Tartarus Sorceror
Posts: 1774
Joined: Tuesday, 23rd December 2014, 23:39
Dungeon Crawl: Mage Book
Here's a simple idea with the potential to make mages far more interesting to play.
Imagine: you can only use 1 spellbook at a time, which you equip in your shield slot, taking 5 turns to equip like a normal shield. You don't memorize spells, but you can use any spells in your equipped spellbook.
Think about it: this way, there will be a different mage playstyle for every different book in the game, including artifact spellbooks. Your playstyle will change over the course of a game as you find different books.
It will also completely solve the problem of spells that "every" character must have. You can't get regen unless you have a book with regen, and that limits what other spells you can have.
"But wait!" you might protest. "I love mages, but this sounds like a massive nerf to them!" You're right. To compensate for that, all spells can be made stronger and easier to cast. Also, spellbooks can grant large stat bonuses, slaying bonuses, and +SH that scale with spellcasting skill, and that are different for each spellbook.
"But won't some books be crap compared to other books? Who would want to equip a Book of Cantrips when they can equip a Book of Power?" The solution is to have the weaker spellbooks grant larger bonuses. Sure, you can have your Book of Power - or you can have your Book of Cantrips with massive stat bonuses. The bonuses should be randomized for each book, so that in some games one book is better and in other games a different book with different spells is better.
"Won't this make it very difficult to play as a pure mage? If I have a Book of Fire, that doesn't give me many options to kill fire resistant enemies, since I can't pick up IMB or Stone Arrow to supplement it." The answer is that all the books should grant large slaying bonuses that scale with spellcasting, so the mage gets a strong unbranded attack capable of fighting 1v1 against any single enemy in the game, just like melee brutes. The flavor is that any mage can blast enemies with pure magic in melee. The slaying bonuses can be larger when wielding any magic staff.
"What about Vehumet's spell gifts?" Vehumet would have to be reworked. Possibly, the gifts from Vehumet can be memorized and used in addition to the player's current spellbook.
"What about Arcane Marksmen? If they are wielding a bow, they can't use their shield slot for a book." The Arcane Marksman book can be given a special property so it can be equipped with a two handed weapon.
"Would this make melee brutes too weak?" Maybe. It would be a fork of the game. The brutes can be balanced later.
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