Contamination to replace spell hunger

[yastp]

There are several problems with spell hunger being a spellcasting limiter, as discussed in another thread.

So i propose to use magic contamination instead of spell hunger. This will untie food from magic and make contamination more interesting; however a whole revision of contamination would be required:

-Each spell level has an associated contamination cost;
-Contam cost is inflicted at the cast of a spell, regardless if it succeeded or not;
-Contamination dissipates over time;
-Spellcasting either doesn't interact with contam costs or decreases them (not below a spell-level specific threshold) / increases contam dissipation rates;
-Making gods or consumables interact with contam (costs) might be interesting;
-There are two or three levels of contamination: safe and dangerous / safe, mildly dangerous and very dangerous (for simplicity);
-After passing the threshold you get blasted by a contamination effect each time you cast a spell;
-Contamination effects wouldn't depend on spell schools of casted spells (for simplicity);
-Miscasts are incorporated into contamination effects (if they aren't already), otherwise they are no more;
-Harmless low-tier contam effects are no more: if you pass the threshold - you will get punished;

Contamination dissipating over time has to be the worst thing about this proposal*, but if stairs didn't exist then this wouldn't be a problem.

Which is what makes this better suited for implementation in Hellcrawl**:

-Contamination dissipates on descend;
-Buffs cost more?

*if there's even any need to limit magic with a strategic resource, which i actually don't know about; and hopefully i am not overlooking something else
**again- if there's any need for that

[Sorcerous]

Your proposal has a deterministic base that triggers off success which you want to replace the stochastic base that triggers off failure. Completely opposite in concept, and likely in purpose. The problem with this approach is that you'd needlessly punish every caster background unless the char becomes a spell/mundane combat hybrid ASAP.

Contamination as it is now, and the miscasts both serve as a risk factor - if you're not reasonably sure that casting will screw you over worse than not casting, you can roll the dice and hope things go well. Your proposal would make casting in general a chore to use, and a self-destructive chore at that. Do you not realise how difficult it is to make a reliable caster without this kind of extra limitation? And those are the ones with decent aptitudes.

[yastp]

Your proposal has a deterministic base that triggers off success which you want to replace the stochastic base that triggers off failure. Completely opposite in concept, and likely in purpose. The problem with this approach is that you'd needlessly punish every caster background unless the char becomes a spell/mundane combat hybrid ASAP.

Contamination as it is now, and the miscasts both serve as a risk factor - if you're not reasonably sure that casting will screw you over worse than not casting, you can roll the dice and hope things go well. Your proposal would make casting in general a chore to use, and a self-destructive chore at that. Do you not realise how difficult it is to make a reliable caster without this kind of extra limitation? And those are the ones with decent aptitudes.

My understanding of design is not particularly deep or broad, so i am mostly throwing the idea out there, in case someone smarter than me finds something interesting in it. In it's current form this might not work at all in DCSS, but it might be useful to Hellcrawl or DCSS in the future.

Well, maybe contam cost should be inflicted only at success of a spell, Idk. I'll either reply again tommorow with a clear head or don't reply at all because of my first sentence.

[bel]

It's not clear to me what you're trying to achieve. What problem is being solved by using contamination?

I can point out that an old fork "Crawl Light" did remove hunger, and replaced all food costs with "glow" costs.

However, I think the better way to go would be to remove spell hunger and replace it with nothing.

[svendre]

The best solution would be to introduce fatigue into melee ranged, so that spell casters didn't feel like they had the unfair disadvantage of spell hunger, which does in fact serve some useful purposes although they may not be obvious at first.

[yastp]

It's not clear to me what you're trying to achieve. What problem is being solved by using contamination?

I can point out that an old fork "Crawl Light" did remove hunger, and replaced all food costs with "glow" costs.

However, I think the better way to go would be to remove spell hunger and replace it with nothing.

My proposal was based on an assumption that spellcasting should have a strategical limit.

[bel]

It already has a strategic cost: you need to train spell schools to be able to cast spells (by contrast, anybody can use a weapon even at 0 skill). Many spells also have spellpower dependence, so you train schools beyond the minimum to actually cast them.

It is true that spells don't technically have an ongoing strategic cost: you can train a spell school enough to cast a spell and then never train it again. But that's the same for melee or evocations or whatever else. I don't see why spellcasting should have some sort of special ongoing cost associated with it.

Anyway, even if we accept some sort of cost, spell hunger basically does nothing. When some mechanic does nothing, it's best to replace it with nothing.

[Aean]

I've read through the idea a few times now, but I still can't find a good way to make contamination a good replacement. At best, it seems like you could make it so it works basically like food, except more punishing if you overdo it within a fight, and less punishing if you can rest away contamination instead of eating.

Seems like either one could be better-replaced with stronger penalties for miscasting spells, especially high-level spells, if you want to maintain a risk, or simply eliminating the hunger penalty entirely.