Why are there separate 'p' and 'm' commands?

I wouldn't even make a pref file mapping, myself.

And separate 'z' and 'a' and 'u' commands? I will hazard a guess that they're separate for largely historical reasons: because Moria (or Hack, or Rogue!) used different keystrokes for 'p'ray vs 'm'agic.

I raised this question with a group of players I know, and one line of response I thought was important enough to quote here:

[angband] someguy says, "I actually like having distinct commands, actually"
[angband] someguy says, "because it means when something I type gets consumed by a -more- without me noticing, the odds are lower that what I'll type will be valid"
[angband] vimes says, "urgh, i stepped on a trap the other day because I was trying to cast something and didn't notice that some portion of my command sequence had gotten out of sync, so even though I'm in roguelike commands, hitting '2' moved me south"
[angband] vimes says, "2 not on the number pad, even"
[angband] vimes says, "good bye a huge pile of stuff I hadn't gotten around to identifying yet, because of course the trap I stepped on was a trap door"
[angband] inky says, "bah"

Ben wanted to unify u/z/a, but not necessarily with 'E' or 'q'. (To free up the extra keys for macros.)

The number pad/not number pad thing is fair comment, but I don't know if that's really fixable.

Strangely enough, while I use "m" for casting spells whether I'm a mage or a priest and ignore the "p" key entirely unless playing some variant which uses it for trap-setting or pet commands or something, I still kind of like the separate zap/use/aim commands - for one thing, it reduces clutter on the screen: if I want to use a staff, I don't want wands and rods cluttering up my list; they are used for different things! (Usually wands are used for attacking from a distance, staves are used for healing and divination spells, and rods - well, they're a mix of both, but their scope of use is different: while a staff or wand can be used only a limited number of times but can be used repeatedly without any charge time, a rod is just the opposite.) So if I press "a" to aim a wand, I'm *probably* trying to attack a monster that wants to kill me, and I don't really want to waste a turn casting "detect traps", and having different commands prevents me from accidentally doing so. So basically, my viewpoint is, I personally prefer the separate commands as they are, but I won't be *too* bent out of shape if they're changed to a unified command! (Though I'd prefer that it be "a" or "z", not "u"... for some reason pressing the "use" key to attack seems rather... unintuitive, to say the least? Aim and zap sound more... aggressive :D Plus, "a" and "z" are easier to reach when you're using the numpad to move with - you don't need to move a hand over to the middle of the keyboard!) Man, did I go off on a diatribe there... :P

I didn't mean to suggest *I* wanted to unify them. :) Though I may well do that in my variant...

While I appreciate the discussion around unifying the other commands, unifying 'p' and 'm' is the suggestion here ;)

Simply because these are actually the same command, just for different classes... it doesn't make a huge amount of sense having separately commands.