ToME WikiKhymChanur: At spell level 1, Identify idents a signle object. At spell level 17, it identifies everything in your pack and everything you're wearing. In between, there's no progress. How about for every two levels gained before spell level 17, you identify one more object? So at spell level 3, two object, at spell level 5, 3 objects, and at spell level 15, 8 objects, with the next jump in power being to all objects you're carrying.
NeilStevens: That gets annoying interface-wise. How about just fixing it not to charge more SP between jumps in power?
JohnGilmore: It need not be annoying interface-wise. Allow selection of the first object to be identified, but then make it identify n random objects as well. The interface would be exactly the same, but the effect would still be as desired. Better yet, make it not check to see if that object exists in your inventory or if it's already identified. So no dropping everything to force it to work on the objects of your choice.
The same thing would work for identifying objects on the floor. For each object in the spells radius, give it a chance of identifying that object based on the spells' power. Not less than 50% or so, I would think, to make sure it stays useful. Power would have to be checked carefully to make sure it doesn't get odd behavior as radius increased, such as identifying objects on the outer edge of the ball at odd probabilities.
The effect on monsters could be scaled as well, such that it can take casting it three or four times (at lower levels) to discover all of a given monsters flags.
KhymChanur: The interface in Nethack for identifying multiple objects isn't that annoying: it asks to identify one object, then when that's done it asks for another, and another, untill the user either presses ESC to stop, or until all available objects are already identified.
NeilStevens: Nethack doesn't begin to compare here. In Nethack, identification is neither used nor needed all that often.
Could you tell me why, though, it's insufficient just to make sure Identify (and every other spell in ToME for that matter) doesn't get more costly without gaining abilities? Right now the SP costs rise smoothly and independently of the spell effect enhancements, and that affects more than just Identify.
KhymChanur: It's not necessary, I just thought it was a huge leap in spell power to go from "identify one item" right to "identify everything you're carrying", and that it could use some more gradations.
NeilStevens: It's going to be a big leap no matter what, given that full pack identify can identify what, 30 items?
FeathinSilyar: Really it isn't that much of a change to go from one item to the whole pack, since when you've got multiple items in your pack to identify, you just cast the spell multiple times in one sitting anyway, unless you are in a dangerous spot, but then you aren't too likely to stop to do even one identify. Really all it does is make it more convenient.
LordEstraven: FWIW, I often find "identify pack" to be very annoying, since it requires that you pick things up in order to ID them.