spells with "interesting" targeting


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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 11:14

spells with "interesting" targeting

It's a bad idea. Stop doing it. It's just awkward and stupid.

The ice spells for example, hailstorm and absolute zero, should get an award for worst spell designs ever. Like, standing ovation, it's a miracle they ever made it into stable, with designs so bad may be years if anything worse is ever designed, if ever.

Look, who thinks it's fun to run from a fight, with full hp and 0 risks, just to go back and fourth until you get a nice position to cast your awkward targeting spell spell?

It's so bad that you have me, a player who likes to spam crystal spears, complaining about an instant kill spell because the targeting is that bad. It's not even bad in a way that balances it, it's just bad in a way that requires you to press a dozen keys to get your kill shot in, none of which are interesting or put you in any risk.

Hailstorm is the same thing! You end up constantly running from easy fights just to come back to get the awkward targeting right.

For what purpose? To make fire and ice schools different? Not worth it if we get this trash.

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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 11:37

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

Official thread about new and improved magic, more than a year old.
There is always something new to learn.

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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 16:28

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

The most relevant comment from that thread is the analysis of the new fire magic spells by bt:

bt wrote:1. Foxfire and starting FE book in general

While Foxfire is fairly interesting to use and deals good damage for a lvl 1 spell, the drawbacks make it really awkward to start a run with. You can't use it in melee in a corridor at all. This along with the way D:1 is usually generated (lots of corridors) makes some FE starts especially difficult.

Encountering an early awake adder in a corridor as a non-RPois species leaves you with two options: run and most likely die; melee it with untrained unarmed and most likely die. Adder in a corridor is an extreme example, it can be jackals, leopard gecko, bat or cockroach instead, and the spell is still tricky to use in semi-open spaces, so it's not like completely avoiding corridors (even if it was possible) solves the problem. All the other caster starts have their lvl 1 spell to use in these situations, FE has untrained unarmed.

The clunkiness of Foxfire gets more pronounced when we consider two other early FE spells:
- Inner Flame: Foxfire is auto-targeted and slow (deals damage 1 turn after being cast at best), so makes IF more dangerous (IF'ed monster gets a chance to get closer) and unreliable (can target non-IF'ed monster)
- Conjure Flame: works best to create gaps in corridors... where you can't really use Foxfire.

Overall FE start feels very awkward to play, all three early spells are slow and unreliable. Your Sticky Flame doesn't work well with either Inner Flame or Conjure Flame and those two spells don't work too well together either, and when you get Fireball online everything else besides Sticky Flame feels redundant, and training Hexes for Inner Flame feels like a waste, cause it's the only Hex in a book and you are already training two schools to get Fireball online (compare it with Dazzling Flash/Fulminant Prism combo of Conj starting book where Prism is your main damage spell so you'll naturally get Flash as well). Also a very-very-very minor point, but FE start being so damn weird and convoluted makes for a bit of a flavor mismatch, as fire mages are usually the most generic "kill them with explosions" type of characters.

In conclusion Foxfire seems like an interesting idea, but is a poor lvl 1 starting spell and doesn't synergise well with anything in FE starting book.

bt wrote:4. Starfire. Didn't find a use case for this one. It's very unwieldy with allies like all the other large non-targeted AoE spells, but unlike them it can miss and costs 6 MP (also none of the common summons are immune to it). So in pretty much every case I would pick one of Irradiate (not even close with this one), Static Discharge or IMB as my point-blank AoE. I tried using Starfire with FE start and Fireball was more appropriate for a given situation almost every time.

This spell reminded me somewhat of ADOM magic system, where almost all spells are targeted by choosing one of your eight movement directions. So there were bolt spells that shot one bolt down a direction, and greater bolts (or whatever they were called), that worked like Starfire. In practice the greater version was used exactly like the normal version, cause being surrounded is bad. What makes Starfire's case worse is that when you do get surrounded you really want your AoE to not miss.

As an aside, having played a lot of ADOM, I don't miss it's magic system or it's targeting at all, I don't think it can hold a candle to what DCSS currently has. Also such targeting makes for a supremely tedious gameplay and is more suited for simpler floor architecture of ADOM anyway.


I think the rest of the schools are not worse than they used to be, but fire magic is in a very strange position, that would need an overhaul IMHO.

There are still an awful lot of spells with manual targeting tough.

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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 19:42

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

sanka wrote:The most relevant comment from that thread is the analysis of the new fire magic spells by bt:

bt wrote:1. Foxfire and starting FE book in general

While Foxfire is fairly interesting to use and deals good damage for a lvl 1 spell, the drawbacks make it really awkward to start a run with. You can't use it in melee in a corridor at all. This along with the way D:1 is usually generated (lots of corridors) makes some FE starts especially difficult.

Encountering an early awake adder in a corridor as a non-RPois species leaves you with two options: run and most likely die; melee it with untrained unarmed and most likely die. Adder in a corridor is an extreme example, it can be jackals, leopard gecko, bat or cockroach instead, and the spell is still tricky to use in semi-open spaces, so it's not like completely avoiding corridors (even if it was possible) solves the problem. All the other caster starts have their lvl 1 spell to use in these situations, FE has untrained unarmed.

The clunkiness of Foxfire gets more pronounced when we consider two other early FE spells:
- Inner Flame: Foxfire is auto-targeted and slow (deals damage 1 turn after being cast at best), so makes IF more dangerous (IF'ed monster gets a chance to get closer) and unreliable (can target non-IF'ed monster)
- Conjure Flame: works best to create gaps in corridors... where you can't really use Foxfire.

Overall FE start feels very awkward to play, all three early spells are slow and unreliable. Your Sticky Flame doesn't work well with either Inner Flame or Conjure Flame and those two spells don't work too well together either, and when you get Fireball online everything else besides Sticky Flame feels redundant, and training Hexes for Inner Flame feels like a waste, cause it's the only Hex in a book and you are already training two schools to get Fireball online (compare it with Dazzling Flash/Fulminant Prism combo of Conj starting book where Prism is your main damage spell so you'll naturally get Flash as well). Also a very-very-very minor point, but FE start being so damn weird and convoluted makes for a bit of a flavor mismatch, as fire mages are usually the most generic "kill them with explosions" type of characters.

In conclusion Foxfire seems like an interesting idea, but is a poor lvl 1 starting spell and doesn't synergise well with anything in FE starting book.

bt wrote:4. Starfire. Didn't find a use case for this one. It's very unwieldy with allies like all the other large non-targeted AoE spells, but unlike them it can miss and costs 6 MP (also none of the common summons are immune to it). So in pretty much every case I would pick one of Irradiate (not even close with this one), Static Discharge or IMB as my point-blank AoE. I tried using Starfire with FE start and Fireball was more appropriate for a given situation almost every time.

This spell reminded me somewhat of ADOM magic system, where almost all spells are targeted by choosing one of your eight movement directions. So there were bolt spells that shot one bolt down a direction, and greater bolts (or whatever they were called), that worked like Starfire. In practice the greater version was used exactly like the normal version, cause being surrounded is bad. What makes Starfire's case worse is that when you do get surrounded you really want your AoE to not miss.

As an aside, having played a lot of ADOM, I don't miss it's magic system or it's targeting at all, I don't think it can hold a candle to what DCSS currently has. Also such targeting makes for a supremely tedious gameplay and is more suited for simpler floor architecture of ADOM anyway.


I think the rest of the schools are not worse than they used to be, but fire magic is in a very strange position, that would need an overhaul IMHO.

There are still an awful lot of spells with manual targeting tough.

Note the quoted comment was wrong here inner flame is actually safer, not less safe with foxfire than it was was, since foxfire does it's damage 1 turn later, you can cast inner flame, then foxfire, and move away from an adjacent critter, doing damage to it and having it explode before it walks up next to you. That it *also* was improved and now generates flame clouds and thereby increases foxfire's (or any other thing's) damage just means it's a generally-useful spell instead of a very rarely useful spell.

Also starfire is just bolt of fire (literally the damage and to-hit are identical) without manual targeting, Bolt of fire was just kind of Ok for a level 6, so starfire is too (the automatic hitting of fireball is, and was, often more useful than BoF/Starfire) That starfire can be used to hit multiple adjacent things is a slight upgrade over BoF, but if you had multiple adjacent things using BoF wouldn't be your go-to usually anyway, so at best it's kind of a wash.

Foxfire being fairly limited in corridors is a valid concern, but since it can be used reasonably at any corner or junction in practice it's a pretty minor case (also foxfire does more damage per cast in the optimal case and doesn't miss when compared to flame tongue, but with less flexibility targeting wise)

Overall the biggest nerf to FE was conjure flame (which was frankly overpowered previously, but now is mostly crap, outside of a few edge cases I never use new conjure flame) however they are definitely more complicated to use now as a start.
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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 20:02

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

pour one out for conjure flame, that was actually a spell with interesting targeting that was FUN to use. The new version you cast once, remember that it was changed, and never cast it again. So interesting!

And "overpowered" isn't an argument. Some starts are stronger than others, and melee is so easy you can literally just bot it with simple Lua scripts and get a 15% win rate without the bot knowing how to run away correctly. Let's not even talk about ranged, which is even stronger than melee.

Then you get ONE very fun fire spell, that's not good after the lair, and it's OP in a universe where meph cloud is instantly winning fights up to and including in Zot? Really?

I get it, I guess. You WILL berserk as a tabber and you WILL meph stab as a caster, no fun allowed! That's the design philosophy, and if anything is remotely fun, it will be replaced with some "interesting" targeting that's too awkward to use that even one instant kills Cerebov players will still not want to use it.

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Post Thursday, 28th January 2021, 21:37

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

snow wrote:Look, who thinks it's fun to run from a fight, with full hp and 0 risks, just to go back and fourth until you get a nice position to cast your awkward targeting spell spell?


snow wrote:pour one out for conjure flame, that was actually a spell with interesting targeting that was FUN to use. The new version you cast once, remember that it was changed, and never cast it again. So interesting!

Then you get ONE very fun fire spell, that's not good after the lair, and it's OP in a universe where meph cloud is instantly winning fights up to and including in Zot? Really?


So you dislike having to run to a corridor to cast frozen ramparts, but the interesting fire spell was the one that required you to run back to the corridor to make best use of it? Or are you referring to some other fire spell and I misunderstood you? IMO fball, sticky flame and inner flame are all very usable late into the game!

My thoughts: The positional magic def made me play more casters. Most starting mage books are fine now with having ways to deal with single enemies and groups of them. I personally dislike Foxfire but that's more of a me thing.
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Post Friday, 29th January 2021, 00:10

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

Frozen ramparts is fine, I like interacting with the environment and corridors. I liked poison cloud before it was axed too.

My problem is with stuff like: oh there's some popcorn in front of that fiend, better run away at full health into safely cleared territory, then come back and hope that's not the case on the 4th or 5th attempt!

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Post Friday, 29th January 2021, 22:38

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

Coincidentally I'm running a character that has cast all of these, partly because I hadn't had a chance to try them since the changes -- tbh, they're great. Like way, way better than I expected. In the case of starburst in particular (which, I had low expectations), the fact that it hits all 8 squares adjacent to you on that targeting pattern is one thing I hadn't really absorbed, and gives a whole bunch of use cases. Hailstorm is not going to carry everything but it has good synergy with new IMB, and has a really good damage to cost ratio. I do think I would have enjoyed them less before being able to see the targeting patterns in 0.26 and use them with quivering. Current CFlame is not in a great place still, I think. But old cflame was fun exactly because of the things that needed to be changed.

too awkward to use that even one instant kills Cerebov players will still not want to use it.


I mean, I literally before running across this post just killed cerebov with abs 0 and it was pretty fun, I find the idea that people would "not want to use it" really baffling, abs 0 has been my main quivered spell in pan so far. I do actually sorta get the complaint that the spell can feel cheap sometimes, though; e.g. I got lucky with TRJ positioning for it and it was pretty anticlimactic.

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Post Saturday, 30th January 2021, 17:16

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

Fully agree with advil - abs 0 is well balanced now. Even before going into a fight with TRJ, Cerebov or an OOF, I consider how I can get the guy within range, without interference. Having abs 0 castable also means that the cloak of darkness becomes really valuable. So you get a guaranteed 1-shot solution, but you need to work for it - which I find much nicer than LCS, which I sometime had miss three times in a row, and really nothing you can do about that.
I share the OP's frustration about Foxfire, and, even more, ConjureFlame. Hailstorm and Starburst are really growing on me now - I used them less in the beginning, but the more their mechanics are known to me, the more I pick them as a matter of course.
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Post Sunday, 14th February 2021, 16:58

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

I'm just back to playing the game after a long break to try out all the new stuff, and find myself agreeing with the original poster, that "interesting" targeting actually makes spellcasting less interesting, not more, as there is now a much smaller set of spells I would bother learning and using.

As others have said, fire magic is in a bit of a sad place right now, both because of the super awkward targetting, and just being generally weaker than the other elemental schools.

Starburst should probably always hit - if you go through the rigmarole of moving to an awkward position to line up a shot, you really shouldn't have to deal with the bolts missing as well.

Fire Storm could maybe be made single school Fire Magic only - it would still probably be better to have Shatter or Absolute Zero in most situations, but this may at least make it competitive.

I'm not sure about Ignition - it seems like in most cases it is worse than Ozocubu's Refrigeration, with the big exception being in mega-zigs, where it is probably better than Fire Storm. Maybe it could be left as it is to please players who enjoy mega-zigs.

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Post Sunday, 14th February 2021, 21:19

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

I think fire magic is fine. I played a 15 rune fire elementalist and it felt pretty strong from start to finish. I think Starburst is better than bolt of fire, though not by much. It was a common occurrence to hit 3 opponents with Starburst without going way out of the way to set it up. It was pretty rare to hit more than 2 with bolt of fire. Ignition is extremely strong--maybe too strong, letting you one shot any tight pack of enemies. The spells are fairy well balanced with good uses for most of the spells. The only spells I didn't find useful are conjure flame and inner flame. Sticky flame also has a pretty small usefulness window.

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Post Wednesday, 17th February 2021, 14:48

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

I have to say it was hilarious the first time I accidentally started a forest fire that burned almost an entire level with Starburst - and Ignition is pretty good for killing the royal jelly.

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Post Friday, 26th February 2021, 05:01

Re: spells with "interesting" targeting

advil wrote: Hailstorm is not going to carry everything but it has good synergy with new IMB, and has a really good damage to cost ratio.

The biggest surprise to me was how much hailstorm combos with freeze. Once they're too close to hit with hailstorm, they are in freeze range. Hailstorm is crowd control and for softening up big threats, who then get close and get freeze for the kill.

Ideally, while standing in ramparts ;)

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