# Talk:Spellcasting
Contents

1 Error in Table?
2 Penalty table
3 Hit change
4 Error in formula for difficulty?
5 Necessity of the "older version" of spell calculator tool?

Error in Table?
Playing as a Barbarian, I noticed a decrease in spell failure when removing an Elven shield. If I am reading the table correctly, this should not happen. Am I reading the formula incorrectly or is there a mistake? Yesennes 12:48, March 24 2016 (UTC)

If you are wearing a shield larger than a small shield, the chance is then reduced to 1/4 its amount (except if it is the special spell for your class -- then it is only halved).
This is separate from the listed shield penalty. Wearing a small shield should give no change in spellcasting rates (For those roles with a 0 in the shield column). -- Qazmlpok (talk) 15:39, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Penalty table
I completely agree with Derekt75, no need for two copies of the same table. But I think the OTHER table, the one that was deleted, is better than the one we kept. Maybe we should swap them around or combine their designs to make an even better super table? Blackcustard 22:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Here are the differences that I remember:
different order of columns
different placement in article
deleted table had a last column that contained a "-4" for every special spell
I figured that the column order didn't matter, and that the -4 was indicated in the text immediately preceding the table, so I chose the table that had the newer placement.  Were there other differences that I missed?  Is the "-4" useful?  Was the previous column order useful?  Derekt75 23:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
I had missed that the deleted table had more links.  I added some links to the existing table (including having Int go directly to intelligence rather than a disambig page).  It's fine with me if you want to replace this table with the older one, though; to me they're both the same.  Derekt75 00:03, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually I was mostly reacting to the annoying abbreviations, e.g. "EMERG". I patched that up and the new table is now perfect. You found a couple other good changes to make I hadn't noticed. For the record, you can look at the deleted table in the page's history, no need to go on memory. Blackcustard 23:30, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Hit change
I'm having trouble finding information about spell hit chance. What stats have an effect and so forth. All I can recall is that it's typically better than that of a wand counterpart, but I can't find information about that either. Denky (talk) 11:33, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Error in formula for difficulty?
Looking in the source, we see:
difficulty= (spellev(spell)-1) * 4 - ((skill * 6) + (u.ulevel/3) + 1);
So

should be

Using this modified formula explains why my Valkyrie cannot cast identify yet (failure=100%), using the original formula I should have a mall chance.
Martijn Lievaart
--82.161.179.3 19:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

fixed, thank you. --Tjr (talk) 08:14, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Necessity of the "older version" of spell calculator tool?
Is there any necessity to reference the "older version" of the spell calculator tool?
The (initial) versions are both from 2006 (from the same author), the "older" tool has just been an intermediate development step for the actual tool. The actual tool is still maintained, the "older version" one is not.