Instead of just marking forgotten spells with an asterisk, add a new
column to the '+' spell menu which gives an estimate of how well the spell
is remembered. Precision of the estimate depends upon the hero's skill in
the category of spell; expert gets the most detail with a low-to-high range
spanning just 2%, such as 19%-20% or 75%-76%; skilled sees 5% ranges; basic
10%, and unskilled the least detail with 25% ranges (ie, one of 1-25, 26-50,
51-75, or 76-100 for percentage of time left available for the spell).
[The tab-separator variant for the menu is untested.]
This fixes an off by one bug for spell retention. It got set to 20000
as intended when a spellbook was read, but then it would be decremented to
19999 before the player had a chance to do anything else, cheating him out
of 1 turn of memory. Spells known at game start last exactly 20000 turns.
Also, adjust the point at which you're allowed to reread a spellbook
and refresh your memory of the spell. When the current spell system was
instituted, that was 10% of the retention period (1000 turns or less left
out of 10000); when retention got doubled to 20000 turns, the relearn point
was left as is. Increasing it to 10% (ie, doubling to 2000) makes it fit
better with the displayed retention percentages. Otherwise expert casters
would be left to guess when they've hit that point (1000 is 5%, falling
within their 5%-6% range, which really indicates (4%+1) to 6%). At 10%,
it's the threshold for the 9-10 range for experts, 5-10 range for skilled,
and 1-10 range for basic so the player can see when it has been reached;
only unskilled, with a bottom range of 1-25, is left to guess. Players
will likely prefer to wait until later, when the spell is nearly expired,
to refresh, but if they're about to abandon their books on the way to the
endgame then being able to re-read sooner is beneficial.
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