Crypt Cleanser
Posts: 714
Joined: Saturday, 5th December 2015, 06:56
Idea: Make charms tactical rather than strategic
My proposal is this: change the duration of Charms to be quite short (around 4 turns), and increase their effects dramatically. This will necessitate frequent casting during combat, which will make failure rate and spell power meaningful, as well as introduce some degree of tactical uncertainty as to when to use a Charms spell, which one to use, and when to use your valuable combat turns on something else. This will also make constant out-of-combat activation suboptimal and/or impossible (due to much higher MP cost vs. turns active).
Example of what im talking about:
Infusion - Guarantees your attacks will not miss for the duration and do +3 flat dmg. 3-6 turns depending on spellpower.
Repel Missiles - 90% chance to repel missile attacks against you for the duration. 3-6 turns depending on spellpower. (Deflect missiles becomes reflect missiles)
Shroud of Golubria - 90% chance to absorb melee attacks against you the duration. 3-5 turns depending on spellpower.
Song of slaying - Any time you kill an enemy, the damage you dealt will also be inflicted on other hostile monsters in LoS. 4-8 turns depending on spellpower.
Etc. Note that these are just examples, numbers can certainly be tweaked so long as the MP cost / turn ratio on all spells remains higher, or at least quite close to, maximum potential non CBoE based mana regeneration.
While an extreme rework, I believe this solves all current and theoretical future problems with Charms in one fell swoop, aligning the sphere with how all other magic in Crawl works (cast during combat). As well as making the spells more impactful, meaningful, and I'd guess fun to use.