[CF-Devel] Non-cumulative spells

[Mark Wedel]

Andreas Vogl wrote:
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      Pertti Karppinen wrote:
     
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      > Non cumulative spells (can only be casted once, or atleast has effect
     
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      > only on first cast) are ok and needed for protection type spells.
     
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      > BUT: strength and armour spells allowed a big wizard to get his strength
     
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      > up to 30 and advance his/her phys skill. It seems this is no longer
     
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      > possible (atleats on MiDS server).
     
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      This is no longer possible indeed, and for good reason IMHO:
     
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      Pushing Str to 30 and armour to 99% doesn't seem acceptible to me,
     
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      especially not for wizards.
     
     
 I was going to ask - it generally seems that I see on this list the wizard are
already plenty powerful at higher levels (having spells of mass destruction that
can be relatively safely used from a range), and that its the non spell casters
thtat have more troubles.

 If that is really the case, then perhaps this is a good thing.

 

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      > And as people tend to play crossfire unparty-like, there's often no help
     
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      > from barbarians available.
     
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      > As there's no such area as "no phys area" as there is "no spells area"
     
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      magic
     
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      > casters are have a huge disadvantage with this modification.
     
     
 I will say that no spell and unholy ground may get used in too many maps.

 It makes perfect sense to project the treasure chambers from getting
dimensioned door into, but I don't really like it as a method to make the map
harder, which in too many places is done.

 And really, if you wanted to make things more interesting, it would be to have
'no spell effect' spaces, which would remove any and all spell effects the
player has on it.  This would for example remove effects from those immunity
potions, but still let you cast your range spells.  What no magic spaces really
do is just mean you need to prepare your protection spells sooner..

 Peter has talked about raising the current max stat values.  If stat spells do
stack, I think that becomes more a problem, because a character will then always
be able to max out the stat.

 You could do something with diminishing returns - not sure how that would
balance out.


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      Still, after all, there is a point where I agree with you: For a long
     
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      time (this is unrelated to PR) I always had the feeling that melee-style
     
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      characters have a little bit of an easier time than spellcasters. But the
     
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      question is: How can we help the wizard without helping fighters at the
     
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      same time? Non-cumulative strenght/armour spells don't look like a good
     
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      solution to me. Most fighters use protection/stats spells as well, at lower
     
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      magic levels of course - but usually that doesn't even make much difference.
     
     
 I certainly think melee characters have an easier time at lower levels.  For a
few reasons:
1) armour is good enough for fighters to be fairly safe against some number of
things.
2) Don't need to wait for sp or grace to regen - just go in and kill.
3) Higher strength means you can haul more stuff out of the dungeon.

 At higher levels, #1 becomes less different, as there are good armor that
spellcaster can wear and it won't affect their performance that month.

 #2 is still some problem, but power crystals can help out the mage, but also sp
regen tends to be much faster (as you get the rings of sp regen and the like). 
Even without those, I believe it is faster (as is hp) because the calculation
more or less goes on the basis it will take X time to fully heal no matter what
your points are (so if you have 100 hp, you regen 10 times faster than if you
have 10 hp).  IT may not be that linear, but it similar to that.

#3 is a little less relevant at higher levels as you have good weight reducing
containers, spells to get back to town quickly, and less likely to haul
everything out - pulling out that 25 long swords at low levels can add up to
some decent money, but at high levels, you really want the good stuff and leave
the junk behind.

 But I haven't played any high level character for quite a while (with all the
changes, I've been starting new characters more often to see how those changes
work out (like the race/class system for example)), and haven't really had the
time to build anyone up to really high level.