Enchantment split - feedback

[sanka]

Hi,

I'd like to know other player's experience with the recent split of the Enchantment school to Hexes and Charms. Did it make the game harder for your casters, or did it make it feeld different?

I guess the step was in the right direction - the enchantment school was way too broad. But I doubt it solved the problem with the Enchantment school if I recall it correctly - that almost all magic users trained the school. Magic users not trained the old enchantment for the "attack" spells - currently mostly hexes - except stabbers. Instead, self buff spells, like swiftness, repel missiles, ozu's armor, haste were the ones that are useful for everyone. And if I'm correct they are still in the same school, now called Charms. And it's still easy to branch into Charms if you are a caster, and worth for almost everyone. So far the most visible effect of the split to me is that stabbers are now somewhat weaker (still strong enough tough, so it's not a problem in itself).

Any plan, thoughts,ideas of further changes?

[evilmike]

I've only played a 0.8 a bit offline since the split, since I'm mainly a 0.7.1 player. But I do have a few thoughts on this.

The split was a long time coming, and the school seems to have been divided the best way possible - crusaders and enchanters keep their playstyles more or less.

Of the two schools, Charms is the stronger one. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is that buff spells are simply more useful than debuffs. Let's compare slow and haste: slow checks MR, and the effect dies along with the enemy it's cast on. Haste on the other hand has a duration that affects you, cannot fail, and can last through multiple enemies.

Hexes could be improved a bit. One idea might be to split haste into "haste self" and "haste other", with the latter being a hex and the former being a charm. This would fit the whole theme of hexes being targetted on things that aren't yourself. Haste other would be useful for summoners, giving them a reason to train hexes (right now its a stabber thing). Haste self would retain its current usefulness, and would also be a bit easier on the interface to cast it.

It could also stand to see a couple of new spells added to improve the school as a whole. For instance I think a spell that has an MR reducing effect, placed somewhere around level 6 or 7 would make hexes a lot more effective (something like a scroll of vulnerability, but not as powerful and not affecting everything in sight). The idea being that with a spell like that, you can disable tough opponents that hexes are normally useless against.

[dpeg]

The current situation is a snapshot, not the final solution.

Reducing Enchantments was necessary by the sheer size of the school alone: with >40 spells in the school, it is clear that some will see only marginal use. Instead of removing half of the spells, we thought that most of the spells have potential, so we opted for the split.
Now, it is true that Charms has more appeal for many characters. But we're now in a position to individually buff Hexes (by adding high level Hex spells, for example) and to individually nerf Charms (see the Haste nerf, for example).
In other words, the split was the necessary first step towards better spell balance. More will follow. As always, we rely on good ideas and feedback for nerfs, buffs and new spells.

[sanka]

Thanks for some clarification on the directions. I'm aware that this is a relatively new change in thrunk, so hopefully more will follow. The developers are extremly active - I've rarely see any programs (for profit or non-profit) progress this fast.

What I'm really curious, is if anybody has a good idea to change Charms in a good way. (I do not have - that's why I put this question here.) As I see, now (after the split and the Haste nerf, all which was good changes) the biggest problem is not that Charms are overpowered. (They may be, but that's a different issue, and much easier to fix). The problem is that it's hard to balance self-buff spells to not be too strong for NON Charm specialist, so give spellcasters a choice if they want to invest xp in it. Of course I'm sure someone will bring up creative ideas, and maybe someone already did. I would just like to know what are those.

[danr]

Is there a list somewhere of how the spells have been divided?

[galehar]

Is there a list somewhere of how the spells have been divided?

I don't think so. The info is in spl-data.h. If someone could make a nice list out of it and post it here or on the wiki that would be great.

[Kroet]

(No double schools mentioned.)

HEXES:
Cause Fear
Polymorph Other
Slow
Confuse
Invisibility
Mass Confusion
Enslavement
Control Undead
Tukima's Dance
Projected Noise
Confusing Touch
Sure Blade
Ensorcelled Hibernation
Metabolic Englaciation
Silence
Corona
Paralyse
Porkalator
Haste Other
Sleep
Mislead
Awaken Forest

CHARMS:
Haste
Invisibility
Ring of Flames
Death's Door
Levitation
Extension
Ozocubu's Armour
Repel Missiles
Berserker Rage
Regeneration
Fire Brand
Freezing Aura
Lethal Infusion
Stonemail
Swiftness
Flight
Insulation
Control Teleport
Poison Weapon
Resist Poison
Deflect Missiles
Sure Blade
See Invisible
Warp Weapon
Silence
Excruciating Wounds
Might

[acvar]

A few tips on balancing.

1. In charms avoid augmentation abilities like the plague. Instead use replacement abilities. For example lets consider a camouflage spell. You can make this spell increase your stealth score by X whether X is some number like 100 or whether it is based on spell power. This would be an augmentation ability and it would be very difficult to balance it. Set X to low and it does very little for anybody not already very stealth. Set it to high and it makes spellcasting sneaks far more powerful then those who actually specialize in stealth. The better way to implement this spell is to make it a replacement ability. Make it so as long as the spell is in effect the caster uses his Int and charms for avoiding detection instead of Dex and stealth. This is far easier to balance and makes it so the best stealth characters are actually "stealth" characters and not hybrid stealth/casters.

2. The big problem with hexes is that they are either all or nothing. This really needs to change. The best thing I can see happening is making it so that when a target resists a hex its MR is termporarily reduced based on the level of the spell. If the monster resists your confuse spell then his MR is termporarily reduced by 30. Shotgun confuse enough and the monster eventually succombs. Drop the initial effectiveness of hexes but let multiple hexes wear the target down.

[MrMisterMonkey]

On 2, I'm sure this has come up a ton already, but you could also make status ailments (like confusion, for example) come in degrees and generally make them succeed more often but the power of the effect depend on how well they succeeded. Further on confusion, its chance to override a monster's actions on any turn could depend on how much power it has left after checking MR. To extend, perhaps gradually reduce strength over time and let recasting could increase it. It would probably be a bit hard to apply this to EH, though.

[njvack]

Resisted hexes temporarily reducing MR sounds like a very elegant solution.

I like this idea as an 'enchantments versus player' mechanic as well -- it'd help with situations like the mummy in the Advice section who got one-shot confused by a wand. Having a chance to see that something dangerous is happening and get away would be really, really nice.