Variant Spells

[Slartucker]

Since vilhazarog's WH imp offers the possibility of alternate spellbooks, let's gather some thoughts on spells. These are a few I did up some time ago. I know there are many other warlocks who have come up with spell ideas, as well.

(FSD) Acid Arrow
Does 2 damage, 1 of which may be prevented by a shield.
The main effect of this on gameplay would be to make Paralysis and Fireball slightly better, I suppose. On the other hand it increases the exit options for F gestures slightly, which has minor but pretty global ramifications on spellflow.

(DWS) Web
Prevent a warlock from stabbing or clapping. Prevents a monster from attacking. Lasts 3 turns, like Protection, beginning on the turn of casting. On that turn, it will not prevent claps, but it will prevent damage from stabs and monsters
Does not cancel with the other disruptions.
Is removed by a successful fireball or fire storm.
Another monster dealing option, and makes Haste worse.

(SFP) Faerie Fire
Temporarily nullifies shields (including from Protection). (Is
nullified by PDWP with no effect)

(PDWFW) Drain Life
Drains up to 3 life from the target (maxing out at the target's
remaining HP). Takes effect after cure spells. Counterspelling the target cancels the spell entirely while counterspelling the caster prevents the life gain only.
Not sure if I balanced the gestures adequately.

[vilhazarog]

None of these are difficult to implement, my only questions is, counterspelling faerie fire, does the target get the shield effect? (I assume yes)

Oh yeah, on web, what about a para/confused/charmed/amensiaed target that then gets webbed, what happens?

[Slartucker]

FF: if it's counterspelled, the FF never does anything, and the counterspell shield is there by definition, so yes. The PDWP clarification was there because (in RBW's physics) unlike counterspell, PDWP must happen after FF takes effect to cancel it, so one could imagine it as cancelling a regular shield anyway.

Web: Well, a warlock can't do something they're physically prvented from doing no matter what's going on in their head. So charm + web means clap and stab aren't charm options. Para goes to something else, I guess to -. Same thing for amnesia.
Actually, I am now thinking web should prevent stabs from successfully doing anything, but should not prevent the > gesture itself.

As for web and confusion: there is no love lost between me and confusion, and I would just as well assume I never play it again, so it is not really something I took into account. That reminds me, though, that Zugzwang's profile has a number of DSF replacements that are interesting, some of them might also be worth trying.

[vilhazarog]

Ah, I see what you're saying about remove enchantment, that wouldn't be an issue for me... I resolve things in phases, I'd just resolve the FF effect during damage taking, which happens after remove enchant has been resolved.

[vilhazarog]

I've always wondered what the game would be like if you simply swapped gestures for lightning and fireball.... I think resist heat would look a lot more attractive if you were facing fireball coming out of DF instead of lightning.

[yaron]

And Charm would be less attractive once the opponent has resistance, which isn't bad, either.

[kwil]

FFWD -- Fast Forward. Sort of a reverse timestop. Cast it on yourself and you do not participate in the next round. You get no gestures, but your spell-chain is not broken and no spells or monsters (including FoD) can effect you during the forwarded turn. You can see what your opponent's moves are.

[Slartucker]

*Very* cool idea. Very cool, flexible spell. Let me say it once more, very cool.

I suspect it needs to be longer than 4 gestures, though, as it looks prolly more powerful than Time Stop, right now.

Also, the interactions with Time Stop will need to be ironed out -- some weird ones there.

[vilhazarog]

In order to maintain the traditional RPG spell names you could call it 'Blink'.

I'm not sure it's all that weird as far as with Timestop... I consider timestop a bonus turn outside of the regular turns.

1) A person that has been timestopped/blinked at the same time would get his bonus turn first, then the next real turn everyone would gesture and the blinked person would not be around for it. Then the next turn would proceed normally.

2) In the case of blink completing during the timestopped round, the behavior should be exactly the same.

3) If one person is blinked at the same time another is timestopped, the timestop round goes first, and the blinked person is still vulnerable to targetting during the timestopped round. Then the following round the blinked person is gone. This isn't hard to implement, since timestop already ignores enchantments such as invisiblity.

Finally, it would make sense if enchantment durations on a blinked person were not decremented during the blinked round.... A person that recieves a para/mala/charm/conf/etc the same round they complete blink suffer the effects the round they come out of blink.

What do you think?

Oh yeah, what happens if cast on a monster? An elemental? Same as amnesia? If it's a long spell perhaps it should do the blindness/invis effect (monster blinks out of existence?)

PS: What does Warlocks do with a Timestop completed during the timestopped round?

[taliesin]

If you cast a Time-Stop during Time-Stop, you get two Time-Stops in a row. This sounds useful, but the second Time-Stop has to be SPPc because of shield limitations, which isn't really useful at all.

Regarding Blink:
I don't think it's nearly as powerful as Time Stop - it's going to be a defensive spell, and a defensive spell with very specific uses. You can't use it to deliver anything, because you give your opponent a chance to clap for Magic Mirror and a fine chance to enter W on the completing turn of Blink for a counterspell. It is in fact, at four gestures, inferior to a Counterspell in every case save protecting you from FoD; it's a counter in which you give your opponent a Hasted turn. I'd be tempted to drop it to three gestures to make it useful. Also, I wouldn't start with F - paralysis ought not to be encouraged.

On the other hand, if a monster disappeared for a turn and came back in the same way, that would be more akin to casting a disruption on it; making the spell marginally more useful.

My suggestion for an alternate spell:

FFFFFF - Backfire: this spell antispells you, makes you Maladroit next turn, summons two giants for your opponent, heals your opponent by up to three health, afflicts you with Poison, and gives your opponent Permanent Permanency and Delayed Antispell.

(Can you tell that I dislike long paralysis strings?

More seriously, I'd be tempted to utterly rewrite the spellbook, using different gestures. Why? Because otherwise, it's very easy to get confused about strategy moving from one variant to the other (how many of us have seen an incoming Confusion as a Maladroit and planned accordingly?). A new gesture set would let you play without messing with your neural model of Warlocks; and you'd get to create a potentially very interesting new game in which the best strategies are yet to be discovered. You could begin with maybe four gestures and a dozen spells, and evolve the game from there; or you could go straight to five or six gestures and forty-odd spells and take a little-used spell away every time you add one. You needn't stick to the same ideas at all; here are a few suggestions:

"Wizards" (to coin a phrase) use exclusively elemental magic. To counter a fire spell, you must have a defensive water spell; to counter an air spell, a defensive earth spell; etc. (If this is too restricting, then perhaps each element can counter two others, e.g. its opposite and itself). Elements could be weighted to different functions; fire would have more damage spells, water more healing spells, earth more defensive spells, air more spells of trickery and misdirection. I'd gladly make up a preliminary spellbook to play with like this...

Alternatively, there are two or three different kinds of wizards, each with their own spellbooks, but who use the same gestures; e.g. white wizards, necromancers, etc. This would lead to much more work to implement, but could be interesting.

Another option: the summoners do not themselves partake in combat, but weave spells from the safety of their towers. Each summoner has a great monster that does battle on his or her behalf, and his magic is devoted to enhancing its capabilities while tearing down the magical wards on his opponent's beast. Disruptions would be more indirect, forcing an opponent not to cast particular kinds of spells at a particular target rather than influencing spellflow directly. Similarly, wizards would not see one another's spellflow, merely the effects from it; you'd need most long spells to contain shorter "tell" sub-spell strings, much as shield and magic missile are tells during Invisibility in Warlocks. Monsters could be identical, or could have different attributes, though the latter would need to be carefully balanced.

I'm sure there are even more interesting possibilities out there. We'd need to play the new spellbook quite a lot to iron out game balance issues, but we could end up with a game every bit as good and addictive as Warlocks itself when we're done.

Taliesin

[kwil]

It gets nastier when you consider targetting it at your opponent and in combination with the Dxx class of spells.

Actually, so much so that it might be better as FFwd

[Slartucker]

First off, this spell is definitely not Blink. "Blink" is a very specific effect in most games -- it is a very minor teleportation that displaces the target by a short distance, typically ten feet.

Taliesin, your analysis of Fast Forward is flawed. Presumably, you can hit your opponent with it as easily as yourself. So it has TWO (well, three) uses:
1) An extremely gimpy counter that also blocks FOD, and
2) Basically a Time Stop that you can't touch your opponent during
3) Non-bouncing monster/elemental disruption

Note that while #1 and #2 have different targets, they can both allow you to block a dangerous spell, so unlike Time Stop, Fast Forward is not simple to counter. I suppose the extreme gimpiness of #1 makes up for this. There are some odd situations when it is better offensively than Time Stop, though. Say both players have an ogre. A single Fast Forward on your opponent makes it easy to have your ogre whack the other, which will be unshielded.

Anyway, it's interesting. I suppose you're right that Time Stop is generally better, but not by much.

[vilhazarog]

Well if you want to get all technical, Blink is a spell that teleports you randomly about several times over a certain duration. Dimension Door is the minor teleportation spell. However we are splitting hairs, and I was just trying to grab at the first name that came to mind was not such an anachronism.

[taliesin]

admin said:

Taliesin, your analysis of Fast Forward is flawed. Presumably, you can hit your opponent with it as easily as yourself. So it has TWO (well, three) uses:
1) An extremely gimpy counter that also blocks FOD, and
2) Basically a Time Stop that you can't touch your opponent during
3) Non-bouncing monster/elemental disruption

Mmm, yes, using it on your opponent would be more useful. That does justify four gestures. Still significantly weaker than Time Stop, though, since most of the usefulness of Time Stop comes not from the extra gestures but from the unstoppable nature of the Time-Stopped spell; you're expending four gestures to get two free ones with Fast Forward. You're speaking of it as an alternative to using Time Stop defensively; but it's fairly rare that you end up using Time Stop defensively, certainly not to counter anything short of FoD.

It would depend what the four gestures were as to how useful it was... FFWD would more or less force it to be cast out of Paralysis, so while it would be capable of being cast more commonly than Time Stop, it would encourage para use further. OTOH it would give extra anti-paraFoD options as FFWD, and maybe that would reduce people's desire to use the para in the first place.

DWWD, maybe? I think it should probably start with a D, to encourage Blindness a little; it lacks anything as potent as Antispell or Time Stop, so casting it is in many cases a waste of time. And DWW encourages progress down the Poison tree, another great but often underused spell.

It gets nastier when you consider targetting it at your opponent and in combination with the Dxx class of spells.

Actually, so much so that it might be better as FFwd

No, this would almost neuter it utterly. It's much, much weaker than Invis, but you're suggesting an equally crippling gesture string. The only use for it would be as an alternative to casting Invis from a FF/PP situation.

You can employ the Dxx class of spells with Time Stop, too. Actually doing this is pretty rare. Why? Because in the time you've set up Time Stop, your opponent usually has gained a fair chunk of initiative, and you don't really have the option to attack any more. Unless you've coming out of Invisibility with a concealed Time Stop, or your opponent has gone Invis and allowed you to fire one off, you're frequently going to find that you're the one suffering a disruption on the turn you cast it, significantly reducing its power - and that power is going to be even more greatly reduced if you can't touch your opponent during the Time-Stopped turn, and he can see your gestures.
Hence, Fast Forward has to be easier to cast than Time Stop.

Taliesin

[kwil]

taliesin said:

You can employ the Dxx class of spells with Time Stop, too. Actually doing this is pretty rare. Why? Because in the time you've set up Time Stop, your opponent usually has gained a fair chunk of initiative, and you don't really have the option to attack any more.

Which I'll point out is specifically not a problem with FFwd.

Unless you've coming out of Invisibility with a concealed Time Stop, or your opponent has gone Invis and allowed you to fire one off, you're frequently going to find that you're the one suffering a disruption on the turn you cast it, significantly reducing its power - and that power is going to be even more greatly reduced if you can't touch your opponent during the Time-Stopped turn, and he can see your gestures.
Hence, Fast Forward has to be easier to cast than Time Stop.

I agree. And it is. The difficulty of casting time stop is the unwieldy SPP entrance. That doesn't blend in to anything nicely. By the time you hit that second P, you're wide open. You either clap, probably breaking your own spell flow, or you proceed through the FD, giving them time to bring up a counter of some sort. Not to mention that SPP makes the spell difficult to cast in conjunction with a number of other spells with P in them.

With the FF start, you can easily break to a fast-foward from any of the common spells with F in them, and by the time your opponent can react, you're already on the w and heading for home. Even with wd as opposed to WD, it's still a lot easier to cast than time-stop, and I'd argue easier to cast than invisibility, because the FF doesn't restrict your other hand at all.