Learning Spells

[warheart]

My last char, a drakish barbarian, used a wish on concentration. With both literacy and concentration at 100 and 30 learning, I got something drained trying to learn cure light wounds.

[Baranor]

How is ability to learn spells calculated?

I feel like my High Elven Monk (seemingly a pretty literate fellow) should be able to read spell books. I have almost 100 in both literacy and concentration, my Learning is not stellar, but I can barely learn the simplest of spells. Is there a formula to look for? I'm not looking for code dived stuff, just curious if I am wasting my time trying to read with my monk. It seems like monk should be a class that can read. Things that I know so far:

Mindcrafters all but cannot learn spells. Due to permanent "spells" being awesome.
Without Concentration, spells are MUCH harder to learn.

Nothing else.

Any thoughts?

[Grey]

PC level and learning are both very important. With a non-spellcaster your level should be in at least the teens and your Le over 20. Preferably 30+ for both. Blessing the spellbook probably helps too.

[Baranor]

What are the non spell casting classes? Some are obvious, but I figured at least Monks would be a partial spell caster considering the whole copying manuscripts and stuff. But, I do know that they are like the ninjas of the ADOM world so perhaps they are less the intellectual types.

[gut]

> PC level
...
> very important.

Not in my experience it's not.
With enough Le, any class (except mindcrafter) is
good to go. OK, literacy needs to be reasonable as
well, but mainly it's Le.

[meh]

My only win with a monk was a drakeling, and he had hundreds of castings of many spells, including stuff like ball spells and identify. His learning was below 30, but I think he had levelled quite a bit before getting so many castings.

[Sradac]

Im not sure if Le is the most imporatant factor. My last dark elf assassin had trouble learning burning hands with a Le of 19 and 100 literacy. I think concentration factors in there too.

[Molach]

I'd say class is the most important factor. Because a wizard can read pretty much anything anyhow, and a mindcrafter almost nothing. (I've made a mindcrafter read something, with 30 learning and maxxed literacy. Darkness, I think it was)
Second mabye literacy, then learning, concentration. And I actually think level matters too, but that is just a hunch. As is my ranking of importance just now.

[saladman]

Monks are fine at learning spells. You can bless the spellbooks and read them in a special room (where walls look like stacks of books) if you're having some trouble.

[pblack]

In my experience assassins and thieves make good basic casters. In my thief/assassin games that get past the casino i normally have teleportation, invisibility, maybe a bolt or two, darkness and light learned. Also lesser spells like slow monster, calm monster, perhabs stun ray, etc. But that's probably only when I play elves. And I suspect assassins get some more books than thieves. Also, archers possibly can make great casters due to having concentration. I have way more problem with monks trying to learn spells than with assassins.

I don't know if literacy is actually important when LEARNING spells. I have no means of backing this up but isn't literacy just a checkpoint to see if you can actually read? with Literacy at 75 i get some messages saying i don't understand the runes but (I have no way of proving thins) I think that to see if you really learn something, how much you learn from it and if you get a bad effect or not, only concentration and learning matter.