Psionic Angband 1.0.4:
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 psioncist 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:
 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 boni 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 boni 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.

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
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 - monsters can forget spells too...

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.

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 '>'
Teleport Other - hmm.
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
Adrenalin Contol - like berserk but better
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 cheap and probably overpowered beam of force
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 - remove fear, restore int,wis,exp
II
Splice - do several powers in a row - cast it again to end a splice early
Ultrablast - a large psionic ball centered on yourself
Time Control - haste
III
Psychic Drain - a psionic attack that gives you mana
*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
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 OOD items/monsters and vaults on level creation

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.

Here are the other changes, largely unrelated to psionics:
-The Dos 2.8.2 display problem has been fixed.
-Greg Wooledge's random artifacts (0.5.1) have been added
-the random artifact generator has been changed slightly
-'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.
-Ctrl-J is a new debugging command.
-The black market generates deeper items the deeper you go.
-Cheat_know doesn't say 32767 kills any more (a side effect of analyze monster).
-Certain level generation constants have been slightly changed.
(OOD items/monster and vaults are more common)
-OOD monsters in vaults no longer contribute to level feelings.
-A more powerful heal spell has been added for monsters.

Known bugs / future changes:
-Right now, few monsters actually have the new heal spell. (You can add it by
adding HEAL2 to their spell lists).
-The domination interface is pretty bad and monsters should be highlighted
with the cursor instead of writing directly to video memory.
-Psionic monsters should be added.
-Psionicists may still be overpowered at high levels.
-Perhaps wisdom should be used for certain psionic abilities, such as amounts
of mana or damage.
-Random uniqes would be cool.

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.)

History:
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 1.00
        (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)
