Learning spells by non-caster classes is too hard

[Blasphemous]

I have a gray elven duelist.
Lvl 14, concentration 100, literacy 100, Learning 24.
I read a spellbook of disarm trap - it exploded in a fireball.
I think this is too extreme, I understand it's a melee class but I have everything needed to successfully read books.
I may not be able to master ball spells, remove curse, wish, create item, earthquake and other high-end spells but something as simple as disarm traps? Come on.
The same is true for other spells, I had spellbooks of stun ray or frost bolt explode, confuse or disappear with the same stats as I listed above.
I got a few castings (between 20-100) but after 1-2 readings, the spellbook either explodes or disappears. I'm talking about actual successful readings, between which at least 3-4 attempts end up with "you learn nothing new".
I feel that something has to be done about this and I intend to post an RFE but I want to find out first if perhaps this isn't some intended behavior.

If the char was a trollish barbarian then I'd understand difficulties with reading spellbooks, but a gray elven duelist with 100 in con&lit and 24 learning?
It's way too harsh, the PC should be rewarded with something for their efforts to make a melee char so learned and trained, even if the amount of spell castings learned is greatly diminished compared to caster classes.
As it is, it just doesn't make sense that a char with the above stats gets explosions and confusions while starting wizard or necromancer can easily read their starting spellbooks without any risks even with Le <20 and concentration somewhere in its ~40ies and necromancers often with ~70 learning.

[asdf]

Rough Spellcasting tiers:
Tier 1 - Wizards, Necromancers, Priests (hard spells on ~10-20 Lv + ~15-20 Le + normal book)
Tier 2 - Druids, Elementalists (hard spells on ~20-30 Lv + ~20-30 Le + blessed book)
Tier 3 - Healers, Bards, Thiefs, Paladins (easy spells on ~10-20 Lvl + ~15-20 Le + normal book, hard spells on ~30-40 Lvl + ~30-40 Le + blessed book)
Tier 4 - Monks, Weaponsmiths, Rangers, Assassins, Beastfighters (easy spells on ~20-30 Lvl + ~20-30 Le + blessed book)
Tier 5 - Chaos Knights, Farmers, Duelists, Fighters, Archers, Merchants (easy spells on ~30-40 Lvl + ~30-40 Le + blessed book)
Hopeless - Barbarians, Mindcrafters
Being Troll - +1 Tier

There is nothing wrong that one of the worst spellcasters have problems learning even easy spells. With that stats and blessed book you could probably learn Light/Darkness/Farsight (3 easiest spells) without exploding spellbooks.

[Silfir]

Don't duelists only deal half damage when using ranged weapons? They're intended to be quite specialized to counteract their extraordinary melee prowess, so they can't be much better at spellcasting than they are at missiles.

[JellySlayer]

They do full damage with missiles, but they take 10x as long to train.

[Stingray1]

I think this is intended, it is not perfect. It is still easy for barbarians and the like to learn spells. It was better in the earlier prereleases. Rather create a RFE to return to that, that made a lot more sense for non-spellcasters to mostly fail at learning spells.

[JellySlayer]

I don't even bother trying spellbooks as melee characters until I'm at least level 20, unless I'm really desperate. Failure rate is very high, and even if you succeed, you might get 30-50 castings.

[Singbird]

I agree learning spells for non-casters should be difficult, but what's the downside of this learning ability for casters then? Double weapon marks? It just seems like a pretty lopsided deal.

[Blasphemous]

I also agree that it should be difficult but at some point with enough Le, concentration and literacy, this limitation should be negligible.
Dependence on PC level is a mystery to me though. How on earth can it be related to proficiency at spellcasting?


Tier 1 - Wizards, Necromancers, Priests (hard spells on ~10-20 Lv + ~15-20 Le + normal book)
Tier 2 - Druids, Elementalists (hard spells on ~20-30 Lv + ~20-30 Le + blessed book)
Tier 3 - Healers, Bards, Thiefs, Paladins (easy spells on ~10-20 Lvl + ~15-20 Le + normal book, hard spells on ~30-40 Lvl + ~30-40 Le + blessed book)
Tier 4 - Monks, Weaponsmiths, Rangers, Assassins, Beastfighters (easy spells on ~20-30 Lvl + ~20-30 Le + blessed book)
Tier 5 - Chaos Knights, Farmers, Duelists, Fighters, Archers, Merchants (easy spells on ~30-40 Lvl + ~30-40 Le + blessed book)
Hopeless - Barbarians, Mindcrafters
Being Troll - +1 Tier

What is the source of this information? I haven't seen anything like this in the manual.

[GordonOverkill]

I am somehow happy that there are no spellcasting babarians in ADOM. I am not yet very experienced with duelists, but from my first try I get the impression that they are quite some nasty melee beasts, too. I think it's okay if such characters can only learn very easy spells with alot of effort.

e: Though I think that some more melee penalties for genuine casters would be quite cool. When my recent high elven elementalist meleed Fistanarius to death wielding Vanquisher, I couldn't do but feel a little amused ;-)

[Carter]

I am somehow happy that there are no spellcasting babarians in ADOM. I am not yet very experienced with duelists, but from my first try I get the impression that they are quite some nasty melee beasts, too. I think it's okay if such characters can only learn very easy spells with alot of effort.


Just completed my first melee ULE with a duelist... they are crazy strong from about lvl 20 onwards. They don't need magic. You can kill a balor in 2-3 rounds as with grand mastery + their class powers your attack is only 200 energy.. plus you have other massive to hit advantages. By far the strongest melee class.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I think this is pretty balanced as it is. In some earlier prereleases there was a bug in the spell success formula and it was REALLY HARD to learn spells with anyone not on Tier 1. But now it's pretty fine IMHO. A duelist is a guy trained for melee fighting, he probably spends most of his time practicing fencing moves and that kind of thing. He shouldn't be a good caster.

[JellySlayer]

I also agree that it should be difficult but at some point with enough Le, concentration and literacy, this limitation should be negligible.
Dependence on PC level is a mystery to me though. How on earth can it be related to proficiency at spellcasting?

What is the source of this information? I haven't seen anything like this in the manual.

There are a huge variety of bonuses/penalties related to casting spells. These include race (mostly just trolls), class, level, literacy, concentration, Le, book status, starsign, and maybe a couple other things (luck?). Level seems to have a surprisingly big effect. The exact dependences were derived from code diving, AFAIK.

[Blasphemous]

I am somehow happy that there are no spellcasting babarians in ADOM. I am not yet very experienced with duelists, but from my first try I get the impression that they are quite some nasty melee beasts, too. I think it's okay if such characters can only learn very easy spells with alot of effort.

e: Though I think that some more melee penalties for genuine casters would be quite cool. When my recent high elven elementalist meleed Fistanarius to death wielding Vanquisher, I couldn't do but feel a little amused ;-)

Yeah I'm not talking about barbarians - it's perfectly understandable to me that they totally suck at learning spells and excel at learning how to rip the guts out of living and not living beings with sharp things.
But a duelist is supposed to be a well-educated master of the art that relies on grace, speed and dexterity as well as knowledge about monsters and weapons - where to hit to bypass armor, how to deliver critical hits etc.
This requires them to have a significant knowledge about many aspects of their enemies. It also suggests they shouldn't have a problem reading books.
A barbarian doesn't even have a literacy skill, he makes up for it with brute force, strength, toughness and ferocity of the attacks. It's the melee equivalent of a wizard.
A duelist feels more like melee equivalent of a mindcrafter (or at least the mindcraft part of his activities), more focused on special attacks and crippling enemies with well-placed melee strikes.

As for the second part of your post - I agree with you, I've finished a game with my gray elven wizard wielding AotME (p18 on the server two days ago, some might have witnessed it, I've seen spectators quite often).
By the end I was dropping balors on D50 with the axe and slicing my way through hordes of chaos mutants, WMoPCs, ghost lords and chaos warriors.
It was more effective in use by pure caster class than my +30 effectivity acid bolt. Only when I allowed them to surround them, I used acid ball for AoE attacks.
It wasn't a weak wizard - I visited ancient library and had all spells with 46 Le, 40 Wi, 38 Ma and more than 500 points in both HP and PP.
However with earlier training, all the potions and bonuses, I had 43 St without fire orb. It turned out AotME is better than Wyrmlance against blue inhabitants of UL, namely all ancient dragons and wyrms. Significantly better than wyrmlance, with some ancient dragons dropping after one hit.
I only reserved ranged spells for tough guys - Fisty, Nurgy, Sraxx, some titans and greater molochs that spawned along the way.
Otherwise, AotME in tight corridors is unparalleled by anything even as a wizard. I can't even imagine what barbarians with two-handed mastery can do with it.

Still, this is a subject for a separate thread.

[Silfir]

There's a vast gulf between being able to read and adapting the acquired knowledge of the arcane arts to your own purposes. Not to mention that duelists don't even get Literacy; if they do, they get it by virtue of Learning score. That suggests that none of the traditional duelist training involves book study at all.

[BenMathiesen]

Of course, this begs the question: What do they need Concentration for?

For archers, we have an answer in the manual (IIRC) that the skill helps target enemies outside the nominal missile range. OK.
For weaponsmiths, I think it has an effect on the smithing time, but I don't remember where I got that impression.
What does it do for duelists?