show book-sourced spells as a different color (e.g. teal) and dual-sourced spells as yet another (e.g. green). With a max of 21 memorized spells and 52 available hotkeys, there should be enough room for players to configure hotkeys for a variety of book-sourced spells and have them retained while swapping between a few books.

This change could have a number of benefits beyond simply having another type of item for the shield slot:

Hybrids who initially focus on weapon skills could have a less bland start with easier access to their starting spells.

Dedicated spellcasters who accumulate a large library of spellbooks would need fewer tedious trips back to their stash to swap spells, and would have more strategic decisions about which spells to memorize and which spellbooks to keep in the inventory.

Finding the same spell in multiple spellbooks would no longer be completely redundant.

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NhorianScum
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 06:55

Re: Book wielding

Sounds like a lot more inventory clutter for me. I would not support this without a drastic inventory reform as a collateral...
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 13:37

Re: Book wielding

Majang wrote:Sounds like a lot more inventory clutter for me. I would not support this without a drastic inventory reform as a collateral...


Eh, even in optimal play you're mostly relying on a handful of workhorse spells that generaly come in the same book. Carrying around a Dmsl book would eat an extra slot, but assuming this has the same auts per swap as a shield hotswapping for the extremely exp light suite of level 1-4 utility spells seems suboptimal.

That said gaurenteed free early wizardry seems like an overkill buff to the player. I'd enjoy it though.

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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 14:56

Re: Book wielding

I am against the proposal, because I think that books as inventory items need to go. If we want to make staves (and short blades) into shield hand items, however, that's cool to me.
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Post Monday, 17th July 2017, 15:13

Re: Book wielding

I think the concept of off-hand magical items has potential, particularly proposals that move magical staves to the off-hand. I also like the idea of wielding books, but not as spell enhancers or wizardry sources, of which there are already many. (Enhancers and especially wizardry are not very good mechanics, so adding more sources is going backward.) Changes in how equipment work that draw a stronger distinction between characters that specialize in spellcasting vs. weapons and armor are good. Incentives to accept lower defenses in exchange for better magic fit there.

If the idea of wielding books were to be implemented, I would like to see it work as a weapon that uses damage spells automatically. There are some major mechanical improvements to conventional spellcasting possible in such a model.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 18th July 2017, 03:43

Re: Book wielding

This proposal is obviously incompatible with the complete removal of books from the game, but it notably is compatible with proposals to allow memorization of spells previously seen in a book without having the book on hand (although I would reflavor "memorization" to "preparation" in that case, as clearly all spells are "remembered" by the player character in order to not need the books after seeing them once).

As to the general concern of inventory clutter, I don't see a need to carry around large quantities of spellbooks. Even on my most magic-oriented characters, I'm often only interested in 1 or 2 spells at a time from most books which, after memorization and sufficient skilling, negates the benefit of carrying around those books. I imagine players optimizing for a large spell repertoire would either choose one book with a several frequently used spells to wield, but leave those spells unmemorized to free up room for other, more situational, spells; or memorize a core set of spells plus situational spells that occur alone in books, keeping the hand empty to quickly swap in one of a few books with 2+ situational spells. That said, I would very much welcome the introduction of container items, though I don't expect it to actually happen.

I imagine spending 1 aut to wield or unwield a book, so:
empty -> book: 1 aut
book -> book: 2 aut
shield -> book: 6 aut

The reason being, if it takes too long to wield a book to be usable during an encounter, then there's not enough late-game value to justify choosing books over a shield, but if there's no (or a trivially small) time cost, then the choice of what book, if any, to wield by default loses all strategic purpose.

I do agree that many characters aren't interested in enough spells to want external spell access (though some very much do), and I would consider the proposal too niche to be justifiable if that were the only appealing reason to wield a book. For that and other reasons, I think there needs to be a significant benefit to spells that are both wielded and memorized. Lower spell failure seems like an obvious choice, because it's of benefit to all characters that use magic and makes the decision about when and to what degree to train magic skills more interesting. As I mentioned, though, I'm not proposing another tick of Wizardry, but a separate failure reduction. There are 2 reasons for this: a Wizardry modifier would devalue every other Wizardry item in the game, as they have diminishing returns, and having a separate mechanic makes it easier to balance the strength of the effect since it's not obligated to match the behavior of any existing effect. It could, for example, scale in magnitude with a character's experience level, or not, as seems appropriate during testing.

I'm certainly open to alternate benefits, but I think autocasting damage spells as a triggered effect of bludgeoning monsters with spellbooks has a number of major issues to overcome, especially how to handle books without any damage spells, which spell to choose from a book with multiple damage spells, how to handle area of effect spells that can damage the player, how to handle spell failure (miscasts?), etc....

Wielding staves (and short blades) in the shield slot as a dual-wielding system would be nice, although I assumed there was a deliberate reason why this has never been done. I wouldn't want to lose the ability to smack enemies with magical staves by converting them into shield-hand items with no attacks properties, though. It's not something I do often, but it's very satisfying when I do. Even if that were an option, though, I would still want the book-wielding feature (though I probably wouldn't consider it quite as important, as the no-brainer choice would be squashed).

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