Too many spells? (was Re: remarks ...)

[(Ken Woodruff)]

Brian writes:

> 	Are you being serious here? I note that there are currently about
> 130 spells in CF; do you think that this is a "mental burden"? If it were,
> would you advocate removing some of these spells?!? I rather think lots of
> spells adds color to the game. There can never be too many. Ditto for 
> skills. Only poorly designed skills (or spells for that matter) should ever
> be 'removed' from the game.  

Frankly, there *are* too many spells!  Well, maybe not too many, but definitely
a lot of redundant ones.  For example:

   small, medium and large fireball should be one level dependant spell
   ditto for the lightning spells
   ditto for turn undead, holy word, banishment
   ditto for reincarnate, ressurrect, raise dead
   ditto for icestorm, large icestorm (I'd rather have a snow-ball than
                                       large icestorm if you want to update
                                       the DragonQuest :0)

If you want to continue to provide non-level based control over a given
spell then I suggest that there be an argument to the spell indicating
how many sp you want to go into it, e.g. "cast fireball 10" would do less
damage (and cost less sp) than "cast fireball 50".  (Want to get fancy?
Base chances of success on the ration of spell caster level to number
of sp used.)

--Ken

+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Ken Woodruff           | Most Latin words in -us have plural in -i,  |
|    | but not all, & so zeal not according to     |
+------------------------+ knowledge issues in such oddities as hiati, |
| Disclaimer: What tote  | octopi, omnibi, & ignorami; ...             |
| bag full of $20 bills? |     Fowler, "Modern English Usage"          |
+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+