VeryAngryFelid wrote:Siegurt wrote:So the question is *do you view more flexibility as more power* if you don't then not having spell slots makes sense, if you do then this is a massive power buff for early characters.
Personally I come down on the "more tools in your toolbox makes you more powerful" side of things, to me, having all the spells in the game I've found available (and yes, there's some training restrictions, but you can cast a lot of level 1-3 spells with very little or no XP once you have a baseline of spellcasting and some int, or a wizardry ring)
Obviously once you start eyeing the level 5 and up spells you'll want to specialize, XP wise, but giving characters a large bump in flexibility without requiring an XP cost to go with it (in the form of training spellcasting) doesn't sound good to me, personally.
What level 1-3 spells do you mean? As far as I know it is already optimal to learn animate skeleton, blink and either conjure flame or meph cloud asap and then train them to castable level. I believe the buff is not that significant, you will rarely find all those spells when you have no spell slots left while having a wizardry item.
Well, without any limitations, it'd be optimal to memorize:
- Code:
Swiftness
Mephitic Cloud
Static Discharge
Infusion
Shroud of Golubria
Song of Slaying
Ozocubu's Armour
Regeneration
Spectral Weapon
Conjure Flame
Dazzling Spray
Passwall
Ignite Poison
Inner Flame
Confusing Touch
Corona
Ensorcelled Hibernation
Slow
Confuse
Gell's Gravitas
Summon Guardian Golem
Tukima's Dance
Animate Skeleton
Corpse Rot
Sublimation of Blood
Poisonous Vapours
Summon Butterflies
Summon Small Mammal
Call Imp
Call Canine Familiar
Apportation
Blink
Lesser Beckoning
Portal projectile
Teleport other
Beastly appendage
Sticks to snakes
Not every one of those is useful for every build or throughout every game (for example beastly appendage is only useful if you have free feet or head slots, and infusion's damage becomes not really worth the cost outside the very early game.
You can get pretty much all of those to reasonable fail rate with middling to high int and/or wizardry and no (or low) body armour penalty, or even with a pretty minimal investment in the relative schools (how much XP is it to get all the relevant spell schools up to say, 2 or 3?) and all of them have a useful effect even at low spellpower. It's unlikely (obviously) that you'll find all (or even a large percentage of) those in the early portion of the game, however by the mid game at the latest (let's say, by the time you've done both orc and lair) You'll easily collect sufficient number of spellbooks with spells that "might be useful in some circumstances" that you'll be unable to memorize due to spell slots with no spellcasting training.
The point isn't that these are all optimal to memorize all the time, the point is *if there's no limit on the number of spells you can memorize* any even potentially useful spell is worth memorizing, because it adds to your ability to handle a situation which it fulfills better than your more generally useful tools.
With spell slots you're forced to prioritize, and anticipate which situations would *most* benefit from the available supply give your character's strengths and weaknesses.
Now the proposal does put a hard cap on the total number of spells available, but before reaching it, there's no incentive to prioritize or be selective about which spells you memorize, and since by that point in the game, you'll have collected as many amnesia scrolls as you could ever want you effectively have an unlimited reorganization available (not *truly* unlimited, but effectively)