#357 Balancing changes to the summoning branch

[Markus Kettunen]

The summoning spell branch is currently vastly underpowered compared to the other spell branches, at least for the lower levels. This holds true even for characters of the summoner class. This makes summoning and especially the summoner class unfun to play.

I've been experimenting with a set of small changes to improve the situation a little. These are not enough to completely fix the problem, but they do ease the pain a bit.

The proposed changes included in the attached diff:

• Golems:
  • Golem arch: wc 12->10.
  • The golem spell: dam 40->60, hp 75->125
  • The lesser golem spell: dam 20->25
• Pet monsters:
  • Decrease level requirements for pet types by 1 level from the beginning until skull.
  • Replace pixie with panther and skeleton with wolf.
  • Casting time 10 -> 5.
  • Failed summons no longer cost sp.

[Kevin Zheng]

Thank you for the contribution.

I agree with all the arch changes.

Why should failed summons cost no sp?

[Markus Kettunen]

The rationale is that summon pet monster is a rare case of a spell whose success is in practice not controlled by the player due to frantic monster movement – when cast in directional mode.

An alternative might be to make the spell fall back to directionless mode if the targeted square is occupied.

[Markus Kettunen]

Ping. Is more work needed to get this accepted?

[Rick Tanner]

Changes applied to trunk via updates 20742 to 20748