[crossfire] Skill level needed display: theological limitations

[Mark Wedel]

On 11/ 7/10 12:04 PM, Otto J. Makela wrote:
> The skill level needed for certain actions and spells (like consecrate,
> heal, etc) depend in part on what gods the player follows. I believe this
> is currently not taken into account in the display, ie. if I am a follower
> of the Devourers, and thus have a handicap on healing, "show skills" claims
> I should be able to do it, but trying it says you need more experience.
>
> Should the display be fixed to show that more skill is required because of,
> er, theological limitations?

  Is this theological limit because of spell path attunements/repulsions, etc, 
or something different?

  The skills command itself just dumps skill information, and for gods, just 
what god you worship - best I can see, it doesn't say anything about ability to 
use spells (unless you are talking about some different command).

  the problem is I don't think skills is the right place to take into account 
spell paths - after all, while devourers will not be able to cast heal at same 
level as someone who is not repelled, they can cast other spells at that level 
just fine.

  I looked at the show_matching_spells(), and it does not take into account 
attunement or repelled status when showing spell level - it should probably make 
a call to min_casting_level().  The cost in grace/mana is adjusted by the call 
to SP_level_spellpoint_cost(), so it makes sense to adjust level as well.

  I don't know if a * or something should be put after the level if 
attunement/repulsion has changed the level.  For the case of worshipping, 
adjusting spell paths is difficult, but there is the more general case that a 
character may have an item which is attuned fire/repelled cold, and could easily 
remove that item if/when they want to cast a cold spell, and so knowing what 
real level is might be nice?

  I'd have to look at what the client side spell handling does - IIRC, for gtk 
client at least, it changes color of spell based on spell paths, so it is very 
easy for players to see if a spell is repelled or attuned - but I don't know if 
it adjust the level on that, or still shows base level and it is up to the 
player to know that it is ±2 levels depending on spell paths.