Remove Spell Buffs


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Post Thursday, 4th February 2016, 22:19

Remove Spell Buffs

There have been numerous efforts to find a way to reform charms and other buffs, and for good reason: pre-battle buffing is tolerable when it's a significant fight, but when literally every fight starts with a series of spells, it becomes fairly tedious. As long as one of these spells is castable, regardless of the spellpower, it is strictly optimal to cast it before every non-trivial fight, of which Crawl has loads.

There are two kinds of buffs. One is dominated by the charms school, though some of these spells (notably the Book of Frost buffs) are outside that school; for these, I recommend removal, with replacements or additions as necessary. The other is transmutations, which requires a bit more finesse; I have a few ideas of how this might be accomplished. For ease of reading, I've divided these up into spoiler'd sections.

Charms and Charm-like Buffs
tl;dr: every buff spell is removed and replaced with an equipment ego or amulet. The Charms school is removed, and dual-school spells are either given a new school (usually Hexes) or is turned into a single-school spell. Skald is removed as a background, and Book of Battle goes away.
Spoiler: show
  • Condensation Shield and Ozo's Armour: Both spells are removed and replaced with the Amulet of Ice, which replaces the Ring of Ice. The amulet gives rC++ and rF-, an Ice enhancer, and gives the player the AC-boosting effect. On taking damage, these defenses fall away over time, and come back following a sufficient number of turns, as with the DS mutation. The effects of the amulet takes numerous turns to "warm up," though the resistances and enhancer take effect immediately.
  • Death's Door: Replace Charms with Hexes as the second school.
  • Deflect Missiles and Repel Missiles: Removed and made into a single brand for cloaks.
  • Excruciating Wounds: Replace Charms with Hexes as the second school.
  • Haste: Remove with no replacement. Potions and the wand are enough.
  • Infusion: Remove and replace with Helm of Infusion, which provides the same effect permanently.
  • Invisibility: Remove without replacement, ideally by making Cloaks of Invisibility somewhat more common.
  • Iskenderun's Battlesphere: Replace Charms with Summoning. Alternately, remove and replace Amulet of Mana Regeneration with Amulet of Doubling, which automatically summons Battlespheres, replacing destroyed ones at full MP. Spells cost an additional MP when wearing Amulet of Doubling.
  • Phase Shift and Shroud of Golubria: Remove and add a "Shroud" effect to Amulet of Dismissal. This shroud acts as the current spells, and is automatically regenerated at full HP.
  • Portal Projectile: Remove and replace Gloves of Archery with Gloves of Volleying, which gives the pproj effect. Alternately, following ranged reform, remove without replacement.
  • Regeneration: Remove without replacement. The amulet, brand, and TLA are enough.
  • Ring of Flames: Remove and replace Ring of Fire with an Amulet of Fire. Gives the RoF effect (including Fire enhancer) and rF++ rC-. The amulet's resistances take effect immediately, but the RoF effect takes a number of turns to "warm up."
  • Song of Slaying: Remove and replace Amulet of Harm with Amulet of Song, which gives a permanent Song of Slaying effect. After some number of turns, the counter resets to zero, but the player is constantly singing. On removal, the player continues to sing for ~100 turns.
  • Spectral Weapon: Replace Charms with Summoning. Alternately, remove and replace with Amulet of Spectral Weapon (better name tba), which summons a permanent spectral weapon that cannot be killed but shares its damage with the player as before. On removal, player gets XP-gated Weakness
  • Stoneskin: Remove without replacement, as the Amulet of Ice above fills the niche.
  • Swiftness: Remove and replace Boots of Running with Boots of Swiftness, which can be evoked to provide the spell's effect. Alternately, leave it as a single-school Air spell.
  • Warp Weapon: Replace Charms with Hexes as the second school.

Transmutations
tl;dr: transmutations are made into toggleable spells that set your MP to zero, or removed as a spell school and turned into a god. Non-form spells are removed, and Necromutation is turned into an amulet.
Spoiler: show
I can think of two ways to "fix" Transmutations:

My first idea: transmutation remains a spell school, but its spells work differently. Casting a transmutation spell takes your MP to zero, and MP is not regenerated until the player leaves the form in the (a)bilities menu. The amount of MP required to enter a form is the same as its spell level, so you must have at least 5 MP to cast Blade Hands again. This retains the Tm background, and it's the idea I'm leaning toward.

Second: All transmutation spells and the background are removed and replaced with a God of Transmutation, which would slowly transform the player over time. Appreciates gaining skill in unarmed combat, and grants permanent forms, starting with Appendage at 0*-1*, a second Appendage at 2*-3* Blade Hands at 4*-5*, and the player's choice of Statue Form or Dragon Form at 6*. Active abilities include Sticks to Snakes at 2* and Irradiate at 4*, both of which have a moderate piety cost, though falling below a piety breakpoint does not exit your current form.

edit: Third: You could always make tmuts into a new dungeon feature, "Fountains of Transformation," with different forms expected at varying depths? Stepping into a fountain transforms you; stepping into it again untransforms you, but dries out the fountain? Starting as a tmut lets you begin the game with Appendage, Spider is found D:2-5, etc.?

With either of these changes, Necromutation is removed as a spell and the Amulet of Gourmand is replaced with the Amulet of Necromutation. Equipping and unequipping the Amulet of Necromutation torments the player; on unequip, they also receive the "Alive" status, which prevents the use of Death's Door or Borg's.

Furthermore, Sticks to Snakes and Alistair's are just removed. Ignite Poison, Petrify, Passwall, and Irradiate lose the tmut school; the earth spells get hexes instead of tmut, and no replacement is needed for Ignite Poison or Irradiate.

Obviously, this kind of sweeping reform is unlikely, but since I spent a lot of time coming up with this while my car was getting an oil change, I thought I'd share.

e: added a third tmut reform idea from downthread.

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Post Thursday, 4th February 2016, 22:30

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I certainly think this has potential to be a major improvement and I can see this as an end-goal over the course of 2-3 stable version.

I don't know if I am fully on board, but its a really nice well thought out proposal and I hope it gets some dev attention if for no other reason than to get the gears moving.
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Post Thursday, 4th February 2016, 23:07

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

The c-r-d thread starts here. As you may guess, I like archaeo's proposal. I propose to keep things separate as much as possible, because that increases the chance that some change actually happens. Because I am much more annoyed with buff spells rather than translocations, I'll not mention forms from now on.

I like all Charms suggestion in archaeo's list, but I'd generally opt for the conservative choice (e.g. make Battlesphere a Con/Sum spell rather than another amulet). If you read through the c-r-d discussion, you'll note the following major objections:

1) "Shroud, Ozo's, CShield, and Stoneskin are all important to their respective backgrounds (especially IE's two - Stoneskin less so), but I'm not sure how you'd balance them while still making them useful for low- to mid-level players. Part of the problem is that they're low-level spells that are intended to be useful throughout the game (esp. the latter three)."

2) "I think the claim of an overarching Charms Problem is overstated; the vast majority of buffs, and even charms, work OK. Most of the problem is a handful of low-level spells. I don't think it's worthwhile to bolt on a new complex system like 'charm slots - well, at all, really, but especially given the limited scope of the problem - and I don't think it makes sense to remove the buffs that differentiate IE without having a good plan to replace them."

3) Ozocubo's Armour is required for light armour casters. Removing it would break balance too much.

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Post Thursday, 4th February 2016, 23:37

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Thanks, dpeg. I'll respond to these objections here rather than at CRD, but let me know if you'd like me to copy it over.

1) "Background Importance." IE really does get the shaft with this change, and I'm sorry to say I forgot about it until your post dpeg. The changes I've proposed takes away most of the book backgrounds' defensive measures. I'll go ahead and suggest some replacements:

IE: It seems like IE could be given Ensorcelled Hibernation and Metabolic Englaciation. Alternately, at level 3, something like Ozo's Icing, a spell that creates difficult terrain for some number of turns to hinder enemy (and player) movement, or Ozo's Envelope, a spell that holds enemies without entangling them.
AE: Instead of Repel Missiles, nerf Force Lance and put it in the AE book, reflavored as an Air spell.
EE: Instead of Stoneskin, make Gell's Gravitas an Earth/Translocation spell and reflavor it as "Gell's Gravitational Field."

These all have the effect of giving more "keep away" effects to these books. I'll address that in my response to that third objection.

2) I respectfully disagree with most charms working "OK." Any time you learn one of these spells, you're sentenced to casting them before every combat. Certainly, I think lots of people don't have a problem with buff dancing before combat, but I find it rather frustrating, in part because I've killed a ton of characters simply because I forgot to hit my no-brainer buttons before combat.

3) Ozo's is in no way required for light armor casters; I've won numerous casters who never used it. In many respects, I think that making spellcasters have low AC is probably a feature, not a bug, since it helps to balance the advantaged of their ranged combat. e: and for what it's worth, taking away Ozo's Armour probably only serves to make Freeze merely quite good instead of being absurdly good.

What this reform loses is the "hybrid" character, many of whom really did want all of these charms. If these reforms were done, you would essentially never be a lightly armored fighter unless you planned on using hexes. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but I suspect there are many players who feel that it would be. It certainly means that IE stops being an interesting hybrid book and starts looking more like other book backgrounds, which is a shame, but I think it's a worthy tradeoff for removing the "Charms Problem."

e2: also, if it's felt that casters can't get enough defenses without these spells, you could always reduce the effect of armor encumbrance on spell success rates.

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 01:17

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

IE could lose ozo's entirely and it would remain basically tied with Be for best background in the game.
EE could lose stoneskin entirely and it would still be one of the best backgrounds.
I don't see the point in retaining any of the charm effects except for unlimited haste (since most of extended is kind of designed around unlimited haste). In particularly, why on earth do you want to keep spectral weapon and battlesphere around?

You are making ice and statue form really bad. Ice form, in particular, is used in combination with refrigeration and fcloud a lot.

Also, "Ozocubu's Armour is required for light armour casters" was someone being sarcastic, nobody is stupid enough to actually believe that.

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 01:48

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

duvessa wrote:I don't see the point in retaining any of the charm effects except for unlimited haste (since most of extended is kind of designed around unlimited haste). In particularly, why on earth do you want to keep spectral weapon and battlesphere around?

Honestly, I just find both of those effects fun. I'd be fine with outright removal, but I'd be sad to see them go, because they're the rare pre-battle buffs that I've enjoyed casting; I know they're "problematic" for a variety of reasons, but I'd rather the problems get fixed than see them get removed. As for retaining charm effects in general, if the devs would rather just remove them too, then they should go for it. For me, they're an unfun part of the game, though there's definitely a big number of players who completely disagree with me.

If extended is too difficult without unlimited haste, we can nerf extended or we can add more consumable haste.

You are making ice and statue form really bad. Ice form, in particular, is used in combination with refrigeration and fcloud a lot.

Yeah, that's probably a fair point. I really struggled with coming up with ways to "fix" tmut, and honestly, if you just left the school entirely alone but made the spells toggleable, it wouldn't change the game in the least.

You could always make tmuts into a new dungeon feature, "Fountains of Transformation," with different forms expected at varying depths? Stepping into a fountain transforms you; stepping into it again untransforms you, but dries out the fountain? Starting as a tmut lets you begin the game with Appendage, Spider is found D:2-5, etc.?

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 02:13

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:If extended is too difficult without unlimited haste, we can nerf extended or we can add more consumable haste.
It's not a matter of too difficult, 15-rune games are routinely won without ever getting the haste status. But vaults, monster speeds, etc. in extended tend to be made under the assumption that you'll be hasted 99% of the time you see them. There is no reason they can't be adjusted though (or you could just say to hell with it and remove haste without adjusting them at all, it's not like it would actually make extended difficult).
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 02:54

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I like repel missiles much better as an amulet effect(and god effect with qaz). It makes more sense for the effect to take up a valuable equipment slot rather than 2 spell levels.

I think its worth experimenting giving the same treatment to other charm buffs as well. For example, rocksin and ozo could become ring brands that gain effectiveness based on spell level(similar to pain branding for weapons).

I agree with archeo that spectral weapon and battlesphere are both cool effects that shouldn't be removed.

I'm confused as to why dpeg said that Ozo's armor is "required" for light armor casters, 3/5 of my wins were done with light armor casters(and a 4th one was a draconian) and I never once used ozo's armor even on the char using ice storm. Perhaps it was just hyperbole, but even so the spell seems FAR from required, perhaps optimal, but no where near required.
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 06:32

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

And how do transmutations peeve you? The typical transmutation is so much better than the typical charm. You can only have one active, and it's not just a buff to your defenses, but pretty much your way of accessing the thing you do, kind of like summoning spells. You meld your staff of wizardry and some armor, get a spell success malus, some translocation spell goes offline, and you start punching. I would consider merging charms with transmutations as well as hexes. And are cloaks of darkness actually better than the invisibility spell?

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 12:24

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:are cloaks of darkness actually better than the invisibility spell?

They cost less mp, require less exp investment and allow the player to turn visible to avoid getting too much contam, so yes.
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 13:24

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:And how do transmutations peeve you? The typical transmutation is so much better than the typical charm. You can only have one active, and it's not just a buff to your defenses, but pretty much your way of accessing the thing you do, kind of like summoning spells. You meld your staff of wizardry and some armor, get a spell success malus, some translocation spell goes offline, and you start punching.

My intention was to remove pre-battle buffs. I'll cheerfully concede that transmutations are a lot closer to summons than charms, and they're not nearly as vexing as Ozo's Armour and the like. But I still find them to be a problem.

Part of the issue with buffs, including tmut spells, is that they don't work well as spells; they have negligible tactical costs that are never an actual factor in their use. Dragon Form could cost 20 MP and it wouldn't much matter, since you cast it at the beginning of a fight and it will usually last long enough that you can hit 5 to regen that MP after the form ends. I honestly can't think of a time that MP was a meaningful limit to my hybrid or Tm characters, and that's an issue, one that is distinctly different from the MP-starved summoners.

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 14:11

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:What this reform loses is the "hybrid" character, many of whom really did want all of these charms. If these reforms were done, you would essentially never be a lightly armored fighter unless you planned on using hexes.

I don't agree with this at all. Most of my characters are what the Tavern calls "hybrids", and while Ozo's is a nice perk, it's not at all required. Without Ozo's, you just wear slightly heavier armour and still have fine defenses.

Edit: added missing "my"

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 14:20

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I believe MP itself is the real problem here. I would rather remove magic cost from spells and add contam to most spells considered a "buff"(including transmutations), as well as to some translocation spells, then make contam exp gated.
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 14:24

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dynast: you push the proposal further into never-never land. MP is certainly good for something, as any cast can attest who's about to die due to 0 MP. It is true that MP is not relevant for some spells. In fact, archaeo made this thread about those spells! Removing MP from all spells because some spells don't work well with MP: a non-solution for the wrong problem. (Hint: who's to balance the bulk of spells, that are decently balanced right now?)
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 14:36

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:Stoneskin: Remove without replacement

IT BEGINS

Kidding ;)
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 14:54

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg: What is your definition of "balanced spells"? because, as far as i played this game, spells are extremely umbalanced(as they should be) and removing MP from it wouldnt make it any different. I concede that removing magic cost from spells is a huge can of worms, but so is every discussion regarding casting spells. MP is just the root of it all. If you are talking about how removing magic costs make spells too strong in comparison to other things like melee or ranged i feel like it would be the same as if weapons always had durability and then it was proposed to remove durability from them(say, because people dont want to have to retreat to sharpen their axe, or do it in the middle of a fight).
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 15:12

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Lasty wrote:
archaeo wrote:What this reform loses is the "hybrid" character, many of whom really did want all of these charms. If these reforms were done, you would essentially never be a lightly armored fighter unless you planned on using hexes.

I don't agree with this at all. Most of characters are what the Tavern calls "hybrids", and while Ozo's is a nice perk, it's not at all required. Without Ozo's, you just wear slightly heavier armour and still have fine defenses.

Well, that's what I get for not putting more scare quotes around """hybrid,""" because I don't disagree with you, it's just one of those imprecisions we get using words like that; perhaps I should've said "buff-based hybrid"? Naturally, the game retains debuff-based or the rare conjurations-based hybridization opportunities.

dynast wrote:as far as i played this game, spells are extremely umbalanced(as they should be) and removing MP from it wouldnt make it any different.

I think this is vastly overstating things, dynast; even a good player like yourself has to make tactical decisions based on MP, and a big part of the learning curve with casting-spells-to-killdudes characters is learning how to manage MP.

Either way, it's pretty tangential to the main topic; if you'd like to continue to discuss removing MP, it'd be a fine topic for a new thread.

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 15:28

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:I think this is vastly overstating things, dynast; even a good player like yourself has to make tactical decisions based on MP, and a big part of the learning curve with casting-spells-to-killdudes characters is learning how to manage MP.

I dont consider figuring out when to head upstairs to be tactical in any way. I dont consider managing mp to be tactical, i would rather manage my contamination, my spell's fail rate and(i cant believe im gonna say that) my hunger. Because the funny thing about spell hunger is that you have plenty of food to eat, so if you are on a fight and start starving you eat a fruit, if you run out of mp, you head upstairs, because magic potions are SO DAMN RARE to waste.
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 15:31

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Could you not just have charms give you a certain -mp based on the spells cost? Maybe have the cost be reduced by skill in the charms tree by up to some amount to make it a partial penalty so it impacts casters less if they train the skill more?

Ex. Ozu's reduces your max Magic by 3, RMSL by 2.

This would allow melee who don't normally use magic to get some value out of it and it would force them to make decisions about which buffs to have on, while allowing casters to supplement their defense. You would also not have to cast them constantly.
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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 15:56

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

That idea was recently floated again in CYC, Ceann, and I think Bart offered a pretty succinct explanation of why it doesn't really fix the problem.

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Post Friday, 5th February 2016, 23:31

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

While I very much love almost all ideas from the first spoiler, I dont think invisibility spell removal is a good thing. Before the wand /ring removal there were actually too many sources of invisibility; (wand potion spell ring cloak) now there are just enough (potion, spell, cloak). With removal the stabber playstyle which is a ton of fun would be a lot less viable as is; and especially two of the races that have extremely good stealth apt cannot wear cloaks of invisibility. This would be Octopode/Felid. Removal of ring is already noticeable on Octopode games.

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 00:15

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I dunno, le_nerd; you could always turn it into an XP-gated evoker like phials and lamps? I don't find invis particularly fun, honestly. I bet that's a minority opinion, but it's functionally the same as a mass confuse aura that only works on certain enemies. You could replace the spell with Aura of Confusion and it'd basically be the same thing. Better yet, Song of Confusion, which makes noise but has a good shot of working on anything (e: or just most things) given enough turns.

Of course, I think lots of people love invis because of the "stabber playstyle" you're talking about, so maybe this isn't my best idea.

e2: actually, that aura idea is just another pre-battle buff, and the xp-gated evoker would be better suited to making it a sometimes buff instead of a "before every fight" buff.

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 00:26

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

my favorite thing about invis is using it on draconians in zot and seeing them all shooting their breath attacks at each other

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 01:21

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

@archeo: 1) invisibility has never been regarded as too broken, so why change it now drastically? Lets get used to the missing wand and ring now and then reevaluate. Invis is partially broken- true- but also still balanced: non-chainable, useless against non-Sinv monsters, bad at getting silver/slime runes, requires investment into two different skills one of which is shortblades (three if the spell is included), reduces score if you just wait contam out

2) If you dont have fun with stabber playstyles well - here are a number of reasons its a great playstyle that do not rely on fun:

- With stabbing almost every "fight" is a suspenseful and meaningful encounter, due to the possibility of waking the enemy up. This is great, but without some enabler like invisibility its not viable enough. Other hexes work only partially and are much much more tedious to use. A relatively short XP timer might work, but seems rather hard to balance. Since invis still works a lot better if everything is asleep you still have a huge incentive to not make noise.

3) I'd argue that invis is very different from mass confuse. Theres a ton of mechanisms (partially hidden) to ensure that, stuff like "sense invisible" and "reduces player Acc if no Sinv", but also the huge reliability boost (you know its going to work and when the status will end due to flickering) and again missing tediousness. Also the no-drowning thing and EV boost which really helps out the EV based species, again.

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 08:27

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

le_nerd wrote:@archeo: 1) invisibility has never been regarded as too broken
uhhh, actually it has been - why do you think it was nerfed so many times?

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 11:36

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

IMO, forms work quite well as buffs because (with the exception of Beastly Appendage) they are not strict buffs; even though some are very strong they all make the player weaker in some way, whether it's preventing ranged attacks, impairing spellcasting, melding armour, or whatever.

Would it not be possible to modify some of the most obvious of the other buff spells to give reasons why you would not want to have them up all the time, rather than just removing them all? For example if Stoneskin gave slowed movement speed and Ozo's gave rF- then you may have to think twice about exploring with them up and would not want to use them in every fight.

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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 20:13

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I would certainly be sad to see these spells go though any of the proposed changes.
Because im apperently one of the few people who actually like casting buff spells as part of preparing for an engagement, since its what makes it feel like your a fighter mage.

I am already sad to see Stoneskin is apperently going away, despite being a useful lowlevel buff. And i dont think there are any reason to start removing even more support spells.
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Post Saturday, 6th February 2016, 21:55

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

lord_khaine wrote:i dont think there are any reason to start removing even more support spells.


You should read the thread then, there are a number of reasons to justify their removal. Most of them are however based on the very thing you enjoy about them, but there are other reasons aside from that such as the issue with balance.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 00:27

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

lord_khaine, on the off chance you were concerned, I'm just a forum mod, not a dev; my proposal is almost certainly not going to happen as written.

Furthermore, to moderate my position a bit, there's probably an argument that the only truly problematic spells are those that you just want to keep on all the time, and that you could "save" charms and transmutations by making each spell more situational, have significant drawbacks, or etc. I tend to think this just creates competition with consumables, however, which already have drawbacks via their scarcity.

As it is, spells like Ozo's Armour and Phase Shift are just AC/EV+ rings that you equip in your spell slots instead of your ring slots.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 09:48

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

archaeo wrote:As it is, spells like Ozo's Armour and Phase Shift are just AC/EV+ rings that you equip in your spell slots instead of your ring slots.


What if buff spells that didn't contaminate were permanent until removed, except part of the effect is to reduce your max MP until the effect is turned off. This would remove the tedium of the spells without changing the power level of the spells too much, since they would reduce the amount of MP you can take advantage of in a battle.

This might be sort of a bandaid solution, but it might be an improvement over the status quo and shouldn't be hard to program. It could also potentially ease into a charms reform a little bit better, as it can allow for balance to be tweaked by increase the cost on maximum MP based on the usefulness of the buff.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 10:13

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

What is the difference between Bs & IE? Your ac comes from Ice Magic instead from Armour, your summons are ice beasts instead than BiA, your ranged attack is icicle instead than javelin. I think berserk is the only meaningful difference.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 10:57

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I don't like this because before there is some consideration to take int on level up for melee characters and learn some spells. With this proposal you might as well go full str/dex even if you are going to be melee because a hybrid style will not be worth it. I would rather see something like make buffs cost max mp that you get back when the buff is canceled.

kuniqs wrote:What is the difference between Bs & IE? Your ac comes from Ice Magic instead from Armour, your summons are ice beasts instead than BiA, your ranged attack is icicle instead than javelin. I think berserk is the only meaningful difference.

Bs is not a background.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 11:19

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I do not understand why people think it is so tedious to cast these spells?
I always just macro them to a 1 or 2 buttons. And you don't actually need them in every fight even considering hypothetical optimal play etc. things.
If you remove all buffs it just makes it optimal to cast hexes/summoning before every fight instead.
When those get removed damage spells are the only thing that is left, might as well make them all conjurations and abolish all other schools.
Last edited by Lacuenta on Sunday, 7th February 2016, 12:09, edited 2 times in total.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 11:21

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

WingedEspeon wrote:I don't like this because before there is some consideration to take int on level up for melee characters and learn some spells. With this proposal you might as well go full str/dex even if you are going to be melee because a hybrid style will not be worth it. I would rather see something like make buffs cost max mp that you get back when the buff is canceled.


When you have to segregate spells into second-class citizen ones who take your maxmp, it's the spells problem, not mp's. Right now there's no consideration of what attributes to take - you take dex or int if you cast spells.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 11:42

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

kuniqs wrote:What is the difference between Bs & IE

You can pick not Trog.
Lacuenta wrote:And you don't actually need them in every fight even considering hypothetical optimal play etc.

You will always need them otherwise you are not considering optimal play.

I think the main issue here is that buff spells are a no brainer: "do i want extra AC/EV/Regen during this fight?"
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 12:06

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Dynast wrote:
Lacuenta wrote:And you don't actually need them in every fight even considering hypothetical optimal play etc.

You will always need them otherwise you are not considering optimal play.

I think the main issue here is that buff spells are a no brainer: "do i want extra AC/EV/Regen during this fight?"


I'll strike through that part of my post since even though I disagree, this should not become a discussion about optimal play and isn't what my post is about.

That said, I agree that buffs are no-brainers but removing them just makes another school/spell replace it.
Which in turn will eventually be considered a no-brainer.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 12:23

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I'm guessing that if buffs are removed, the next thing that will be considered a no-brainer will be translocations. Then when they're removed there will be no reason at all to bother with magic unless you are a dedicated conjurer/summoner.

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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 12:27

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Lacuenta wrote:I do not understand why people think it is so tedious to cast these spells? I always just macro them to a 1 or 2 buttons.
Because it is tedious for some of us. Wonderful that it's not tedious for you. For me, I shun all the buffs except for Repel/Deflect Missiles (and those two are still bad spells, just with an acceptable interface by now).

Lacuenta wrote:If you remove all buffs it just makes it optimal to cast hexes/summoning before every fight instead. When those get removed damage spells are the only thing that is left, might as well make them all conjurations and abolish all other schools.
[...]I agree that buffs are no-brainers but removing them just makes another school/spell replace it. Which in turn will eventually be considered a no-brainer.
That's the fallacy: Hexes are much less of a problem: if you cast them, the monster is already around (obviously, I am talking about spells like Confuse here and not about Darkness). That removes a lot of the abuse potential.
Secondly, not even all Charms are bad. As we have thoroughly established by now, the problem is that you get a buff over a duration, so you can cast before battle and during travel/exploration and cheat costs. Summonings have some of those issues (and there's a really good reason they were nerfed several times), but these are a far cry from the numerical buffs, Charms or not.

It seems that instead of removing a number of spells wholesale, we're now removing/nerfing them one by one, which is of course fine by me.

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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 14:10

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

dpeg wrote:
Lacuenta wrote:I do not understand why people think it is so tedious to cast these spells? I always just macro them to a 1 or 2 buttons.
Because it is tedious for some of us. Wonderful that it's not tedious for you. For me, I shun all the buffs except for Repel/Deflect Missiles (and those two are still bad spells, just with an acceptable interface by now).


I guess it's a personal thing, I take it you're not a big summoning fan either?

dpeg wrote:
Lacuenta wrote:If you remove all buffs it just makes it optimal to cast hexes/summoning before every fight instead. When those get removed damage spells are the only thing that is left, might as well make them all conjurations and abolish all other schools.
[...]I agree that buffs are no-brainers but removing them just makes another school/spell replace it. Which in turn will eventually be considered a no-brainer.
That's the fallacy: Hexes are much less of a problem: if you cast them, the monster is already around (obviously, I am talking about spells like Confuse here and not about Darkness). That removes a lot of the abuse potential.
Secondly, not even all Charms are bad. As we have thoroughly established by now, the problem is that you get a buff over a duration, so you can cast before battle and during travel/exploration and cheat costs. Summonings have some of those issues (and there's a really good reason they were nerfed several times), but these are a far cry from the numerical buffs, Charms or not.

It seems that instead of removing a number of spells wholesale, we're now removing/nerfing them one by one, which is of course fine by me.


Well I said what i wanted to, hope you decide to keep Ozo's I like the "built around me" potential it has, especially when found on melee types.

Though i guess its hard to not make it a no brainer for more magically inclined types. It could certainly be moved up to like lvl 5 and be ice only so as not to be an easy pickup for everyone with a charms investment.

Another idea could be to make all buffs toggle-able passives which activate when meeting a monster instantly consuming their mp cost, then apply buff x for a certain duration based on power, and automatically retrigger, again costing mp, when that duraton has passed re-aplying the buff.
This will at least solve the cheat cost effect, the tedium of re-casting and will make them less of a no brainer to keep active since it might be too risky to lose mp during a prolonged fight.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 17:14

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Jeremiah wrote:I'm guessing that if buffs are removed, the next thing that will be considered a no-brainer will be translocations. Then when they're removed there will be no reason at all to bother with magic unless you are a dedicated conjurer/summoner.


First they came for the buffs
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like buffs.
They they came for the Translocations
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like Translocations.
They they came for the summons spells
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like summon spells.
After that, crawl spellcasting was
in a pretty good place
and they stopped coming for things.

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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 17:55

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Rast wrote:
Jeremiah wrote:I'm guessing that if buffs are removed, the next thing that will be considered a no-brainer will be translocations. Then when they're removed there will be no reason at all to bother with magic unless you are a dedicated conjurer/summoner.


First they came for the buffs
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like buffs.
They they came for the Translocations
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like Translocations.
They they came for the summons spells
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like summon spells.
After that, crawl spellcasting was
in a pretty good place
and they stopped coming for things.



After that they came for Trog as there was no reason to worship any other god.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 18:02

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Personally, I think translocations and summons are fine, which I'm sure to some people just means I have inconsistent views or whatever, but hey.

Also, Ozo's Armour just got nerfed with Ponderous 1. While I'm not sure if stuff like this really changes my opinion on whether or not charms should stay, it's nice to see the devs working on ways to make them less like spell slot equipment.

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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 20:18

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Rast wrote:First they came for the buffs
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like buffs.
They they came for the Translocations
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like Translocations.
They they came for the summons spells
and I did not speak out
Because I don't like summon spells.
After that, crawl spellcasting was
in a pretty good place
and they stopped coming for things.


After that the game became so boring there was no-one left to speak out.

archaeo wrote:Personally, I think translocations and summons are fine, which I'm sure to some people just means I have inconsistent views or whatever, but hey.

Also, Ozo's Armour just got nerfed with Ponderous 1. While I'm not sure if stuff like this really changes my opinion on whether or not charms should stay, it's nice to see the devs working on ways to make them less like spell slot equipment.


I'm no dev but this seems like a rather random nerf, it doesn't seem to adress any of the mentioned problems with ozo's/buffs.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 20:22

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

So my personal litmus test for whether a spell is too tedious to use optimally or not is "is it any more tedious than using conjuration"

IMHO the thing that makes charms tedious is that you can get a benefit from continuously casting it when no creatures are around to use it on.

I've proposed before (and It's been generally lukewarmishly responded to) that the thing to do with charms is to make them not optimal to use out of combat.

Swiftness is already this way, OA is now this way-ish, adding a drawback isn't the *only* way to make a buff not optimal when no critters are around, but it's probably the simplest one, some others include: tying it to the area in which it is cast (And having it expire when you leave), and tying it to the critters who are in LOS when it's cast.
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Post Sunday, 7th February 2016, 20:29

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Lacuenta wrote:
archaeo wrote:Personally, I think translocations and summons are fine, which I'm sure to some people just means I have inconsistent views or whatever, but hey.

Also, Ozo's Armour just got nerfed with Ponderous 1. While I'm not sure if stuff like this really changes my opinion on whether or not charms should stay, it's nice to see the devs working on ways to make them less like spell slot equipment.


I'm no dev but this seems like a rather random nerf, it doesn't seem to adress any of the mentioned problems with ozo's/buffs.
That's polemic: whatever you think of this nerf (and it is just in, so it will be evaluated later), it does address a number of the shortcomings we've been discussing over here. Ponderous Ozo Armour means you don't want to cast the spell when exploring/travel, and it is not straight buff in all fights.

So if you find something to criticise (and I am sure there is something), please try to come up with actual points.

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Post Monday, 8th February 2016, 10:21

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I would prefer to see buffs become tactical and not situational, instead of adding drawbacks just add contamination. It works for haste.

Also, ponderous, really? do you want mage or warriors to cast the spell?
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Post Tuesday, 9th February 2016, 20:51

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Yeah if I'm being honest ozo's having ponderous will, to me, just mean "never learn ozo's"
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Post Tuesday, 9th February 2016, 21:05

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

I'd be okay with getting rid of Charms altogether, but don't like the OP's specific proposal - Trog doesn't need repel missiles + ring of flames, and ranged combat users don't need a bunch of buffs.
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Post Wednesday, 10th February 2016, 00:29

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

That's fine Reptisaurus; judging from the changes we've seen, I don't know that the devs like my specific proposal either. :)
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Post Wednesday, 10th February 2016, 07:21

Re: Remove Spell Buffs

Let Shroud stay active until it is aken off by a mighty blow and remove timing out. In other words, it should work like repel/deflect missiles.
Now the use of this spell is dicouraging - you should watch for timer and recast it while you can loose it every hit.
With such a buff one can overcome the Phase Shift removal (since Shroud is kinda getting some EV if I understand this spell correctly) and make the use of the spell less tedious.
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