Tomb Titivator
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Monster spellbooks
This would clear up the problem of spell book rarity.
Any comments?
Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Tomb Titivator
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Shoals Surfer
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One problem wizards seem to have is not having enough spellbooks.
To this end, I propose monsters that can cast spells drop their spellbooks.
They're rare drops, and I typicality end up with around 10 spell levels sitting around gathering dust.
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wizzzargh wrote:One problem wizards seem to have is not having enough spellbooks.
This is one problem I can honestly say I have never, ever had. Admittedly there aren't many spell books before Lair(which is why casters start out with a spellbook with enough power to at least get them there), but there aren't many Artifacts either- spellbooks are rare because they are extremely good. If you want books/spells that aren't RNG reliant, I suggest you worhship Kiku, Sif Muna, or Vehu- they guarantee a veritable cornucopia of spells to choose from.
wizzzargh wrote:To this end, I propose monsters that can cast spells drop their spellbooks.
Your proposal would mean that basically every character would begin with a spellbook containing Magic Dart, Throw Flame/Frost, Haste, Confuse, Invisibility, and possibly Slow. Not very good for diversity, as characters who utilize this guaranteed "Book of Orcish Wizardry" would have a distinct advantage over those who can not or do not.
wizzzargh wrote:They're rare drops, and I typicality end up with around 10 spell levels sitting around gathering dust.
This is because there are only so many spells from a book that you need. Spells are like equipment- you aren't supposed to have a complete suit of endgame-capable items until you are at or near the endgame, and the same is true for spells. Making books excessively common would be no different than upping the spawn rate on jewelry, branded weapons, runed armor, and so on. It's probably even more unbalanced for spells, because while a Dagger of Venom or a weak Protection Ring won't be used forever, a Level 1 spell like Animate Skeleton can remain viable as long as there are corpses.
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khalil wrote:No, they don't. Vehumet only gives one spell at any one point, Kiku gives two spellbooks, most of which contain spells any decent necromancer will already have (and also one optional one), and Muna demands you get to max peity if you want gifts.
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khalil wrote:Furthermore, every other orc seems to drop a runed flail or whatever
khalil wrote:No, they don't. Vehumet only gives one spell at any one point, Kiku gives two spellbooks, most of which contain spells any decent necromancer will already have (and also one optional one), and Muna demands you get to max peity if you want gifts.
khalil wrote:Perhaps more diverse casters could be added?
Tomb Titivator
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nicolae wrote:khalil wrote:No, they don't. Vehumet only gives one spell at any one point, Kiku gives two spellbooks, most of which contain spells any decent necromancer will already have (and also one optional one), and Muna demands you get to max peity if you want gifts.
How many pre-Lair spells are you hoping to get your hands on?
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mumra wrote:khalil wrote:Furthermore, every other orc seems to drop a runed flail or whatever
You realise the vast majority of those runed flails are barely any better (and some even worse) than a standard 0,0 unruned flail?
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khalil wrote:Likewise, the book of orcish magic would be barely any better than your default spellbook. You'd get invisibility and magic dart. That's it.
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mumra wrote:khalil wrote:Likewise, the book of orcish magic would be barely any better than your default spellbook. You'd get invisibility and magic dart. That's it.
If this is "barely any better than your default spellbook" then what's the point, why would you even want this? (Also you seem to be forgetting Haste.)
Anyway I'm not going to repeat the thing about "you're doing something wrong if your starting book can't get you to at least Lair". Wait, I just did.
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mumra wrote:The thing is, spells are completely different to melee weapons.
What I don't see is: what problem are you actually trying to fix? If you're not happy with the Wizard starting spells then you already have a choice: pick a different background.
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mikee wrote:I'd like to suggest an extreme situation: imagine that you start a wizard, which does not choose a spell-gifting god. Throughout the entire game, it is very unlucky with book generation and does not find a single spellbook to complement its starting book. Would this game be: unwinnable, unfun, or flawed in some other fundamental way?
I think that classes are just a collection of things you start with, and just because your character has 'wizard' in the name doesn't mean it can only cast spells.
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khalil wrote:Furthermore, after a while, your skillset is entrenched enough that branching out to melee or archery due to lack of spellbooks becomes impossible because you'll get chewed up by the monsters of your level.
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khalil wrote:It's not wizard starting spells, its the fact you eventually have a bunch of spell levels sitting around not having anything memorized.
mumra wrote:If you have spell levels "gathering dust" then probably you're training Spellcasting too high rather than focusing on skills that are more useful to you right now. This is actually a feature of Crawl - sometimes you are forced to adapt your character's development based on what you find, you can't always stick to the plan you started with.
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mumra wrote:khalil wrote:It's not wizard starting spells, its the fact you eventually have a bunch of spell levels sitting around not having anything memorized.mumra wrote:If you have spell levels "gathering dust" then probably you're training Spellcasting too high rather than focusing on skills that are more useful to you right now. This is actually a feature of Crawl - sometimes you are forced to adapt your character's development based on what you find, you can't always stick to the plan you started with.
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One-Eyed Jack wrote:Well don't do that
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khalil wrote:mumra wrote:khalil wrote:It's not wizard starting spells, its the fact you eventually have a bunch of spell levels sitting around not having anything memorized.mumra wrote:If you have spell levels "gathering dust" then probably you're training Spellcasting too high rather than focusing on skills that are more useful to you right now. This is actually a feature of Crawl - sometimes you are forced to adapt your character's development based on what you find, you can't always stick to the plan you started with.
I generally keep Spellcasting on + and my other magic skills on *. And that's with dodging on + eating up some of spellcasting's XP.
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ebarrett wrote:Despite multiple threats and continued harassment I will stand by my principles and take this opportunity to again denounce the abysmal standards of suggestions presented in this subforum as evidenced by the chronic failure of the average threadstarters to acknowledge both their limitations as players and their misunderstandings regarding game design in what regards Crawl in specific and dare I say logic rational thought in general considering that repeatedly we are exposed to complaints which stem from frustration originated from repeated failure at achieving personal goals in the game with said frustration itself being predictably derived from the aforementioned limitations and misunderstandings which continue themselves in a way to present hurdles to improvement towards surpassing the aforementioned limitations and misunderstandings creating a vicious cycle in which the aforementioned limitations and misunderstanding manifest themselves in these forums as a tendency to react badly to criticism which is partially what caused in turn some other members less encumbered by limitations and misunderstandings to treat these people in a not at all unsurprising manner which is to say a generous serving of sarcasm or irony or snark or any other treatment which isn't serious in tone but is in clearly serious in effect as we can't just sit here and watch as the forums are constantly subject to mild-mannered abuse which is calamitously endorsed by some people in charge but all things considered I say though not everyone will understand the workings behind what might be seen as poor community spirit you should, and I say this with with no irony at all, consider yourselves - as I consider myself - lucky.
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tasonir wrote:Edit: to be fair to people posting new suggestions, I feel like there should be some warning: the GDD is a trap designed to let people think they can discuss game design. Actual design is done on a different wiki. We would rather you not go there and clutter things up, though, so we've left this forum mimic here.
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Tomb Titivator
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dassem wrote:I like animate skeleton - my current character has 10 runes, cleared a Zig, tomb, and holy pan, but is still using that spell heavily.
[Sarcasm]Maybe it's not so useful on the orb run?[/Sarcasm]
Of course, I'm not using skeletons to kill many things (although dragon skeletons can be useful) but to save turns butchering and to get cheap minions for blocking LOS.
I think there's some value to being forced how to use weak-seeming spells most effectively...
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khalil wrote:dassem wrote:...
I think there's some value to being forced how to use weak-seeming spells most effectively...
I generally play mummies. I don't know why, as they are bad at everything, but I do it all the same.
Either way, I don't need to butcher things due to the lack of a food clock.
Shoals Surfer
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ebarrett wrote:Despite multiple threats and continued harassment I will stand by my principles and take this opportunity to again denounce the abysmal standards of suggestions presented in this subforum as evidenced by the chronic failure of the average threadstarters to acknowledge both their limitations as players and their misunderstandings regarding game design in what regards Crawl in specific and dare I say logic rational thought in general considering that repeatedly we are exposed to complaints which stem from frustration originated from repeated failure at achieving personal goals in the game with said frustration itself being predictably derived from the aforementioned limitations and misunderstandings which continue themselves in a way to present hurdles to improvement towards surpassing the aforementioned limitations and misunderstandings creating a vicious cycle in which the aforementioned limitations and misunderstanding manifest themselves in these forums as a tendency to react badly to criticism which is partially what caused in turn some other members less encumbered by limitations and misunderstandings to treat these people in a not at all unsurprising manner which is to say a generous serving of sarcasm or irony or snark or any other treatment which isn't serious in tone but is in clearly serious in effect as we can't just sit here and watch as the forums are constantly subject to mild-mannered abuse which is calamitously endorsed by some people in charge but all things considered I say though not everyone will understand the workings behind what might be seen as poor community spirit you should, and I say this with with no irony at all, consider yourselves - as I consider myself - lucky.
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