Wizman uses Enhanced Spells. They're super-effective!

[Captain_Bravo]

Cross-posting from SA:

Spell Enhancement - by choosing multiple copies of a spell, the original spell is improved in some way.

Cluwne's Revenge - Each enhancement reduces spell cooldown by 20 seconds
Fireball - Each enhancement increases blast radius by 1 tile
Bull's Charge - Each enhancement adds 40 brute damage to anyone hit by the bull
Rathen's Secret - Each enhancement causes a chance of additional limbs to be removed (At x4 there is a chance for brains to be ejected, and cyborg heads to pop off)
Animate Golem - Each enhancement adds a 25% chance of an additional golem spawning per cast
Blink - Each enhancement makes Blink more precise (I.E. from a 1-7 tile jump, to 2-6, then 3-5, and at x4 every blink takes you exactly 4 tiles)
Doppelganger - Each enhancement makes your doppelgangers more dangerous (X2 turns doppelganger into an npc that attacks anyone nearby. x3 buffs it considerably. x4 spawns a pack of wizards)
etc.

Basically, the gist is that by sacrificing some of your spell slots, you give the spells that you already have extra functionality, or make them better at what they do. Spending one spell point on Fireball gives you a useful tool to slow down small groups or fuck up one dude's day. Spending four points on fireball makes you go all-in, but allows you to clear a room with a single cast. It should be piss easy to code, because most of the upgrades just involved changing one or two variables. (Most, not all.)

Additional spell ideas:
Blind: First enhancement turns Blind into a small AoE centered on the caster, which blinds anyone within 1 tile. Each additional enhancement increases the radius of the spell.
Ice Beam: First enhancement doubles the amount of projectiles. Second enhancement makes the missile pop in an AoE when it hits. Third enhancement coats floors with Space Lube instead of Ice.
Warp: Each enhancement adds a 25% chance of Warp spawning a hostile mob in the location the person was warped away from.
Shocking Grasp: Each enhancement reduces the cooldown of Shocking Grasp but, also increases the charge time needed to activate it.
Knock: First two enhancements increase the range of knock substantially. Final enhancement makes knock emag everything in range.
Pandemonium: Each enhancement increases the list of things that can happen. x1: adds a chance to spawn a group of weak npcs x2: adds a chance to spawn a group of hostile mobs x3 adds a chance to spawn a group of hostile bees
Empower: First enhancement gives the wizard all beneficial melee mutations for the duration of the cast. Muscles, stamina boost, human SMES, etc. Second enhancement gives the wizard access to wrestling moves. Third enhancement gives the wizard access to Maecho moves.
Teleport: Each enhancement increases the cooldown of the spell. The first allows the wizard to target someone else with teleport. Second enhancement heals the wizman when he teleports. Third enhancement makes this spell automatically activate when the wizard drops into crit. (Wizard is effectively immortal unless you crusher him/debrain/bomb/etc. or he's stupid enough to run back to the station while it's still on cooldown)
Soulguard: Each enhancement gives the wizard an additional 100 health
Forcewall: The first enhancement allows you to dispel your forcewall at will. The second allows you to walk through your forcewall. The third makes your forcewall last permanently, until you dispel it. A wizard can only have one forcewall up at any time.
Animate Dead: The first enhancement lowers cooldown. The second enhancement causes you to also summon a chattering skull that makes skull puns whenever you skeletonize a body. The final enhancement causes everything within two tiles of the corpse you skeletonize to come to life (I.E. Anima effect)
Staff of Cthulu: First enhancement allows the staff to disguise you. Right-click the staff in your hand, and select a job choice to take on the appearance and voice of a randomized crew member. (I.E. anyone that sees you will see a randomized crew member, such as John Henks the Clown. Examining you will show your true self) Second enhancement will give an O2 toggle at the top of the screen while you're holding the staff, like if you were wearing an air tank and breath mask. It also makes you immune to the effects of space while holding the staff. Third enhancement allows the staff to hypnotize crew members for short periods of time. Bonk them on the head with your staff, and they become mindslaved for 30 to 60 seconds.

Those are my suggestions! With each, I tried to keep in mind that maximum enhancements should give you something good, since you're going all-in on your points. Therefore I tried to make each 4-crystal suggestion something worth putting all your eggs in, while not going too far and making it overpowered. (Maecho moves and mindslave staff might be a bit over the line, I dunno.) What do you guys think?

[FloozyBarge]

Staff of Cthulu: First enhancement allows the staff to disguise you. Right-click the staff in your hand, and select a job choice to take on the appearance and voice of a randomized crew member. (I.E. anyone that sees you will see a randomized crew member, such as John Henks the Clown. Examining you will show your true self) Second enhancement will give an O2 toggle at the top of the screen while you're holding the staff, like if you were wearing an air tank and breath mask. It also makes you immune to the effects of space while holding the staff. Third enhancement allows the staff to hypnotize crew members for short periods of time. Bonk them on the head with your staff, and they become mindslaved for 30 to 60 seconds.

*bonk* kill yourself
*bonk* kill yourself
*bonk* kill yourself
*bonk* kill yourself
*bonk* kill yourself

[Captain_Bravo]

Good point. What about this, instead, then?

Staff of Cthulu: First enhancement allows the tentacles on the staff to grab on to you, letting the staff go in the backpack slot. This gives you two hands free, and makes it impossible for you to drop the staff. You can still cast spells while it's on your back. Second enhancement will give an O2 toggle and jetpack toggle at the top of the screen, effectively turning the staff into an infinite jetpack. It also makes you immune to the effects of space while holding the staff. Third enhancement allows the staff to disguise you. Right-click the staff in your hand, and select a job choice to take on the appearance and voice of a randomized crew member. (I.E. anyone that sees you will see a randomized crew member, such as John Henks the Clown. Examining you will show your true self)

Now the staff will not help you in combat at all, but it's got extraordinarily more utility. If you go all-in on staff of cthulu, you're useless in PVP, but ideally you won't need it.

[Walrus]

I think that this is a cool idea that should be put on a trial run at the very least. More variety for wizard loadouts makes it easier to contrast between defensive and offensive wizards.

[I-Sett]

Yessss. I really like these ideas. More variety in wizard types is always great rather than the banal Phaseshift->Magic missile->fireball->shockinggrasp with soulguard combos I see ALL the time. I'd love to see an All In Bulls Charge wizard smashing around.

Four spell points in cluwne needs to have something else I think to make it a bit more appealing, low cooldown is great, but it would be nice if for instance cloning a cluwne transformed by a 4 point Cluwne Wizard meant the resulting clone would STILL be a cluwne. Permacluwnes! That might balance things out a bit more for the wizard.

[robertGN]

Staff of Cthulu: First enhancement allows the tentacles on the staff to grab on to you, letting the staff go in the backpack slot. This gives you two hands free, and makes it impossible for you to drop the staff. You can still cast spells while it's on your back. Second enhancement will give an O2 toggle and jetpack toggle at the top of the screen, effectively turning the staff into an infinite jetpack. It also makes you immune to the effects of space while holding the staff. Third enhancement allows the staff to disguise you. Right-click the staff in your hand, and select a job choice to take on the appearance and voice of a randomized crew member. (I.E. anyone that sees you will see a randomized crew member, such as John Henks the Clown. Examining you will show your true self)

Maybe make it less changelingy? I mean a full staff is pretty much just a shitty changeling.
Plus, the mindslave idea was good, it would require you to get CLOSE to your target and hit them, preferably breaking your disguise,

[robertGN]

Woops double post.

It would also allow for a stealth wizard playstyle, which would stop the wizard from being COMPLETELY rampage orientated.

[Captain_Bravo]

In my mind, the point of enhancing the staff of cthulu is to make life easier for the wizman. Spending a telecrystal on the staff just makes it so people have a harder time stealing it from you. Using that as the basis, each additional point makes it harder for you to be griffed, until the point where you're basically almost undetectable. 1 point makes people not able to grab your staff. 2 points makes it so people can't push you over and numb your spells, three points lets you run away basically anywhere, and four points is the next best thing to being invisible.

The downside is that you're also kind of useless. No real combat skills, fuck-all for utility, it's the build for someone that had a specific traitor or changeling gimmick in mind, but ended up rolling wizard instead. Just blow it all on the staff, and basically ignore your wizman imperative.

[Erev]

Staff ideas:

1 point will get you the staff.
2 points will let you cast normally with non-magical clothing so long as you hold the staff.
3 points makes the staff invisible to everyone else and lets you cast beardless.
4 points lets you summon a new identity twice per round - giving you a new name, looks, ID, and corresponding jumpsuit. - I'm not sold on this last one. Needs tweaking but lunch is about over.

[DyssalC]

Give one of the enhancement levels for the Staff of Cthulhu be the ability to summon it to your hand.

Or just make that a thing it can do normally.

[Captain_Bravo]

Staff ideas:

1 point will get you the staff.
2 points will let you cast normally with non-magical clothing so long as you hold the staff.
3 points makes the staff invisible to everyone else and lets you cast beardless.
4 points lets you summon a new identity twice per round - giving you a new name, looks, ID, and corresponding jumpsuit. - I'm not sold on this last one. Needs tweaking but lunch is about over.

I don't know that this could work, since shaving the last wizard ends the round, but I really like the idea! How about this:\

1 point - Staff of Cthulu
2 points - Staff deals 25 brute damage when thrown, and knocks down whoever is hit by it (Similar to Butcher Knife)
3 points - You can cast spells without penalty even when not holding the staff. (So you can throw it, and then cast a full-power fireball, or magic missile, or whatever)
3 points - You can cast spells when wearing non-magical clothing, and clean-shaven. Doing so incurs a penalty to the spell similar to casting a spell without a staff. (Meaning you can now blend in completely. You can shave your beard, throw on a jumpsuit, stick the staff in your backpack, and still magic missile/phase shift/etc.)

[Roomba]

I think all level 4 spells should at least include some form of direct damage-dealing capacity, because the wiz's objectives still generally call for the assassination of people. Some ideas I had:

Staff of Cthulhu - suggested this in it's thread, but what if an enhanced staff could apply random spell effects to whoever it hit every once in a while? So every once in a while some poor victim finds himself getting bonked and warped away, or blinded, or cluwned if the wiz gets extremely lucky. Maybe it works with a cooldown, so it's not more efficient than the spells themselves.

Bull's charge - at level 4, it works like phase shift, and when the bull materializes, it moves with the force of a meteor, busting through any walls in the way.

Pandemonium - should really get more random effects than 'spawn angry stuff'. Something like turning everyone in the vicinity into monkeys, or shrinking them, or swapping all their minds around randomly, stuff like that.

Knock - at level 4, can be aimed at a person and rips them apart from the inside-out, dealing massive brute and bleeding damage.

Blind - each enhancement increases the cooldown, but makes it last longer. At level 4 you get a perma-blind with a cool down of over a minute.

Doppelgänger - at level 4, spawns angry doppelgängers of not just yourself, but everyone in the vicinity.

Soulguard - the wiz gets some kind of life-draining move, and every time he drains a few people he gets another life. Maybe a bit too changeling/vampy though.

Blink - wiz gets X-Ray vision and can choose the exact spot he wants to warp to, within a certain range. If he warps into an occupied space, anyone there will be teleported to where the wiz previously was.

Warp - each enhancement increases the range people can be teleported. At level 4 people can be warped off the z-level altogether.

I tank it'd be hard to balance some of these, though. Ideally you'd have to balance it so every combination, especially all of the four-point ones are equally viable/fun to use, so wizzes don't just pick level 4 fireball every round and people just call the shuttle and hold up in the chapel with lazer guns if they so much as hear a wiz.