Spell durations (was: Best Cheibriados Race_

[tasonir]

By support I suppose I should have said benefits. Improves your casting (necromancy power booster and hungerless spells). You can cast in any form, of course. Ice form gives ac and spider gives speed, so they benefit your character, I just don't think they really benefit casting. Regardless, you're right they are useful. The main transmuter forms, blade hands and statue form, both are bad for heavy casters, and that's what I was trying to get across.

Also I agree that appendage doesn't exist.

[Magipi]

What is wrong with appendage? It is a good spell in the early game.

[pratamawirya]

Yeah, appendage increases your damage output in the early game, not much, but still better than nothing.

[crate]

the problem is appendage is a level 1 spell that you want to cast in every fight
this is slightly mitigated by the fact that eventually it does nothing, but it's still really annoying to do that
in addition you can scum it for your preferred aux, though this is less important than it used to be now that it both no longer gives claws and talons are slightly better than they used to be

(if you read my posts you should know that I very rarely complain about spells for being too weak)

[mikee]

Really short buffs like this would probably be more bearable to use if their 'duration' were a set number of successful applications than a set number of turns. That might also prevent some brand spells from scaling so well with xl, as later on you will be getting more applications per aut.

[Sandman25]

Really short buffs like this would probably be more bearable to use if their 'duration' were a set number of successful applications than a set number of turns. That might also prevent some brand spells from scaling so well with xl, as later on you will be getting more applications per aut.

I think it would be a no brainer to cast such spell after every fight. Now you have to choose whether you want to cast the spell or attack/retreat provided the monster noticed you.

[mikee]

Do you find that every monster that notices you is suddenly adjacent to you?

[Sandman25]

No, of course. But sometimes you don't have time to cast the spell. With unlimited duration you will always cast it whenever possible.

[njvack]

You should pretty much always have time to cast the spell against monsters the same (or slower) than you.

1: If the monster is 1 space away from you, make that not be true anymore (using stairs or whatever).

2: If the monster is more than one space from you, cast the spell or rest for more MP. If you haven't cast the spell, goto 1.

3: You've cast the spell!

Edit: this is why crate said it was annoying

[bobross419]

You should pretty much always have time to cast the spell against monsters the same (or slower) than you.

1: If the monster is 1 space away from you, make that not be true anymore (using stairs or whatever).

2: If the monster is more than one space from you, cast the spell or rest for more MP. If you haven't cast the spell, goto 1.

3: You've cast the spell!

Edit: this is why crate said it was annoying

There are still situations in which you need to decide whether to cast a buff, move, or attack (*taur packs come to mind), so Sandman does have a valid point.

With that said, keeping up buffs is really monotonous and I'd be for anything that removes the tedium which includes duration by application.

[Sandman25]

The same problem applies to Reflect Missiles, Deflect Missiles, Necromutation, Stone Skin, Ozocubu's Armour etc. I always have these spells on and immediately recast them when they are about to expire so they are even more annoying. Do we want to make them permanent too???

[reaver]

The same problem applies to Reflect Missiles, Deflect Missiles, Necromutation, Stone Skin, Ozocubu's Armour etc. I always have these spells on and immediately recast them when they are about to expire so they are even more annoying. Do we want to make them permanent too???

Yes. Here's the dev wiki page on the subject.

[njvack]

There are still situations in which you need to decide whether to cast a buff, move, or attack (*taur packs come to mind), so Sandman does have a valid point.

If you're casting appendage to fight *taur packs... um, don't.

You also probably don't want to spend turns trying to appendage up with Grinder or Sigmund in LoS. So don't always apply those rules; just do it in 95% of the early game encounters where hobgoblins and gnolls can kill you.

[rebthor]

There are still situations in which you need to decide whether to cast a buff, move, or attack (*taur packs come to mind), so Sandman does have a valid point.

If you're casting appendage to fight *taur packs... um, don't.

You also probably don't want to spend turns trying to appendage up with Grinder or Sigmund in LoS. So don't always apply those rules; just do it in 95% of the early game encounters where hobgoblins and gnolls can kill you.

No, you're missing at least part of crate's point and that is as a Tm there is almost no point that you do not want beastly appendage up, it's not just the early game. What stops people from using it later on is other Tm spells and it being annoying to have to cast constantly.

[crate]

The same problem applies to Reflect Missiles, Deflect Missiles, Necromutation, Stone Skin, Ozocubu's Armour etc. I always have these spells on and immediately recast them when they are about to expire so they are even more annoying. Do we want to make them permanent too???

in fact you have discovered that crawl's buffs are in general not well designed!

charms is by a lot my least favourite magic school, but it's still the one i train basically every game

[njvack]

Once I have spider form castable I'm pretty much done with appendage. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?