Halls Hopper
Posts: 72
Joined: Wednesday, 5th January 2011, 21:48
Elemental Magic Schools Differentiation
That is to say, all five types (if you include poison) are essentially just different-flavoured conjurers. And, especially due to the prominence of the bolt spells, the flavors we're talkin' about here are something like Coke, Pepsi, and RC Cola. So I think that while conjuration-centric play is cool if you're specifically a conjurer, and although it certainly makes a lot of sense for an elementalist to dabble with conjurations a bit, an elementalist's main focus should be defined as fighting monsters via controlling different aspects of their environment. (as well as changing the environment!)
I'm not talking about a total overhaul here. Crawl already has a lot of cool tactical spells like this, such as:: Delayed Fireball, Ring of Flames, Conjure Flame, Freezing Cloud, OCR, Ice Form, Lee's Rapid Deconstruction, Statue Form, Dig, Leda's Liquefaction, Petrify, Alistair's Intoxication, Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, Repel Missiles, Silence, and Flight, and of course all of Tornado/Shatter/Ice Storm/Fire Storm. I think "elemental style" play can be further enabled by just a few changes/additions to the current spell list, and an overhaul of Summon Elemental.
I'll talk about each elemental magic school in turn. Each seems to follow some sort of progression, roughly divided as Lvl 1 / Lvl 5 / Lvl 9, featuring a spell theme that scales up exponentially in effect. There's a handy table here of each spell by school. Note the congestion of the Conjurations school.
Earth Magic: A slow moving fury, should be about stalwart defenses and shockwaves, earthquakes, all that stuff. Its main progression is Sandblast -> LRD -> Shatter. Earth Magic is unique in that it partners with Transmutations more than any other school, although it also features 3 bland (but useful) single target conjurations. I think the former should be emphasized and the latter de-emphasized:
- Remove Iron Shot. Right now, Iron Shot, thanks to its high irresistable damage, is one of Earth Magic's strongest assets. Conjurers of all kinds will use it as the general go-to spell for mid/late game threats that fall outside of their elemental sphere. Because it is so generic, it is kind of a no-brainer. Furthermore, it kind of overshadows its big cousin, LCS, being known as "almost as good, and chaper," especially since even a mid-level conjurer can usually cast iron shot simply using their int, spellcasting, and conjurations skill, while LCS is tough enough to case
- New Lvl 6 Tmut/Earth Spell: Shockwave. The idea here is that we're sending the floor in front of us out to attack a monster. Nominally does about 75% of the damage as Iron Shot on its main target. Like Iron shot, is not a beam, but stops when it hits either a.) a wall or b.) a monster. Does 25% of its damage to each square on the left and right of its target. Furthermore, if both tiles adjacent to the target and both tiles adjacent to the square directly *before* the target are non-walls, then it places a single wall at the space directly before the target. The target would of course move around it, but he is now set up perfectly for LRD. If any of these squares are wall squares, then no wall is deposited, and instead the two squares adjacent to the square before the target explode, and the target (and the two squares next to him) each recieve this 25% damage, although AC applies seperately. So this spell could potentially do 125% the damage of Iron Shot in the right situation, or provide a setup for LRD. Damage from this spell should be amplified if one is under effect from Leda's Liquefaction.
Fire Magic is about being fast and furious and scorching everything in their wake. Main progression is Flame Tongue -> Fireball -> Fire Storm. Fire is known for lots of explosions and flames and so I propose two new spells to emphasize that:
- Change Inner Fire to Lvl 5 Fire/Hex, and have it so each adjacent square in the explosion has a power/200 chance to end up as a flame cloud.
- New spell Explosion, Lvl 7 Fire/Hex. Explosion explodes every flame cloud on screen as a fireball at the extra cost of 1 MP per cloud, removing the cloud afterwards. (i.e. using it as a reagent) Could potentially set the whole screen on fire, but also empty your mana pool as well. Would be Freaking Awesome if combined with Ring of Flames. (but note Charms/Hex polarity!)
Ice Magic is about a slow lockdown, about totally controlling the situation around you. Its main progression is Freeze -> Freezing Cloud -> Ice Storm, and its utility spells focus on defense. I think that other than Summon elemental, Ice Magic is pretty good and varied. Just one of the reasons that it seems to be the most popular elemental school! The one suggestion I have is that Condensation Shield currently Sucks Big Time, but there's already another thread out there on that.
Air magic seems to be about keeping enemies away and damage-over-time. Despite that, Air Magic's Main Progression is actually Shock -> Lightning Bolt -> Chain Lightning, which is very Conjurations-centric and fairly boring. Bolt-bouncing with Lvl 1 Shock is a generally loathed activity due to its low accuracy rate. Lightning Bolt isn't as bad, although its 3/4 bounce possibilties were eliminated recently. I suggest changing it to be Puff -> Gale -> Tornado, as follows:
- Deflect Missiles should be removed. Repel Missiles seems to be enough, although perhaps that should be made Lvl 3.
- New spell - Puff, Lvl 1 Air, replacement for Shock. Puff has a Range of 1-2 squares, has damage dependent on range, and does damage slightly less than that of Freeze. (say, 1d(13/Range) at max power). Has a 1.5*Power/(Weight*Range) chance of knocking-back a monster by min(1, Power/Weight/Range) squares.
- New spell - Gale, Lvl 6 Air. Gale is like an uncapped, cone version of Puff. Has a range of 1 to 3 squares, and spreads out like a Cone. Does damage similar to Airstrike at close range, reduced by /Range. Has the same 1.5*Power/(Weight*Range) chance of knocking-back all monsters in its cone by min(1, Power/Weight/Range) squares. Knocks back clouds by 1 square for every 20 power, and has a power/200 chance of dispersing the cloud completely. Capped at 100 power.
- These could potentially be made Air/Charms to further emphasize Air's partnership with Charms and add some additional polarity against Earth/Tmut. Gale should be lowered to Lvl 5 in that case, however.
Also, I have a big long treatise on Summon Elemental, which I think should actually be a really important spell to the elemental schools but currently isnt, but I figure I'd start with this since its already pretty wordy and post that if anyone seemed interested.
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