[crossfire] Spell rebalancing notes/thoughts

[Kevin R. Bulgrien]

>   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

I think this is a good move.  It is rough that the low level cold/fire/mana
spells destroy loot when the new player needs it most.

> 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.

Except perhaps that the savvy fighter finds ways to avoid hp going down,
and the caster cannot avoid spending mana or grace, so be careful of
that comparison, I think.

>   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 monster smart movement seems a bit out of whack, but I can't be sure
what is going on with that.  Maybe it is monster tweaking or map oddities
instead.  It seems that some maps have all the mobs flooding the entrance,
so the level is a ghost town when you get past the front door. Not, I think,
what the map maker had in mind.  Some mobs too easily detect the player
(through walls, non-line of sight, etc.).  Others seem normal, which makes
me think it might be something other than the smart movement code.

>   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.

There are a few places where the generator limit breaks the maps, but so
far, the limit seems primarily reasonable, even for places like Raffle 1
which still lets you gain an awful lot of XP before all the generators
disintegrate.

I'll add that fixing the broken maps may be hard to get done.  Even for
the ones I found, its not always easy to remember to work on the map when
you find the breakage, then for me, at least, it seems hard to decide
what a reasonable change is to fix it.  I'm not necessarily saying to not
do adjustments like that, but it probably is good to keep in mind that
saying maps can be fixed, and getting them fixed are completely different
things.  I think that getting them fixed is one of those things that does
not excite people, and thus is easily ignored.

>   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)

You talking about a ring granted at character creation?  How would this ring
be different from any other ring of say magic+, regeneration+, stat+, etc?
It should not be taken back by the god that granted it if dropped, IMO.

>   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.

Sounds good for variety of magic.  Sometimes the stat/protection boost spells
seem a bit too bland.

>   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 am in support of making improvements here.  Evocation, for example, is
not all that fun being limited to small bullet for several levels just to
avoid burning/vaporizing/icing all your loot.  Its hard to want to play a
pyro, etc., simply because of that difficulty at low levels.  Not having
gotten those classes at high levels, I can't speak to the options up
there, but I imagine it would still be a bummer to burn all that high
level loot too.

>   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.