Remove Levitation

[Galefury]

Now that swiftfly and the levitation spell are gone I think levitation could be changed to flight in more (or even all) cases. That's the boots, ring, artifact evocation, potion and miscast effect. Levitation is usually just annoying (compared to flight), the difference is rarely actually relevant to gameplay. And when it is relevant then usually because the player did not consider the side effects. This is not interesting.

The miscast is the only one really worth keeping as levitation IMO (flight is strictly good in the absence of airstrikers), but I don't think really obscure miscast effects are good. It could be removed. A case can be made for not changing the potion, but I think removing levitation with its far from obvious side effects would be more worthwhile.

cFlight should then also be removed of course. Or changed to provide additional effects during flight, such as swiftness and/or an EV bonus during flight, possibly also evocable flight so it is useful on its own. If cFlight is removed Inaccuracy could get a higher weight if keeping the the amount of useful amulets the same is a concern.

[Danei]

I support this. I don't think the differences between flight and levitation are meaningful anymore. I think they should be made meaningful or the distinction should be removed.

[dpeg]

It is true that levitation is cumbersome to use and also that removal would improve matters. However, I believe that there is place for a meaningful distinction. The problem so far is that the distinction is not good enough (only pickup or not, and use of stairs, I believe). So here is another proposal:

Levitation works as now, but greatly reduces movement (not action) speed. (Duration could be increased.)

You can use it to cross water and lava as now, but it'd lose a lot of tactical appeal.

[absolutego]

So to give the cFly intrinsic some relevance you'd make levitation even worse? This would hurt melee builds, again.
It doesn't seem fair to require two intrinsics which often take two different jewellery slots to make up for a L3 spell which is nearly required in some late-game areas (the abyss or hells, and it's very useful in swamp and the shoals).

[snow]

I think he was saying to change potion of levitation to potion of flight, right of levitation to ring of flight, and so on while removing the amulet altogether....

EDIT

Oh, you're referring to dpeg's comment? Yeah there's no reason to make levitation worse. There's really no reason to even keep levitation and have multiple forms of a "get over lava" ability.

[Tiber]

I'd support removing it, and giving draconians evokable flight (and removing the relevant mutation).

If we're not doing that, I'd give levitation an EV penalty (you can't control yourself well enough to dodge). That's about the only penalty I can think of that both makes sense flavor-wise and hurts physical and caster types relatively evenly.

[absolutego]

That's much better, yes. Probably not very distinctive, though, unless the penalty is very steep.