Create inscribe spellbook command

[svendre]

I propose that players start with a generic "Book of Spells", which is either blank or contains the spells they would start with.
A command would be created that allows you to copy spells from books you find into your book.

* Player has their spell book in inventory
* They find and pick up a spell book of Conjuration
* They press an inscribe command key and a list of the spell books they have obtained appears and they can select one or more
* Spells are merged into the player's starting spell book, perhaps there is a cost in time depending on how many spells are copied, duplicates are skipped
* The book being copied from should probably vanish, so it can't be double used for Trog piety, etc. Trog worshippers inscribing spells would incur wrath. The flavor explanation can be simply that some pages get removed/transferred. The net effect here would be a small nerf to Trog characters hording books to use later if they intend to ditch Trog, but Trog is already so powerful I think this would be fair.

This would primarily be a quality of life change to ease inventory space. The reasoning is that when choosing spells to memorize, it often makes sense to see which books you find. Currently, even if I have a non-spell casting character I may want to train spells later. Which ones I would want to train is unknown often until I know more about which combinations I find. This results in wanting to always collect all the books and put them in one single pile to be able to review what I can memorize (without trying to search for individual spell names one at a time and figure it out.) I don't think this would be much of a change to player power, because memorizing spells isn't something you normally do in combat situations anyhow. The only case where I see this as possibly being more powerful is when entering pan. One possible solution for that is to not allow the memorization of spells in pan unless you worship Sif Muna (perhaps it has some kind of dimensional interference.) I don't think pan is an extremely big deal though because usually at the point a character enters pan, they are fairly clear on what spells they plan to use and aren't going to completely reconfigure their character magic abilities and if they did it would require a huge investment. People doing pan more often just want to get in and get out and win the game.

When you can carry a stack of 5,000 large rocks - I don't see why additional pages of writing should clutter the inventory as they currently can so much currently. That the generic player's spell book would take one inventory space would slightly offset a power increase. Players who intend on never using magic can simply throw it away.

[KoboldLord]

There's no reason this should be an explicit command or take up an inventory slot. You can already autotravel to the nearest spellbook containing any spell you have discovered that you search for, which is safe wherever you left it for whenever you need it. If the character gets a global memorize list that skips the autotravel step, that has basically no impact on the game except skipping some stash management, and stash management is not a desirable feature anyway.

I assume the only reason this hasn't already been done is nobody has gotten around to it.

[svendre]

There's no reason this should be an explicit command or take up an inventory slot. You can already autotravel to the nearest spellbook containing any spell you have discovered that you search for, which is safe wherever you left it for whenever you need it. If the character gets a global memorize list that skips the autotravel step, that has basically no impact on the game except skipping some stash management, and stash management is not a desirable feature anyway.

I assume the only reason this hasn't already been done is nobody has gotten around to it.

I don't think you can claim that every spell book is always safe where you left it. Not that they may be game breaking problems.. a few examples: it costs food, god piety and there is the chance of dangerous spawns happening or enemies you needed to skip which moved around on the level near to where you want to return. You also didn't address pan or abyss from which you can't always just leave whenever you want.

[Quazifuji]

I don't think you can claim that every spell book is always safe where you left it. Not that they may be game breaking problems.. a few examples: it costs food, god piety and there is the chance of dangerous spawns happening or enemies you needed to skip which moved around on the level near to where you want to return. You also didn't address pan or abyss from which you can't always just leave whenever you want.

If you acquire a spell book with a spell you may want to learn later, it's almost always completely trivial to stash that spell somewhere that you can guarantee is safe, such as Lair, or Temple, or Vestibule, or basically any cleared floor in the game whatsoever outside of Pan/Hell/Abyss. Cases where you're forced to make an interesting decision because you found a book with a good spell in Pan/Hell/Abyss but your inventory and spell slots are full, or because you would benefit from traveling to a spell book you left somewhere to shuffle your spells around but it's dangerous or difficult to leave your current area, are exceedingly rare in my experience. The piety cost and food cost is also generally pretty negligible, considernig it's not usually something you do very often. And preserving those cases where the cost of hunting down a spell book you left somewhere is non-negligible is not worth preserving the far, far more common tedium that occurs when you have to travel fifteen floors, probably with a few interruptions due to hunger or random popcorn showing up, in my opinion.

[svendre]

I don't think you can claim that every spell book is always safe where you left it. Not that they may be game breaking problems.. a few examples: it costs food, god piety and there is the chance of dangerous spawns happening or enemies you needed to skip which moved around on the level near to where you want to return. You also didn't address pan or abyss from which you can't always just leave whenever you want.

If you acquire a spell book with a spell you may want to learn later, it's almost always completely trivial to stash that spell somewhere that you can guarantee is safe, such as Lair, or Temple, or Vestibule, or basically any cleared floor in the game whatsoever outside of Pan/Hell/Abyss. Cases where you're forced to make an interesting decision because you found a book with a good spell in Pan/Hell/Abyss but your inventory and spell slots are full, or because you would benefit from traveling to a spell book you left somewhere to shuffle your spells around but it's dangerous or difficult to leave your current area, are exceedingly rare in my experience. The piety cost and food cost is also generally pretty negligible, considernig it's not usually something you do very often. And preserving those cases where the cost of hunting down a spell book you left somewhere is non-negligible is not worth preserving the far, far more common tedium that occurs when you have to travel fifteen floors, probably with a few interruptions due to hunger or random popcorn showing up, in my opinion.

Yes, I agree that it is not a steep risk to create a stash. I wasn't trying to say that having one spell book in inventory was some huge offset penalty. I think it is rather minor, to offset other "player power" matters. I said I think this change would be mostly a quality of life change, not a huge balance swing.

While making a stash may not be enormous in terms of risk, it does come with a cost. I don't think it's trivial in terms of annoyance. As you pointed out, the cost in terms of annoyance running around back and forth is notable. I'd like to further point out that while sure it's easy to move 1 or 2 books (from depths!?) to the temple... it's not as easy to move 15 books. The real cost to having these things pile up in inventory is that now you have less inventory to collect either more of them or anything else. So then what, take more time dropping all but essential stuff to pick up more than a few items at a time, move it, return, grab your combat items.. etc. etc.

When I get ready to tackle a new branch or area, I don't usually decide "okay here are the 52 items I plan to take with me to do this branch". The reason is that does not allow for me to collect anything new. Sure it's possible that what you find didn't make the cut into the fully packed inventory, but that can be because the item isn't useful for you yet or in the area you found it. Before I tackle a new area I either have to leave all sorts of useful items behind so that I have space to pickup new things, or make two trips zig sagging all over the place to each individual item which did not stack with my original set that I want to obtain. If you do as I do and keep say around 30 items in inventory and reserve space for picking new things up, you are reduced in character power from that somewhat significantly but you don't need to make so many trips. If you kept 51 items in inventory, and every time you find a spell book you march to the temple and back... sure god piety and food would stand out, it wouldn't be negligible in that case. If you made a list of the only items you will ever pick up which always fits into 52 or less you will have significantly fewer options. So, in any event - it shows that having spells being copied to one item is an overall increase in player power. It's a huge decrease to tedium for certain. I don't think having one single spell book in inventory or having an inscription process take some time is a huge offset. Anyways, my main point was to reduce tedium. If I could get the reduction in tedium, I could certainly live with a slightly larger balance swing.

I guess the more I think about it though, because of the escalating nature of taking so many trips to build a stash if you don't sacrifice a lot of options... it's actually not that minor of a power boost, and maybe more penalties than simply taking one inventory space are warranted to balance it out.

I *hate* building stashes. I've tried to play games without them and it isn't really much less tedious either because you have to make a lot more single choices rather than batch choices. My ideal game would be not fussing with moving shit around so much and staring at the inventory screen as much, but if the player is stronger from having more options - make the game more difficult in some other way to compensate. I went after the spell books in this post, because there are so many ()@% of them and they aren't much of a tactical item.

[prozacelf]

There's no reason this should be an explicit command or take up an inventory slot. You can already autotravel to the nearest spellbook containing any spell you have discovered that you search for, which is safe wherever you left it for whenever you need it. If the character gets a global memorize list that skips the autotravel step, that has basically no impact on the game except skipping some stash management, and stash management is not a desirable feature anyway.

I assume the only reason this hasn't already been done is nobody has gotten around to it.

How would this affect burning a book to forget a spell? Just jettison the mechanic altogether and maybe make amnesia scrolls a bit more common? Or maybe just remove the spell(s) from your virtual spellbook (like how it currently works, just with out lugging the actual inventory around)?

I've been in favor of the idea for a while, just wondered what the best solution for that aspect would be. Presumably in terms of burning books for Trog, you would just have to burn the books on the ground instead of carrying them around to create a flame cloud where ever you wanted, but Trog is strong enough without that feature anyway.

[KoboldLord]

This issue is so minor that the specific details of implementation don't actually matter. Wipe out a random spellbook that has that spell, or wipe out all the spellbooks that have that spell, it doesn't matter. Decisions on my spell list almost never consider the supply of spellbooks I can use to forget spells; the only time I've ever actually considered using that feature is when Vehumet offers something that I really want and I don't think I'll get spellcasting up in time. By mid-game, more amnesia usually generates than I could possibly ever use.

Likewise, piety costs for autotraveling to the spellbook you left on the ground where you found it don't matter. Popcorn encounters on the way don't matter. Food consumption on the way doesn't matter. Nobody designed any part of the game to consider the impact of autotravel to stashes, so if this very tiny cost simply goes away it is very unlikely that anybody will even notice a difference. The cost is tiny and irrelevant, so developer time should not be spent rescuing it.

[genericpseudonym]

This issue is so minor that the specific details of implementation don't actually matter. Wipe out a random spellbook that has that spell, or wipe out all the spellbooks that have that spell, it doesn't matter. Decisions on my spell list almost never consider the supply of spellbooks I can use to forget spells; the only time I've ever actually considered using that feature is when Vehumet offers something that I really want and I don't think I'll get spellcasting up in time. By mid-game, more amnesia usually generates than I could possibly ever use.

Likewise, piety costs for autotraveling to the spellbook you left on the ground where you found it don't matter. Popcorn encounters on the way don't matter. Food consumption on the way doesn't matter. Nobody designed any part of the game to consider the impact of autotravel to stashes, so if this very tiny cost simply goes away it is very unlikely that anybody will even notice a difference. The cost is tiny and irrelevant, so developer time should not be spent rescuing it.

I've used the book-destroying option to forget useless low-level spells after having memorized everything from the starting spellbook. Maybe not worth bothering with for the level 1 spells, but (for example) an AE who finds dmsl can use it to forget rmsl for free.

I agree that it doesn't really make a huge difference though, and I'd gladly lose it in exchange for "global memorization" or whatever you'd call it.