ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

It seems sustained spells work with the spell-power the character has at the moment of casting.

Is it
a) cheating
b) smart
c) no bigger effect
if you keep special spel-power gear at a place?

You use this equipment when you start sustained spells and swap to combat equipment once the spells are up.

I'll say smart because I cannot do much else

Also don't forget to recast Arcane Power each time you put a point in it to get the full effect...

I noticed the same thing happening for other sustained-effect talents, e.g. it took me some time to figure out why my past character wyrmic's ice skin (or whatever it'scalled) wasn't doing more damage to attacking monsters when I was puting points into it

Just figured this trick out on my Arcane Blade. A pair of +magic rings turns into a couple of extra stat points across the board with Inner Glow. Once it's active just leave it on and swap for whatever rings you'd prefer.

I have to say though, stat-boosting for picking talents feels a bit cheap. However some talents aren't selectable with out some sort of stat boost at the level you get them. The aforementioned Inner Glow I can't put the 3rd point in even with maxxed magic unless I equip a ring or turn Inner Glow itself on.

It would probably make it less exploity if sustained talents ignored equipment and relied only on the player's "natural" abilities.

Or have them deactivate when you switch gear.

That would work, but it'd be pretty inconvenient for the mid-late game where every time you want to switch something you have to wait for your five sustained spells to cool down so you can reactivate them.

That's true, but the other option will really hurt mages and any future classes that rely on spell power boosts 100% of the time. I think the exploit really comes in for classes like Arcane Blades who don't really use spell power equipment except when sustaining spells.

Actually, what if the game checked for sustained talents on equipment change and did a free recast of each in the background?

It may cause a moment of slow down as the game performed the check and recast everything but would auto-update active talents to current stats.

Since you're sustaining the spells, the effects should automatically change whenever your spell power does.

You could justify either, flavour-wise, by just saying that you cast the spell at a specific power level, so it's going to stay that power level until you cast it again.

Gameplay wise it's just kind of annoying. I'm in favor of adjusting sustained spells automatically.

Spellpower isn't the only issue. Most talents seem to scale off stats and equipping two rings of Strength +5 will have an effect on Shield Wall just like spellpower has on effect on Inner Glow.

Programming the game to auto-adjust everything may be a lot of work or may be something that slows the game down. DG said he couldn't do much else so I'm assuming auto-adjustment isn't as easy as it sounds.

Also at least one spellpower adjustment feeds right back into itself; Inner Glow. This could cause a looping effect that not only would be unbalanced but might also be hard to program without creating lockups.

I would add a check on equiping stat changing items. There are ways of doing this efficiently, but the question is, can it be added to t-engine and keep it efficient, along with everything else.

That and the amount of work making changes.

The computation cost of having a check every time equipment or stats change would be negligible, so I figure that's not really an issue. It's not like you would have to recompute dozens of spells each turn, only what's active and even that only if anything actually changed.