Spell type listed in their help files

Beat you to it, Morl.

 

Edit: However, I'd disagree about the saves... I'd say that mental are generally MORE important than mal to an invoker, as a single dispel/energy drain are far more dangerous in the short term than any single mal spell landing is.  

Errr.... Energy drain is Malediction and Silence is Mental & Charm. What type of spell is energy drain and silence?

I've always considered BOTH as mental, but I am not certain.

I think this is not right - keeping the type of spells a secret. I think I've suggested this before, but spell type should be listed in the help file of the spell.

True that

Common misconception. Energy drain is malediction. Silence doesn't have any mods affecting afflictive, mental, or maledictive (meaning, only svsspell aids here).

Common misconception. Energy drain is malediction. Silence doesn't have any mods affecting afflictive, mental, or maledictive (meaning, only svsspell aids here).

That's quite interesting, and certainly new to me.

Anything on the suggestion itself?

And if editing each help file is too annoying...could make some master list as a few new helps

I like this one as well.

annnnd this has been added.

I'm beginning to believe Mo here isn't real.  Either that or Volg keeps him in a basement and screams at him to code or it gets the hose again.

Where has he been all our lives?!

No wonder so few people were good at this game 15 years ago. There was such a gigantic shroud of mystery around this thing it's ridiculous.

Morl is the Champion of the Common Man.

Common misconception. Energy drain is malediction. Silence doesn't have any mods affecting afflictive, mental, or maledictive (meaning, only svsspell aids here).

Then silence was changed. And most likely the saves check.

How I wish I could browse all the changes.

It used to check:

if ( saves_spell( level, victim, IS_NPC(victim) ? DAM_MENTAL : DAM_CHARM,skill_table[sn].spell_type ))

Checked as mental damage vs mobs and charm vs PC's plus the general save of the skill table, which is " &gsn_silence,      SPELL_OTHER"

Then magic happened and *saves spell *function is checked which in turn checked calculation of saves.

Which was a pretty funny function. Most likely a legacy thing resulting from FL code being written on top of MErc, which was on top of ROM which was written on top of Diku or some spaghetti like that. I can only imagine the elderish nightmares Morlhach must pass just to change something in the code without it conflicting with other stuff.

Don't believe ? Just look at Morlhach signature.

Anyone remember when the old Sermon was  checking an non existing save type?

Anyhow this calculation of saves was pretty odd.

It used saves vs spell then It checked if the spell was Maledictive, if not it checked if it was Afflictive, if not then it just assumed it must be Mental and used savingmental. Maybe this was some sort of fix for problems like the Old sermon thing, who knows.

Anyhow, next, it would check if the subject was vulnerable, resistant or immune to the damage type. Yes, even a spell like silence had a damage type. Mental for mobs and charm for NPC's. And add the resistance modifier according.

Elves, being resistant to charm got a bonus, gnomes being vulnerable got a penalty.

This was how I think Ogres got their penalty. They are vulnerable to magic damage, and thus every damage type that belongs to that group. Like Holy or light or disease.

Anyhow I'm rambling again.    What I meant to say, is that perhaps we should also include the damage type in help file. For the specials cases of Gnomes and Elves and charm.

I really don't feel like getting into it and trying to explain how it actually works mya, but you're definitely wrong.

The syntax of saves_spell: level, character saving, dam_type, spell_type.

dam_type is only used to check if a monk is in Buddha stance. All other uses of it, which usually just pulls the dam_type of the weapon of the user unless they're a mob, are actually not calculated and are pretty useless. The only reason dam_type is used is because of a different class that uses attacks as spells (one which I'm sure half of you can guess).

The last variable, however, spell_type, is dictated in the actual table of the spell, and thus are calculated in the calc_saves function which pulls from the bool of saves_spell.

edit: it's very possible it's been changed since the release of the code, come to think of it.

Nor do I think you should explain. Half the fun is us discovering stuff for ourselves, and then arguing with Pali over Ray of Thruth or Nameless over other stuff. Or Enethier about why bards suck, and why Dwarves are better than avians.   No doubt many things I say are wrong, specially since they are based on a 2009 source, or on practical class knowledge that has become obsolete due to many changes, or my broken english, or just plain distraction. Like not knowing for 10 years that the command to change target to a PC while engaged was 'hit' and not 'kill'.

I'm just happy that we have a dedicated coder that codes non stop.

No wonder so few people were good at this game 15 years ago. There was such a gigantic shroud of mystery around this thing it's ridiculous.

I don't think it was the shroud of mystery. It was most likely that many of us sucked. Really big time.

How many times did I die in the early days because I forgot sanctuary.

Or what about that old forum thread were people were discussing the merits of mastering hand to hand. Where the main conclusion they arrived was to do it because you could be disarmed and need to punch them to death.

For the players of today this discussion was almost silly because, you should never run around with a non-cursed weapon.

In my country we have a saying: "In the land of the blind, who has an eye is king."

Most of us sucked, and the few that didn't were kings.

I noticed that while silence is "other" blasphemy is "maledictive", which seems a little strange to me, I thought they would be the same.