Connect magic schools with player resistances

[Majang]

Here's a suggestion to add player resistances to significant investments into magic schools. The idea here is that if I become adept in ice, fire, poison magic, I can reasonably be expected to also protect myself against the effects of ice, heat or poison. These bonuses should not be given too early, but at hard break points in the relevant skill set. Here is an idea how this may look:

Fire Magic: rF at skill 10, fire-cloud immunity at 18, rF++ at 26
Ice Magic: rC at skill 10, ice-cloud immunity at 18, rC++ at 26
Poison Magic: rPois at skill 10, poison cloud immunity at 18, poison immunity at 26
Charms: a full pip of MR at skill 10, another at 18
Hexes: ditto
Air: rElec at skill 10, permanent flight at 18
Earth: starting from skill 10, a point of AC for each new level
Transmutations: rMut at skill 10, rMut++ at 18, rMut+++ at 26
Translocations: 70% resistance against involuntary translocations at skill 10, banishment immunity at 26
Necromancy: rN at skill 10, rot immunity at 18, torment resistance at 26
Summoning: can't think of anything - maybe passive abjuration or something like that

Why would all that be good: Of course it would add flavour to the game. More importantly, it would be an incentive to invest significantly into magic schools for characters that find themselves lacking in some of these resistances: Octopodes or Felids for armour, Gargoyles and Trolls for magic resistance, etc. Some of these resistances are very hard to come by, particularly for characters that are lacking some of the slots.

I believe such a system would work because it affects all magic schools, and therefore no player could afford to pursue all of these benefits. It would provide interesting strategic choices, and it would help to get new players interested in magic schools. Just pursuing a school for a pip of a resistance would be stupid, so players would also try out in which other ways they may benefit from these experience investments.

It may be objected that some characters are already very strong in these resistances, and get overpowered by learning one or two obvious magic schools. A gargoyle comes to mind. On the other hand, some characters wouldn't have any obvious benefit from pursuing some schools. But I think there would still be enough choice for most characters to reap significant benefits by choosing different career paths.

Has this idea been proposed and rejected earlier? I couldn't find any discussion to that point, but may be it is on some list of things that are never going to happen?

[duvessa]

Earth: starting from skill 10, a point of AC for each new level

This is more AC than armour skill usually gives

it would be an incentive to invest significantly into magic schools for characters that find themselves lacking in some of these resistances

This is an extreme overestimation of how useful resistances are

[Majang]

Earth: starting from skill 10, a point of AC for each new level

This is more AC than armour skill usually gives

Fair enough - the increments are certainly debatable; you may want to compare them with what old charms spells such as stone skin or Ozo's armour were giving. Ozo's armour is still around and could be scrapped for a passive AC increase by skill level - a much less fiddly solution than what we have now.

it would be an incentive to invest significantly into magic schools for characters that find themselves lacking in some of these resistances

This is an extreme overestimation of how useful resistances are

I don't recall that I gave any estimation of the usefulness of these resistances, so I can't have been that extreme. But, for the record, I feel much better as a character when I have a + in fire, cold and poison. For me that makes a difference as to whether I enter the volcano, the ice cave, or one of the poisonous branches of Lair. I'm even more covetous about MR or rN, where an extra pip can be the difference between life and death in the mid game. Particularly MR is sometimes very hard to come by. If you forget the rest of the proposal and consider boosting the charms and hexes schools for a way to increase your MR - those two schools are usually not considered overpowered anyway.

And hey, if resistances are not that much of a big deal, why not throw them in as a marginal bonus to the spell schools?

[svendre]

It's not a bad idea. The numbers of how effective it was would have to be tweaked. It would somewhat help bridge the gap of disparity that is the huge gobs of XP spell casting needs to be effective, while still being squishy, and so I think it would be helpful rather than harmful.

I think that training hexes used to give some resistance to hex-based spells long ago (or something like that) if I recall correctly. Those are cool kinds of mechanics in my opinion, I'm not sure why it was yanked out.

Having a little bit of resists for each category is a huge boon to survival. Resists are not overrated, that is nonsense.

I made a similar proposal awhile back that was an attempt to get Dex to influence the values of resists, but I think this proposal (if implemented with care) may be better overall.

[bt]

If I'm not missing something, this would allow full melee heavy armour users to get resistances with a relatively minor XP investment, and melees already require less XP to function than casters. Not sure if it's a bad thing, but incentives this would create feel a bit weird to me in general.

[ichbins]

Gnolls would like this. Becoming omniresistant somewhere in midgame surely is neat. I'd also say this is much to gamey. Like getting 10 skill in tmut before extended would be not too costly for most and as such probably a no-brainer, among other things.

[Majang]

Gnolls would like this.

That is a good point. It wouldn't do to give all these benefits as Freebies to Gnolls. But I guess that could be dealt with by adding special rules for Gnolls - such as the idea that all their geeky limitless expertise makes them more sensitive to outward influences.

[Majang]

If I'm not missing something, this would allow full melee heavy armour users to get resistances with a relatively minor XP investment, and melees already require less XP to function than casters. Not sure if it's a bad thing, but incentives this would create feel a bit weird to me in general.

Yes, I can see your point. Even in the current game the pain brand may encourage melee fighters to go for Necromancy without ever casting a spell, and I remember there once was a wiki guide that seriously suggested that a troll should study Earth with the single objective of smashing the world to pieces with the Staff of Earth. I still think that having a benefit from each magic school would mitigate against this, as you would still have to choose which benefit to pursue. If you want to discourage non-casters from going this way, you could make a somewhat lower threshold of the Spellcasting skill a necessary condition.

[svendre]

The heavier the armour you're wearing, the more levels of magic you have to train in order to get any beneficial resists (if you get any at all). It seems very fair to me, since pure casters have such a difficult time getting any AC while still being able to cast. It also makes sense from a flavor standpoint that someone deeply trained in fire magic might have some inkling of how to mitigate incoming magical fire damage, etc.

Solved.

[TheMeInTeam]

If I'm not missing something, this would allow full melee heavy armour users to get resistances with a relatively minor XP investment, and melees already require less XP to function than casters. Not sure if it's a bad thing, but incentives this would create feel a bit weird to me in general.

On the other hand:

- Viability of training to level 10 somewhat depends on the aptitude.
- Players might have some extra incentive to use medium armor and get some spell casting value out of the training rather than just a resistance.
- For most resistances, training to even skill level 10 isn't worth it.
- Even so, having a mechanic like this would be a nice hedge for those games where getting decent MR is impossible or your only sources of rElec are storm scales or some +4 artifact falchion.
- For extended, training tloc and tmut would help hedge against some of the most BS interactions the game has, allowing some reasonable agency for these effects.

[bt]

- Viability of training to level 10 somewhat depends on the aptitude.
- Players might have some extra incentive to use medium armor and get some spell casting value out of the training rather than just a resistance.
- For most resistances, training to even skill level 10 isn't worth it.
- Even so, having a mechanic like this would be a nice hedge for those games where getting decent MR is impossible or your only sources of rElec are storm scales or some +4 artifact falchion.
- For extended, training tloc and tmut would help hedge against some of the most BS interactions the game has, allowing some reasonable agency for these effects.

I gotta admit, I kinda like runs, where you might lack a certain resistance or have it on a sub-optimal swap. Makes finding new gear actually exciting, forces some creative approach to encounters. I can understand that it's not everyone cup of tea though and totally can see the appeal of having a guaranteed way of getting MR+ for instance.

Mostly though, it doesn't "feel" right to get such a benefit from training a skill. It's like if having 14 in Long Blades gave you a special move or something, not that outlandish as far as RPG mechanics go, but not something that DCSS does or ever did, as far as I'm aware. Doesn't mean it can't work of course.

[TheMeInTeam]

I mean, I've been forced to play through runs where > 1 external source of MR was impossible before Zot (only body armor had it). I think I've had one para death in depths from that ever, after a shaft, and it wasn't inescapable (I had blink and could have chump blocked it if I were paying attention). So it's not like this is a driving factor in game outcome in a vacuum.

But we're supposed to be making interesting choices. Having no gear options = no choice, you just play carefully and once you've learned how to survive the occasional banishment you're going to win regardless (or lose to some other cause). Having the option to somewhat gimp your build in favor of a resistance is a reasonable tradeoff. If you really need it you can do it, but in most cases training a skill just for that purposes is an inefficient use of resources, like wearing an rF ring to get rF++ rather than wearing a +6 AC ring.

There actually are some skill trainings with step functions already (AC has a bunch of small ones, several evocations have effects that are not possible until you have enough skill despite using them the same way). Besides, the 18+ skill stuff would be pretty rare/limited to extended other than maybe one skill, and the 26+ stuff would be the realm of zigs. I don't think you'd care about being banished then, beyond the inconvenience!

[Siegurt]

To flip this on it's head, how would you feel if there was an item that gave you +10 or +26 to some skill?

[Majang]

To flip this on it's head, how would you feel if there was an item that gave you +10 or +26 to some skill?

It would have to cost a couple of thousand gold in a shop.
Well, in fact, if you get a potion of experience early enough in the game, it may well bump one skill from 0 to 10.

[byrel]

I'm even more covetous about MR or rN, where an extra pip can be the difference between life and death in the mid game.

I'm curious; what devastating rN attacks are there in the midgame?

[Majang]

I'm even more covetous about MR or rN, where an extra pip can be the difference between life and death in the mid game.

I'm curious; what devastating rN attacks are there in the midgame?

• Nergalle and Josephine
• Hall of Blades in E2
• Orc Warrior (or any other bloke) with draining weapon

The trouble with these draining weapon attacks is that you only notice after a while that someone is draining you, and when you check your status again, you're already in the red.

[nago]

* those are two uniques with speed 10, you can in most cases just avoid them if you can't handle them - as you should with any other monster in the game
* Hall of Blades is a totally optional area inside a totally optional area. You can't get there by chance. Don't enter in it if you can't handle dancing weapon. And in elves' hall there are other monsters with bolt of draining, plus dancing weapons are legit spawn there so I don't see why only pick dancing inside E2.
* Most monsters who may spawn with a draining weapon are speed 10. Kill them from distance. Hex them. Use summons. Whatever, if their draining attack can be so dangerous.

And nowadays all weapons are described when the monster enter in LOS, so...

[tealizard]

Equipment that confers skill bonuses would be good in my opinion. In fact, a skill system based largely on such bonuses could easily provide a superior alternative to existing crawl skills. The brilliance potion already has a similar effect, though, so it's not a wildly outre suggestion.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with giving resistances according to skill levels, outside of mostly unrelated problems with the resistance and skill systems themselves. Resistances are a marginal consideration, easily manipulated through jewelry swapping under current mechanics. That's not to say it's a good idea, just no worse than many others that are actually implemented.