Scorpion Teleport (new spell)

[nrook]

http://screencast.com/t/S54OlUWcZAOR

Scorpion Teleport is a new spell I coded up over the past week that I'm interested in getting into Crawl. It's a low-level, short-range tloc spell which blinks the caster behind a monster and has them attack that monster in melee. The idea here is to give melee characters a powerful tool against ranged opponents, while not helping primary casters too much. That, and it's a cool spell which feels dynamic and powerful to play with.

There's some revision of cblink which makes it feel better in the 10th commit there, too.

I haven't done very much playtesting yet, so I'm not sure what level it deserves to be. I'd definitely prefer nerfs to a higher level, though; the idea of this being a light-armour-hybrids-only toy is sad to me.

A git patch is attached.

Some thoughts and notes:
I'm uncertain about _target_scorpion_blink() in spl-transloc.cc.
The spell is currently Fire / Tloc for absolutely no reason; there's nothing fiery about it. But I don't like the idea of it being yet another pure translocations spell, so even the most fragile of flavor would help justify something else.
The spell currently completely ignores -cTele. Obviously devolving to a semicontrolled blink would not work, but the spell should probably not get away scot-free here.
The spell's delay is the higher of the caster's attack delay and normal spell delay, to prevent both ultra-quick blinks with a quickblade and halved delay with giant spiked clubs.
No, you can't stab with it. That would be super broken.

[ontoclasm]

Flavor-wise, maybe make up some mumbo-jumbo about turning into, or stepping through, smoke or sparks or something. You appear with a burst of embers! Fulsome Dist is Nec/Tmut and has only the flimsiest connections to either so it's not like the criteria are really strenuous. Making it Tloc/Fire helps to differentiate it from blink etc, thematically if nothing else; maybe it could be called "Smokestrike" or something similar.

In -cTele perhaps you could randomly fudge the exit point by a square or two in a random direction, which would make the attack part fail if you didn't end up next to your target ("Space bends oddly, and you swing at empty air!"). It would still be useful, especially if you're not too picky about your exact position, but much less reliable. Alternately just give it a chance to come out as a random blink instead?

What happens if the target square has something in it (an invisible creature, for example) or is out of LoS due to, I dunno, a lantern or something weird? Does spellpower have any effect? I don't see how it could, but who knows.

[jejorda2]

Spellpower could affect the range that it works at, like it does with flame tongue and (IIRC) silence.

This could be a nice escape spell: use it on a bat in the distance when a stone giant gets in melee range.

[Stormfox]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlashStep

So would the range be determined by your distance to the targeted monster, or the distance to the square "behind" the monster that you're teleporting to?

[XuaXua]

http://screencast.com/t/S54OlUWcZAOR

Scorpion Teleport is a new spell I coded up over the past week that I'm interested in getting into Crawl. It's a low-level, short-range tloc spell which blinks the caster behind a monster and has them attack that monster in melee.

...

The spell is currently Fire / Tloc for absolutely no reason; there's nothing fiery about it. But I don't like the idea of it being yet another pure translocations spell, so even the most fragile of flavor would help justify something else.

Translocation / Charms

It teleports you, then forces you to attack. Charms apply to you.

[Roderic]

It's an offensive blink, for the flavor of a rogue player, as warpers should be. Given that, what about having a chance of making the enemy unaware for the next turn? It would help to stab it more proficiently. In that case the spell would be tloc/hex

[Stormfox]

Or give it a chance of applying Confusion per the spell (another application of spell power), which would firmly land its second school in Hexes. Target is disoriented trying to follow your movement, coupled with the "how the hell did he manage to hit me?" factor.

[smock]

Cool idea! This might be use (abused?) is many ways.

On may floor layouts this spell will be a nearly complete substitute for retreating around a corner. It might make open layouts easier to handle. That's probably not good. On the other hand, it might slightly promote fighting in rooms rather than in tunnels, just because there's no need to hide from the yaktaur when you can scorpion it.

Nagas and Chei worshipers will love it.

It's also similar to controlled blink in that you can blink to a location of your choice. It might be used to blink behind a goblin to escape from an Ettin's great mace. In that sense it's a most interesting spell than controlled blink. But any comparison to controlled blink suggests to me that it might turn out to be very powerful. Consider it's use in orc, where there's a lot of popcorn. You could conceivably controlled blink yourself across the landscape, without need for cTele.

Likewise, it might be strong with summon imp. Summoning a bunch of imps before attacking would make it easy to reliably put several square between you and the opponent.

[BlackSheep]

Bear in mind that repeated controlled blinks should quickly rack up some magical contamination.

[mumra]

It sounds very strong - it's a CBlink with the additional bonus of performing a free attack. So actually this should be quite high level - perhaps higher than CBlink, otherwise it's abusable with e.g. weak monsters or plants at edge of LOS.

[jejorda2]

If you only get to choose which enemy you are beside, but not which adjacent space you occupy, I don't think it's "better than controlled blink." For attacking it is as good as blinking after casting control teleport, but you can't depend on having enemies in the right place to use it for retreating. And it's not as good for, say, getting out of clouds or crossing water.

[Galefury]

It could blink you next to a random enemy.

[mumra]

I don't think it's "better than controlled blink."

In some situations it's most definitely better than controlled blink. And controlled blink is known to be an extremely powerful spell. The OP mentions a revision to CBlink; what is that revision exactly?

[jejorda2]

It could blink you next to a random enemy.

That's even better; let you choose your enemy when CTele is enabled. Then it can probably even be a level 2 spell. Maybe weight the enemy selection by distance, so you're more likely to end up next to an enemy farther away?

[Stormfox]

Making it higher level than CBlink defeats the OP's original intent of making a spell that's a useful utility spell for bashy-types.

Also, the followup attack should take its usual amount of time units and not be "free".

Taking the automatic target choice out of it (except with cTele, maybe) helps with balance. Maybe cTele should make it semi-controlled at best.

[galehar]

I don't think such a spell is very interesting. For melee oriented characters, ranged opponents are a challenge, and you need to develop some ranged abilities. There are a number of options available: throwing, launcher, rods, wands, spells, god abilities. This spell would be a no-brainer. Why bother diversify if you can blink close and attack with the full power of your main attack in the same turn? And instantly disable *taurs!
No, I don't think so.

Also, why isn't this in GDD? Moving it.

[Galefury]

Assuming it takes (spellcast + attack delay) time and you cant chose your target, it's about as good as semicontrolled blink (ctele is a level 4 spell by the way) for shutting down ranged enemies, and far less useful for escaping. It is definitely nowhere near a fully controlled blink in utility.

Whether it is a nobrainer or not depends entirely on details like

• spell level: 2 tloc = blink, 4 tloc/charms = control teleport, so level 3-4 sounds okay to me depending on multischoolness (could be dual or even triple) and other details
• how controlled it is: does it blink you behind the enemy? Just next to the enemy? Randomly maybe even one square away, making the attack automatically miss? Can you specify the target enemy?
• how much glow it adds: this could be more than for cblink for example, stopping people from spamming it.
• how much time it takes.

A spell simply being useful and learning it being a nobrainer are entirely different things, and I think a few people here are seriously overestimating the power of this spell. Calling it better than cblink is simply ridiculous. Yes, in its most powerful variant it would be better than cblink in certain situations, but those probably make up less than 5% of cblink use.

I think it is an interesting idea. Definitely overpowered as a level 3 spell with perfect control and a no-delay attack, but far from being unsalvagable.

[galehar]

Of course balance depends on a lot of things and we can hardly call it overpowered when the spell level hasn't been defined. Players like the idea because it seems convenient. I don't like it, because I feel like it would make the game less interesting. Of course, I might be wrong. I'm just giving my opinion.

[nagdon]

It should only allow blinking to hostile monsters; maybe it could always blink to the strongest (selected by HD, attack strength, or something similar, friendly monsters are excluded) monster in the field of vision; making it useful for meele characters who want to take out a centaur/orc priest/other spellcaster in meele; while making it almost useless for escaping. I think this way it would become an interesting spell which is different enough from blink/controlled blink. (Note that there are situations when this is good for escaping; like when you are sandwiched between two strong enemies in a corridor and you can run away after blinking behind either of them.)

The "Smokestrike" (Transloc/Fire) flavour sounds good (and it gives Fire a nice utility spell), maybe the spell could produce some short-lived (1-4 turns) smoke clouds blocking line of sight, either at the origin, at the destination or at both places; making the spell even more useful against ranged attacks and especially smiting as it gives some extra protection against other ranged attackers while you kill the selected one. These clouds shouldn't be completely reliable, I think something like 75% chance to block the los of a distant enemy in open areas for one turn and 40-50% chance to block los for 3-4 turns would be ideal. This could also give the spell a limited control, because right after a jump, some monsters won't be seen because of the smoke so you have the chance to jump toward something weaker -- although this would probably need the special case that if you jump towards a monster, then after the jump it is excluded from the possible targets for a few turns (so if you jump next to a monster (the strongest visible one) then you can jump to the second strongest one in the field of vision).

[eeviac]

From the name alone I thought this spell was going to be Haunt, but with scorpions, and now I really want that spell.

[Bim]

From the name alone I thought this spell was going to be Haunt, but with scorpions, and now I really want that spell.

Ditto.

I really do like the idea of this spell, and I completely disagree that it would be boring as it would give a completely new avenue to go down instead of HAVING to take up a ranged weapon/spell to deal with most thing. However, I do feel it is currently overpowered and should not be an alternative to cblink.

My proposals:
-It should be a level 3 spell, as that stops it being a no brainer for anyone, but still allows most armour users to use it to an extent.
-It should not work at all under -ctele.
-It could be semi random. You could chose a direction and then take a full turn before you move ('you feel the heat rise around you'), this would separate it further from a blink, and add some danger into it.
-I'm really not sure how difficult it would be to implement, but could it only work if the direction you want to go in is free up to the monster (or that you need a free space next to you?)
-Fire/translocation makes a weird sort of sense to me, fire has less utility spells than the others, but possibly it could be a good poison spell that would be more useful later on?
-I don't know how the calculations work, but aren't 3 type spells harder to cast? so it could be poison/fire/translocation or something?

Great idea though, I'd love to see it get implemented!

[mageykun]

I don't know how the calculations work, but aren't 3 type spells harder to cast? so it could be poison/fire/translocation or something?

Spells that are double / triple school are harder to cast, since it takes more xp to get the average power up.

That alone isn't really an effective cap on really useful things though. The more schools you put in a spell, the more you can get away with fueling success with spellcasting instead (someone threw the actual percentages around at one point, but danged if I can remember them). Example- when was the was time you actually trained all three of the schools in meph? You can usually get away with one, maybe two of them if you want it working faster.

On topic- I'd say level 3 or four is too good for something that has this much potential utility. Should be 5 or 6 and cause glow to prevent overuse. I mean, it's not like there aren't melee characters who train up for haste, so heavy melee 'porters would still be an option, just a tougher one. (For the record- You can do heavy armour blink to ranged combats craziness now. All you need is to go Oka, pray for a +blink randart, train evo, get ctele. It's not guaranteed, but it works, and it's damn effective).

Idea: instead of a new spell, why not roll this into Lucy's bend space? I never really thought "blink, but it hurts you, and can't be controlled" by itself was terribly interesting. Things that offer paradigm changing crazy playstyle changes are kind of more a god thing than a spell thing anyways, usually. You might have to make it a higher tier ability though, and up the piety cost. Of course, this does give something potential awesome to a god that may not really need it.

[galehar]

OK, a better reason against this spell. It's redundant with Passage of Golubria, only worse (from a design point of view).

[sanka]

Well, I still do not really understand how to use passage of golubria effectively... This spell seems pretty intuitive. So I do not really understand why is it worse? (From design perspective.) Also, for me they seems different enough. Certanly more different than some of the million damaging spells.

I do not know the solution to minmay's problem tough. Let a worm follow you everywhere to give you easy escape sounds really tedious. I really, really would like to have some solution and put spells like this in the game.

[nrook]

The OP mentions a revision to CBlink; what is that revision exactly?

The "revision" to Controlled Blink is code- and UI-only. The spell's actual functionality is unchanged. It's just nicer about disallowing controlled blinks that definitely won't work. For instance, blinking to a square known to be occupied used to devolve to an uncontrolled blink; now, the UI just complains to the player instead. (And yes, if you blink to a square containing a monster who wasn't invisible to you, you'll still blink randomly.)

I put this in contributions instead of GDD because there's a working patch.

Scorpion Teleport is a powerful tactical spell that gives melee characters a strong new option against opponents like centaurs, as well as some cool escape options (I like the idea of using it to escape from being sandwiched by two enemies in a corridor). But I don't think that makes it too powerful (in its intended use); Repel Missiles gets unnervingly close to disarming centaurs, too. Swiftness makes half the monsters in the game easy to escape, and Passwall allows for devastating stabs. Utility spells are powerful when they're in their element! But you'd never want to Scorpion Teleport a two-headed ogre.

Remember that it is low-range, so it is considerably less powerful as an escape spell than Controlled Blink, even if you could Scorpion Teleport wherever you wanted. I don't have a development build right now (I'm at work) but if I remember correctly it can be aimed at most 3 squares away, which means you can blink 4 squares (since you blink behind the target). This is probably a worse escape spell than semicontrolled blink often, too, though sometimes it is better (and the "carry around a low-threat monster" is a bit worrying).

I didn't make Scorpion Teleport interact with +cTele because I think +cTele is problematic in general. And I was inspired by Passage of Golubria, which if I remember correctly doesn't interact with it either. There might be something that could be done there, though.

I would much rather have this be a god ability than a level 5-6 spell, just to make it more viable for dedicated melee types. It is rarely going to compare favorably to gap-closers like "put on repel missiles, swiftness, haste and charge somebody", which the strong caster hybrids can do all the time.

[roctavian]

I would much rather have this be a god ability than a level 5-6 spell, just to make it more viable for dedicated melee types. It is rarely going to compare favorably to gap-closers like "put on repel missiles, swiftness, haste and charge somebody", which the strong caster hybrids can do all the time.

It's a little Xom-ish but I think it could be interesting for the god to choose who to blink you next to -- and when it happens, too.

[molari]

Agree that this sounds thematically very close to Lugonu.

That the spell is evocative and 'visual' should definitely count in its favour - roleplaying in your head is important in roguelikes for many people, so 'cool stuff', if it has gameplay advantages, should be encouraged.

Having the ability/spell beeline to the most powerful enemy should elminate the (slim?) possibility/advantage of tugging around a worm etc.

[mageykun]

Also, if it's a Lucy power, it's going to cost pain to use. That also makes it less effective an escape tool- added risk, and potentially outright death in the right situation.

I'm kind of waffling on balance though. On the one hand, I really like the idea of giving Lucy a useful, tactical offensive ability. Some of her powers have limited utility- bend space as is uninteresting (half the time I just pick up blink anyways), banishment is powerful early on but peters out and corruption is highly situational, though great for cutting corners. The biggest draw for non-AK's is converting to get out of the abyss alive (and often, that isn't enough for people. They'd rather take the risk of looking for the portal, rather than offending their current god or breaking their build). I like an offensive ability that's useful late in the game to seduce them in.

On the other hand, Lucy arguably is strong enough that giving her this is unbalancing. Banishment will keep you alive in the early game. A corruption + distortion offers one of the most powerful means of sequence breaking / planned threat bypassing. Self banishment is one of the best escape options. Does she really need a strong offensive option too?

[njvack]

Does she really need a strong offensive option too?

I think no, honestly.

Blink is generally better than Bend Space, but Bend Space is guaranteed.

This spell feels a bit too much like a cheap version of cblink -- and it really does encourage keeping low-threat monsters around.

[KoboldLord]

This spell feels a bit too much like a cheap version of cblink -- and it really does encourage keeping low-threat monsters around.

I think the risk here is exaggerated. Hostile monsters aren't going to nicely sit at the edge of LOS waiting for you to teleport out to them. They're going to close in to melee within two or three turns, and at that point you already lost your emergency escape. Occasionally you might run into a dangerous unique at close range and want to flee immediately, but most of the time you're going to be handling a fight just fine when another group of monsters wanders over and pushes the fight into a danger zone. Then there's the limited supply of worm-style monsters to use as a teleport pet, and the risk of getting caught with your worm in a corridor and a dangerous monster coming from behind, and it should be pretty clear that the proposed ability is nothing like being able to chain together semi-controlled Blinks at whim.

[galehar]

Where does it fit? It's supposed to be a low-level spell, but given that it's much better than the level 4 passage of Golubria, I'm not sure what level it ends up to be.
So a god ability? With translocations, Lucy comes to mind, but she's already strong, balanced and polished.
What's the theme already? Translocations, scorpions and fire? Maybe a racial ability for a new species, then.

[nicolae]

What's the theme already? Translocations, scorpions and fire? Maybe a racial ability for a new species, then.

Thematically it's just a blink to a monster and then you whack it, it's called "Scorpion Teleport" because it's similar to an ability the character Scorpion has in the Mortal Kombat games and he couldn't think of a better name.

[galehar]

Thematically it's just a blink to a monster and then you whack it

This isn't a theme, it's a mechanism.

it's called "Scorpion Teleport" because it's similar to an ability the character Scorpion has in the Mortal Kombat games and he couldn't think of a better name.

This is a theme and it's terrible.

[nicolae]

This is a theme and it's terrible.

Oh, definitely, but the name can be changed.

[galehar]

This is a theme and it's terrible.

Oh, definitely, but the name can be changed.

Yes, of course, but my point stands. Mechanically, it's kinda cool, but it doesn't fit in the game and it has no theme. No need to brainstorm the latter until the former has been addressed anyway.

[XuaXua]

I thought it was called Scorpion Teleport because it makes you go somewhere and immediately attack them, as though a scorpion jumped somewhere and struck with its tail, I have no idea.

Not a fan of the overall concept behind the spell. Controlled-Blink then attack.

[mageykun]

Hrm. I'm surprised to report there isn't a trope name for teleporting to melee range and attacking, surprise or no. (There are several teleportation as offensive weapons tropes, and a sudden teleport to things/people trope, but none for outright tele-and-stab I could find. Despite the fact there's gotta be a dozen different characters from various things who use this as a combat style). So I guess we can stick with scorpion as the generic form, for now.

Back on topic though, I'd have to say I agree with Galehar's assessment. It doesn't seem like it fits where we've tried to stick it so far.

If we do want to consider giving it as a innate ability to race of natural teleporters, I for one am curious as to what kind of crippling disabilities they'd get to offset.
(New race proposal- first guardians. )

[twelwe]

How about we all stop beating around the bush, and start paying attention to the spell's name. Scorpion teleport, translocations/poison. You jumps like a scorpion behind someone, and sting them. Inflicts a poison, so you don't drag around any of these slow poison susceptible creatures all day. I think it's great. Blink is powerful defensively, and this spell needs to be strictly offensive.

[XuaXua]

How about we all stop beating around the bush, and start paying attention to the spell's name. Scorpion teleport, translocations/poison. You jumps like a scorpion behind someone, and sting them. Inflicts a poison, so you don't drag around any of these slow poison susceptible creatures all day. I think it's great. Blink is powerful defensively, and this spell needs to be strictly offensive.

The problem here is, tactically, poison is best used at range. Poison, then teleport, would make better sense.

[Bim]

I think the 'scorpion' part of it would be the easiest to change, and I doubt the OP was fixed on it as he didn't mention anything about that part of the flavour in the post, and put it as a fire/tloc spell. It's just a throw away name which helped describe a fast attack, so can we put that to rest until we decide if it's a viable spell/ability?

To me, this would seem too much for a racial ability, even with a high hunger cost and timer, it'd still be strange to have such a purely offensive ability as a racial one (the nearest one we have is breath weapon I suppose) and the only sort of race this would fit would be as a stabber, which we already have completely covered with sprigs.

Secondly, I really can't imagine keeping slow monsters around just to blink behind them. I understand that some players will game and grind, but there are so few very slow creatures that (as mentioned) wouldn't just close in/move into an awkward position in a fight. Also, if you're fighting ranged (stumbling upon a massive group of centaurs, which is presumably the only time you'd need to escape like this) you could only move a few squares away at most, which would probably still leave you open. I simply can't see it being used as a good escape option other than in one or two very specific times, much like many other spells could be broken in one or two very specific times.

As a spell, could it not heavily glow you afterwards to offset the balance issues? I really do think it's a great idea for a purely melee char to have another route other than swift/haste/rmsl and would hate for it to be discounted because it's too strong.

[njvack]

Then there's the limited supply of worm-style monsters to use as a teleport pet

Essentially all of Hell and Pan are swimming with low-threat monsters mixed with a few high-threat monsters. This spell sounds like a cheap way to cblink towards that tormentor or away from Ignacio.

[KoboldLord]

Then there's the limited supply of worm-style monsters to use as a teleport pet

Essentially all of Hell and Pan are swimming with low-threat monsters mixed with a few high-threat monsters. This spell sounds like a cheap way to cblink towards that tormentor or away from Ignacio.

Have you ever tried to keep a single ufetubus at the edge of LOS while you fight other things? Not only do you have a tedious time outside of a fight, but if you stop to kill a neqoxec or ynoxinul, even if you spend only a single turn doing it, that ufetubus gets a step closer and you have to use some sort of translocation or charm to get that distance back. If you stop to fight something, and you're interrupted after a few turns by the arrival of a foo fiend or other halfway dangerous monster that you might want to retreat from, that ufetubus has already moved out of position, probably even into melee. If Random Demon Lord Bob reveals that (s)he actually has Fire Storm and you totally want to bail out through the exit portal now, your ufetubus probably already approached close enough to get caught in the radius. Ignacio? You fire off your Teleport Stab once, but Ignacio easily moves fast enough to keep up with a chain of semi-controlled Blinks, so he catches up immediately and you don't have another handy pet to chain off of.

Basically, the proposed exploit is ludicrously fiddly and impractical in any actual game, and furthermore that function is defensively inferior to the second-level Blink spell.

[smock]

This spell is abusable with wandering mushrooms, statues, plants and fungi.

I propose the name sneakoport.

On a serious note: Passage of Golubria has a very good design but I'm under the impression that it doesn't get much play. I also envisioned PoG as being more of a funky escape spell. I don't think sneakoport overlaps it so much. And even if the did overlap a lot, both could easily coexist as long as both aren't in many common books.

[XuaXua]

Piggyback Blink.

Still not a fan of the spell, though.

[tasonir]

I'm a big fan of the spell, but then again I play mobility impaired melee characters I've played around with passage of golubria, and I just can't see it ever being reliable enough to be worth the spell slot. Monsters can take it, both ends of the passage are subject to being slightly off, and it doesn't last indefinitely. There's just too much that can go wrong with it for me to consider it usable. I mostly go blink->Cblink for mobility. Controlled teleport is mostly only ever used for looting the slime vaults, but it does have other uses too

I think to be fair, this should probably be at least level 4, and probably level 5. Let you pick the monster, but go to a random tile of the 8 tiles - the idea of always going "behind" the mob is too precise. Guarentee being in melee range, but all 8 tiles are equally likely (unless blocked). If no tiles are open, random blink or possibly disallow the blink. I think tloc/charms would be best for the schools, although both schools are highly useful to melee, so making it something like tloc/fire would make it more of an investment for melee types who probably don't have fire levels, but do want charms for haste, etc. Players going for CBlink could probably ignore the second school entirely and just raise tloc high enough for Cblink and be able to cast scorpion teleport also.

Have you considered making this spell instant, and not chaining the attack? That would lower it's power level, and probably help make it more balanced. Also that justifies the much better name "Flash teleport" or "Flash blink"

[Moose]

I'm not a fan of this thematically at all ... I dont think melee classes need another reason to pick up spells ...

Why not implement this as a melee ability granted perhaps through a god, like Okawaru? if anyone here has ever played WoW, one of my favorite abilities in that game is the warrior's "charge" ... It basically blinks a player within direct line of movement against a foe, and hits it with a stronger than normal attack.

If implemented properly, I think it would be very interesting and fun. It doesnt let you get behind opponents, nor does it let you move through obstacles. One can think of it as a blind fury rush at an opponent. Perhaps it would be better implemented through Trog. Using Trog would open up some more interesting options like automatic berserk and such.

I dunno ... just seems like this should not be a spell.

[Deimos]

Would be a nice Chei spell

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

What is its effective range? If it could only be applied to the enemies within, say, radius of ReachingRange+(1~2) squares...

I second making it a divine spell -- it would be easier to get for the warriors this way.

Or... making it into a ring that gives you that ability AND cuts your mana points prevents spellcasting at the same time.

"A treasure for a strong warrior, this ring lets you temporarily blend with the ambient magic fields that surround most living and undead creatures, giving you a chance teleport very close to them and deal with them easily. However, this ability will only work with the creatures that are relatively close to you and are not summoned. In addtion to that, always being ready to blend with the magic around you will greatly weaken your ability to cast spells."