alternatives to permabuff

[Galefury]

I came up with a spell hunger formula with diminishing returns that I like. It stays somewhat close to the current spell hunger for low int/spc (usually its a little lower), then the gains slow down and it ends up more expensive at high spc/int:

old: maxhunger(level) - int*spc
new: maxhunger(level) * (1 - ((int*spc/27) / (1 + level^2 /5 + (int*spc/27))))

Plot in the attachment. It shows old spellhunger over spellcasting skill for int=30 for spell levels 1, 3, 6 and 9, and proposed new spellhunger for int=30,20,10 (for the same levels). If this sparks more discussion it should probably split into its own thread.

[galehar]

After some talk on ##crawl-dev:

• Treat each spell individually.
• Allow permacast for forms, flight and weapon branding spells.
• Flight gives ponderousness.
• Unless wearing an amulet of controlled flight (to be renamed?) or being a XL>=15 tengu.
• What about the minor stealth bonus? Double it with controlled flight?
• Change ring and boots of levitation to * of flight.
• Levitation still exists has an enchantment miscast effect (for historical reasons).
• What to do with rMsl?

[eeviac]

^I like these proposals, except adding ponderousness to flight unless you have controlled flight. I can't get behind making shoals/swamp/cocytus more annoying without a nearly useless amulet/intrinsic.

[KoboldLord]

Galefury: I'll be happy with most any formula, as long as it is not possible to hit a minimum hunger cap like it is to hit minimum weapon delay. Rushing to a specific level of spellcasting because the formula caps there is bad, and an abrupt drop in rate of improvement at a specific level of spellcasting isn't much better. I like your formula, but I'm not super-fussy about the specifics either.

galehar:
Flight -- air/tmut form, meld cloak slot for permaflight. Can be combined with Beastly Appendage and Blade Hands, but none of the full-body forms. No need for ponderousness; losing the cloak slot is a meaningful drawback since you're almost certain to get a branded cloak eventually with all the draconians about. No carrying capacity modification, and possibly remove changes to carrying capacity from other forms too because routine changes to carrying capacity are annoying and fiddly. No stealth bonus, no speed bonus, remove immunity to electrocution brands, remove everything except the ability to cross impassable tiles. Finish removal of Controlled Flight by eliminating amulet generation.

Repel Missiles -- Instead of the absurdly strong fractional multiplier applied to enemy hit rolls, it gives effective AC against ranged attacks. The AC granted scales with air magic skill, much like Ozocubu's Armour and Stoneskin, probably at a rate comparable to Ozocubu's Armour since it exchanges the drawback of being melted by fire for the drawback of not doing anything in melee. An AC bonus would be a strong benefit against packs of kobolds with darts, middling benefits against packs of centaurs or yaktaurs with real ammo, and do proportionally almost nothing against dragon fire or Crystal Spears. Unlike EV and SH, AC does not stack multiplicatively with other modifiers to the hit roll. AC only interacts with damage. Deflect Missiles can either be removed or left as is, because it requires more meaningful xp investment for the substantial benefits.

[crate]

I would never learn flight if it gave ponderousness whenever it was activated.

[ElectricAlbatross]

Flight -- air/tmut form, meld cloak slot for permaflight

I really like this idea.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Would Draconian Controlled Flight affect the new Flight?

[galehar]

About flight, the idea was that it has minor bonuses (stealth, immunity to mechanical traps and carrying capacity), but they are all relevant for exploring. So we need to either remove those bonuses or make it possible to permacast it. But permanent flight is Tengu's things and we don't really want to give it to anyone. So it needs a relevant penalty, and ponderousness is one. You would be able to permacast it, but you'll rarely do without the amulet, except maybe for shoals and swamps. Another idea that came up was a spellcasting penalty like for blade hands and spider form (double ponderousness was also suggested).

Regarding the minimum hunger for spellcasting elliptic pointed out that if there is one, you'd always have to worry about whether casting IMB twice or throw flame five times is better against monsters for which either will do. Hungerless spells is a good thing because it means less minmaxing.

I like the idea of giving an AC bonus to RMsl. If it works by slowing down projectiles, should it also work on bolt spells and penetrating bolts? Probably yes, at least for simplicity. Still need to find a way to prevent the use of all defensive buffs when exploring (ozo's armour, stoneskin, TC,...).

[Jeremiah]

What if flight had kind of the opposite effect to ponderous - eg normal movement speed but slowed attacks/spellcasting?

Alternatively, how about if while you are flying or levitating, all monsters of medium size or larger are treated as if they had trample? (You are easier to push around when you don't have your feet on the ground.)

[njvack]

Flight -- air/tmut form, meld cloak slot for permaflight.

No flying mummies, then?

[Jeremiah]

Regarding the minimum hunger for spellcasting elliptic pointed out that if there is one, you'd always have to worry about whether casting IMB twice or throw flame five times is better against monsters for which either will do. Hungerless spells is a good thing because it means less minmaxing.

What if spell hunger for all spells eventually reached the same minimum value, independent of the spell's level, but higher level spells needed higher int/spellcasting. Kind of like now, except the minimum would not be zero. I guess you could still use some kind of exponential formula so that it approached the minimum with diminishing returns rather than linearly.

[Hirasi]

I don't like ponderousness for flight because I don't use flight for the exploration bonuses, but instead to flee across lava/water in the swamp/shoals/abyss, and making it ponderous would nerf that usage of the ability. I think having alternative ways of escaping dangerous situations besides popping a teleport scroll is a good thing.

Having flight make it easy to be pushed around by monsters sounds interesting. The spell would keep its value as a way of crossing water and lava, but it would not always be good to keep it on.

[plantaspoon]

Something I've not seen proposed is to make a permanency spell. Lvl 9 enchantment spell that allows you to choose a currently active buff to make permanent. there can be a permanent cost involved. Permanent mp loss when the spell is cast, permanent increased metabolism, permanent minimum glow, reduced known spell levels etc.

Casting a lvl 9 spell is a significant character investment and could justify the advantage of a permanent buff.

This proposal may need tweaking as the end result is annoy the player with recasts until the reach sufficient skill level to cast permanently, but I believe the idea of having permanent buffs available to only very high level enchanters has merit.

Alternate proposal - permanency spell gives the player the spell as a toggled ability similar to tengu flight. it may be toggled on/off, but carries the metabolism/glow accumulation/other negative galehar is so fond of. toggle on/off as the situation demands. Traveling with full buffs will consume a lot of food and is not optimal, but for areas where it's needed removes the interface screw.

there are many ways this could be implemented, and the final, balanced version would probably look completely different from what I've proposed, but I believe this may be a step toward the solution that makes everyone happy. Permanent buffs but not without significant cost/choices.

[KoboldLord]

About flight, the idea was that it has minor bonuses (stealth, immunity to mechanical traps and carrying capacity), but they are all relevant for exploring. So we need to either remove those bonuses or make it possible to permacast it. But permanent flight is Tengu's things and we don't really want to give it to anyone. So it needs a relevant penalty, and ponderousness is one. You would be able to permacast it, but you'll rarely do without the amulet, except maybe for shoals and swamps. Another idea that came up was a spellcasting penalty like for blade hands and spider form (double ponderousness was also suggested).

Tengu get awesome super-flight, everybody else gets stripped-down basic flight that allows safe travel through relevant problem tiles and does nothing else. Saving the amulet of controlled flight is not worth the trouble. Flight is not an effect worth sacrificing an amulet slot, so it will never be worth an amulet slot to very slightly improve flight.

Regarding the minimum hunger for spellcasting elliptic pointed out that if there is one, you'd always have to worry about whether casting IMB twice or throw flame five times is better against monsters for which either will do. Hungerless spells is a good thing because it means less minmaxing.

That consideration already exists in that you want to conserve mp. A single 2-mp Throw Flame that kills a target will result in less piety decay than a 4-mp IMB that does the same thing when you rest your mp bar back up, so it will always be worth minmaxing your spell tactics. Hunger is typically much less a concern because either way you're going to eat chunks from the thing you just killed anyway.

Hungerless spells cause minmaxing by introducing a clear maximum to shoot for. Worse, this maximum often works at odds with actual good gameplay (it is often preferable in practice to use your high-hunger spells and then eat the chunks you make than it is to use your hungerless spells), which misleads unspoiled players by giving them an obvious goal to reach and then punishing them for trying.

I like the idea of giving an AC bonus to RMsl. If it works by slowing down projectiles, should it also work on bolt spells and penetrating bolts? Probably yes, at least for simplicity.

I'd say yes, but poorly. +8AC against ranged attacks gives the same average of 4 damage reduction whether the incoming projectile is a kobold's dart or a 100hp Crystal Spear.

No flying mummies, then?

They can always use a ring of levitation or a +lev artifact. Or semi-controlled Blinks. They're common enough, and the only vaults that actively require levitation and flight don't occur until post-endgame.

[One-Eyed Jack]

I don't think anyone is willing to commit 9 spell levels and thousands of hp to removing a minor annoyance. I do wish there was a charm spell worth going above 12 or 15 or whatever for, though. Really, removing the school and distributing its spells among other schools (rmsl is ir/tloc, flight is air/tmut for example) might be best. I think a lot of the secondary spell schools could benefit frm having more spells worth learning, personally.

For spells, I like hungerless casting because I over-estimate the food clock consistently (and I think most players do). If you really want to do someting like this, how about just having metabolism increase while regenerating mp? Maybe also adjusting current cast values.

[Jeremiah]

If you think about it, spellcasting already has a minimum food cost (kind of) - due to the nutrition that is lost while resting/channeling to regain MP.

It affects conjurers more than hybrids (as they will normally spend a lot more MP if doing most of their killing via spells) and even gives the player a potentially interesting choice: continue to explore with reduced MP (risky) or rest until fully recovered (wastes food.)

And Vehumet already helps reduce the effective food cost, both by reducing the MP costs for spells and giving MP for kills, both of which can reduce the need for resting.

Introducing a minimum cost for actual casting will hit spellcasters with a double whammy as they will now have to deal with the food costs for the spells themselves as well as those for recovering their MP.