Spider Stomper
Posts: 201
Joined: Thursday, 16th July 2015, 21:47
Saturday, 20th August 2016, 22:17
Passwall should be seriously turned up
Recently, there was one time, fleeing and desperate in Vaults 5, when I happened across Passwall and was actually desperate enough to use it.
It didn't work, of course.
As I understand it (after having it to fool with for the first time in a long time) you can't Passwall through anything much - not stone, definitely not metal, not multiple tiles, etc. It is almost but not quite as hard to learn as Deconstruction, which provides a much more satisfying doorway that doesn't leave you in a really bad spot if you come out to find admirers waiting for you on the other side. And of course you can't use it to kill all the monsters you run across. It is, in short, a spell whose sole purpose is to trick you into trying it so you can read amnesia afterward and try to forget about it. Now I don't think the spell should just be taken out - it's an RPG classic and obviously could make for interesting tactics. Instead, in order of decreasing priority:
* The spell should, at the very least, totally not have a "that is not a passable wall" error, unless maybe you're trying to go through an obsidian statue or something. Rock, stone, crystal, metal, transparent crystal, all should pass. I would say even the indestructible walls near the Orb should be passable; it's not really harmful to the game to let that happen.
* I think it would also be nice to have power levels of the spell that determine how far you can go, so that if you have 4 #'s of power in it you can go through four tiles, etc. (I'm not altogether sure it doesn't have that, as you can guess, I don't use it much). It should be able to go something like 8 to 10 squares at full power - a middling character ought to be able to seriously prospect for new areas in the Orcish Mines and such by casting it here and there.
* If you try to pass a wall that is too thick, you should get a line of generic wall characters on your map (like from magic mapping) to permanently track that logical deduction for later as you explore the level. (If the wall has some other kind of obstacle on the far end, you should get a "there's something on the other side" and the right number of wall characters before it)
If you do all this... I probably won't take the spell. But I *might* take it, if I'm following Sif Muna with free amnesia or having really crappy luck with spell books (which seems to happen surprisingly often). Which is better than the current situation.
It didn't work, of course.
As I understand it (after having it to fool with for the first time in a long time) you can't Passwall through anything much - not stone, definitely not metal, not multiple tiles, etc. It is almost but not quite as hard to learn as Deconstruction, which provides a much more satisfying doorway that doesn't leave you in a really bad spot if you come out to find admirers waiting for you on the other side. And of course you can't use it to kill all the monsters you run across. It is, in short, a spell whose sole purpose is to trick you into trying it so you can read amnesia afterward and try to forget about it. Now I don't think the spell should just be taken out - it's an RPG classic and obviously could make for interesting tactics. Instead, in order of decreasing priority:
* The spell should, at the very least, totally not have a "that is not a passable wall" error, unless maybe you're trying to go through an obsidian statue or something. Rock, stone, crystal, metal, transparent crystal, all should pass. I would say even the indestructible walls near the Orb should be passable; it's not really harmful to the game to let that happen.
* I think it would also be nice to have power levels of the spell that determine how far you can go, so that if you have 4 #'s of power in it you can go through four tiles, etc. (I'm not altogether sure it doesn't have that, as you can guess, I don't use it much). It should be able to go something like 8 to 10 squares at full power - a middling character ought to be able to seriously prospect for new areas in the Orcish Mines and such by casting it here and there.
* If you try to pass a wall that is too thick, you should get a line of generic wall characters on your map (like from magic mapping) to permanently track that logical deduction for later as you explore the level. (If the wall has some other kind of obstacle on the far end, you should get a "there's something on the other side" and the right number of wall characters before it)
If you do all this... I probably won't take the spell. But I *might* take it, if I'm following Sif Muna with free amnesia or having really crappy luck with spell books (which seems to happen surprisingly often). Which is better than the current situation.
