CF: Are these bugs?

[David Andrew Michael Noelle <dave@Straylight.org>]

Some odd things I've noticed that may or may not be bugs:

1) Holy Word vs Banishment

    Should a priest of Lythander, who regularly slays large trolls with two
or three Holy Words, be unable to affect them in any visible way with
Banishment?  I have follower of Lythander, with wisdom level 17, thanks to
Holy Word and Summon Avatar, who has never once been able to kill a large
troll with Banishment.  Holy Orb and Holy Wrath seem to work fine, though,
and Banishment works on small trolls with enough castings.  It seems like I
just can't do enough damage fast enough with Banishment.
    As far as I can tell, there are three differences between these two Holy
Effect cone spells.  Banishment adds Death to the attack vector, it does
zero damage, and it gets no wisdom bonus.  That zero damage stumped me for a
while, until I realized that Death attacks don't depend on damage, only on
the relative levels of the caster and target.  So, with that zero, the Holy
Effect vector does 3 * 0 damage.  Why is it there?  Shouldn't Banishment at
least hurt a little even if the target is strong enough to resist being
destroyed?

2) Undead

    Only priests of a cult that considers undead their enemy (or unaligned?
priests) can banish them or slay them with Holy Word, but any priest (of
sufficient level) can Turn or Command them.  Should Turn Undead and Command
Undead be usable if undead are neither friends nor foes?  Lythander and
Mostrai, for example, should have _no_ power over undead, while Gaea and
Valriel should be better than "unaligned" at turning them, but not so good
at controlling them.  Devourers on the other hand, should be able to Command
Undead especially well, but unable to turn them at all.

3) GTK Client & Split Windows

    Is anyone else having this problem?  When I use split windows with the
GTK client, the map window always comes up blank.  I can't see what I'm
doing.  So I have to use one window, which doesn't remember its size, or how
the sub-windows were divided.  Am I doing something wrong here?

4) Pupland Raffle 2

    In Raffle2, on the Warrior side of the third level, when I melt the ice
cube and wait a few minutes, the yellow door still doesn't open.  As far as
I can tell from reading the map, that's all it should take.  Am I missing
something?  And is there a way to complete this challenge without Dimension
Door, Show Invisible and Word of Recall (in case you get trapped in the E
room for example)?  Perhaps there should be a warning to that effect.

5) Rare Prayers

    From reading the gods.c code, when a god considers whether to grant a
rare prayer, only prayers of aligned paths (and non-repelled - redundant? if
not redundant, why isn't non-denied checked?) are considered.  That makes
them extremely rare and encourages priests to switch gods to learn all the
spells.  Wouldn't attuned or neutral be better?

6) Protected && Vulnerable == immune to protection?

    It's possible to be protected and vulnerable to the same attack type,
which apparently cancels out.  (dam *= 2; dam /= 2;)  That kinda makes
sense.  But why would Lythander grant his priests protection from confusion
AND make them vulnerable to confusion?  It not only cancels out, but it
prevents any other Protection from Confusion magic from working.  This /has/
to be a mistake, right?  Even if protection is made additive, it just
doesn't make sense.

7) Your weapon still hungers to slay enemies of ... nobody in particular

    Gods only grant slaying power to weapons that aren't already enchanted
to slay something.  Any particular reason for that?  I don't see why Valriel
should decline to make a Dragonslayer also slay demons and devils.  It would
just become a Dragonslayer of Valriel.
    The gods' refusal to bless each other's sacred weapons already prevents
one weapon from being blessed to slay the enemies of multiple gods.  There's
no problem with adding a god's attacktype to a magical weapon.  If it's just
a matter of merging the slaying fields, I have a patch for that.  I'm
testing it now and it seems to work okay.

8) Speed Buffer

    When a player runs, but can't move, the movement is apparently buffered
so that they'll move faster once they're no longer blocked, to catch up with
where they would have been if they weren't blocked in the first place.  I
don't know what problem this buffered speed is supposed to solve, but I find
it a problem in its own right.
    First of all, it just doesn't make sense.  If your character is chopping
up some monster instead of actually running, why should that monster's death
suddenly let you zoom to where you would have been if you hadn't been
fighting?  The same goes for doors.  And running at a gate while waiting for
it to open does the same thing.  I wouldn't mind waiting for a gate to open
once in a while if it meant fixing the rest of this.
    And secondly, it's dangerous.  When you're hitting the movement keys too
fast or holding the run key to beat up some door or monster, you may not
know what's on the other side.  Or you may not know what will be on the
other side at the moment your obstacle dies.  That can be painful,
destructive, possibly deadly, and definitely annoying.
    I saw some mention in one of the text files of a "keyboard" command that
would toggle the keyboard buffer on and off.  That might help, if it was
actually available on the GTKclient.  I don't know if it exists on the X
client.  A user-settable command buffer size would be better, but either
way, that speed buffer is still a problem.

-- 
            -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
            -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org
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