Bolt spells 'beaming'

[CheeseToast]

Every bolt spell has a chance of beaming and doing a line of damage as opposed to the normal effect, but in Angband 3.0.1, Lightning Bolt always beams. Its extremely useful when you're in a hallway full of breeders, and adding this as a feature would only be bringing Mangband closer to Angband 3.0.1.

-CheeseToast

[Zaira]

Dear god this would be useful.  As someone who has recently gotten heavily into mangband I bought lit-bolt as a guaranteed spell.  I have used it almost never since.  For its mana cost it has severely worse damage than most of the spells, and its redeeming feature (that of high stream or beam chance) is almost completely gone.  Do bring this back - it would definitely make the spell more useful and applicable for people who are more used to the vanilla version.

[Maegdae]

 I must say, I am very prejudiced for mage attack spells;
I believe they are more "in character" for a mage than combat enhancing spells (I see them as being more of a Paladin thing).  I think that, barring any large programming blocks, making lightning bolt always beam would be a good step forward.

[Domino]

Oh god yes.  One of the things I have always been annoyed about with mages is that... IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAY AS A MAGE!  The spells do squat for damage and so you end up playing a weak fighter with supplimentary protections.

[Ashi]

Mages also can't rely on spells after a certain level, since monsters have thousands of HP and the highest damage spell is Mana Storm. The Mana Storm spell should be about 2-3 times its current damage. Considering its high level and mana cost, it should have some reason to be used instead of a single round of melee. The only problem would be its damage to players. It would need to remain at its current damage to players.

[Avenger]

I have a low level mage named Morfuin, and i agree with increasing the power of spells. Morfuin is beginning to learn some of the spells like lightning bolt, which would be more useful with the greater power.

[Berendol]

I'd like to reopen this topic for discussion on my area of the forum. Would anyone with good suggestions please post there? Thanks. I'd like ideas for reworking the whole set of magic books, especially using higher magic elements than are currently used in them. In your ultimate spellbook system, please leave some spells for rangers and rogues as well, because they have to use the same books.