Spells could use some tweaking. [Suggestions]

[Cubic's Rube]

- If you perfect a spell you shouldn't be able to forget it. A little bit of real-life logic and common RPG knowledge can be applied to roguelikes, so this one just doesn't make sense when I cast, for example: Wizard Lock all game and then I suddenly forget it after a while. The way it should work is if you constantly cast something you just won't forget it, but if you rarely cast it then it would slowly fade out of your memory until you re-read it, since that's more logical. Rarely casted, harder spells are easier to forget than quickly read, easy ones. A hidden value can do this trick easily. Other modifiers could include: Larger memory boost if casting a rarely casted spell succesfully. Spell memory loss if you unsuccesfully cast a spell, maybe scaling with how low it's percentage is, and thus discouraging trying to cast spells with 10-30% chances. I know this would make spellcasting significantly easier, but in the late game when you have +7 immutable and/or legendary weapons and gear then spells don't even really matter, apart from polymorph, identify and maybe teleport away for quick traveling, and it's already hard to find spellbooks when going solo.

- Healing spells are rather weak, even with upgraded Life. They are probably only good to revive and use on your pets. They could use a buff (more heal, better scaling, removing debuffs, etc.)

- Sickness needs to be lower level and/or easier to read and should scale.

- Protection needs either lower reading time/level or major buffs and scaling per level for how high ranked it is. +3 armor is useless mid-late game when you are able to cast this spell.

- There needs to be a "Dispel" that is basically the spell form of wand of cancellation. Maybe it could be weaker, like only being able to kill vortexes and disable the aquator/disenchanter attacks, but not powerful enough to kill golems and elementals. Or may remove cursed/blessed status but not remove enchantment levels or blank scrolls/potions. I know it can be pretty powerful, but it's really missing from the list of spells, especially after I encountered dungeon runs with zero wands of cancellation.

- I once found gnomes spawning with lightning wands in the lower mine levels and that was when I found out that lightning doesn't get reflected by Silver dragon armor or amulet of reflection by them almost killing me. I can understand striking, that it is physical, but since there is no way to get shock resistance and it IS a spell after all it should be reflected too so it won't hurt you or do minimal damage. Actually I'm not even sure if this is intentional or rather a bug.

- Darkness (and dark rooms in general) should cause penalties to monsters too, give lower chances to detect and hit you. If there was a way to have nightvision (maybe for a thief as a skill) it could be a really useful spell other than to level up dark casting.

[Gray]

I agree with the essence of everything you have suggested - the only thing I would leave alone is lightning - I think that is intended to have a double edge to it. And dont mention it being horrible in the gnome mines - I think that will make Waz add more! (I believe he wants the gnome mines to be chaotic hell!)

[FancyMustelid]

I'm going to say the assinine statement of "I didn't read your whole article, but..."

yes, you're correct from what I skimmed out of your post.

On the other hand, a lot of the things you're on about have to do with balance right now. At least from last I played. Last I knew though, Waz wasn't quite happy with the current spell mechanics (namely a pesky teleport spell). I expect to see some changes at some point, but some things, such as forgetting spells, probably won't change.

On that subject, you used the phrase "common rpg knowledge". That's dangerous territory for several reasons. But let's look at the origins of Wazhack to talk about that. Wazhack does stick to a lot of (western) fantasy tropes intentionally. But know also that this is by a guy who also worked on Nethack - a long-running fantasy game with lots of DnD (possibly the definitive fantasy rpg) inspired elements. And magic in classic DnD works quite differently than your "common rpg" stuff does today. The characters actually forget the spells due to a magical imprint of the spell (upon learning it) transitioning into the metaphysical spell itself (upon casting). A higher intelligence allows a character to imprint multiple uses of spells. That's the short of it, anyway. So, Wazhack does closely utilize a more classic rpg trope (is this Waz's excuse? I dunno). And I say all that because I understand that just saying "Deal with it because it's what balances the game" is often not an acceptable answer to most people.

I found no problem with healing spells though I did think it odd that the spell specifically titled "Heal" seemed to be the weakest healing spell last I played.

I've never been to clear on the effects of sickness on monsters to justify carrying around the book - even with bags of holding.

Protection pretty much the same thing. It didn't seem good enough to warrant the extra weight.

So, for those two spells, your points may generate more usefulness for them. But keep in mind, too, that there may be other reasons to have spellbooks (of unjustifiably crappy spells) in the game than just so you can learn good spells.

Dispell would probably unbalance the game to some degree. Or maybe waz just has issues coding it to a spellbook rather than a wand. Programming can be tricky. But more likely, it's to do with balance and evening out the spellbook drop chances. Probably similar to how some things are only found as wands, some only as potions, some only as scrolls, etc. I'd really like to see Dispell/cancellation blank out a spellbook and let you craft a spellbook, but that might really be OP.

Lightning is an interesting one. That's one you just have to be prepared to deal with. I'm not going to talk about this one here much due to spoilers, but lightning does some neat things and those things may have some weight on why it doesn't reflect. Also the lack of reflection may be due to the locations of the wand drops in relation to the usefulness of lightning against certain mobs. And maybe it could be accidental as you suggested.

The darkness one is something I've sort of repeated and seen repeated a few times. Have it affect monster hit rates and give the thief characters some kind of darkvision.

Honestly, I almost feel as if the spell list is something that Waz may overhaul in one "big" patch. It works great as it is so no point in changing it right now, but there's quite a few good suggestions about spells that we may see some interesting changes in. Or he could be quite happy with it the way it is. The bottom line here is balance and, for the most part, it's pretty balanced, I think. I'd bet there's just higher priority items right now.

EDIT: Also, @Gray, Yes, he does want them to be chaotic hell. I can't recall the thread, but that's specifically what he said he intended the mines to be.

[Waz]

Currently it is true that some spells are under-powered. Mostly it's insufficient scaling with Skill level. I'd like to balance them, but I want to do it in concert with further weakening mage's ability with weapons (not sure how yet).

On spellbook forgetting, no, sorry, the game needs to force you to decide if you need to carry them or not. It doesn't matter what other RPGs do (and NetHack does it very much like WazHack, unsurprisingly). If you could just read and discard them, there would be no choice to make.

The "explanation" for the "forget" mechanic is that every time you cast the spell it requires a slightly different incantation based on the enemy type, the light on the walls, the time of day, the phase of the moon, etc.; you learn about all these details by reading the book, but eventually you forget the details such that you cannot cast the spell in the current situation.

It doesn't matter how non-sensical this explanation might seem - that's the mechanic. It similarly makes no sense that you can only wear two rings or one amulet (especially since in WazHack these do not drain anything from you), but such limitations exist to improve the game by forcing you to make choices.

[Null Gravy]

Make "cure sickness" targetable so you can cure your pets - Seems logical