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• Spell Ideas: Incomplete Schools-Air
• Mind
• Nature
• Time
• Water

BitsySpider: This is a rehash of the old spells suggestion list split into four groups: Complete schools which, in my anything but humble opinion, don't need more spells, Incomplete schools which could use a little sprucing up, Divine Magic, and Other (including new schools and things like Demonology and Udun, which don't fit the paradigm).

Schools

Air

Shocking Grasp (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 1 Air
• Works like the scroll of monster confusion-adds an effect that discharges when character makes a melee strike.
• At level 20, the first attack after casting the spell always hits.
• MP cost is always relatively low for the damage, since it takes twice as long to "spam" the spell and it has no range.
• Gives Manwe worshippers something to cast with their Air bonus spells.

Mist Cloud (by RavenRed)

• Base level 5 Air
• All "empty" floor spaces are transformed into mist in a largish radius around the caster (2+(Spell Level @10)). This blocks LOS against summoners and the like.

• At Spell Level 10, there is a single fireball (not cloud) confusion attack at the same radius as the spell effect. Maybe those pesky orcs will get lost.

Swirling Wind Stance (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 15 Air
• The character's ranged attacks have an increased chance to inflict critical hits.
• The spell effect ends if another spell is cast.

BitsySpider: I've created a set of "stance" spells which are designed to be cast by non-spellcasters, making a "fighter-mage" type more viable. This one is for the archers, obviously, and could be cast through Manwe if all else fails. None of them can be sustained, and all of them have duration in the 100-200 round range that does not improve much with level.

Shockwave (Air @ 20) (by Anonymous)

• Base level 20 Air
• Fires a ball of sound. Radius and damage increase with level.

Make Air a little more useful. Should be pretty much the same as Pulverise, but more damaging.

(see comments in Chatter, below)

Fell Voice on the Air (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 30 Air
• Inflicts frost/shard/lightning damage in a ball effect. Leaves ice like Fireflash leaves lava.
• When cast outdoors, creates a cloud effect instead of a ball effect.
• Compared to Fireflash, this spell should do less damage but have a larger area of effect.

BitsySpider: Saruman's attack on the fellowship. Should be more of a spam-clearing spell than a major combat spell.

Air chatter

BitsySpider Air is, in my opinion, an incomplete school since Noxious Cloud appears to be the only spell that is actually useful. Poison Blood is good in concept, but few melee types get Air magic to begin with. 12 Air is 18 Manwe Prayer, which isn't too bad if you do all the god quests, but by the time you finish the god quests you're past the point where you'd really want it. Invisibility doesn't actually break LoS, and it doesn't seem to have a large enough effect to warrant casting much. Sterilize is nice in concept, but is extremely specialized. Wings of Winds is OK, but the duration is too short for overland travel and makes it a hassle to maintain. Thunderstorm suffers from working on a 10 speed turn, which is extremely slow by late game.

In short, other than new spells, I would propose: * Poison Blood reduced to level 5 to make it more Manwe useful and automatically gives branding instead of at 15. * Invisibility could be coded to actually block "Line of Sight" to you based on monster level, which would make it invaluable for beating up low level Q's and other harassment summoners. It's actually passable as is for avoiding low level junk, but it's not a spell that justifies carrying around a book. * Sterilize could have additional effects, such as preventing enemy healing. * Wings of Winds could have a *much* longer duration. * Thunderstorm could trigger more often at higher levels.

Mind

Slumber (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 5 Mind
• Resets the sleeping status of all adjacent monsters (radius 1 centered on player). Q's and Z's and v's and other things that don't sleep aren't put to sleep, and normal stealth rules apply to reawakening them.
• At level 20, the effect can be targeted.
• At level 30, the radius increases to 2.
• At level 40, it affects all visible monsters.

Mind Blank (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 10 Mind
• Gives immunity to fear.
• At level 10 it gives immunity to confusion.
• At 20 Mind skill it gives immunity to memory loss.
• At 30 Mind skill telepathy no longer gives away your position.
• It can be sustained, but it lasts a while anyway.

Tranquil Thought (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 10 Nature/Mind
• Restores sanity based on Mind skill.

Inner Focus Stance (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 15 Mind
• The character does not miss with melee attacks as long as he or she is at "normal" tactics.
• The spell effect ends if another spell is cast.

Brainstorm (by Anonymous)

• Base level 25 Mind
• Fires 5d5 balls of Confusion in random directions. Balls' radii increase with level, as does the damage.

Like a Thaum spell, but more predictable. Getting everything around you really confused is the main idea, but it should be a good damaging spell.

Mental Storm (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 30 Mind
• Costs sanity instead of mp to cast.
• Deals non-elemental damage in a radius around the caster.

Nightmare Gaze (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 35 Mind
• Deals massive mental type damage to a sleeping target.
• At level 20, it turns into a ray effect.

Mind chatter

GreyCat: I'm pretty dissatisfied with the Temporal and Mind schools as they are implemented currently.

• Charm -- the only reason I've ever used this is to avoid taking the piety hit for killing good monsters as an Eru worshipper. Potentially useful at high levels, but Mindcraft gives you a better version of this.

• Confuse -- I don't know, how useful is this one in the late game? Has anyone ever put enough points into Mind to find out? (Other than sorcerers.) Does it have any effect on the high level monsters?

• Armor of Fear -- why let the monsters get close to you in the first place? If you want them to get close to you so you can smack 'em with a melee weapon, then you don't want them to run away! If you're a mage, you don't want them near you to begin with, which might make the spell potentially useful to make them run away, but I'd rather spend the time and mana doing something to kill them.

• Stun -- surely you jest. High level monsters recover from stun in 0 turns. Making it a ball at high level doesn't change that.

What I'd do for Mind is severely reduce the power of the Mindcraft skill (remember, in Zangband, it was originally a whole character class unto itself, and that class had hideous penalties in fighting to make up for the power of Mindcraft) and move some of the Mindcraft stuff into the Mind school as spells.

BitsySpider: Gutting Mindcraft would make sense except that it's really one of the main schticks priests have. Mind as a school is somewhat dubious, I agree. The main thing it needs, though, is spells that don't completely fizzle at high levels.

LordEstraven: I suggest that, for starters, Confuse and Stun be made damaging (GF_CONFUSION and GF_STUN_DAM).

DarkGod: Ahh the Nightmare Gaze could make for interresting strategies and would bolster Mind .. mhh

BitsySpier: Another thought would be to make Armor of Fear cancel attacks if a monster is scared by it. This would make it much more useful as a defensive spell.

Nature

Tranquil Stance (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 15 Nature
• While active, the player cannot cast spells.
• Increases regeneration, mana regeneration, and slowly restores sanity.

Draw upon Nature (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 20 Nature/Mana
• Restores the character's mp using mana from visible grid squares.

Crumble (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 25 Nature
• Player selects a space, similar to the Conveyance Recall spell.
• If space contains a golem, mimic, or other "artificial" enemy, deals damage.
• If space is an item or stack of items, the top non-artifact explodes, dealing damage based on the gold cost of the item.
• If the caster targets themself, their wielded (non-artifact) weapon is destroyed, healing the player and creating a similar explosion to the item target effect, both based on gold cost of the item destroyed.

Orc 1: Why'd he drop that ring of speed? Orc 2: Oh noes, we're about to be pwned!

Reincarnation (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 35 Nature/Yavanna

• If Nature skill > 34 and the character dies while the spell is active:

• The character's race is changed to a random vanilla species with new random stats.
• The character's hit dice are permanently decreased by 1, Prayer skill drops by 1, and piety is reduced to 0.
• The character's inventory and equipped items are emptied. So much for those artifacts!
• If Nature skill = 50 and the character dies while the spell is active, all of the above happen, but no hit dice are lost.

Nature chatter

BitsySpider Nature isn't a bad school, since it has two extremely useful spells (Healing and Recovery) as well as grow trees, but it could use a little more variety. Spells to benefit Yavanna worshippers in particular (i.e. melee-assisting spells) would be handy.

Temporal

Timedebt (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 10 Time/Meta
• Costs nothing.
• Restores caster's mana to full and in 2d100 10 speed turns, the caster's mana drops to 0.
• If at full already, reduces to 0 and restores to full in exactly 1000 10 speed turns.

Solar Lapse (by PatashuPatashu)

• Base level 10 Time
• If it is day, it is now night. If it is night, it is now day.

Timeweave Stance (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 15 Time
• Grants +10 speed.
• The spell ends if any other spell is cast.

Weariness (by Anonymous)

• Base level 15 Time
• Fires a beam of Inertia.
• At level 15, becomes a cone.

A nice attack spell for Warpers, hopefully.

(see comments in Chatter, below)

Future Glance (by PatashuPatashu)

• Base level 15 Time
• Maps a targeted area of the map. The radius cannot include you in it.
• If you do not enter the area within a certain amount of time you take damage and are teleported into it. "You cannot change your fate!"

Premonition (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 20 Mind/Time
• Identifies a fate, but damages your sanity.

Control Time (by BitsySpider, not quite GreyCat's Time Stop, but easier to code)

• Base level 50 Time
• Gives player +100 speed.
• Reduces the speed of all others by 100, no resistance, no immunity.
• Very short duration

Temporal chatter

GreyCat: I'm pretty dissatisfied with the Temporal and Mind schools as they are implemented currently.

• Magelock -- why is this in Temporal? How is locking a door related to the passage of time? How is a glyph of warding related to time? How is a glyph of warding related to locking a door? This makes no sense at all. And the wizard_lock effect is pretty useless.
• Slow Monster -- Handy. Not sure how well it does in the later game, because I have a problem with keeping spellcasters alive that long.
• Essence of Speed -- the whole reason anyone takes this skill at all.
• Banishment -- Potentially useful, but look at the skill cost. Nobody but a sorcerer is ever going to get it. Mindcraft gives you this (without the time bubble?) as a side effect of the personal teleport power, at a much cheaper skill and mana cost. And you can get Mindcraft from FF.

So, how can we fix this? Good question. Essence of Speed clearly needs to stay, but you can't have a whole skill revolving around just one spell. Slow monster is OK, but I'd make sure it scales well enough to have some usefulness in the early game. I'd move Restoration from Nature into Temporal (or make it dual-school), because reversing life/stat draining seems to make sense as a time-related effect (certainly more so than locking a door!). Also note that time breath attacks drain life and stats, so it would make sense that Temporal magic could reverse that. We could also consider making a spell that would reduce time damage, or give intrinsic stat sustains (and eventually hold life) based on Temporal school skill level. We could add a Wither spell which would "age" your opponents (reducing their speed, attack strength, making them move somewhat randomly to simulate senility -- who knows). Maybe Slow Monster could turn into Wither at high skill levels. Yeah, that fits well. Finally, at the highest skill levels, we could have a good old Stop Time spell. Everyone likes Stop Time, don't they? All monster movement/attacks cease, all poisoning/cuts/regeneration ceases, for a very short number of turns. Effect is cancelled if the player attacks anything. That's what a Temporal school is supposed to give you for your hard work!

LukeHaub: I always thought temporal spells should be made more like the GF_TIME attacks so that you'd effectively turn back time on monsters making them weaker like Curse.

• LordEstraven: That would be a good idea. A GF_TIME (or maybe GF_INERTIA, since GF_TIME doesn't have any extra effects on monsters) ball or beam spell could give Warpers and T3 Mindcrafters a reasonably broad-spectrum directed attack with useful side effects. Something to damage the enemy and wear them down, but not destroy them utterly with one hit.

Water

Flowing Water Stance (by BitsySpider)

• Base level 15 Water
• The next physical attack that the character hits with inflicts additional damage.
• The spell effect ends if another spell is cast or the player hits something.

Ice Wall (by KhymChanur)

• Base level 16 water
• You create an ice wall on a single floor square; can't be cast on a floor square which contains laval or fire.
• At spell level 6 it allows you to place the wall anywhere in your line of sight.
• Useful for blocking narrow passage ways and preventing monsters from getting LOS on you.

  • BitsySpider: This spell seems too much like a gimped version of stone prison. Maybe make it a litle higher level (25?) and make it create a wall in a ray from where you cast it, stopping when it hits a monster or an object? This is the way create wall wands worked in the ancient versions of Moria.

Water chatter

BitsySpider Of these, Water is one of the more robust. It's actually a really solid school at low levels, but both Ice Storm and Tidal Wave suffer from working around a 10 speed turn, which is pathetically slow at the +30 to +50 speed encountered at endgame. Geyser's damage to mp ratio could also be adjusted, though it's not bad. Ent's Potion is a clear winner for sheer utility.

General Chatter

(Quoted as transplant from original page)

Sirrocco: I like the "wierd and nasty" flavor of Choking Vines, and it does seem that Udun should have at least one Horrible Little Damage Spell but Udun already has a Nature spell in Genocide. For Shockwave, well... it's pretty redundant. The people who get Air in significant quantities are Geomancers, Sorcerers and Manwe followers. Geomancers and Sorcerers are already pretty heavy on the raw damage spells, and Manwe priests get mindcraft. It might be useful for non-priest prayer-investing followers of Manwe, and Manwe priests who chose not to invest heavily in mindcraft, but.... On the other side, with Weariness, it always seemd to me that the point of Warpers was to see what you could do with specialization in the three big utility schools when you don't have much for native damage. It's a playstyle thing.