Psionic Angband 1.0.7: an attempt at documentation Brief Summary: The problem with mages in current angband is that their spells (with the exception of magic missile and other early attacks) are mainly utility and defense. The result is that mages rely on hand to hand, but cautiously until getting globe of invulnerability (GOI) which makes the end-game silly. The class of the psionicist attempts to rectify this in several ways. First, psionicists are weaker fighters than mages and have no GOI. Also, many mage attacks become useless since every monster is resistant to them at high levels and their damage remains relatively constant. Most psionic attacks are either attack forms that are often unresisted (sound, life draining, meteor, force) or new attack forms that monsters are less likely to resist (three kinds of mental attack, disintegration, amnesia, pain, domination). Also, damage is generally proportional to level, so attack spells remain effective at higher levels. Finally, an attempt has been made to make as many powers useful throughout the game. Many weak (or unthematic) utility spells (destroy traps, cure poison, detect enchantment, etc...) have been replaced with more specialized defenses (spells that resist breath weapons or physical attacks or mental attacks) as well as utility spells that help with spell casting (restoring mana or allowing "simultaneous" spells). The purposes of the variant are to create a mage-type that relies on magic again as well as to create innovative new powers (see below for descriptions) and use other ideas, such as wearable spell books. General (Important) Information: First - Read the entire file! (Maybe not the history of changes) There are many important things about psionic powers that are not at all obvious from their names or even from using them once or twice. Failure to read the fine print has already resulted in one YASD. A psionic "spell book" is called a focus and a psionic "spell" is a power. There are 18 different psionic foci, divided into 6 disciplines and 3 levels (not to be confused with every other kind of level). Wielding a focus (in the amulet slot) gives you various bonuses and allows you to use its powers. They are destroyed only by electricity , but level 2 & 3 foci get saves. Higher level foci give better bonuses when wielded and are necessary for certain powers. A few general things. Psionicists are worse fighters than mages and have a max of 3 attacks. The command for psionics is 'n', although since this conflicts with roguelike commands 'm' or 'p' will also work. Most psionic foci give special boni when they are simply wielded - these work for non-psionicists only if the NO_PSI_ERASE flag is enabled. Unlike mages, psionicists can wear gloves without penalty and use powers when blind - however, they still can't use psionics when confused. Failing to successfully use a psionic power ("You fail to concentrate hard enough.") only causes you to lose half the mana. Building up too long a duration in any power is dangerous; there's more on this below. The disciplines are Telepathy, Psychoportation, Psychometabolism, Psychokinesis(*), Metapsionics(*), and Clairsentience. * - not found in shop #6 Following are the various disciplines and then their powers. Telepathy: I - +2 wis,chr Mind Thrust - the equivalent of magic missile + stunning/confusion/fear/sleep Empathy - If successful, it makes the affected monsters more vulnerable to telepathic attacks. It also cancels the penalties for attack animals or stupid monsters. Mental Barrier - sust int,wis - res fear,conf, and a few monster spells Intimidate - like mage's fear but stronger Sleep - ditto Psionic Blast - psionic fire ball like mind thrust but more damage II - +2 int,wis,chr - sust int,wis Psychic Crush - psionic attack that's harder to resist Mind Wrack - little damage but hardest to resist side effects III - +3 int,wis,chr - sust int,wis - telepathy Domination - "The greater titan hits the AMHD. The AMHD looks confused." Amnesia - each casting causes a monster to cumulatively lose 1/3 of their (total) spells as well as causing them to sleep and a few other things Note on format: Telepathy I allows access to the first 5 powers. Telepathy II allows access to those and psychic crush and mind wrack. Telepathy III lets you use them all. Note on psionic attacks: None are bolts/beams. Instead, all except for Psionic Blast are radius 0 balls, so any monster in sight can be targetted. Also, stunning/confusion/etc.. is based on damage done, your level and the monsters level. Psychic Crush weights this in your favor and mind wrack weights it much more. Also, confused monsters are more susceptible. Note to those who understand the source: Besides GF_DOMINATE and GF_AMNESIA, there are three types of psionic attacks. GF_PSI (mind thrust, psi blast, ultrablast), GF_PSI2 (psy crush, *ultrablast*) and GF_PSI3 (mind wrack). The higher the number the lower the chances of resisting damage and the higher chance of stunning/confusion/fear/etc. Player level, monster level, unique status, monster intelligence and spells and damage also affect these chances. Psychic drain uses the GF_PSI routine for resists/specials. Psychoportation: I - +2 AC Blink - as the old dimension door Teleport - guess. Dimension Door - pick any destination within a certain distance - costs an extra turn or more if you pick a bad destination or an extra half turn regardless. Time/Space Anchor - no teleportation for anyone. That includes you. You resist nexus and time (!) also. II - +5 AC, +2 dex Probability Travel - temporarily can teleport level at will with '<' and '>' Banishment - teleport other in a beam (just like everyone else) Steal Time - a bolt of time that gives you all or part of a free turn depending on how much damage it does. Time Control - temporary haste, effective even while already hasted III - +10 AC, +6 dex, random teleportation (as ring of teleportation) Recall - another staple Time Shift - gives you a free turn + 1/10th of a free turn... of course, it costs one turn to cast. This one could be broken at high level, although it wouldn't be easy. Psychometabolism: I - +2 con - sust str,con Cell Adjustment - minor but efficient healing Adrenaline Control - like berserk but better. When it ends, though, you risk a "crash," causing slowness and other unpleasant effects. It and biofeedback cancel each other out, and that's a relatively safe way to end it. Biofeedback - 1/2 damage from most physical attacks Energy containment - resist fire,cold,elec,acid,poison II - +2 str,con - sust str,con,dex Death Field - pay life for a big nether ball centered on yourself Complete Healing - the only drawback is that it takes 3 turns to recover. Test it in town next to an idiot. Drain Life - like the wand, except you gain life (1/2 dmg) III - +3 str,con,dex - sust str,con,dex - hold life Shadowform - very little damage, no attacks, walk through walls. Double Pain - halves one monster's hitpoints if they don't save. Psychokinesis: I - res force Project Force - a beam of force with "fading damage" (important: see below) Force Wall - creates a temporary wall of force that bolts and monsters can't cross. It costs more to maintain the further away it is. The '#' command will let you destroy them. Inertial Barrier - 1/2 dam from monster breaths Sonic Boom - radius 5, sound attack Detonate - like meteor storm, radius 2. II - res force, inertia, shards Disintegrate - does damage and destroys walls, radius 2 Sphere of Cold - a lot of damage, radius 1 Immolation - a lot of damage, radius 0 III - res force, inertia, shards, gravity Balefire - damage proportional to your current hp (let them worry about instadeath if they forget their fire resistance...) Metapsionics: I Cannibalize - pay life and get mana Empower - a powerful recharge Receptacle - drain charges to get mana (note: it's best to not to drain wands halfway with this power - now they do damage when they explode) Psychic Surgery - restore int,wis,exp - remove fear Intensify - Every level of intensification increases the mana costs of all of your powers by 50% and their damages and durations by a third. i.e. level 3 would double damage and increase costs by 150%. There is a small cost to maintain it. Cast intensify again to end it. II Splice - do several powers in a row - cast it again to end a splice early. Ultrablast - a large psionic ball centered on yourself. III Psychic Drain - a psionic attack that gives you mana. It costs roughly one extra turn. The area affected is ball of random radius. *Ultrablast* - big ultrablast, uses psychic crush formula for confusion,etc... Note: wielding a metapsionic focus allows you to use any other focus in your pack, although angband uses the minimum of the metapsionic focus level and the other focus level. i.e. you're wielding metapsionics I and you have telepathy II in your pack. You can't use psychic crush without actually wielding telepathy II. Clairsentience: I - +3 searching Detect Monsters - . Reveal Secrets - detect doors, traps, stairs Clairvoyance - magic mapping Awareness - temporary telepathy Metaphysical Analysis - describes all temporary magical effects and level auras II - +4 searching, res blind Read Object - identify III - +5 searching, res blind, telepathy Read Aura - *identify* Analyze Monster - get full monster recall if it fails its save Precognition - You notice out of depth items/monsters and vaults on level creation. It also gives warnings for cannibalize. Note: Normally, psionicists get feelings about objects the same way as mages. When wielding a clairsentience focus, they get feelings as warriors (far better). Certain attacks lose approximately 1/3 of their damage after each monster. They are currently project force, psychic drain and life draining. Certain powers cause you to lose (or gain) part of a turn. Normally, one action takes 100 energy. There are some exceptions: for example, shooting a bow when you have 2 shots/round costs 50 energy per shot. Basically, gaining or losing 1 energy is equivalent to gaining or losing 1% of a turn. These powers are as follows: Time Shift - Gain 5d(level) energy. Dimension Door - Lose (60 - level) energy. 100 more if the destination is bad. (i.e. "You fail to exit the astral plane correctly.") Psychic Drain - Lose d150 energy. Complete Healing - Lose 350 - 2*level energy. Certain temporary powers do damage if their duration becomes too long. This only happens if you try to "save up" a large amount of adrenaline control, for example. When you take damage, the duration of the spell will be reduced. The effects are as follows: Time Control - hits you with a ball of time Shadowform - hits you with a nether ball Adrenaline Control - simply does damage Biofeedback - reduces duration without doing damage Inertial Barrier - hits you with inertia (what else?) Awareness - causes you to space out for a little while (lose d200 energy) The percent chance of this each turn is (# of turns of awareness left) divided by 1000, rounded down. After you receive the message the first time and until awareness wears off or you quit, it's abbreviated as a period. Three other powers can also kill you: Receptacle, Cannibalize and Death Field. It should be obvious why. Here are the other changes, largely unrelated to psionics: -Keldon Jones's monster AI patch was added (ver 0.1.1) and changed so that all pack monsters (not just animals) will try to draw the player out of corridors. -Many monsters have psionics. If you're not playing a psionicist, this could be dangerous. More on this later. -Most dragons' melee attacks are much stronger. -The black market generates deeper items the deeper you go. -Out of depth monsters in vaults no longer contribute to level feelings. -Ctrl-J is a new debugging command. Note: setting the value of "oops" to 0 and then saving will wipe out temporary psionic effects. -A more powerful heal spell has been added for monsters. -Greg Wooledge's random artifacts (0.6.0) have been added. -The random artifact generator has been changed slightly (making it incompatible with non-psiband savefiles with GW random artifacts). -Temporary resistances have a chance of vanishing if built up too much. There is a (# of turns of resistance left) divided by 64 (rounded down) percent chance each turn of this happening. This is in response to energy containment. -'C' shows average weapon damage, not counting to_hit and slays -missiles show average damage when the appropriate launcher is used (again, not counting to hit and slays, which are now more significant) -Anduril is stronger (as in utumno) -The One Ring is more common (1 in 10000 instead of 1 in a million). -Broken items were removed to make room for psionic foci. -The autoroller is about 1000 times faster in maximize mode. -Cheat_know doesn't say 32767 kills any more (a side effect of analyze monster). -Certain level generation constants have been slightly changed. (Out of depth items/monster and vaults are more common) Future changes: -Right now, few monsters actually have the new heal spell. (You can add it by adding HEAL2 to their spell lists). It also is maybe too powerful when combined with monster AI. -The domination interface could still use improvement. -Exclusively psionic monsters should be added (like mind flayers). -Psionicists may still be overpowered at high levels and probably favor their weapons too much. -Perhaps wisdom should be used for amounts of mana. -Random uniqes would be cool. -Maybe different difficulties of psionicist should be introduced. -A monk class should be created (half warrior, half psionicist). -Better monster AI should be added (like Keldon Jones' patch) and monsters should choose offensive spells better. Where it's at: In case you've forgotten, psi-angband sits in ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband/Variant The files are p_exe???.zip, p_src???.zip, p_doc???.txt and p_dif???.txt (??? is the appropriate version.) Immediately after uploading, they are in the /angband/Incoming directory, where they are invisible. Also of possible interest is "pziband," a merger of psiband and zangband. The filenames are the same, except with "pz" instead of "p_", and the version, as of this writing, is 1.1.0. (ex: pzexe110.zip) Note to programmers: Psionic angband adds several internal features to the game. -New attack types, and item and monster flags. These are described elsewhere and can be found in defines.h. -Calling project with "who" set to "-2" will create an attack from neither monster nor player. The global variable "_killer" describes what's on your tombstone. -If you want to combine psiband with your variant, use the diff file (patch -p0 < psi_diff). Just give me credit and look closely at how I've changed saving and loading. -To use fading damage, set "fade_dam_on" to TRUE before calling project and FALSE afterwards. -I think that lib/edit/*_info.txt files can have entries out of order now, but that may not be true for all. Note on monster psionics: Monsters also have psionic attacks now, which can be quite deadly if not resisted. The attacks also come in three levels of power (independant of damage). The first is easily resisted and generally causes few special effects like confusion or stunning. The second and third levels of psionic attacks are resisted with more difficulty and are more likely to cause side effects. The third is particularly dangerous as every point of damage it does risks causing an effect randomly chosen from confusion, stun, paralysis, slow, int/wis drain, mana drain and amnesia. The particular spells that monsters have available are as follows (L denotes monster level): Psychic Crush (3dL damage, level 2), Psionic Blast (3dL damage, level 1, a ball spell), Mind Wrack(1d(2dL) dmg, level 3), Psychic Wave (Ld4 dmg, level 2) and breathing insanity (monster hp/4 dmg, max 800, level 1). To resist all of these, resist confusion, sustain int/wis and being paralyzed help. Being berserk, confused or stunned hurts and having telepathy or enhanced int or wis will help if you manage to resist or hurt if you don't. Some people think that monster psionics are too powerful and that the psionicist class doesn't need them as a counter-balance; in that case, there is a file called r_info.old in the lib/edit directory with almost no monster psionics. Simply copy this over r_info.txt and delete r_info.raw from lib/data to eliminate these attacks. Credits: Thanks to Keldon Jones, Ivan Tkechev and Greg Wooledge for allowing me to use parts of their code (monster AI, automatic control of dominated monsters and random artifacts respectively). Thanks to Cam Moore, Neal Stangis, and many others for bug reports, suggestions and support. Finally, I appreciate the efforts of those who compile this for platforms other than DOS. History: 1.0.7 - Balefire is now more true to the original idea. This means that it is more powerful (less resisted) and has very dangerous side effects. Pet displacement now works. Time control was moved to psychokinesis. Several new powers were added: empathy, intensify, metaphysical analysis, wall of force and time bolt. It is now based on the final version of 2.8.3. Monster psionics were weakened and paralyzed characters resist mental attacks better now. Telepathic attacks against undead and demons Monster AI is now optional. A new option/command was added to order your pets to follow you (instead of going after other monsters). Adrenaline control is slightly weaker, is incompatible with biofeedback and risks cutting out suddenly and causing "crashes" when it ends. High level psionicists have weaker melee skill. Being hungry is more debilitating and more spells cause it. Added a command to remove force walls ('U'). Added detonate and ultrablast side effects. Balefire is cheaper and other PK attacks are more expensive. 1.0.6 - Based on angband 2.8.3 Added Keldon Jones's monster AI (ver 0.1.1) Telepathic attacks are more effective against high level monsters. The pet code for kamband was stolen for dominated monsters, meaning that you no longer have to (or can) micromanage them any more. Dragons fight better. Stunned monsters aren't helpless (a la gw-angband). The RES_PSI item flag is more useful. Some monsters have the RES_PSI and IM_PSI flags. Cannibalize has a confirm prompt and precognition warns about it. Spells with durations were weakened. Deep foci are more shallow and rarer. The awareness "float" message has been abbreviated. The awareness high happens earlier. When domination ends you risk a psychic attack from the monster. Adrenaline overdose does more damage. Energy containment ends early more often and doesn't last as long. Biofeedback speeds regeneration and has other minor effects. Certain monster attacks risk causing amnesia. Metapsionic foci work. Monster psionics are weaker and more dependent on monster level. They are also standard - r_info.old is without psionics. OOD monsters in jelly pits, zoos and graveyards no longer contribute to level feeling - instead there is a fixed bonus. Semantic changes, typos fixed, spell descriptions updated, etc.. Failure rates no longer have a 5% minimum. 1.0.6 alpha - Implements some of the 1.0.6 changes and is only released on the amiga. 1.0.5 - Precognition now works. Fixed bug where monsters couldn't become confused. Buffering powers is now dangerous. RES_PSI and IM_PSI were introduced as monster flags. RES_PSI, META_PSI1 and META_PSI2 were introduced as item flags. (metapsionics flags work like binary, for "META_PSI3" use both) Several new psionic attacks were added for monsters (although few monsters actually have them). Psychic drain was toned down. Temporary resistances have a chance of vanishing if you build them up too much. Confused monsters are more susceptible to psionic attacks. Domination wears off faster and the cursor is less buggy. Telepathic attacks have internal probabilities changed. This documentation is more comprehensive. 1.0.4 - The random artifact version is now 0.6.0. The random artifact generator now loads a fresh artifact list whenever it fails to create an appropriate one (instead of reprocessing the old one). 1.0.3 - Replaces "focuses" with "foci" and other semantic changes. Fixes average damage. Uniques resist a few special attacks better and recover faster from being stunned. The "deep" foci are now rarer. Psionic foci are pre-*identified*. The black market level now has a minimum. A few autoroller bugs were fixed. A few internal changes will facilitate eventual random uniques. NO_PSI_ERASE is no longer the default. The HEAL2 spell no longer results in hp overflow. 1.0.2 - Fixes almost every remaining bug introduced in ver 1.0.0 (thanks to Cam Moore) - one might call it "semi-stable." 1.0.1 - Fixes random severe bugs (like not wielding foci). 1.0.0 - Brings psionic angband to angband 2.8.2, random artifacts 0.5.1. Makes psionicists more balanced, introduces fading damage. Introduces several bugs in the port. unnumbered - psi_exe.zip and psi_src.zip existed based on angband 2.8.1 Written by Aram Harrow (aram@mit.edu)