[LIST] Magic schools rebalance and new spells suggestions

[tangar]

1) I've started new char and thought - it's good to take air magic
2) Then I checked guide and found ( https://tomenet.eu/guide.php?chapter=6.8 ) that it's totally dull. Almost all spells are useless and bonuses also not good.
3) I went through http://angband.oook.cz and... no one using Air magic. If no one using it - maybe it means that it has to be buffed?

Analysis:

Noxious Cloud

Fires a poison cloud at a designated target.
Lv31: Unbreath cloud, harder to resist since it prevents
living creatures from actually breathing.
Required skill level for first spell level: 3.
// The only good spell there. Good at beginning and VS living creatures later on. But a lot of stuff immune to it.

Lightning Bolt

Fires a lightning bolt at a target.
Required skill level for first spell level: 6.
// Manathrust better

Elemental Shield

Gives temporary resistance to heat and cold, and at
higher tier also to lightning and acid. (auto-project)
Required skill level for first spell level: 15.
Shared spell (see above): Fire, Water.
For the complete version: Fire, Water, Earth, Air.
// It was fun idea to make shared spell, so more people would take Air too. But it's much easier (and useful) to use res.potions

Thunderstorm

Throws thunder bolts at random monsters nearby.
(33% lightning, 33% sound, 33% light)
Required skill level for first spell level: 15.
Shared spell (see above): Air, Nature.
// Worst spell ever. Looks cool, but it could mess everything very easy. Stealth would be ruined with this.

Wings of Wind

Grants feather falling.
Lv16: Lets you levitate.
Required skill level for first spell level: 16.
Shared spell (see above): Air, Conveyance.
// Useless.

Invisibility

Turns you invisible.
Required skill level for first spell level: 30.
// Not bad.

BONI: Feather falling at 30, // useless
poison resistance at 40, // something, but not really. one of the most easier resists.
levitation at 50. // useless (at 50 so much items gives you levitation)

===============

Suggestions:

1) Make boni like this:
BONI:
Feather falling at 20
poison resistance at 30
levitation at 40
poison imm. at 50.

2) Rework some spells:
- Move "Noxious Cloud" to Nature school (also very unpopular/quite useless school; cloud would make it much better). Instead cloud put 'Lightning Bolt' as 1st spell with level: 3 req.
- Second spell --> 'Chain Lightning'; AoE spell which hits several creatures one by one
- make 'Thunderstorm' attack only 1 enemy which you are already attacking. So it wouldn't work till you start fighting with particular mob.

I hope it would help to make Air school more popular among istari

p.s.
Also 'mind' school is pretty dull.. It makes not sense to put there skillpoints (_temporary_ ESP is not enough, maybe make it constant at lvl 50?).. And add at least one dmging spell.

[tangar]

The problem - typical build for istar is:
Mana, Fire, Temporal, Udun, Divination, Earth (for walls), Spell Power, Magic (+ some ppl takes conv/div)

90% istars using something like this for years. It means that 4 other magic schools are disbalanced and weak:

1) Water (the only point - to have water res.).
Suggestion: add some monsters in-game which could be killed _only_ by water
2) Air (weakiest school now)
Suggestion: in my 1st post of this topic
3) Nature (not really useful)
Suggestion: it would be fun to create there 'priest-like' spell, which increase stats.. or even HP temporary (like +1 life item?)
4) Mind (only useful - ESP)
Suggestion: add dmg spell strong VS single target - 'Mind Blast'.

@ tavern

[tangar]

3) Nature (not really useful)
Suggestion: it would be fun to create there 'priest-like' spell, which increase stats.. or even HP temporary (like +1 life item?)

It's appeared to be very useful, cause 'grow trees' could help to deal with summons.

Also some other notes has to be corrected, so far I've made some progress in the game and see better picture. But still there is some truth in this topic, some magic schools are much better the others...

[tangar]

I think its better to write all kind of ideas about magic and suggest new spells in one topic, there; so it would be easier to look into it.
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new 'water' spell - to freeze water around you

There is 'Stone Prison' spell; but it doesn't work at deep water tiles; also it's not possible grow trees there..

At the same time 'Water' school magic isn't really popular among players, what means that it's a bit unbalanced. As it's very important to make people use more various builds (one of the goals of game balance) - maybe enhance it with such spell?

Ice Touch

Turns water tile which you touch into ice (require 'deep' water tiles).
Required skill level for first spell level: 25.
Tier II: Level 40.
Creates Ice Cell around you.

So when you cast Tier I spell - you have to choose direction and turn one tile into ice block. At Tier II you create Ice Cell around you. If you cast it at shallow water - it becomes icy patch (slippery tile)

[tokariew]

In Adom, frost bolt cast (more like beam) near water freeze it for some time :p

correct me if i wrong, (i not playing istar much), but i think you will not get to lvl 40 with this spell… stone prison with max earth and spell power, go only to lvl 36 and it start too with first spell level: 25…

ok, i stupid, it mean skill lvl, not spell lvl…

[tangar]

Recently I've created MA shaman and made some analysis on which Magic school to take for it.. I found out that MA shaman in general is quite limited in compare to old days http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-browse.ph ... &n=&e=&s=1 , it seems this class were quite nerfed in the past (in terms of skillpoint cost for Holy Magic, for example)..

So I had a question in my head - to take Spirit Magic or Holy (Offence / Defence / Support) - as the most useful for MA Shaman (or another melee shamans)... I wanted to try Spirit Magic very much cause it's something new.. But after looking into it, it's quite obvious that Spirit not really good enough in compare to Holy schools.

I would suggest to buff a bit Spirit school, so melee shamans would take it rather Holy schools... What could be done..

1) change passive bonus:

Adds slay spider to all your physical attacks at 20, slay animal at 30, slay undead at 40, slay demon at 50.

//ok, no slay evil so it wouldn't be imba. But animals (&spiders) and demons are make sense, not only in terms of balance, but also in lore Shamans has to be quite good in dealing with demonic stuff and killing animals is a part of a lot of shamanic rituals...

2) up MA skill from 0.400 to 0.450 for Shaman

[tangar]

Temporal school got only 4 spells. It's well balanced, but still it's quite strange feeling to play with it (I got temporal Magic), like it's half-of-magic-school. I've already /rfed such two spells, but I wanna also mention them there for further brainstorming.

New temporal spells has to be not too powerful so they wouldn't break balance. I'll say they has to be 0.5 or 1 point spells (from 0 to 5; from useless to useful):

Conservation Suspend your food consumption for a while.
Required skill level for first spell level: 5.

// make it work for 100+ turns. While it's active you don't loose satiation points and dont need to eat food.
It won't break game balance cause at high lvls you don't need food - healing potion make it vice versa and you have to drink Salt Water to be hungry.

Ethernal Fire Makes your light source do not deplete for a while.
Required skill level for first spell level: 7.

// also 100+ turns. And not too much influence on game balance also - a lot of people using Dwarven lanterns and Feanorian lamps at endgame.. Of course it would help torch users, but as this spell has to be recasted every 100+ turns, you have to be careful with it

Maybe just choose one spell from above.

[tangar]

TomeNET magic curses: DoTs and monsters resist mechanics

I wanna to continue discussion of TomeNET's magic system. Today I wanna talk about making _offencive_ magic spells more diverse, to give players more choice of gameplay styles.

Currently TomeNET got pretty straight-forward way of killing monsters with magic - direct damage. It could be AoE and single-target.

Also you could apply certain debuffs on monsters, but they are used in rare occasions because it's much easier/fastest/effective to kill monsters than use most of 'control' spells. By 'control' spells I mean: sleep, blindness, confusion & etc. The only exception is using 'control' on archers/mages or monsters who run away. Such spells are pretty dull also because there are a lot of monsters which are resistant/immune to 'control' effects; that's why most of players taking 'Holy Defence' school.. It's the most popular magic  school atm - paladins, shamans, adventurers.. Actually everyone who could get this school - would take it. Why?

Because it's much easier and profitable to buff yourself _before_ battle than debuff monsters _in battle_.  When player using buff _before_ battle - they just increase speed of killing monsters or surviving. At the same time debuffing monsters is a waste of time in most cases. It give us situation when there is no point to use curses/debuffs spells. 

So if we would just add curses and more control spells - it won't change situation. There should be another approach which would make applying curses worthwhile.

Suggestion:

1) add 'Curses' magic school which would have various debuff spells with DoT ('damage over time') damage like spells. It would weaken monsters and the same time would apply slow ticking damage to them.

2) DoT damage from curses could be buffed by 'Aura' skills: Aura of Death/Shivering Aura/Aura of Fear cause atm no one use this skill, they are useless. 'Traumaturgy' also coudl give certain bonuses to DoT.

3) add DoT effects to some other magic schools, like 'Shadow' which got now 4 curses:
Cause Fear (I - fear; II - AoE fear)
Blindness
Veil of Night (I - sleep; II - AoE sleep)
Darkness (AoE blindness)
Lets some of them have some DoT take make them useful? (especially 'fear')

4) The same thing to some other magic schools; they also could be more diverse and interesting with DoT mechanics.

5) make monsters who resist 'control' (sleep & etc), resist it differently. EX: mob is resistant to sleep. Make it sleep 1 turn then and then awake even if it resisted the spell. There are still would be immune mobs, so making resistance less powerful doesn't make everything too easy.