Conjurers - are they redundant?

[ekolis]

I always wondered why Crawl has both Conjurers and Elementalists... don't they serve the same purpose, namely that of zapping enemies with powerful offensive elemental spells? Seeing as Elementalists are more fully fleshed out (there are more types than just fire and ice, as conjurers are limited to), might it make sense to remove Conjurers? Or is there some distinct advantage to playing a Conjurer that I'm missing?

[xtc]

the only difference I can ever really make from them is their starting books. I actually really like the conjurer starting books compared to the fire and ice elem. starting books. Conjurers just seem like its easier to branch out into all the elements as opposed to an elementalist that focuses mainly on one.

[Kate]

The Cj[ice] book is pretty nice but yeah, I almost never start as a conjurer when I could just go FE (sticky flame!) or IE (throw icicle!). There have been various ideas thrown around on the wiki to get rid of a lot of the redundancy, there's a super-long page here. Personally I like the idea of Reavers having their own unique starting book, and Conjurers either being removed or having another different unique one.

[GameKnut]

I'd prefer to keep conjurers, and distinguish them more from elementalists.

For one thing, there are skill differences, which make some races better suited to one or the other. As an example, kenku have such a high conjurations aptitude that they can raise Conjurations to level 6 off of their starting experience, maxing out Magic Dart power at level 1.

The distinction between ice conjurers and ice elementalists is fairly pronounced already. Conjurers get Magic Dart, Mephitic Cloud, Static Discharge (which doesn't suck as much in trunk!), and Bolt of Cold. Meanwhile, elementalists get Freeze, Ozocubu's Armor, Throw Icicle, and Summon Ice Beast. (Personally, I think it's odd that the ice elementalist book has a better source of irresistable damage than the conjurer book, but it's probably okay because conjurers can just use IMB or even another element.)

There's less of a difference between fire conjurers and fire elementalists, because most fire spells happen to involve blowing things up. Conjurers get Magic Dart, Stone Arrow (also improved in trunk!), and Bolt of Magma. Elementalists have Flame Tongue, Sticky Flame, and Bolt of Fire.

Note that the two ice books only share 2 spells, Throw Frost and Freezing Cloud, while the two fire books share 3 spells, Throw Flame, Conjure Flame, and Fireball. I'd like to see the fire elementalist's book of Flames changed, because every single one of its spells is conjuration/fire. An elementalist's book should involve more uses of its element than simple destruction. The book of Frost is great in this regard, having a buff and a summon spell to round things out.

I wonder if replacing Throw Flame with Flaming Aura, and Fireball with Ignite Poison, would be interesting enough. But this topic is about conjurers, not fire elementalists, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

[RangerC]

I posted a bunch of stuff both in the Wiki and on the related Mantis discussion.

The problem is that fire conjurations is completely covered by the Fire Elementalist class, and Conj [Fire] is a crappier version of the FE book. The Conj [Ice] book is competitive and different enough from the Ice elementalist book (only two spells in common), but the IE book is still IMO a better start for everyone (Freeze and Throw Icicle being the main reasons) looking to use ice conjurations.

The two areas where conjurers/reavers could pick up the slack are in Air/Earth conjurations. An Air Elementalist isn't necessarily an air conjurer (the starting book is mostly utility spells and Mephitic Cloud), as AE can either play as a crusader type or a summoner (Air elementals can take out 90% of the enemies in the game). EE only has one conjuration in its starting book, and you can go completely without conjurations as an EE. I think 2 new books should be created, and either Reavers should get one and Conjurers the other, or the choice should remain:

Book of Conjurations (Air/Poison)
Magic Dart
New Lvl 2 Air/Conj Spell "Blast of Air" - does less damage than Throw Fire/Frost, but has knockback effect. Could be used to push monsters into Mephitic/Poison/Freezing Cloud.
Mephitic Cloud
Airstrike
Lightning Bolt
Poisonous Cloud

Other option for the Air book is (Air/Ice):
Magic Dart
Throw Frost
Mephitic Cloud
Blast of Air (more pronounced knockback at lvl 3/4)
Lightning Bolt
Freezing Cloud

Book of Conjurations (Earth/Fire):
Magic Dart
Throw Flame
Stone Arrow (with some kind of improvement - a combination of damage/fragmentation/range increase)
Conjure Flame
Bolt of Magma
Iron Shot

[nilsbloodaxe]

The dead are walking!

[Siegurt]

Man talk about a necrothread...

[duvessa]

Spambot post in a 4-year-old thread with a line pulled from a different 4-year-old thread. Not bad.

[and into]

Spambot banned, post deleted.

May the thread now return to its eternal slumber, which had been so cruelly interrupted.