Friday, 14th January 2011, 20:05 by danr
Yeah, I know, but I like Vehumet, and I just thought it would be a neat niche for an otherwise totally useless item (I hope no one is offended at that!).
One thing I like about Crawl is that just about everything has some kind of purpose. Harmful potions can be used with the evaporate spell, and curse armour / weapon / jewellery are good if worshipping Ash. A potion of water gives a tiny bit of nourishment, and can be evaporated to make steam. Even scrolls of random uselessness might give you butterflies.
The only use I can imagine for blank scrolls is to carry them to slightly reduce the chance of another scroll being burned.
Anyhow, so transcribing a spell is one idea. Here's another idea:
You can write something on them like "Here be Dragons", post it on the outside of the door of a room, and intelligent monsters will refrain from opening that door. Obviously you can't do that from inside a room, as only you could see the sign, but you can do it to create a safe stash location elsewhere in the dungeon.
Alternately, this could be another use of Traps & Doors skill - enable you to lock a door (from inside or out).
By the way, does traps and doors skill minimize the chance of a door creaking when you open it?