[crossfire] spell rebalancing

[Mark Wedel]

  I'm doing some more work on spell rebalancing.

  While giving first level character cone and bullet spells isn't a bad start, 
trying to do much with it is pretty frustrating.

  To help things out, I give characters a first level aura spell.  It doesn't do 
much damage (1 hp/tick), but aura spells hit all spaces around the player, so 
does a pretty good job with a group of monsters _if_ you're willing to wander 
into the middle of them.

  For a first level mage, wandering into the middle of low level creatures is 
still a pretty fast way to die, so this does amount more to sitting in doorways 
and hitting them with the bold spells until numbers are reasonable.

  One problem is that it also hits friendly creatures, so when I got to the top 
level of the mad mages tower, his bodyguard promptly killed me.  I think just to 
make the spell more useful in both parties and not to aggravate friendly 
creatures, it probably shouldn't damage them.

  I also need to tweak the destruction logic a bit - a huge amount of gear is 
burned up - this actually created a food shortage at some point.

  In the end, the character got to second level in about the same amount of time 
as a fighter took, and there really wasn't much sitting around for sp to regain 
- I made the aura pretty long lasting, so that doesn't need to be recast much. 
I'd probably say there wasn't any more sitting around waiting for mana regen 
than a fighter spends for hp regen.

  I do need to test further.

  One thing I would like to do, especially given that more layers of information 
is supported, is somehow include that information (this could be useful for lots 
of things, like protection spells could have some type of overlay to make it 
cleaer that character is affected, etc)

  I've also thought a bit about spells.  One goal is to try to reduce the number 
some - fewer spells means fewer things that need adjusting.

  for things like the bolt & cone, different sized versions likely are not 
needed - if the size scales up with level, that should be fine.

  I'm also pondering a different change - rather than to try and scale up damage 
to keep up at higher levels, instead decrease casting time and keep mana cost 
the same.  So rather than hitting creatures with more potent spells, you're just 
hitting them with more spells faster (character mana goes up, so a character 
that might only be able to cast 5 at first level could cast 10 and 5th level 
before mana is expended).

  I'll have to play with that more.