[CF-Devel] Re: Scrolls and prayers

[Mark Wedel]

S. A. Heyn wrote:


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      The "problem of experience is not the main problem:
     
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      When being surrounded by e.g. Gnolls, Kobolds etc. and having peaced them by singing, I should
     
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      be able to inflict diseases within their parties.
     
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      If I do the correspnding prayers (cause flu, cause cold, cause red death...) it works.
     
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      If I've set traps before facing them (invoke magic rune of cuase red death e.g.) it works too.
     
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      Both types are working that good, that when hiding behind a wall I'm hit also
     
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      (in Lord Budo's castle and other dungeons this works across walls, in contrast to the
     
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      inflicting process!)
     
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      However, if I use scrolls, they won't inflict anything at all. So I#ve the impression
     
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      these scrolls are useless (but worth their value :-) ).
     
     

  I've looked into this.  The cause of the cause... scrolls not working is that 
when a player casts a scroll, the direction it is cast in is himself.  In this 
way, things like scrolls of protection, armor, etc, get cast on the appropriate 
person.

  The problem is that for disease, it looks in the direction the player is 
facing to determine what to effect - it is not like some things like alchemy 
which just examine all spaces around the player.  So scrolls of cause disease 
basically just cause the scroll to try and infect the player.

  Now my thought here is that if the caster and owner do not match (eg, player 
is using a scroll and not casting it himeself), we could then look at the 
op->facing to determine where the character is 'pointed' when he cast the 
disease spell, and use that.  This should then make that work, and I can't see 
any downside to doing that (this would only effect the cause disease stuff, and 
not the other cases I mentioned above).


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      BTW: when using the skill inscription of scrolls I only get scroll of alchemy level 92, regardless
     
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      of the former type.
     
     

  Using the inscription skill is relatively cryptic.  Basically, whatever spell 
you have ready is the one put on the scroll.  IT always takes your level.  But 
doing this basically means you need to adjust the ring, then use the skill.

  It would probably make more sense to change the syntax to something like 
'inscribe scroll of identify', and it then doesn't need to look at the range 
field.  Good clients could provide some shortcuts for this (eg, player clicks on 
'inscribe' menu item, and it then pops up a listing of the spell the player 
knows, and the player then clicks on one of those, ...