Magic vs Melee


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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 16:07

Re: Magic vs Melee

Sandman25 wrote:I am playing a DgTm at the moment and I see it is extremely hard to branch into Conjurations even if you do it as early as Lair while having Int 24, MP+9 amulet and staff of conjuration in leather armour. Flame tongue is not that great and it takes forever to get fireball castable.

Dual-school spells are a bit slow to branch into. IMB and Irradiate don't have this problem, but come with their own issues of course. I suspect it's easier to pick up a decent bow/xbow, or just to invest in throwing.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 17:11

Re: Magic vs Melee

The problem, I think, is that armour doesn't limit movement speed. If heavy armour made you slower, you would suddenly have reasons to not go for it. Make dex have you move faster, with body armour limiting your speed in a scaling way unless your strength is high enough. Stealth and ranged characters become much faster, beginning fighters are slower, mages are somewhat faster, but quickly slow down if they use armour.

What I don't really understand from a design perspective is limiting the health pool of casters, if they already give up on AC, and AC mitigates almost anything that will hit you. Caster races have either no HP bonus or very bad fighting aptitudes.


There are already plenty of reasons for characters to avoid heavy armour. Heavy armor is good... But not that good. Ring mail or light dragon armour is sufficient for both "fighters" and "casters".

Any character can (and should) invest in Fighting.

What do you think "caster " races are?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 17:27

Re: Magic vs Melee

Sprucery wrote:HOFE is still a good 'caster'. Unless for some bizarre reason 'caster' should mean 'no melee'.


It is good hybrid, not caster. http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/SlowThinker ... 003734.txt

- Level 12.0 Spellcasting at XL 27 due to -3 aptitude.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 18:27

Re: Magic vs Melee

Well, that explains it. All my casters are hybrids :)
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FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 18:55

Re: Magic vs Melee

  Code:
 + Level 19.4 Spellcasting

And Fire Storm online. With 4 runes. Seems fine to me???

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 22:33

Re: Magic vs Melee

I forgot that I played Tr of Vehumet with Fire Storm in 3 rune game as caster so yes, everything is a good caster with Vehumet ;)

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Post Saturday, 20th August 2016, 23:38

Re: Magic vs Melee

It would be more satisfying to play mages if they didn't have strange, non-obvious line of sight requirements. Like, you cast a Conjure Flame and close the door. You think the undead hydra or whatever it is on the other side is going to blindly plow into the flame, stop because it can't figure out how to open the door, get roasted. But the reality is that the moment you lose sight of the fire, it disappears. Note that if you WANTED to go through where the fire is you couldn't just close your eyes, oh no, for that you have to wait for it to die down "naturally".

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 01:34

Re: Magic vs Melee

Chicken wrote:It would be more satisfying to play mages if they didn't have strange, non-obvious line of sight requirements. Like, you cast a Conjure Flame and close the door. You think the undead hydra or whatever it is on the other side is going to blindly plow into the flame, stop because it can't figure out how to open the door, get roasted. But the reality is that the moment you lose sight of the fire, it disappears. Note that if you WANTED to go through where the fire is you couldn't just close your eyes, oh no, for that you have to wait for it to die down "naturally".

It used to be the case that clouds would continue to exist and do damage out of LOS, this lead to all sorts of awkward, awful mechanics for optimal out of sight kills, which was considered to be powerful, not risky, and tedious, which made it a prime candidate for removal, hence clouds now dissipate almost immediately when out of LOS, which is awkward and not intuitive, but at least it's not tedious and gain for no risk.
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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 11:05

Re: Magic vs Melee

Brannock wrote:
The problem, I think, is that armour doesn't limit movement speed. If heavy armour made you slower, you would suddenly have reasons to not go for it. Make dex have you move faster, with body armour limiting your speed in a scaling way unless your strength is high enough. Stealth and ranged characters become much faster, beginning fighters are slower, mages are somewhat faster, but quickly slow down if they use armour.

What I don't really understand from a design perspective is limiting the health pool of casters, if they already give up on AC, and AC mitigates almost anything that will hit you. Caster races have either no HP bonus or very bad fighting aptitudes.


There are already plenty of reasons for characters to avoid heavy armour. Heavy armor is good... But not that good. Ring mail or light dragon armour is sufficient for both "fighters" and "casters".

Any character can (and should) invest in Fighting.

What do you think "caster " races are?


There are three factors which I use to decide what race is a caster race.
#1 is having magical aptitudes with a total value above 0. This leaves Deep Elf (20), Felid (4), Formicid (4), High Elf (1), Naga (2), Octopode (1), Spriggan (3).
#2 is the presence of a MP bonus. This leaves Deep Elf, Demigod, Felid, High Elf, Spriggan, Tengu, Vine Stalker.
#3 is INT. The average in starting stats is something below 6 (5,96). DD, Dr, Gr, Ha, HO, Hu, Na, Tg, VS start with 6. More castery races start with 7 and above: DE, Dg, Ds, Fe, HE, Sp, Va, VS.

Deep Elf, Felid, High Elf, Octopode, Spriggan, Tengu, Vine Stalker all have a HP penalty.
Formicid, Demonspawn, Vampire have no HP bonus or penalty.
Naga and Demigod have a HP bonus.
Of the 6 INT races, Deep Dwarf, Hill Orc and Draconian have a HP bonus, while Human has no bonus or penalty.

And this is why I think that casters in this game are supposed to have little health, with the added fact that DE and Spriggans both have a noticeable penalty to fighting.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 11:14

Re: Magic vs Melee

The rule #1 seems quite arbitrary imo.
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FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 11:26

Re: Magic vs Melee

Sprucery wrote:The rule #1 seems quite arbitrary imo.

It is very restrictive. If you want a specialist caster, you can ignore it. This is why it is just one of the criteria.

In general, I suffer from the consequences of D&D 3.5, so I still think in terms of full, generalist casters vs full, specialist casters vs gish. A full generalist would be a wizard with multiple schools and such a character can be easily pulled together with very few races, generally those listed under #1. A specialist full caster will have a big advantage from #2 and #3. A gish can be one of the 6 INT races and, unlike the full casters, doesn't aim above lvl 6 spells. Anyway, it's all very fluid. Crawl gives synergy between schools through multi-school spells, so species in #1 do have an advantage.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 13:26

Re: Magic vs Melee

Also MP aptitude is very important.

Blades Runner

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 23:52

Re: Magic vs Melee

No, except for the incredibly early game. It's not +30% throughout the entire game, it's literally a few extra MP.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 23:54

Re: Magic vs Melee

Sorry, I meant Spellcasting aptitude.

Blades Runner

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Post Sunday, 21st August 2016, 23:55

Re: Magic vs Melee

Ah, so Sp apt is effectively the new MP apt?
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Snake Sneak

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 00:25

Re: Magic vs Melee

IMO the problem with combat magic in terms of competitive play is turn count and human time. When I say combat magic I mean mainly conjurations.

For non competitive fun play it is novel for a little while blowing away things over and over again with conjuration spells but they basically glorified launchers (yes some dual school hex/charms spells are exceptions).

The other issue is the buff and hex spells still massively trump conjurations in terms of both turn count, human time, and one could argue are effectively more interesting (particularly the hex spells).

Magic is massively strong but only if it is combined with melee. For example Statue Form is probably the best spell in the game in terms of competition (and again one could argue fun since you win in far less time). If you are a deep elf and you see that spell you should just seriously consider concentrating on getting it online... it is that OP. I find it hilarious the devs decided to get rid of stone skin to discourage buffs but then just jacked up the power of statue form.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 00:45

Re: Magic vs Melee

Why is statue form op?

Snake Sneak

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 01:00

Re: Magic vs Melee

arandomperson12 wrote:Why is statue form op?


Because you do ridiculously more damage per hit, you get free AC as spell caster with no penalty to EV or casting and massive boost of HP.

Of course there are like 4 more things but the above two are the major ones.

The more damage per hit and going slow thing actually helps your score because it lowers human turn count. It is the same reason chei is strong except with statue form you can un-chei at any moment... oh and spell cost is less than any cloud spell... so yes it is massively OP....

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 01:03

Re: Magic vs Melee

til chei is strong because it lowers human turn count

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Snake Sneak

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 01:09

Re: Magic vs Melee

Sar wrote:til chei is strong because it lowers human turn count


Well yeah why do you think 4tharra whatever his name pick chei over and over again... because chei lowers human turn count (this is in part because you are stronger ... as I mentioned earlier you hit harder). Winning faster in less turns for a lot of people == better god / more powerful. The problem is chei takes a lot of skill not to screw up late game and basically some luck early game (fucking draconian ghosts).

If you want to move fast with statue form you can also haste... I can't begin to emphasize how powerful hasted statue form is.

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Shoals Surfer

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Post Monday, 22nd August 2016, 06:59

Re: Magic vs Melee

Chicken wrote:It would be more satisfying to play mages if they didn't have strange, non-obvious line of sight requirements. Like, you cast a Conjure Flame and close the door. You think the undead hydra or whatever it is on the other side is going to blindly plow into the flame, stop because it can't figure out how to open the door, get roasted. But the reality is that the moment you lose sight of the fire, it disappears. Note that if you WANTED to go through where the fire is you couldn't just close your eyes, oh no, for that you have to wait for it to die down "naturally".


I'm pretty sure non-door-opening monsters start wandering as soon as they reach the door you closed anyway. The status quo was much worse back when summons and clouds could kill out of los
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Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Tuesday, 23rd August 2016, 23:58

Re: Magic vs Melee

Shtopit wrote:There are three factors which I use to decide what race is a caster race.
(...)

Everything you write is nonsense.

Shtopit wrote:In general, I suffer from the consequences of D&D 3.5

So you bring in ideas from another game that has nothing to do with Crawl? I hope you realize that this is madness.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Wednesday, 24th August 2016, 01:01

Re: Magic vs Melee

If you don't consider Draconian to be caster race, you must reevaluate your criteria for what a caster race is.

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