Possible use for blank scrolls


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 10th January 2011, 17:38

Possible use for blank scrolls

What if you could (with sufficiently high spellcasting skill) transcribe a spell onto a blank scroll?

With the new spell forgetting mechanism that destroys the spellbook, this would let you save a spell for later. Or, if there was just one spell you wanted from a book but couldn't learn yet (not enough slots), you could save some weight, which is often important for casters with low STR.

It would also help if you were wanting to forget one spell so that you'd have room for another spell from the same book. This won't work because you have to destroy the book to forget the spell.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 00:21

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

minmay wrote:
danr wrote:It would also help if you were wanting to forget one spell so that you'd have room for another spell from the same book.

I'm pretty sure making it difficult to do this was half the point of the amnesia change.


What if scrolls of amnesia were removed, and blank scrolls replaced them? Kinda thematic, if you ask me... (which you didn't, but I'm telling ya anyways!)

Temple Termagant

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 08:48

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

What if blank scrolls would repeat the effect of the last scroll used? Obviously, they would work very rarely for scrolls of acquirement, if at all, and if the last scroll you used was a blank scroll that failed, you couldn't repeat *that* effect. I think they'd lead to interesting choices, and give you more control over item management. Do I want another recharge of my wand of healing, or another scroll of torment for my lichform character, or another controlled blink out of danger?

Or: they could instead be used to *undo* scroll effects, dispelling vulnerability, canceling teleport, causing you to blink or teleport back whence you came, etc.

I don't know if either of those is a good idea, but both are definitely more interesting than the current implementation. danr's is, too.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 16:05

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Both of those ideas would make it the best scroll in the game and would be a huge change.

I'm just proposing a way to slightly lessen the impact of having to destroy a spellbook to forget a spell, or to let spriggans save a few precious aum of carrying capacity.

I was thinking that the scroll would be destroyed when you memorized the spell.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 18:57

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

danr, you know you don't have to destroy spellbooks, right? scrolls of amnesia and sif muna exist.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 20:05

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Yeah, I know, but I like Vehumet, and I just thought it would be a neat niche for an otherwise totally useless item (I hope no one is offended at that!).

One thing I like about Crawl is that just about everything has some kind of purpose. Harmful potions can be used with the evaporate spell, and curse armour / weapon / jewellery are good if worshipping Ash. A potion of water gives a tiny bit of nourishment, and can be evaporated to make steam. Even scrolls of random uselessness might give you butterflies.

The only use I can imagine for blank scrolls is to carry them to slightly reduce the chance of another scroll being burned.

Anyhow, so transcribing a spell is one idea. Here's another idea:

You can write something on them like "Here be Dragons", post it on the outside of the door of a room, and intelligent monsters will refrain from opening that door. Obviously you can't do that from inside a room, as only you could see the sign, but you can do it to create a safe stash location elsewhere in the dungeon.

Alternately, this could be another use of Traps & Doors skill - enable you to lock a door (from inside or out).

By the way, does traps and doors skill minimize the chance of a door creaking when you open it?

Snake Sneak

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 20:22

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Ideas: Evoking a blank scroll shows you list of scrolls.
"Copying" one them causes it to be identified but with a decreasing chance that one or both will be destroyed. Higher Evocation == better chance of keeping one good copy or even getting 2 good ones.

Or - no identification. The copy may or may not give you the same scroll. Depending on Evocation/spell level ratio, the copy may do nothing, be a different/bad scroll (always a scroll of random uselessness?), give you the worst effect of the scroll that was copied, be an exact duplicate, or be better than the original if that's possible.

Copy would be inscribed {copy}.

The act of copying could give you a Evocation training bonus no matter what.

Snake Sneak

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Post Friday, 14th January 2011, 20:35

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

ohmi wrote:...
The act of copying could give you a Evocation training bonus no matter what.


Sorry, I meant Spellcasting not Evocation.

Temple Termagant

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 01:39

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

danr wrote:Both of those ideas would make it the best scroll in the game and would be a huge change.

True, it would be a complete reworking, and I'd think that if there were a scroll like that, it'd have to be fairly rare. It also doesn't introduce any new effects. (and my second idea just sucked.)

I second that blank scrolls be removed, reducing clutter. Having 3 curse equipment scrolls which are completely useless for anyone who doesn't worship Ash is annoying enough.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 04:36

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

I agree with removing them as well. I'm sure that's already on the wiki somewhere?

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 05:12

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Right now blank scrolls add nothing to the game. They are one (of a few) items that could be removed with no loss to the game whatsoever. Actually, in this case removing them would be more of a gain than anything. I agree with everyone who says they ought to be removed.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 13:08

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

danr wrote:You can write something on them like "Here be Dragons", post it on the outside of the door of a room, and intelligent monsters will refrain from opening that door.

Or you write Elbereth on it, drop it on the ground and monsters stop attacking you ;)

Or, we rename it as "scroll of trolling", and it just have a random profanity cherry picked from ##crawl :lol:
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 13:39

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

I support removing scrolls of paper.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 18:48

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

galehar wrote:
danr wrote:You can write something on them like "Here be Dragons", post it on the outside of the door of a room, and intelligent monsters will refrain from opening that door.

Or you write Elbereth on it, drop it on the ground and monsters stop attacking you ;)

Or, we rename it as "scroll of trolling", and it just have a random profanity cherry picked from ##crawl :lol:

I have to admit, my suggestion did remind me of Elbereth from Nethack, but this is much weaker - stopping monsters attacking you is very different from just reducing the slight chance that they might loot your stash.

However, yes, remove them.

I bet I could handle that kind of a patch... Of course it would probably take a dev as much time to accept the patch as to do it themselves.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 21:03

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

danr wrote:With the new spell forgetting mechanism that destroys the spellbook


I've only dabbled a little with trunk, so I have to ask, which mechanism is this? I've seen the scrolls of amnesia of course, but did someone say this is a Vehumet thing?

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Saturday, 15th January 2011, 21:24

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

(r)ead a book, select a spell, and (F)orget it
I recall proposing dedicating a key to avoid confusion like this, but apparently it's not important enough. Has anyone properly documented it yet? I imagine it is at least important enough for a mention on the command list, and certainly inclusion in the tutorial.

Snake Sneak

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Post Sunday, 16th January 2011, 18:55

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Although I can't say I would miss them, if scrolls of paper could be made extra valuable for those trying to get Spellcasting in the first place -- much like fighting plants to get Fighting -- then that would be cool. So, simply extra Spellcasting training with or without a copying/destruction of other scrolls mechanic.

"This scroll seems to be blank. You quickly fill it up with notes to help you learn Spellcasting."
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Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 16th January 2011, 20:35

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

They need to burn. Burn, I say! :twisted:

I've no idea why they're still in the game myself. The old argument ("We have to have some useless scrolls to balance out the good ones") doesn't hold water (after all we're blithely adding scrolls all the time), especially now there's a curse jewellery scroll. Removing them would be easy, but I'm too lazy to check the scroll frequencies. Probably just redistribute the probabilities over various mostly bad scroll types.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 03:44

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

jpeg wrote:They need to burn. Burn, I say! :twisted:

I've no idea why they're still in the game myself. The old argument ("We have to have some useless scrolls to balance out the good ones") doesn't hold water (after all we're blithely adding scrolls all the time), especially now there's a curse jewellery scroll. Removing them would be easy, but I'm too lazy to check the scroll frequencies. Probably just redistribute the probabilities over various mostly bad scroll types.

If the rationale is to make them useless (rather than outright bad) you could make all (or most) blank scrolls into random uselessness scrolls. That might make random uselessness too common though. And it's another type of scroll that really doesn't do anything (although they can be kind of funny).

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 03:47

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

ru scrolls do something - they train spellcasting
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 05:32

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

You can also get butterflies from RU scrolls, but this hardly makes them worthwhile IMO.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 08:41

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Grimm wrote:ru scrolls do something - they train spellcasting


You can train spellcasting with curse foo scrolls while the corresponding slots are unfilled, so that's really not an argument. I doubt that removing blank paper would make training spellcasting significantly easier.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 08:46

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Wasn't meant as an argument, I was just pointing out that ru scrolls do do something. I'll not shed a tear should they go.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 11:55

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Scrolls of random useless do something, they can scare new players, when i was new to the game. I didn't read them (after few other roguelike games, i was quite paranoid)

Dungeon Master

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Post Monday, 17th January 2011, 11:56

Re: Possible use for blank scrolls

Somebody just burnt the paper scrolls!

"Little scroll of blank paper, you will be missed."

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