[crossfire] Spell rebalancing notes/thoughts

[Mark Wedel]

  Finally found some time to get back to the rebalancing of spells.

  For now, I've just started with an elven pyromancer - I didn't want to go to 
any of the more special races - I figure starting with a good baseline is important.

  I gave that class a couple spells:
firebullet - like magic bullet, this fires a bullet that does damage.  It does 
not explode into a fireball.  Costs 1 sp to cast

firebolt - basically same as old ones, just lower damage.  Costs 2 sp to cast.

  I figure that for low level spells, when character won't have many mana, they 
should start at the low end of the sp cost.  I also reduced the casting time - 
before, both had a fairly high time, which basically meant that at best, you 
could only cast the spell every other or every third tick.  Now you can pretty 
much cast the spell ever ticket

  But even with that, I found that I was waiting for mana to regen a lot.  I 
suppose this isn't really any worse than fighters waiting for hp to regen. 
Since by the very nature, these are range spells, the wizard should ideally kill 
the creatures before they get next to him, and if they get close, fall back, 
cast again, and so on.

  But there are also a couple key points here - one actually needs the space 
available to fall back.  In the newbie tower, once I started making progress, I 
could basic remain beyond the monsters detect range and hit them with spells 
(and once the kobolds are dead, gives an outer circle to move in.  But the 
difficult time was initial assault - after opening the doors, kobolds come out 
eliminating much space to move about.

  The generator limit I put in is quite important - without that, progress would 
be quite slow - getting through the front doors may have been difficult with 
those generators always being there.

  Another change I made was to give the pyromancer a spell regen bonus - this 
helps reduce the waiting some more.  Rather than that being a force (how I 
instituted it), doing it as a ring may make more sense - player can upgrade it, 
but it also means that they don't really get a bonus if they choose a wizard and 
  play it as a fighter (at some point, they'd likely find a ring more suitable 
for a fighter, and thus loose that sp regen bonus)

  I'm thinking some defensive spell may be in order, so if creatures do get 
close, they get killed.  OTOH, maybe that is part of being a mage - you really 
don't want to be close to monsters.  But many maps don't give much choice - go 
through the exit, and monsters are behind door 2 spaces away.

  Another change I'm thinking of is item destruction.  The firebullet doesn't 
destroy items, but the bolt does.  I'm thinking that maybe bolts shouldn't 
destroy items either - as I see it, bolts are maybe a 1' diameter bolt that is 
3' or so off the ground as it travels - as such, things on the ground shouldn't 
be destroyed.  Otherwise, especially I think at lower levels, using bolts is a 
pretty big disadvantage because of all the treasure it destroyes.

  I'm somewhat happy on damage - a couple spells will kill the orc - the choice 
between bullet and bolt really depends on number of creatures - if you have 
several nicely lined up, bolt is clearly better, but for stragglers or 
individual monsters, bullet works pretty good.

  It may be that instead of defensive spell, giving them burning hands (cone 
spell), but with very limited range would work.  But then, I'm also not sure how 
many spells we should/want to give out at first level - we need to keep some new 
spells for players to get as they gain levels.