#3017 Overhaul Warpers
Just spitballing a new class idea for a ranged version of the crusader. Skills would be toned down hunter with some enchantment and spellcasting tossed in. Spellbook would primarily consist of ammunition branding. Some spell ideas are below. It would be too much to have them all in the starting book, but eventually, an AA could expect to be able to exploit most any weakness in an opponent at the cost of depleting their ammunition store. Swift/haste are tossed in because any dedicated ranged class will want some kiting ability. I'd suggest swift in the starting book and _perhaps_ haste in a higher level book.
The downside i see is that the class would rely very much on victory dancing to raise their casting skills, however, if they only want the lower level spells, this isn't as big of a deal. Currently, so many combinations need to victory dance that I guess it's acceptable, or at least tolerated.
Portal projectile translocation lvl 2
Swiftness ench/air lvl 2
Flame ammunition ench/fire lvl 3
Frost ammunition ench/ice lvl 3
Poison ammunition ench/poison lvl 4
Returning ammunition ench/translocation lvl 5 (temporary branding)
Shocking ammunition ench/air lvl 6
Haste ench lvl 6
Death ammunition ench/necro lvl7 (needs a much better name)
-cryo
I like the, hmm, high concept of the class/style ("should be able to exploit most any weakness in an opponent at the cost of depleting their ammunition store"). That is most evident in the branding, flame/frost/poison/shock. Considering there's a good bit of elemental schools, ideally it could mean it'll be hard to pick up more specialized spells from those schools, unless you forego some of the branding options. I'd say, in this book, take Portal projectile out and replace with Corona.
Good also: thinking of the victory dance weakness.
In general, I'd like to see several valid ranged combatant styles, combined from:
* throwing vs. bows vs. crossbows vs. perhaps even slings
* pure archery vs. hybrid
* different gods
* different spell schools (for example translocations vs. enchantments)
--Eino
Corona certainly makes more sense than portal projectile to help boost enchantments, but i like portal projectile for the ability to shoot 'through' opponents at more dangerous enemies. I suppose a dedicated AA would pick that up later though if they wanted that ability. Corona definitely makes sense for playability.
As the opposing schools go, I don't think that's too much of a concern. At level 3, good int/spellcasting/enchantments can do the heavy lifting for fire/ice ammo. There is nothing opposing electric ammo, and swiftness is there to help with air training.
Death ammo will take some work to get castable, but it's no worse than transmutations and the high requirements to cast what amounts to 1 spell for a lot of builds. The level requirement might be a bit high, I dunno.
-cryo
P.S. This class needs a better name! AA implies bows and there's no reason these spells can't work for any ranged weapon type.
I meant having oppositional schools would be cool if it *caused* problems, i.e. forced the player to make choices.
Same with Corona vs. PP - PP would indeed be useful, but not all the useful tools should be in the same book.
--Eino
Well, I wasn't proposing a single book so much as a list of potentially useful spells. Two or three books would be good if there are enough spells to go around. Perhaps a translocation centered book, an elemental book and high level book for the better damage types and haste would be a good start.
Perhaps the translocation versus damage types will make enough diversity, but I'm not sure you can get enough elemental requirements to cause conflict without making the spell so high level that it's seen as underpowered.
Perhaps something like this would be good:
book 1
--
fire ammo
ice ammo
swiftness
corona
repel missiles
book 2
--
apportation
portal projectile
blink
returning weapon
repel missiles
book 3
--
shocking ammo
death ammo
haste
deflect missiles
teleport ammo (forces blink or teleport like distortion)
Archers with magical support have been in Crawl for a long time; from discussion with Brent or Erik in a USENET thread long ago, I know that Warpers were explicitly intended to be arcane archers, but the class is unplayable as designed, even moreso with the Controlled Blink and book acquirement nerfs. It needs a significant overhaul, possibly including one or more of the ideas in this thread, and probably also a rename.
There's no chance Wr could start with stealth, is there?
I just submitted a patch to address most of these ideas and a couple other bits.
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2897880&group_id=143991&atid=757515
-cryo