Spell suggestions

[Logwad]

First:
I think it would be better if instead of freezing a character in place after a spell, i think the should be able to run away afterwords, but not be able to cast anything till the spell delay is up. After all, mages arn't meant to stand there.

Second:
Sorcery is a rather hard skill to lvl up in, unless your a high lvl player who can take many hits to use earth walls to line up monsters. The reason being is that then only good attack spell for sorcery is steambolt (whats the point of the steam? it only blocks my line of sight, monster walk right through it to get me). Sure there are other attack spells, magic bullet, poison cloud, magic missiles, spark shower, and destruction. all of which are great when your killing goblins and zombies. but are really useless against other things.

Destruction, a lvl 18 spell. At lvl 19 in sorcery I stuck myself in the middle of a bunch of hill giants. I had 30 pow, 30 int, 22 wis. I emptied 300 sp of destruction and only killed about half. This sounds kinda weak to me. I can cast burning hands (a lvl 1 spell, I'm at lvl 16) and kill all those giants. Not only this, but my magic regain is so much that my sp meter isn't affected much. I know it has the advantage of being able to hit behind walls, but it is still a pretty useless spell.

The only reason people even try to lvl in sorcery is the utility spells. It would be nice to have one or two other spells that can take down large monsters (one being a cone). Spells with attacktypes other than physical, fire, elect, ice and "pure magic" would be preferable. maby something that does acid, ghosthit, weapon magic or any other attacks out there out there.

[hoxu]

First:
I think it would be better if instead of freezing a character in place after a spell, i think the should be able to run away afterwords, but not be able to cast anything till the spell delay is up. After all, mages arn't meant to stand there.

That would be nice, and I think most people agree with it. The problem is however, that the server only reads packets/commands from the client socket when it's the player's turn to act. That is, if you cast a spell and then move, the move commands are read only after the delay has passed.

(someone correct me if I'm wrong)

In my opinion this system sucks. I think it would be quite impossible to implement your suggestion without making big changes. Whether or not the developers are in favor of those changes, I do not know. Sometimes I just think that a complete redesign/rewrite (jxfire?) could be good.

[Zortan]

I can see the delay in casting again vs. movin after casting and I agree.. Freezing a spellcaster after casting = bad, but freezing casting after casting, okay..

..but since the later cannot be done without major changes (is that right?) then maybe we should do away with the delay all together..

[Ryo]

Who said you'd need a major redesign? It probably could be done with current codebase, maybe with some changes indeed. But i doubt it'd require major changes.

[Logwad the not logged]

Why would it be so hard?

(excuse the pseudo-code, qbasic style -_^)
When a spell is cast, you would have a variable record the time.

:can.cast.next.spell = (current.time + spelldelay)

when the client sends a command to cast another spell just check if the spell delay is over yet, if it is, cast the spell, if its not, it just skips over the command

:if current.time=> can.cast.next.spell then
: cast the spell
: can.cast.next.spell = (current.time + spelldelay)
:end if

Now I know that there may be some problems with this, but thats how I currently see it.

[Ryo]

Only drawback i see is that you couldn't easily fire a lot of spells. Right now, if you fire 5 spells which have some delay, your char will cast the 5, after the delay. What you suggest will eat some spells, so maybe character will only cast 1 or 2...

[LordBiggy]

I too believe there should be more spells for the sorcery skills, being wraith devourer means i cant use steambolt, have you ever tried raising sorcery with magic bullet and spark shower alone!?!?

[RovinRogue]

Oh yes! I have tried that - I made it to lvl 8 in Socery just by using magic missile on hill giants ... takes about 50secs to 2mins just to kill just one (and thats simply holding the key fire+direction down and waiting! )

[EmperorBMA]

My take:

First, some of the spell required levels are set way too high. For example, Destruction is level 18, but it hardly harms a thing.

Second, the classification schemas are not ordered well. Lighning and Fire = Pyromancy. Cold and Mana = Evocation. Summon and Create = Summoning, Utility and Miscellaneous = Sorcery

Finally, Utility spells don't give squat, so sorcery is basically unable to advance effectively save for ONE spell. Similarly, Summoning is hard to train unless you go to certain maps and hog them each reset, and even then you have to wait forever for the monster to kill things.

To fix this I think we should revamp how we get xp from spells. For summoning spells, include a random chance at failure and if you succeed you gain some xp for the summon. For sorcery, identify spells (detect and identify) should give random failures, but also give xp. Pyromancy seems fine for its use and Evocation seems OK as well.



Another possible approach could be to have "Colleges" of magic each with their own xp. Spells consist of a force and an element college. The force is how the spell is used, the element is its raw payload. A spell can consist of up to 2 elements, and only one force. The spell level then is the mean of the elements + the force levels. (Levels would be called "Circles" for colleges and forces)

Steambolt belongs to fire and water and its force is evocation... so (fire + water) / 2 + evocation colleges >= lev 8 you can learn it.

Lighning is air and evocation so if both sum to lev 4, large lightning is learnable.

This college also affects the elemental summoning so lev 3 in earth and 1 summon allows you to learn summon earth elemental.

Experience is delegated half to each component. For 3-college spells, the force recieves half, and the elements receive 1 fourth.

Learning the basic magic skill gives a level 1 in all colleges that that player can learn. A fireborn should be denied the cold college, et alii. The benefit of this system is that we can get rid of that stupid "summon lesser golem" since summon golem will have the necessary 1 earth + 1 summon = 2

Colleges I can conceive of:

Element Colleges:
Air - Electromancy
Fire - Pyromancy
Cold - Cryomancy
Earth - Geomancy
Mana - Sorcery
Death (poison, wounding, disease)
Life (heal, cure)
Light (prayers)
Darkness (prayers)
Acid (special case)

Forces:
Evocation - bolt-type spells
Explosion
Summoning - Create and Summon
Prayer - Spiritual based

Prayer spells base their power off the element they are related to as well.

In total we are left with 18 spell circles to fill.....

This is a VERY rough idea, but if we hammer at it, it may be usable.

[Leaf]

Wow, that is a pretty expansive list!

As for the colleges..

Under this plan, there is now 18 spell "skills" to track or am I misunderstanding your example?

Will the matrix of force and elemental college be complete and thorough?

Meaning, level 3 in mana and level 1 in summoning = level 1 mana elemental?
(based of your summon earth elemental example)

Or would some college and force integration not exis?t (ex: acid & summoning)