Inscriptions for spells and abilities

[mageykun]

Inscriptions nicely allow you to place confirmation prompts to prevent accidental stupidity. {!w}, {!q}, {!f}, {!r}, {!v} etc all allow you to stop yourself from using the wrong item at the wrong time. I would love to see this functionality expanded to abilities and spells, something like:

{!a} triggers confirmation prompt "Really use <ability>?"
{!z} triggers confirmation prompt "Really cast <spell>?"

I feel this is relevant because in my experience, hastily selecting the wrong spell is much more common than selecting the wrong consumable. You don't often use specific consumables frequently enough that triggering them becomes a reflex, but relying on certain spells / abilities can become a matter of habit. A habit that causes problems when you've moved on to a new character and your reflexes haven't.

Aside from the matter of memory, there are also certain spells / abilities that can be very unfortunate to activate at the wrong time- particularly those that exert a toll on the caster/invoker/evoker, and especially those that have permanent consequences.

Right now, the current solution is often to remap problem spells / abilities to capital letters to make accidental activation harder.

It would probably make sense if the inscription option showed up when examining the spell or ability description (via the "a !" or "I" screens), just as the option to inscribe shows up while checking item descriptions under the "i" menu.

Thoughts?

Edit: just checked the help files- turns out {!a} is already used to prompt before attacking with the wielded item. Is it alright to have the same inscription to do two things depending on where it's placed? I suppose we could use {!z} for both spells and abilities, but it breaks the nice {!<command key>} pattern.

Double edit: there might be a few other things inscriptions could be used for in spells, like maybe {+z} setting one spell so it would always be the spell queued up for use when you hit z (right now the last spell cast is queued), or {=z} excluding a spell from showing up in the queue even if it was the last spell cast. Potentially useful for saving keystrokes, but nowhere near as useful as being able to force confirmations.

[Blade]

In addition to the above, it would be nice to have an inscription for "Really cast a spell while wielding X?" It's easy for hybrids to forget that they're wielding their attack weapon instead of their enhancer staff/resistance weapon/etc.

[greepish]

Well I like the idea, but I don't see an easy way of doing it... Consider you'd run into "Really use X" A whole lot with !a/!z, as nearly all spells are casted occasionally, while specific items are used only rarely. I can definately see it being used for abilities, though, since many abilities are used rarely. God knows how many spells I've accidently forgotten while channel spamming.

[mageykun]

The idea was for you to inscribe specific spells, not the z command wholesale. In practice, you most likely would want to limit it to occasionally used spells- for instance you might want to force a confirmation on Alistair's (so you don't forget to toggle on your amulet of clarity), or Revivification (accidental loss of max hp hurts!), or yes, Sif's amnesia if you're prone to accidentally triggering it when you're channeling. It shouldn't interrupt you when you're busy spamming magic dart. Just like putting "!q" on a potion of mutation doesn't stop you when you go to drink a potion of healing.

So in practice, it might look something like this...

  Code:

Your Spells

a - Magic Dart
b - Alistair's Intoxication {!z}

Your Abilities

a - Channel Energy
b - Forget Spell {!a}
x - Renounce Religion {!a}

"za" and "aa" would not ask for confirmation, "zb" and "ab" would. ...and "ax" would ask twice since renounce religion already asks for confirmation, I'm pretty sure. :p

[Kate]

I usually just achieve this by putting the ability or spell on a capital letter, seems like a simpler way of achieving the same thing.

[Blade]

It's not incredibly uncommon to confirm prompts by accident, either. If you're rapidly tapping a direction key, it can take several taps before you notice a prompt, and if that key is y, you can find yourself suddenly doing something you didn't intend.

[dpeg]

Marvin's approach is the way to go, in my opinion. If you need more obscure keys than uppercase letters, that might be feasible.

[Blade]

Really, the option to switch inventory/spell/ability letters could stand to be a lot better-documented. It's not like I've thoroughly examined all of the in-game documentation, but I did read it, and I never realized changing letters was a possibility until I saw people doing it online.