Majang wrote:4Hooves2Appendages wrote:In any case, Lightning Bolt wins this contest hands down. And Air is a useful school for utility too, giving Swiftness and DMsl.
But, as you noticed, LB is an air spell. You are not suggesting that an FE or EE should train this instead of BoM, are you? Are you suggesting, instead, that we all should only play AE to have one-school access to this amazing spell?
I'm suggesting that an EE doesn't need BoM or LB, (or BoF/BoC/FB/etc.), because LRD is better than BoM already. An FE desperate for non-fire damage, as written before, has options other than training Earth. The options include Evocations, Summons and Ranged. Those are strong additions to any character. By excluding them you weaken your character. I don't think that is really debatable. Of course you can do that if you want, but you are deliberately reducing your power relative to what you could have.
Allies (from Summons/Necromancy/Gods) are likely the strongest regular thing in the game. Just because your character started casting fire conjurations, doesn't mean you can't or should not get summons. You can. And you should. They will make your character stronger. The same is true for Evocations.
(I feel like I've written this at least 3 times in this thread alone, and I will write it a few more times I guess.)
Majang wrote:Those utility spells require training of charms. Why is this better than training another elemental school, if this makes you killing your enemy before they can throw missiles at you, or before you have to run (very fast) away from them?
Well, BoM does
not let you 'kill your enemy before they can throw missiles at you'. It has short range. The same is true for Iron Shot. Now if you had a bow or Freezing Cloud, or Lightning Bolt, you'd have a better case. Still, it isn't possible to blow up every enemy before it does something to you. (Unless you are deliberately doing mostly damage to enemies out of LOS, but that's quite a different discussion.)
Having access to two different elemental attacks (Say Fireball and BoM) is weaker than having access to just Fireball (or LRD) and Swiftness. That's why it's better. Swiftness is really good. DMsl is really good. Summons are really good, Lightning Spire is amazing for its cost. Evocations are really good. Not everything is equally good in crawl. There is a lot of redundancy. Multiple elemental attacks are redundant. Multiple ranged weapons are redundant. Multiple melee weapons are redundant.
Majang wrote:To bring this all to a less pointed solution:
There are different kinds of characters, all of them using spells to kill. There is the hybrid, the guy who is as good with his weapon as with his spells. He needs one particular kind of skill training. There is the rounded caster, who uses offensive spells as much as support spells, which help him in situations his offensive spells leave him unprepared for. He needs another particular kind of skills training, getting many schools up to fairly low levels.
And there is the offensive caster, that I am talking about here. With this particular skills set, the player will not often be in a situation that cannot be resolved through offensive spell casting. Escape options consist mainly in consumables. And this offensive caster needs a second elementary school (except, maybe, an Earth Elementalist) to fill the tactical gaps caused by resistances.
All three casters need basic defenses: Fighting, dodging, maybe armour, maybe shields. And so far I have always given all my casters some weapons skills, although I guess it would work without.
You create some kind of categories for crawl characters that only exist in your head. Those are not strict divisions. Crawl characters can, and usually should, branch out into widening their toolkit. There is no such thing as an 'offensive caster' in the design of crawl.
If you want to play a character that fits the description then you can do so, of course, but it isn't the strongest way to build the character.
If you hand me a late D or early L FE, I will not learn BoM. If you give me an EE, I will not learn FB. If you give you me an AE, I will not learn VB. In all those cases I will train Evocations, Fighting, Dodging, Summoning/Necromancy, Bows/Throwing, Charms and Invocations before training other elemental schools for doing damage. That's because I can already do damage, but I can't summon allies, can't cast strong buffs, don't have high HP, don't have high EV, can't attack at full LOS without paying MP and don't have low failrate on my Invocations. But I would like to be able to do all of those. Each of those will make the character significantly stronger.