Elementalist rebalancing

[_Ln_]

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.

[Silfir]

Add some Lightning Bolt and a little more Lightning Ball and call it a day. Elementalists are fine the way they are.

[Deathwind]

The biggest issue I see are the class powers, I'd like to see things like elemental damage added melee attacks (similar to suffixed weapons) or faster casting to set them apart.

the magic given is very biased towards fire, would swapping fire bolt for lightning bolt be a bad idea?

Elementalists normally don't use written magic but employ powers they harness from within.

Why do they start trained in literacy?

I agree with the book learning penalty but there would need to be an increase in castings per level for it to be fair as I've had more than a few elementalists just run out.

[Silfir]

It does say "normally", you know. They're encouraged to derive their power from the elements themselves rather than spellbooks, but they're still trained in reading spellbooks, if not as rigorously, and they will compromise for the sake of saving the world.

Not everything has to be extremes.

[Stingray1]

I agree with Silfir in this regard. Elementalists are fun to play the way they currently are. If you are running out of castings you are playing wrong.

[_Ln_]

I agree with Silfir in this regard. Elementalists are fun to play the way they currently are. If you are running out of castings you are playing wrong.

The problem is that I don't play them, because I've tried and found them very boring. If I want to play a spellcaster, I roll a wizard or a necro. Playing a spellcaster that gets around 400 points in Fire ball and even less in other ball spells is unfulfilling.

[JellySlayer]

If some changes were to be made to this class, my inclination would be to push them more toward the extreme: Greatly reduce their capacity to learn from books, but make up for it with innate abilities.

Here would be a somewhat extreme version:

-Elementalists learn from spellbooks about as well as mindcrafters. Or even make it that they cannot learn any non-elemental spells at all, through any means (including babbling mouth, wonder, etc.)
-Add lightning bolt and petrify to their spell lists (why not?)
-Generally increase the number of castings that they get per spell. Double the current amount would not be outrageous, IMHO.
-For every level of proficiency the elementalist has in one of their elemental spells, the energy cost required to cast it is reduced by 10, to a minimum of 400 energy per casting.

[Stingray1]

If their castings are doubled, I cannot see them ever running out. It is already very hard to run out of casting if you use spells only when necessary and don't kill rats with spells. The point of having a certain number of casting is so that they can run out of castings.

Every class should have some sort of nemesis in the game and Karmic dragon-kin plays a good role here against elementalists. Giving them petrification will take that away.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Actually I don't see anything wrong with elementalists not running out of castings of elemental spells (or at least of some of them, maybe not the most powerful ones). It would contribute to differentiate the class much more (wizards have to save castings, elementalists don't) and it wouldn't be OP or unbalanced as long as they get very significant penalties to book learning or to casting non-elemental spells. In fact, I'd straight away give them a ∞ symbol for burning hands on the get go, and maybe at level 12 or so, a ∞ symbol for one or two bolt spells. Well, at least assuming that ADOM had unicode support

Which would be more powerful: a wizard that runs out of castings of burning hands and fire bolt, or an elementalist that doesn't run out of castings of those, but struggles (say, like a melee class) to learn spells from books?

Most of the most powerful spells in the game (teleport, healing spells, strength of atlas, invisibility) are non-elemental, so I don't have any doubt that the wizard would still be much more powerful. But the elementalist would feel more different and allow from a different playstyle (basically fry everything - although they still need to keep an eye on PP, especially now that HP casting has been nerfed) so there would be more motivation to play with them.

[Singbird]

Lost my response, so my ideas in nutshell.

1. Improved fireball exclusive to elementalists.
2. Elemental storm class power mostly useless. Replace with a sequence of 4-8 bolts in one direction for 400-800 energy cost per bolt or an improved fire-, ice-, or lighting ball with radius 2. Or replace "immune to weather effects" with the former and balance accordingly, and replace elemental storm with the latter. I feel like the original elemental storm was meant to feel like a sort of superpower when it comes to class powers, but the situations in which it can be used never really arise.
3. Make impossible to learn elemental spells from books, so would lock elementalists out of lighting bolt, mystic shovel, petrification and maybe acid bolt and acid ball. Current spell selection is fine to me.
4. Have higher power point (2-3 times) and/or energy point (1500-3000) cost for other spells.
5. More castings or 1d[character level] chance to get +1 power on each naturally learnt spell on level up or something.