As I've said in the other thread, I think that teleport is fine as it is, and do not feel that it really has any significant effect on melee characters. Most melee characters will never learn the spell to any appreciable degree anyway. Teleport is simply too powerful for the paltry ~20 PP that it costs in 1.1.1, for all characters.

I think like JellySlayer. The PP cost of Teleport was too small for its power in 1.1.1. Now, with the nerf, it makes much more sense.

Let's say for argument's sake; a non-magician character find a spellbook of teleport and never finds a wand of teleport. The player decides to put some effort into learning this spell. Choosing appropriate talents, trains Le, literacy and concentration.

Finally gets to learn it. All that effort wasted. Rather discouraging.

My suggestion for how to balance teleport out was put in the other thread, but I'll repeat it here: instead of raising the PP cost, make it limited. Cast teleport once every 'however many' turns (maybe 10? 20? More?). In that way, you can nerf it for the caster classes, who have more PP and could cast it one after the other, more than for the melee/low spell classes, who would have to gain back the PP before they could cast it again *anyway*. In addition, it turns it into a great escape spell (since you should only need to cast it once and then physically run like heck), and at least a little less effective 'casual travel' spell.

Perhaps a cooldown period on all spells is better way to nerf spellcasters if that was the intention. Frankly I fail to see anyway a reason why casters shouldn't be allowed to teleport instead of walking.

Same for Death Ray, Petrification, Create Item, Wish, Magic Mapping... And most of those aren't as useful as Teleportation.

And you're coming up with an absurd situation really. I've only had a couple of non-spellcasters actually learn the Teleport spell. It just doesn't happen! There are other teleport methods and they're not that rare.

What I would like to see is extra movement abilities for melee characters, like the rush attack in ToME4 (basically shoots yourself at an enemy and attacks it in one). But that's maybe something more for ADOM II than ADOM...

Rarer ->: Magic mapping and teleportation is a good combo for SIL dives. The way it is now, a non-caster is looking at many corruptions added.

Khelavaster gives a spellbook of teleportation when saved, library is almost a guarantee.. All my game winners were able to cast teleportation. In 3 years I was unable to realize that a wand is guaranteed. I was able to save Khelavaster and find the library however.

If corruption and a deadline is lurking, one doesn't want to be hampered by a few forum go-ers that doesn't want other players to succeed in wizard speedruns.

As it should be! It's not meant to be an easy romp through the ID. But if you know level layout tendencies then stairs scumming does still make it fairly easy to descend quickly.

I rarely save him myself. And a wand of teleportation is much much much more guaranteed, and earlier in the game. Booze isn't rare either, and melee types have less use for potions of mana.

Oops. I corrected some and added some in my previous post. While you were posting. Nor did I know booze charges wands.

Heh, well the change in teleport is making you learn new things - surely that's good? ;)

It's not an 'absurd situation' it's purely based on your play style. I don't play casters. I play melee characters. Frequently I'll intentionally play melee characters who I know have the potential to learn a few spells. Personally, I find wishes and save Khelly MOST games I play. People here seem to think wishes are rare, maybe one every three games. I seem to think that wishes are common, about two per game on average. That means when I play characters intended to have some spellcasting ability, I usually get Teleport.

And, frankly, whether it's a 'rare' situation or not is kind of beside the point.

All of these posts along the lines of "you can just use the wand of teleport and booze" imply that, really, we should just eliminate the Teleport spell from the game. After all, you don't need it and it, melee characters can't get it, it unbalances spellcasters, and wands of teleport/booze are MORE THAN ENOUGH. There's definitely a double standard at play here, one that seems to favor casters.

Melee characters shouldn't be able to teleport around like spellcasters, but as it stands I reckon many of them wouldn't even be able to cast it ONCE, while particularly adept melee characters would get but a single casting until they had to wait for their PP to come back. That's not balance. Who, before the change, honestly thought, "Wow, melee characters have way too much ability to teleport. They really need to be nerfed!" NOBODY!

IMO we should just nerf the spellcaster DISCOUNT ON SPELLS. There was nothing wrong with the base cost before. Keep in mind that melee characters will have higher PP cost than what the spell is 'supposed' to cost because of an inability to learn the skill as well. My mist elf duelist required 66PP to cast teleport once though he had hundreds of castings.

No, but casters are exactly that: casters. They are called casters because they cast better than the other classes. So of course there is a double standard. Casters are better at casting, and melee characters are better at melee. As it should be!

To summarize the opposing positions:

- Melee characters can never learn Teleport, or it happens so rarely that it isn't a consideration.

-Access to multiple Teleports doesn't matter because one has access to a Wand of Teleport and Booze, though this logic doesn't apply to casters because of the next point.

-Wands and Booze aren't enough for casters because casting spells is what makes them balanced. Hence, it would be unbalancing for melee characters to be able to Teleport multiple times.

FINAL CONCLUSION: Even though casting Teleport presents no benefits to melee since Wand of Teleport and booze are more than enough, being able to cast teleport would make melee too powerful. And, even if the nerf wasn't justified, melee characters almost never learn Teleport; except for every single Ultra essentially nobody saves Khelly or plays anything other than pure melee.

Seems reasonable.

Nice strawman. Let me spell it out to you again:

The characters who primarily benefit from the teleport spell are the pure caster classes--Wizards, Priests, Druids, Necromancers. They find lots of spellbooks, so are quite likely to find one or more of teleport. They learn spells easily, so can get many, many castings. They are likely to have high Le, and are likely to be races with spell learning bonuses--elves, primarily. They have, by mid-to-endgame, huge batteries of PP, so they can teleport very frequently. Because these characters are the major beneficiaries of the teleport spell, they are the ones most affected by the nerf.

The characters who experience no effect from this change are the pure melee classes--Barbarians, Beastfighters, Farmers, Mindcrafters (not technically melee, but same problems), Chaos Knights, Fighters, Thieves, Merchants, Rangers, Assassins, and virtually all Trolls. These characters rarely find books, so unless you save Khelly, you probably won't see it anyway. Even if you do find it, you have class-based spell learning penalties, no concentration skill, and probably racial spell learning penalties as well. They tend to have lowish racial Le as well. These characters are lucky to max literacy before level 40. They have tiny amounts of PP (except Mindcrafters). Most of these characters will probably never learn/cast teleport in any circumstances, so they aren't affected by this change. This represents, not just the bulk of all class, but the bulk of classes that we typically call "melee characters".

The characters who experience some effect from this change are the hybrid casters--Paladins, some Bards, Monks, Healers, Weaponsmiths, Archers, Elementalists, Duelists, most Mist Elves. Most don't find many books, so probably won't see this spell without saving Khelly, but most of them have literacy and concentration, medium Le. They have some book learning penalties, and learning spells with the dumber races is still pretty hard. Their PP batteries are still pretty small (except Elementalists). If they're lucky enough to find a book, most of them can probably learn teleport at high level as long as they aren't a troll. Are they hurt by this change? For those who find the book and read it, sure. Are the affected as much as pure casters? Absolutely not. Is it a crippling nerf to them? Absolutely not--at worst, they end up playing the same as the characters with no access to teleport spell at all. More likely, they can cast it, but their limited PP batteries prevents consecutive castings without a recharge. Not that big of a deal.

Conclusion: This is a nerf to all casters, including, to a lesser extent, hybrid casters. The more you cast, the stronger the more you'll notice this effect. Melee characters, who are, for the most part, non-casters, aren't penalized in any way. By making it more difficult for casters, the huge gulf in difficulty and ability between casters and melee is lessened. That was the intended effect.

Strawman? Really?

I think that whether the pure casters have been nerfed more than the hybrids is somewhat besides the point, which is that the hybrids shouldn't have been nerfed at all.

That said, I think a large assumption of your post is that there is a linear relationship between PP cost and quantity of castings. I wager that many casters might cast Teleport only 10% less, not 50% less. The casters I played rarely ran up against PP constraints when abusing Teleport. It's actually possible that hybrids have been, in a functional sense, hit by this nerf to a very significant degree which is less but still extremely comparable to pure casters if we choose a metric like % reduction in entire-game castings of Teleport. If the PP cost was originally 8 but later changed to 32 it would definitely be a bigger hit to hybrids since casters would hardly notice the difference.

It toned casters down but it also unintentionally toned melee down as well. Why aren't people trying to suggest more targeted interventions? I feel like your post was essentially a concession that, yes, the change to melee spellcasters wasn't optimal. Is it the opinion of everyone that there is no better fix for the problem and that the nerf to melee is necessary collateral damage?

Teleportation is not the only spell. Why was it targeted? According to what I was able to deduce, it was to make wizards walk. So they can't finish the game in fewer turns. That is no class nerf. I would say nerfing offensive spells would narrow the gap more.

Or their melee, missile, and defensive capabilities could be targeted. After all, those are supposed to be the strengths of fighter-types, right?

Because it's the most powerful spell, naturally. Having unlimited on-demand teleport means:
-Much, much lower corruption since you don't need to travel needlessly. You can traverse the CoC from top-to-bottom in the same number of turns it takes to cross one level.
-Many areas are much easier to clear--BDC, Minotaur Maze, D:50, etc. since you can avoid the vast majority of the monsters. For all sytar6's complaining about cavernous vaults, teleport is a far superior option for them than walking.
-Powerful defensive and offensive capabilities--you can kill almost powerful monster completely naked, without ever taking a scratch, using teleport + missiles/bolts. You can also instantly escape from virtually any dangerous situation. Reducing the melee/missile/defensive capabilities of casters, for example, would be meaningless if the monsters can't get close enough to inflict any damage. There are very few monsters in ADOM that pose a serious threat to an on-demand teleporting character. There's a reason why the Temple levels are all no-teleport areas. Imagine teleport were allowed in the Mana Temple--you could finish the place in 10 turns.

I didn't say it wasn't optimal. I agree that it affects, in a fairly minor way, hybrid classes. But I don't think it is a serious concern, and I've noted why. The problem was that teleport is significantly overpowered relative to its PP cost. This is true for both pure casters and for hybrids. The simplest solution, therefore, is to increase its cost to a more appropriate level, and that is what was implemented.

C'mon let's be honest here, if your wizard is surrounded, would you cast teleport and then bolt the foes or cast Acid Ball. Sure, teleportation gives you the option, but ultimately it's offensive spells that take out multiple foes in one turn that reduces turn count the most.

I've contributed enough to this discussion, happy birthday TB.
Hope you get to read this today.

Those pro's of Teleport only really apply to PCs with near-unlimited on demand Teleport. A PC with one or two castings of it has pretty much none of those. Teleport is a lot more powerful if you've got a lot of it. If you've got one or two castings, it has very weak offensive capabilities and is, defensively, more of an "oh shit" button than anything.

Wait, you're really taking the position that melee characters learning how to cast Teleport twice in succession made them overpowered?

People don't seem to be coming out and just saying this straight out. It doesn't seem like people can make up their mind as to if this was a necessary nerf to melee because they were overpowered or if the nerf was a regrettable but necessary side effect of balancing casters.