Does failing to cast a spell train that skill slot?

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SSIA.

Thanks...

 

[Guest]

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The question was in the subject. The 'subject said it all'.

Thanks...

 

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thiskidrob@yahoo.com wrote:
> SSIA.

SSIA?


--
If geiger counter does not click,
the coffee, she is just not thick

 

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In article <dfhurk$1vn$03$1@news.t-online.com>, sepp00@web.de says...
> thiskidrob@yahoo.com wrote:
> > SSIA.
>
> SSIA?

Presumably 'Subject Says It All' or 'I'm too lazy to type a simlpe
question'...

 

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thiskidrob@yahoo.com wrote:

> The question was in the subject. The 'subject said it all'.

(my turn!)

That's not the way we do it here. It's one of the customs of r.g.r.n. to
use a meaningful subject AND put all the information in the text field;
this is not a bulletin board or a web forum, not even if you (generic,
not you-thiskidrob in particular) read it on Google.

Raisse, killed by a water troll, while helpless
--
irina@valdyas.org LegoHack: http://www.valdyas.org/irina/nethack/
Status of Raisse (piously neutral): Level 8 HP 63(67) AC -3, fast.

 

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Ken Sharp <ken@spamcop.net> writes:
> In article <dfhurk$1vn$03$1@news.t-online.com>, sepp00@web.de says...
> > thiskidrob@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > SSIA.
> > SSIA?
> Presumably 'Subject Says It All' or 'I'm too lazy to type a simlpe
> question'...

But not too lazy to put it all in the subject field?
Weird.

--
Jukka Lahtinen

 

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Jukka Lahtinen wrote:
> Ken Sharp <ken@spamcop.net> writes:
>
>>In article <dfhurk$1vn$03$1@news.t-online.com>, sepp00@web.de says...
>>
>>>thiskidrob@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>
>>>>SSIA.
>>>
>>>SSIA?
>>
>>Presumably 'Subject Says It All' or 'I'm too lazy to type a simlpe
>>question'...
>
>
> But not too lazy to put it all in the subject field?
> Weird.
>
Protocol aside it's still an interesting question so if it brings some
kind of answer to it I'm only too happy to copy-and-paste the subject
line into the message text:

Does failing to cast a spell train that skill slot?

My hunch is that it would't help trying to cast a spell with 100% fail
over and over, but what about, say 63% and failing the attempt? My hunch
still says 'No'.

But why not? Compared to a RL learning proces the chance of learning
something from a mistake is very slim if you don't know anything about
the subject. When you become more skilled however you will be able to
recognize your mistakes as you make them adding to your chance of
reducing them in the future.

Now we're at it: Shoudn't your chance of successfully reading a
spellbook be influenced by your skill in the relevant spell class?
Shoudn't the concepts of fx a high-level attack spell be easier to grasp
if you're well-familiar with other attack spells (don't they have
something in common)?

Happy hacking
Jens

PS! thiskidrob: Please don't mind those blockheads. They've been lurking
in this ng since 1985 and eat tripe for breakfast. DO keep hanging
around and keep posting (but lay off of that SSIA-sh... please)
--
Jens Oestergaard
joester@jabberwock.pc.dk -- remove meanie

 

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On Sep 6, 2005, thiskidrob@yahoo.com sent message
<1125939224.782435.104260@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, which
allegedly said:

> SSIA.
>
> Thanks...
>

No, Skill Slot Is (not) Assisted

Have Fun
Martin
--
Playing NH3.4.3 in TTY or Qt on Mac OS X

 

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Jens Oestergaard <joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> writes:

> Does failing to cast a spell train that skill slot?

AFAIK, no. Only successful castings (no matter whether they actually hit
something or have some other effect or not).

> But why not? Compared to a RL learning proces the chance of learning
> something from a mistake is very slim if you don't know anything about the

NHINRL..
(NetHack Is Not Real Life)

> subject. When you become more skilled however you will be able to
> recognize your mistakes as you make them adding to your chance of reducing

I guess the NH characters just can't figure it out what went wrong.

--
Jukka Lahtinen

 

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On 06 Sep 2005 09:18:40 +0300, Jukka Lahtinen
<jslnews@despammed.com> wrote:

>Jens Oestergaard <joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> writes:
>
>> Does failing to cast a spell train that skill slot?
>
>AFAIK, no. Only successful castings (no matter whether they actually hit
>something or have some other effect or not).
>
>> But why not? Compared to a RL learning proces the chance of learning
>> something from a mistake is very slim if you don't know anything about the
>
>NHINRL..
>(NetHack Is Not Real Life)
>
>> subject. When you become more skilled however you will be able to
>> recognize your mistakes as you make them adding to your chance of reducing
>
>I guess the NH characters just can't figure it out what went wrong.


Or Jens is right, but that's already been factored into skill
advancement.

Meaning skill advancement actually becomes almost exponentially
difficult as skill goes up. But the (already) advanced skill
improves learning ability to the point that the difficulty looks
linear.


--
All the best,

Jove

 

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Jukka Lahtinen wrote:
> NHINRL..
> (NetHack Is Not Real Life)

Right, but it still mimics certain aspetcts of rl for instance gravity.
Ask anybody who has ever died of falling some way or the other (not
those in rl obviously).

> I guess the NH characters just can't figure it out what went wrong.

Well, at least not in the present version. I'm just wondering why it
hasn't been done. It's an obvious thing to do.

--
Jens Oestergaard
joester@jabberwock.pc.dk -- remove meanie

 

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Jove wrote:

>
> Or Jens is right, but that's already been factored into skill
> advancement.
>
> Meaning skill advancement actually becomes almost exponentially
> difficult as skill goes up. But the (already) advanced skill
> improves learning ability to the point that the difficulty looks
> linear.
>

Ah, that's another way of creating the same effect. If I understand you
correctly it will also makes the skill gain from lower level spells
relativly smaller as the player reaches higher skill levels.

Just out of curiosity: What will be the optimum spell level to train a
skill. How high a fail rate is acceptable before the number of failed
attempts neutralizes the extra gain per succesful attempt (statistically)?

Happy hacking
Jens
--
Jens Oestergaard
joester@jabberwock.pc.dk -- remove meanie

 

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On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 06:22:01 +0200, Jens Oestergaard
<joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> wrote:

>Jove wrote:
>
>>
>> Or Jens is right, but that's already been factored into skill
>> advancement.
>>
>> Meaning skill advancement actually becomes almost exponentially
>> difficult as skill goes up. But the (already) advanced skill
>> improves learning ability to the point that the difficulty looks
>> linear.
>>
>
>Ah, that's another way of creating the same effect. If I understand you
>correctly it will also makes the skill gain from lower level spells
>relativly smaller as the player reaches higher skill levels.

That's a good point and does seem to follow from my argument.
The best I can do is point out that you're still casting the
lower level *spells* at a higher *skill* level. (Emphasis added
for my own benefit.)

It's kind of like: "It's what you learn after you know it all
that really counts."

Spells in a school tend to become more effective as skill in
that school goes up. So you're casting it "smarter" as your
skill goes up. So it's arguable that doing so continues to
improve your skill at learning.

This rationale is necessary because any spell successfully cast
contributes the same to learning its school in Nethack.

This could also be reflected in the failure rate for spells.
Once you lower the failure rate to 0%, you're starting to
really learn to make use of the spell, instead of concentrating
most of the effort on getting the *&^%#$ spell to work in the
first place.

More evidence for: "The best way to study a subject is to know
it thoroughly before you start."

There's also a school of thought (mine) that says some things
just take time to learn. So more exposure even at a low level
is useful. Think of marinating steak instead of pounding it with
a tenderizing hammer. Or of a box of laundry detergent. The
gentle shaking it gets being moved from the factory to your home
causes the contents to "settle", even if it was packed full at
the factory. If the factory tried to achieve the same effect by
compressing the contents, they'd get a solid block of detergent,
instead of usefully free-flowing material.

And I believe it's true that just watching someone really
*good* at what they do (painting (portraits or walls), cooking,
acting, plumbing or dancing) can be an education by itself.
Even if they're doing something simple.

>
>Just out of curiosity: What will be the optimum spell level to train a
>skill. How high a fail rate is acceptable before the number of failed
>attempts neutralizes the extra gain per succesful attempt (statistically)?
>

It depends on the usefulness of the spell, its power cost,
and how quickly it improves.

I'll practice the spell of haste self early, even with a
failure rate of 77%. Because early wizards desperately need
speed, the mana cost is low enough, and one #enhancement
will give a 0% failure rate (depending on armor).

I'll even take off spell-hindering armor to do so.

All of those qualifications also apply to the spells of
identification and remove curse.

The spell of wizard lock meets all those conditions except
one: usefulness. So it doesn't get practiced.

The spell of protection generally starts out at 0% failure
with low mana cost. But it's still barely worth casting enough
to improve the skill level, and is generally ignored until a
better spell in the clerical school is available. Then it's
giving +protection enough attention to enhance clerical skill.

Ditto spell of detect food.

Spells of jumping and light start out 0% fail, or close to it.
And are worth casting for themselves and to improve skill level.

Spell of create monster: by the time I want to use it, I'll
generally go ahead and cast it even with a mid-level failure
rate (~40%) because I want the effects. Even if I could be
casting protection at 0% failure instead.


Something else to remember is that failure rates and spell
effectiveness also depend to a certain extent on the character's
experience level. Magic missile is a level 2 spell, but does
one d6 damage for every experience level the caster has.

So more than just experience in a spell school affects how
effectively those spells are cast.



--
All the best,

Jove

 

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Jens Oestergaard <joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> wrote in
news:431e6a42$0$73092$edfadb0f@dread14.news.tele.dk:

> Just out of curiosity: What will be the optimum spell level to train
> a skill. How high a fail rate is acceptable before the number of
> failed attempts neutralizes the extra gain per succesful attempt
> (statistically)?

Well, what are you comparing against?
(The following is all IIRC, so I may be wrong)
If you mean "what is the most efficient use of power points" then I would
think it would be to use the lowest level possible as spell cost
increases quickly (IIRC exponentially) as spell level goes up, but the
training increases linearly.

If you mean "what is the most efficient in terms of number of turns
used" then I think you would just want to maximize (success rate)*(spell
level).

 

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Jens Oestergaard wrote:
>
> Just out of curiosity: What will be the optimum spell level to train a
> skill.

I'll give a simpler answer than the other postings.
Spell level 1 will have a lower failure rate and
take less mana than any spell level 2 or higher in
the same school.

So use level 1 spells in each school to train that
skill. Cast force bolt on all doors and monsters
until you are offered to enhance attack school,
jump again and again until offered to enhance
escape school, and so on. Each school will have
at least one spell that's level 1.

> How high a fail rate is acceptable before the number of failed
> attempts neutralizes the extra gain per succesful attempt (statistically)?

Game play answer not statistical answer: If it is
crucial that you succeed, don't bother with spells
that have low chances. You don't want to fail
casting finger of death when facing your Quest
nemesis so pick your high-chance attack spell. On
the other hand if you are alone in a room trying
to ID your items, even a 67% failure rate on
identify is not a problem.

 

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In article <431e6a42$0$73092$edfadb0f@dread14.news.tele.dk>, Jens
Oestergaard <joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> says...
> Just out of curiosity: What will be the optimum spell level to train a
> skill. How high a fail rate is acceptable before the number of failed
> attempts neutralizes the extra gain per succesful attempt (statistically)?
>
Skill level increases require a variable "x" to be of a certain level. For
each successful spell cast, the level of that spell is added to x.

The mana used for casting a spell increases linearly with the spell level -
equal to ( 5 * spell_level )

For a given school:

To maximise the learning per turn: practice with the spell with the largest
value of ( success_rate * spell_level )

To maximise the learning per mana: practice with the spell with the largest
value of ( success_rate ).

 

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Jens Oestergaard wrote:

> But why not? Compared to a RL learning proces the chance of learning
> something from a mistake is very slim if you don't know anything about
> the subject. When you become more skilled however you will be able to
> recognize your mistakes as you make them adding to your chance of
> reducing them in the future.

In Dutch, we have a saying that goes something like "You have to fall to
learn to stand up", ie you can only learn by making mistakes.

I would propose that learning (gaining the possibility to raise your
skill level in a fighting or casting skill slot) would be counted by
*failed* attempts (to hit a monster or to cast a spell). You would
always need 30 instances to open up the slot for an increase (and you'd
still have to gain an XP level as well).

For example, you'd need 30 misses and 1 skill slot to raise your skill
level from unskilled to basic. Then, you would again need 30 misses (and
2 skill slots) to go to skilled. 30 misses and 3 skill slots would raise
you to expert.

Note that when your chance to hit increases, it becomes more and more
difficult to miss, so these 30 misses would be ever more difficult to
achieve.

Boudewijn.

--
"I have hundreds of other quotes, just waiting to replace this one
as my signature..." - Me

 

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Boudewijn Waijers wrote:
> Note that when your chance to hit increases, it becomes more and more
> difficult to miss, so these 30 misses would be ever more difficult to
> achieve.
>

Until the wizard puts on some metallic armor...

 

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Andrew Kerr wrote:
> Doug Freyburger says...
>
> > In athletics the saying goes - "Practice makes permanent,
> > so practice right". I think that is the DevTeam principle
> > in effect here.
>
> That I think is a slightly different type of learning. It is imprinting a
> pattern onto muscle memory.

The word for that is "training".

> Learning an abstract concept is a different matter AFAICS.

The concepts involved are "training" which involves imprinting
a reaction to the point you can use it automatically, and
"education" which involves absorbing an abstract to the point
you can use it in reasoning without reference to the books.

The idea of skills appears to be one of training per my
meaning. Use a weapon/spell/riding again and again and the
sucessfull uses make future uses so automatic they can
happen during combat.

The idea of skill *classes* appears to be one of education
about using the specific and moving it to the general. Get
good about a spell in one school and you have a better idea
of how to go about using a similar spell, or the same
pattern with weapons.

 

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In article <431cdd45$0$73055$edfadb0f@dread14.news.tele.dk>, Jens
Oestergaard <joester@jabberwock.pc.dk> says...
> But why not? Compared to a RL learning proces the chance of learning
> something from a mistake is very slim if you don't know anything about
> the subject. When you become more skilled however you will be able to
> recognize your mistakes as you make them adding to your chance of
> reducing them in the future.
>
>
Yes, and furthermore learning from a success won't happen if the success
wasn't a challenge.

YANI: Character learns from spell cast attempt if and only if the casting
roll (d100) is within 30 of the failure rate *before* capping the failure
rate at 0% or 100%.

Therefore, in order to maximise the chances of learning failure probability
needs to be between 30% and 70%. If failure rate before capping is <-30% or
>+130% then the caster will never learn.

Replace the value of 30 according to taste.

 

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BManx2000 wrote:
> Boudewijn Waijers wrote:
>
>> Note that when your chance to hit increases, it becomes more and more
>> difficult to miss, so these 30 misses would be ever more difficult to
>> achieve.
>>
>
> Until the wizard puts on some metallic armor...

The idea that prompted me to post in the first place was that there
perhaps should be a _chance_ of gaining to your skill when you fail. My
thought was: the higher the fail rate the lower the chance of gaining.
For example:

chance of gain (when failed) = succes% * (int+wiz)/100

or the like.

This means that if you have 34% fail on a certain spell and int+wiz is
30 your chance of gaining skill points would be 66*0.3=19.8%
Raising your fail rate to 77% would reduce your chance of gaining
anything on the attempt (when failed) to 23*0.3=6.9%

This might actually be set too low, but that's a mere question of
changing (int+wiz)/100 into sometning more suitable. Luck may also fit
in as a factor here. But It'll do as an example.

Since you gain fully from every succesful attempt already it woudln't
make any sense wearing metal to raise fail rate for a mere _chance_ of
gaining. Even if the player gained the same amount of skill points
regardless of fail or succes wearing metal would result in a mere
break-even.

Reversing the mechanism i.e. gaining skill from failure only OTOH will
invite exploits like the iron clad wizard you're describing.


Happy hacking
Jens
--
Jens Oestergaard
joester@jabberwock.pc.dk -- remove meanie

 

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In article <1126298795.343140.261230@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Doug
Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com> says...
> In athletics the saying goes - "Practice makes permanent,
> so practice right". I think that is the DevTeam principle
> in effect here.
>
That I think is a slightly different type of learning. It is imprinting a
pattern onto muscle memory.

Learning an abstract concept is a different matter AFAICS.

 

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In article <1126304948.036749.44320@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Doug
Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com> says...
> The idea of skills appears to be one of training per my
> meaning. Use a weapon/spell/riding again and again and the
> sucessfull uses make future uses so automatic they can
> happen during combat.
>
> The idea of skill *classes* appears to be one of education
> about using the specific and moving it to the general. Get
> good about a spell in one school and you have a better idea
> of how to go about using a similar spell, or the same
> pattern with weapons.
>
Agreed.