The Tavern

I saw a proposal like this in one of the race threads (I forget which one... gargoyle?) and I thought it was pretty interesting. A race that allowed you to learn, say, both fire and ice spells could be pretty interesting. Perhaps you've got a mechanic similar to the lava orc, in that spellcasting of various schools is boosted in given periods?

Somewhat related, I also think it could be interesting if we had a couple fire/ice or earth/air dual school spells, low level spells but slightly more powerful than a typical spell of that level.

I think that could be an interesting situation for a race because it suggests a playstyle that doesn't exist yet, combining opposing schools of magic.

The issue with this is that there's not much need for it. Fire mages would rather pick up earth to deal with demons, ice mages can just throw icicle. If an ice mage reaaaally wants conjure flame, or an earth mage really wants swiftness, both are easy to pick up without leveling.

Also, such an ability would really pigeonhole them into magic, unless they were allowed to train those skills as a fighter and maybe get some kind of fighting buff.

Any ideas for the theme of this race?

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TeshiAlair wrote:Any ideas for the theme of this race?

I had a couple ideas... one would be a some kind of fire and ice themed race that got some kind of benefit for spell interactions, like icing the floor and propelling themselves with fire (although that kind of idea would probably work best for a totally different kind of game.)

Another idle thought I had, one of those nature-themed races that has all opposition penalties removed. They have a sort of spell metronome that randomly selects a favored school out of the four elemental schools every few thousand turns or so, and gives a boost to it.

There would be melee benefits too, perhaps resistance gain/loss or free temporary attack brands.

Might work better as a God, I don't know. I'm surprised we don't have an elemental-oriented nature god yet.

minmay wrote:Proposal: remove school opposition penalties. It's like if weapon crosstraining was a penalty instead of a bonus, it removes decisions and it doesn't even make sense.

I actually enjoy school opposition penalties... it gives me a significant choice to make, whether I want the benefit of say airstrike, reflect and deflect missiles, or stoneskin, statue form, shatter, etc.

Except that, even in a world without the penalties, choosing to use your experience on skills that you're not focusing on can be a significant choice already.

I feel like spell school opposition penalties are one part of the deal, and level 1 and 2 spells that appeal to more characters are the other. If I'm getting myself pumped up for Fire Storm, I'm not going to spend time getting my Earth up for Iron Shot. Freezing Cloud is totally out of the question, but without the opposition penalty I still probably wouldn't bother.

But then we have Swiftness, Conjure Flame, Oczubu's Armour... These you can probably get up and running on Charms or Conjurations alone. So why bother training up the elemental schools? I'm sure the added spellpower is nice and all, but I've never felt like I needed it.

Note that I don't necessarily think any of this is problematic, I just doubt removing school opposition -- whether for a race or globally -- is enough to change player behavior alone.

I've at least once had ozo armour + Ring of flames, and the fire/ice penalties definitely influenced that character - eventually I picked up heavier armour and used ashenzari to lose the Ice. Ashenzari was a big help for that anyway though, since I'd only need say 7 ice to have 12.

I would prefer the opposite schools have a much bigger impact on the game (like RMsl/Swiftness power is halved if your Earth magic is higher than Air). It would differentiate late game characters more.

Sandman25 wrote:I would prefer the opposite schools have a much bigger impact on the game (like RMsl/Swiftness power is halved if your Earth magic is higher than Air). It would differentiate late game characters more.

Agreed, the malus has very little effect for most chars. I suppose if you were started with a fire mage and then found two ice books you might want to change - and the malus would be something to contend with for the first few levels - but other than that it makes little difference as you can get most spells up to an ok level with spellcasting and their alternative spell school. Nerf everything.

You realise it's actually a design goal to allow this kind of flexibility in how you shape your character. A worse penalty just pigeonholes characters more.

We definitely discussed removing anti-training for humans. But we also agreed this would make very little impact. A lot of the spells don't work terribly well with each other anyway.

As rosstin notes, this is better handled as a diety effect.

mumra wrote:We definitely discussed removing anti-training for humans. But we also agreed this would make very little impact. A lot of the spells don't work terribly well with each other anyway.

Better might be to just remove anti-training for everyone. As you mention, it's rarely important and there are existing reasons to not make big opposing-school investments.

njvack wrote:
mumra wrote:We definitely discussed removing anti-training for humans. But we also agreed this would make very little impact. A lot of the spells don't work terribly well with each other anyway.

Better might be to just remove anti-training for everyone. As you mention, it's rarely important and there are existing reasons to not make big opposing-school investments.

Nooooo hahaha. *stares at hands* What have I done?!

Eh, it isn't too hard to get Fire Storm and LCS castable for most casters that aren't wrapped in toilet paper... At least in a 15 runer. Removing the training malus would be nice though so I could pump air for the all powerful Elf clearing spell.

NO NO NO NO NO.

I don't know where this sudden streak of 'lets take out anything that makes crawl difficult' in the guise of 'it's annoying' came from, but it's really NOT GOOD.

If anything, malus should be made stronger but possibly a shorter duration (as in, not requiring you to get all the way to above the other school level to get rid of the malus). Or, maybe to not cripple xp gain but instead cripple strength.

I don't know - there are better ways around it not being useful rather than 'too annoying - don't want.'

Bim wrote:I don't know where this sudden streak of 'lets take out anything that makes crawl difficult' in the guise of 'it's annoying' came from, but it's really NOT GOOD.

What I'm saying is that it hasn't generally made Crawl difficult or annoying; I generally don't try to train opposing schools very much for reasons completely unrelated to the crosstraining malus. I want <ELEMENT> + Charms much more than I ever want <ELEMENT> + <OPPOSING ELEMENT>. Especially <OPPOSING ELEMENT AT HIGH LEVEL>.

I think opposing schools is in-general good because it creates an interesting decision for players to make.

For new players, it helps indicate to them this lesson about generalization/specialization.

I think most people don't train opposing schools anyway because each of those schools already kills things well (and for immunities you can use pure Conj spells/melee/whatever), thus the penalty doesn't make game "harder" or "more challenging", it just exists and it might as well not exist.

I generally don't train two opposing elements highly as a spellcaster for the same reason I don't train two different weapon types as a melee fighter, because it's usually a waste.

Most times, training different skills you can't use in conjunction is silly. However I do feel like certain schools have some low level spells (I'm looking at you, air magic) which are particularly useful in some situations.

To me, anti-training just feels like a reasonable balancing mechanic. Flexibility should come with a cost.

Edit: Oh, and I will often train up a little Air magic as an Earth caster, just to get things like Swiftness and Repel missiles online, I can't say the same for fire/ice though, there's not really any low level spells that are useful there.

It does bother me that most characters always can and should use Swiftness, Blink, Repel Missiles, Apportation, Regeneration, etc. with few trade-offs and very little XP cost. Crosstraining or any other artificial pigeonholing obviously isn't the way to solve it, but it would be nice if every non-Troggy YAVP didn't know basically the same set of really good low-level spells.

the problem with crawl charms is in the spell design
this has nothing to do with aptitudes.........

I for one think the anti training should stay, its an interesting effect that produces (at least to some degree) important player decisions. I would actually like to see more anti-training pairs but most would hardly make sense.

We need to make penalties more common by applying them everywhere. Opposition penalties to Fighting/Spellcasting and Armour/Dodging!

1010011010 wrote:I for one think the anti training should stay, its an interesting effect that produces (at least to some degree) important player decisions. I would actually like to see more anti-training pairs but most would hardly make sense.

I'd love to see a "Life" or "Nature" school of magic that would oppose necromancy.

Siegurt wrote:I'd love to see a "Life" or "Nature" school of magic that would oppose necromancy.

I strongly disagree. Not everything has to be symmetric and have an opposite. Life/ Nature in Crawl is the domain of the Gods : Fedas and Elyvilon specifically, maybe also the god of the hunt if it ever gets implemented. I like the fact that Regeneration is a evil, necromantic spell, it goes against what one might expect.

Velikolepni wrote:
Siegurt wrote:I'd love to see a "Life" or "Nature" school of magic that would oppose necromancy.

I strongly disagree. Not everything has to be symmetric and have an opposite. Life/ Nature in Crawl is the domain of the Gods : Fedas and Elyvilon specifically, maybe also the god of the hunt if it ever gets implemented. I like the fact that Regeneration is a evil, necromantic spell, it goes against what one might expect.

Well, technically necromancy is also in the domain of the Gods (Kiku, Ydrem) and while I don't think everything needs to have an opposite, I merely said that one thing (necromancy) seems like one that would be appropriate to me

I don't think Regeneration should change schools even if such a school were to exist. Actually I personally wouldn't put any healing in such a school (I kinda think regeneration is as much healing as I'd like to ever see in the game, spell-wise)

Siegurt wrote:Well, technically necromancy is also in the domain of the Gods (Kiku, Ydrem) and while I don't think everything needs to have an opposite, I merely said that one thing (necromancy) seems like one that would be appropriate to me

Point taken. What kind of effects would you place in such a school of magic however if not healing? The manipulation of plants if the domain of Fedhas, so maybe something with animals?

Velikolepni wrote:Point taken. What kind of effects would you place in such a school of magic however if not healing? The manipulation of plants if the domain of Fedhas, so maybe something with animals?

I imagine Life would be method of giving life to (mostly) inanimate objects, like sticks to snakes or summon elemental, even some high level revival spell used on fresh corpses, or augmenting living creatures such as a strength buff or agility buff. It'll take some effort to bring a new school into the game, but as long as it don't step on toes then it's fine.
Although "life" does sound cheesy and a bit forced, if it prompts new spell ideas out of people and a reasonable spell set is made then all the better for crawl.

As I've said before I like the anti-training for polar opposites there doesn't seem to be too many opportunities for them.

To put the discussion to rest, it has been categorically stated that healing should only be available via Necromancy / gods / items.

I've also thought of some spells that would fit better in some sort of "Nature" spell school than any combination of existing ones; but to tell the truth we have enough spell schools and you'd need a lot of very good spell ideas to flesh out a brand new one. Perhaps "poison" is the closest we have to "nature/life" magic, since it applies directly to physiology. Poison magic is a little lacking in diversity and top end spells in my opinion; perhaps it would be easier to think about fleshing it out if it were rebranded as the natural magic school? (I'm not convinced this is a great idea: just the most obvious possibility.)

I think the problem with a "Nature" school is that it would be hard to differentiate from Fedhas.

Poison perhaps can be branded more as an "alchemy" school - alchemy also fits with the theme of giving life to inanimate objects. Poison and stat buffs also work here IMO. Maybe add something like Create Golem?

In Crawl, Necromancy is the "Life" magical discipline and the "Death" magical discipline. That is to say, it is the discipline concerned with life and death. It can bring the dead to a semblance of life, banish the dead, heal the living, move life from one thing to another, etc.

A separate "life" school would be redundant.

mumra wrote:To put the discussion to rest, it has been categorically stated that healing should only be available via Necromancy / gods / items.

I've also thought of some spells that would fit better in some sort of "Nature" spell school than any combination of existing ones; but to tell the truth we have enough spell schools and you'd need a lot of very good spell ideas to flesh out a brand new one. Perhaps "poison" is the closest we have to "nature/life" magic, since it applies directly to physiology. Poison magic is a little lacking in diversity and top end spells in my opinion; perhaps it would be easier to think about fleshing it out if it were rebranded as the natural magic school? (I'm not convinced this is a great idea: just the most obvious possibility.)

Yes, I've thought this too, I think "Nature" would be a more interesting school than "life" anyway.

Some random spell ideas for a Poison->Nature school:
Spiny thorns (Nature): gives a passive short-term attack (Like porcupines or the mutation)
Barkskin: AC bonus with a Fire vulnerability
Earthquake: (Nature/Earth) does damage in a radius (2-4?) has a chance of pushing back enemies like force bolt.
Tornado would become Nature/Air
Green barrier(Nature or Nature/Summoning(?)): Targeted non-occupied square sprouts a tree which fades after a while (Blocking/tactical spell)
Merform (Nature/Transmutation): Become a mer-critter, only able to be cast in water, gives same bonuses to speed/ev/stealth as being a merfolk for a duration (Don't let it expire in deep water!)
Volcano (Nature/Fire): Target unoccupied square becomes lava, starts spewing fire clouds randomly for a duration
Tree step (Nature): Lets you walk through trees, cannot attack or cast spells (Other than tree step)
Animate trees (or whatever the spriggan forest attack spell is)
Root (Nature): Roots emerge from the earth and entangle the target (Like a net)

Plus several of the summon spells would become summon/nature (Call Canine, summon scorpions) and of course the existing poison spells would become "Nature"

That just sounds so unnecessary? The current system already makes sense.

What's the unifying theme of Nature? I can't find one.

Igxfl wrote:What's the unifying theme of Nature? I can't find one.

Well the unifying theme of Fire is "fire", the unifying theme of Ice is "Ice", I'm going to let you draw your own conclusions from there.

rosstin wrote:That just sounds so unnecessary? The current system already makes sense.

Sure it's not required, and the current system does make sense, if someone did decide to go in that direction, Nature would be a way to expand which would also make sense

I can immediately discern whether something is fire or not. Nature is a much wobblier call. Is Ice Storm Nature? How about Summon Scorpions? The school could work, but I think its domain needs to be tightened and clarified a little.

My issue is that almost everything in the universe is already "nature".

In Crawl, the only things that aren't nature are... demons... and the undead I guess. And even those are debatable.

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