Dungeon Master Forum

Well I just want to know (and I'm sure these questions have been asked a lot):

1. Are the Stamina, Mana, Stength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Vitality and Shield potions very useful? I mean, I never used them and I never thought to make these potions for my party.

2. What the darkness spell is for? Is there something useful with it?

3. What's the difference between the Torch spell and the Light spell?

4. What is the spell that is the most powerful between the fireball and the lightning? I mean, I always used the fireballs.

All the time, when I played the game, the only spells I used are the Health potion, the Cure Poison Potion, the Torch spell, the Open door spell, the Weaken Nonmaterial spell, the Fireball spell and the Zokathra spell. I don't know why, but I never thought to cast the other ones. Is that normal? Don't you think that there's too much spells?

Probably that, if only the Runes system was changed to a spellbook, for example, it could become more understandable to the game.

Hey that's the same as me . I will give answers to your questions as best as I know...
1 - No idea. I never use them either.
2 - I see no reason why you would want to use it either.
3 - I dunno - I only ever use Ful myself, and only ever have ever.
4 - I also only ever use Fireball. Lightning uses more runes to cast so in theory is more mana-expensive. Fireballs look better when flying through the air though, rather than just a wimpy little yellow thing.
I've played the game using the same spells as you (everyone else seems to like using poison to zap things but meh, I do fine with swords and fire ), and I don't have a problem with DM .

1. i use stamina and strength a lot.
2. errrr, never used
3. light is quite longer than torch : i always use light when i can
4. dunno, probably depends on what spells have influence on monsters (see DME for this)

1. I use Stamina potions almost as much as Healing potions, but they are only useful if you run around quickly and don't sleep very much. Strength potions are useful as well, since they increase your carrying capacity and the damage you do with melee weapons. I never use anything of the other potions mentioned.

2. If you play RTC, the screen might go too bright if you cast too many Torch or Light spells. The Darkness spell can be used as a countermeasure. That is the only use I can think of.

3. As Linflas said, Light lasts *much* longer.

4. I discovered that poison clouds are very strong if you can make a monster stay inside it (for example, if you use a Magic Box). Poison is actually deadlier than fire if you can manage to use it properly. It also has the advantage of driving monsters away if you cornered or have your back against a wall. Lightning, I think, is useless.

You do have a point that lots of spells are not really necessary, but some have uses that are not really obvious at first. I found out that Poison Bolt (DES VEN) is very useful against Vexirks, and Magical Footprints can really help if you are in a maze with invisible teleporters (I used it to a great effect in a test level I once received from PaulH).

1. Stamina - yes, if you don't sleep alot or train to buggery then stamina is one of my most used spells - can keep a pary on the go that isn't backed up by huge reserves. Mana potiosn allow you to cgain priest levels with some buy back, or train up starting charatcers, or jsut ised as a reserve against a big boss guy you need out of the way (no matter how good a mage you are, you are goign to run out of mana in a big fight). Wisdom affects how fast you regen mana - so topping up with these potyions will get your mages mana back faster. Dexterity decreases your chances of being hit, strength increases your blows considerably. Shield potion too - or rather the spell, (then again, same thing you can build a reserve as big fights mana is precious) - but with the spell, you cast a few and watch golems and knights blows be reduced alot (to start with..really you need it maxed out)

2. Some creatures don't have the same awareness in darkness, therefore you have a spell to recant your huge light spell load if you wanted it. The awareness is subtle, can't uimagine everyone tryign it. But this game has alot of subtle flavours liek this around.

3. As linflas said, you are trading off low mana cost and easier to cast against a much longer lasting spell. I tend to swap when I remember with higher level characters

4. Fireball does more damage, but lots of creatures (for examplescorpions) have high fire resistance. Then again, lightning seems to have a low blast effect so only really affects the creature hit, and even then lower cost/ I htink this is modified by anit-magic, but les drastic than anti-fire. However, another subtle effect where it's just eaier to flood with fireballs even if they are doing less damage (still comparible for less mana cast)

I don't understand your spellbook reference at all.

I think he means it would be better if the spells were listed by name instead of having to cast them rune by rune. I don't think that would work well at all, especially with DM having such a powerful spell system. Plus it'll ruin the atmosphere - many a time I've died by slipping up casting a meaningless spell! And the back story on the runes is pretty cool too, how they all form shapes and alignments.

If you just had a list of spells to choose from rather than individual runes it would completely ruin the idea of being able to experiment and figure out spells yourself when playing for the first time and not having found any of the rune scrolls (for example, the rune scroll for Fireball is on level seven).

There aren't really enough spells to make experimentation practical. One of my friends and I discussed this and thought it would be much better if every rune combination did something, even if it wasn't always good, noticeable, or useful. It would make experimentation much more practical and rewarding.

Light lasts longer because it's brighter than torch, which is easy to see at low levels. Brighter lights burn out more slowly, which Paul will probably tell you.

Potions aren't nearly as useful as they could be because the interface for making and drinking them is exceptionally clunky. If you could cast/drink them without so much hands-on work, they'd be extremely useful as quick buffs for all your characters. The flavor of DM is that it's not easy to play, and unfortunately this turns off a lot of would-be gamers and, even worse, nullifies some potentially useful aspects.

Personally, I loved the spell system when I first used it back in the Day, but nowadays I prefer something less cumbersome and more logical. If you look at the spell combinations, you'll notice a lot of them don't make much sense — and the Gor rune isn't used at all. Rumor has it Gor was deprecated during design, which makes sense from a programming standpoint — lots of games have features that are never used — but then why wasn't it used in any of the sequels? Why leave it in and not use it?

Eh. Maybe I'm becoming too cynical with age.

Gor was deprecated during design, which makes sense from a programming standpoint — lots of games have features that are never used — but then why wasn't it used in any of the sequels? Why leave it in and not use it?

It was used in the versions of CSB with the magic map.

Yes, and DM2 also. Originally, it was used in early versions of DM to make Ful bombs, but this capabilty was later removed.

All the runes of spells make sense once you cast them and know the effect...esecpailyl with the

I don't think every rune combination shoudl ahve an effect, but yes, a healthy percentage having effects owuld be cool - especially if not all of them were beneficial, some just hinted at spells requiring components or exact circumstances, etc

Would be cool to have more elemental stuff - like a wind spell and an earthquake spell, not sure how easy it would be to implement though...

Earthquake couldn't see doing it wihtout some graphical help (always wanted to have kind of effect for a giant) - you could make it just great a pit

Wind would be easy - teleport critters and objects away from you, with some damage, have objects be thrown

Maybe instead earthquake could cause a barrage of boulders and rocks to fly from the party and disappear upon contact? I think that would be pretty cool...

would be cool to have invocations too : trolins to help you to fight or a flying eye which could pass a pit and activate an actuator that disables the pit.

Oooh I like that idea, is that a bit like DM2's summoning spells?

dunno, i've never cast summoning spells.

There are four types of minion in DM2 - Attack, Guard, Porter, and Scout. Attack and Guard are both summoned by spells - the Attack follows you and zaps enemies with lightning while the Guard remains in one place and zaps enemies who come too close. The Scout and Porter are summoned with magic maps. The Scout Minion is just that - a scout. You can click a point on the map and it will go there so you can explore areas ahead of you. The Porter Minion is a fetcher-carrier to take objects to or from yourself and a spot you mark on the map (stand in a spot and click a button on the map to mark that spot with an invisible X).
I think the Scout and Porter minions disappear if attacked. Attack and Guard minions have an amount of health depending on how high a level the spell you cast them at (Lo-Mon obviously) and wil also automatically fade after a certain duration, again depending on their power.

i see.. but minions aren't invoked monsters the way i think of.
dead monsters parts could be used as ingredients of a same spell : shank in hand invokes a hellhound, rounds will create worms... the more power the spell will have, the biggest stats the monster will have !
by the way, we could use the 2 first minions spells to give order to the monster when invoked : attack or guard this area.

Umm, how did a question about runes go into a spell discussion? For what engine????? IF the question hadn't been answered fully this would be severly splittably OT

You could do this in CSBwin, but it would be hellishly tricky.

a) You would have to create a copy of a monster, then fetch its ID, and pass this to be stored by both the movement and attack filters. THis means you can't allow limitless monsters, and so unlike DM2 I think only one minion could be created at a time (like the familiar spell in NWN)

b) You need the attack and movement filters to basically check for the ID of this summoned monster, and block it from attackign the party (See the caveat below in c) and moving towards the party or moving from the spot it is in

c) You would need to have a window of opportunity for this second spell to be cast to assign it it's duty (ie a DSA counter line of code keeps triggering in both the attack and movement filters to block this creature from doing anything) If you don't cast a spell in,. say, 5 seconds the monster is freed to be normal and agresive if you don'#t have the further magic to control it

d) The movement filter would then need to, each time this monster thinks of moving, not only block its movement, or movement towards the party, but then check randomly around it's four squares to see if another critter is close - if thjey are, then the minion will make an 'attack' a random number is generated, and based onthe chances assigned will then reduce the health of the cretaure attacked by a set amount.

Note the graphcis would look weird, and this is quite intense code (since you are expecting the creature to keep guarding or attacking) so you need to have the movement filter checkign all movement all the time...

e) Duration - will the monster keep attackign until death? Then you need to have, when it moves, a chance of the cretaures aroudn it 'attacking' it - each creatrue aroudn it gets a random chance to do damage to it too - intersperced with its own attack turn. It therefore needs to check if the monster is killes, and disable the ID number. If you kill the monster, I can think of no way currently to check if the creatrue is still alive that isn't hellishly messy and very DSA intensive (a copy of a unique object, and you check ever monster that dies for this object being dropped, which you then delete fom the dungeon if found fter disablign the ID)
If there is a time duration, this will need to be set somewhere upon castignthe spell, probably a seperate DSA that keeps triggering itself until the count number set is zeroed, in which case it will target the movement and attack filters with a disable then kill the monster

Whew..intense stuff! Maybe I should be working...so sorry for not checkign what I type,

Lol runes, spells, pfah - runes are used to cast spells so you can get around it that way, muahahahaha...

Gettign round discussions is for amatuers - an OT master will just ignore all previous conversations and talk about what is on their mind : )

Ahh well I never claimed to be an OT-Master. I'm more of an OT-Supporter...