Suggestions from The Bard's Tale

[troycheek]

I discovered The Bard's Tale about the same time as I discovered Moria, so in my mind the two have always been linked, and this association has continued to Angband. The are a few things about The Bard's Tale that I've always wanted to have implement in Moria/Angband so I thought I'd mention them here and see what everybody else thinks.

1) Stat gain on level up. In Bard's Tale, when a character gains a level, he gets a point added to a random stat. Since Angband already checks for and restores reduced stats on level up, it should be easy to add picking a random stat and applying whatever effect a stat potion has.

2) The bard class itself. It's sort of a warrior/mage hybrid with half a dozen songs which are basically long acting spells. To use them, the bard needs an instrument and the occasional drink to keep his throat from drying out. Here's a use for the flagons of whiskey sold in the General Store. Some instruments were basically ego/artifact, like a flame horn that occasionally let the bard breathe fire like a dragon. (Maybe the bard could wield an instrument instead of a bow? Except for the bow of the bard, of course.)

3) The ability to change classes. After a certain point you could change classes to a different type. The character would still be able to use the spells they'd already learned, but be unable to learn any new ones from the old discipline. The character would go back to level 1 and lose all experience, but would retain the HP/SP/stat gains from leveling up.

4) Memorizing spells. Bard's Tale didn't use spell books. Instead, once you learned a spell, you knew it for life. What I'd like to see in Angband is that after X successful castings of a spell, there's a chance that it could be memorized, allowing you to cast it from memory instead of a spell book, perhaps with a slightly increased chance of failure (bottoming out at say 5% instead of 0% for most spells). Memory could be considered spell book 0 (zero), and failure messages could include bits like "You try to cast Magic Missile from memory. You misremembered the spell!"

5) Adventuring Parties. In Bard's Tale you didn't play a single character. You played a group of up to 6 characters. They moved as a group (all stayed in the same square) and attacked (and were attacked) depending on player speed and initiative and the like. Only the front 3 could attack/be attacked by melee weapons, so you'd put 3 fighters in the first three slots and put archers/magic users in the rear. I'm not sure if this would work in Angband, as the party would be limited to moving as slowly as the slowest character, which would make pillar dancing and shoot-n-scoot and other strategies difficult.

6) Luck. The Bard's Tale had the standard stats, but where Moria/Angband has/had Charisma, the Bard's Tale had Luck. This acted as a second saving throw. Trigger a trap and fail to get out of the way because you failed the Dexterity check? Well, LUCKILY the trap malfunctioned and you took no/reduced damage. Have a perfect saving throw but bad luck? Take full damage from that fireball anyway. This would probably be too difficult to balance. Which leads me too...

7) Luck II. This is actually from an old RPG called Top Secret. When the character is created, the game runner does a secret roll for Luck points. The player never knows how points many he has left. The player just knows that sometimes when death seems certain, LUCKILY by some miracle he survives, which also causes the game runner to subtract one from his tally of Luck points. Every secret agent dreads the day when his luck runs out. In Angband, this would lead to IF LUCK>0 THEN "The drolem (offscreen) breathes poison. Luckily, it doesn't reach you." LUCK = LUCK - 1. Or just a general failure message so the player doesn't even know that he lucked out of an instadeath.

[PowerWyrm]

1) The problem in Angband is that you gain many levels really quickly and then the pace slows down abruptly. Gaining one point of stat every level would make the character way too powerful early on.

2) Sil has that, but in Angband this would simply duplicate the ranger class with songs instead of spells

3) No idea how you could implement that in Angband

4) Again that would probably be too big of a change

5) I started a while ago to code a party-based roguelike in the vein of Eye of the Beholder, it's quite a change compared to single character roguelike. Easiest way to have a party is to play multiplayer Angband (/me points at PWMAngband)

6) TomeNET (and probably ToME) has a luck stat, which influences many things including monster drops. This could be something to consider.

7) Sounds like the destiny points in D&D. OP no?

[Rydel]

PosChengband has 1 (You get 1 stat point every 5 levels) and 2 (Bard class, natch). Some of its classes have memorized spells - either spells are learned innately (e.g. the Mindcrafters) or spells from books can be used without having the book present (e.g. the Samurai)

[bio_hazard]

2) as said above, could be interesting, and would push to make buffs/debuffs more interesting overall I think. Hopefully we'd have auto-squelch of the instruments if we weren't playing a bard.

4) Spell memorization. I don't think I'd want to completely get rid of spellbooks and scrolls, but maybe something like this would be an interesting middle ground.
Start with 1 memorization slot, and every 5 levels add a slot. If failure rate <5% (or whatever), allows you to memorize spell. These can be case when blind. Any other spell must be cast from the book. Memorization takes N interrupted turns, where N is some function of the mana cost or level of the spell.
Maybe hybrid classes get slots only once every 10 levels, or can only memorize from the town books.

6) Luck in ToME is kind of a double-edged sword. Low luck = boring slog. High luck = more good stuff but more danger. I think it would need a good implementation. I don't think a "get out of jail free" card is in the spirit of Angband.

[troycheek]

Originally Posted by Rydel

PosChengband has...

Cool. I'll have to check it out. My standard excuse for not trying variants is that I haven't won Vanilla yet. I've only been saying that since I was playing VMS Moria on a real VAX.

[troycheek]

Originally Posted by bio_hazard

4) Spell memorization. I don't think I'd want to completely get rid of spellbooks...

I don't want to get rid of them, either. It just seems ridiculous that my mage has cast Magic Missile, Detect Monsters, and Find Traps about a gazillion times now, but he still needs to check the book every single time. These spells can't be overly complicated (as in, having to read aloud a whole chapter), else you wouldn't be able to cast them in the middle of battle between sword swings. It seems that by sheer repetition you couldn't help but memorize the words/gestures/whatever almost by accident without even trying. I mean, I barely have to think that I want to use Magic Missile and my fingers type out maa without me even having to look at the keyboard. Then it's "Oh, I don't have telepathy yet, better mab again to Detect Monsters." My main problem is that Find Traps isn't mah anymore. Luckily, that and Stinking Cloud (which used to be mai) don't map to anything currently.

I'm sure somebody has a perfectly good in-universe explanation for always needing spell books. I'll guess "While the trigger phrase the mage needs to concentrate on to cast the spell is only a few words in Ancient Gobbledegook, it is only that: a trigger. The true power of the spell is the three chapters of theory, equations, and runes that follow. Without this established framework, the spell is powerless. Even the most talented spellcaster would not have the mana to cast the simplest of spells."

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by troycheek

I'm sure somebody has a perfectly good in-universe explanation for always needing spell books. I'll guess "While the trigger phrase the mage needs to concentrate on to cast the spell is only a few words in Ancient Gobbledegook, it is only that: a trigger. The true power of the spell is the three chapters of theory, equations, and runes that follow. Without this established framework, the spell is powerless. Even the most talented spellcaster would not have the mana to cast the simplest of spells."

Actually, the explanation is simpler. They're magic books. Literally. They don't have spells in them, per se, just a bunch of buttons you push. The real skill in being a mage is in acting as a proper mana battery to empower the spell without destabilizing it (which would cause the spell to fail). Mages don't know diddly about creating new spells; they're more or less just mobile, self-regenerating ammunition.

Similarly, priest books don't have prayers, exactly, but rather a bunch of holy relics glued to the pages like some kind of biblical scrapbook. It says a lot about Angband's universe that they're able to mass-produce these things...

[debo]

Originally Posted by troycheek

I don't want to get rid of them, either. It just seems ridiculous that my mage has cast Magic Missile, Detect Monsters, and Find Traps about a gazillion times now, but he still needs to check the book every single time.

Maybe the spells are actually perl programs.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Actually, the explanation is simpler. They're magic books. Literally. They don't have spells in them, per se, just a bunch of buttons you push. The real skill in being a mage is in acting as a proper mana battery to empower the spell without destabilizing it (which would cause the spell to fail). Mages don't know diddly about creating new spells; they're more or less just mobile, self-regenerating ammunition.

Similarly, priest books don't have prayers, exactly, but rather a bunch of holy relics glued to the pages like some kind of biblical scrapbook. It says a lot about Angband's universe that they're able to mass-produce these things...

I think we need to start an index somewhere of rationalisations for the game's mechanics...

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Actually, the explanation is simpler. They're magic books. Literally. They don't have spells in them, per se, just a bunch of buttons you push. The real skill in being a mage is in acting as a proper mana battery to empower the spell without destabilizing it (which would cause the spell to fail). Mages don't know diddly about creating new spells; they're more or less just mobile, self-regenerating ammunition.

Books contain ritual to activate spell in the book using caster mana and the book itself. So it is a bit like wand in book shape. Without book you can't cast the spell just like you can't zap a wand without the wand.

That is why you need to learn the spell (activation ritual) only once, but can't cast the spell without the book.