Shoals Surfer
Posts: 255
Joined: Sunday, 24th April 2011, 04:13
Re: Discussion: Improving Skalds
Song of Shouting is desperately in need of a rework/buff. During the part of the game when level 2 spells are supposed to be useful, the extremely low returns and short duration make it basically useless, and the mild risk of maybe attracting the attention of an orc wizard/priest makes it unbelievably dangerous any time you're fighting a large enough group for the spell to even be worth considering.
It's not good for anything until much later in the game when the duration is long enough to reliably last for more than a single engagement, and even then, it's only useful if you're comfortable fighting a large group of enemies in rapid succession AND comfortable with a hydra/titan/orb spider/whatever-other-dangerous-monster showing up in the middle of that fight. Basically it's only good if you can win without it, so there's no reason for any character to ever cast it. You're better off just NOT shouting every turn and dealing with the enemies in a controlled manner.
Plus it forces me to do dumb crap like beat an enemy up, but cast the song right before the killshot.
But this is for pure casters.
Think about what you are saying. What is the difference between a skald and "pure caster" (other than the fact that pure casters don't exist in skilled crawl play)? The difference is, a pure caster relies on MP much more, because it is his only real method of inflicting damage or escaping harm. Characters who have LESS use for MP get MORE use out of Song of Shielding, precisely because if you lose 40 MP in one turn, your character needs to have the skills to survive without that MP. "Pure casters" are the worst possible characters to use Song of Shielding. The best possible character isn't allowed to cast it, because he's worshipping Trog.
Anyway Song of Suicide sucks because the 40 MP you spend to save yourself once with it is enough to save your life five times over with Blink or Demonic Horde or Butterflies or Mephitic Cloud or Repel Missiles or Disjunction or any of a huge list of other spells that don't drain your entire MP bar. Or just killing the thing before it gets a chance to hurt you. One large rock from a stone giant instantly cripples you if you have this spell active. Repel/Deflect Missiles can deal with a large rock every turn for its entire duration.
I can recall only two actual battle spells, that _can_ be useful at high levels - Mephitic Cloud and Conjure flame.
Dazzling Spray
Ozocubu's Armour
Passwall
Static Discharge
Inner Flame
Spider Form
Stone Arrow
Confuse
Regeneration
Vampiric Draining
In fact, the few level 3 spells that aren't useful at high levels may be in need of buffing. Spectral Weapon isn't overpowered. It's just decent (which makes it vastly superior to both Songs).