Wizards learn about spellbooks as they enhance their spell skills

Previously, Wizards got a boost to the chance of writing unknown
spellbooks based purely on being a Wizard (with the chance still
luck-based), leading to a very large power spike when the Wizard
gained access to a luckstone and the ability to max out luck.
This had two main issues: this power spike came *after* the major
early-game difficulty spike, often leaving Wizards forced to deal
with it without having appropriate spells; and it promotes
grinding (for Luck and for Magicbane) at an early point in the
game, meaning that the Wizard early game effectively followed a
sequence of extreme difficulty -> grinding -> minimal difficulty,
which isn't very good balance-wise.

With this commit, Wizards lose their advantage to writing unknown
spellbooks by guessing, and instead learn spellbook IDs based on
their spell skills (advancing a skill gives knowledge of higher-
level spellbooks). This means that writing unknown spellbooks
becomes guaranteed with sufficient skill, but has no advantage
over non-Wizards in schools where the Wixard does not have
sufficient skill.

Due to Wizards' skill caps, there are two spells which they can't
ever write guaranteed: create familiar and charm monster. Create
familiar is a fairly niche spell (that doesn't match the Wizard
playstyle that well) and being unable to write it is not a major
problem. The inability to easily write charm monster is
intentional.
This commit is contained in:
Alex Smith
2023-12-02 03:46:55 +00:00
parent a30a205c45
commit 319dfbdaa3
5 changed files with 47 additions and 4 deletions

View File

@@ -2760,6 +2760,7 @@ extern int known_spell(short);
extern int spell_idx(short);
extern char force_learn_spell(short);
extern int num_spells(void);
extern void skill_based_spellbook_id(void);
/* ### steal.c ### */