Recently there were talks about some classes uniqueness and pitfalls/moments of glory for some of them. Particularly I was interested in the discussion about elementalists which currently look like nerfed wizards (base spellbook drop chance?) and limited usability of their innate spell learning.
I took a liberty of creating a spreadsheet and placing spell knowledge progression in current versions of ADOM (1.1.1 since data is from IGB), as well as adding my own suggestions which increase the gains.
I've also added suggestions about Lightning Bolt and Petrification.
Finally, I would like to discuss more possibilities for making elementalists differ more while remaining interesting to play. I've decided on the following points:
1) Give them a penalty to book reading, as otherwise their magic is not particularly different from any other.
2) Give them "elemental bonuses" according to their individual power, like the following: +St/2 damage bonus to fire ball, +St/3 to fire bolt, +St/5 to burning hands; +Dx/3 to lightning ball, +Dx/4 to lightning bolt; +Wi/4 to ice ball, +Wi/4 to frost bolt. Bonuses should be calculated based on active stats, not base.
3) Introduce several reasonable earth-based spells: 1 healing spell/1 regeneration spell (cast once, works for several turns) and 1 shield spell (cast once, get +X PV for several turns) and grant elementalists bonuses to these spells from To score.
I understand that these changes are unlikely to be implemented, because they are rather serious, I suppose. I'd still like to see modified spell knowledge increases to be at least considered, because current gameplay with elementalists suffers in comparison as opposed to other spellcasters.
The spreadsheet is here. You may comment and modify data there (better create more columns I think), but please don't vandalize it without reason.
Any suggestions and opinions are welcome in this thread.