I've noticed that transmuters usually have both sides of the coin in their spells. You gots your disrupt bone, but you also have your repair bone. You have your gill growth, but you also have your gill removal. In the spirit of this I propose a new spell to opposite Occular Enhancement.
I was thinking along the lines of "Occular Deterioration." If they can enhance it, why can't they screw it up?

This spell, as the name implies, would deteriorate the targets vision rendering them unable to utilize some of the finer points of being able to see clearly.
This of course wouldn't be straight blind - that would be boring.
What I propose it should do is:

1) They are able to see people in the room, but are unable to see hidden/invisible/camo.

2)They would be able to see what room they're in, but not its description. (Like a forced brief mode)

3)They would be able to look at people, but not see what those people are wearing. (It would all be "Something")

4) They would still be able to initiate attacks, but unable to use disarm. (beause they cannot see the weapon well enough)

5)They would be rendered unable to do the following: Scan, see hidden/invis/camo, (as aforementioned) and see in the dark.

6)They would have a chance to manipulate the wrong item in their inventory (I.e, trying to wield a steak instead of a sword) and are unable to manipulate potions at all.

I kinda thought this should stop the target from using "where" as well, but thats probably a bit too nasty.

I - having played a few muters - think this would be a welcome addition to their repertoire, and add a few more options for lower level combat.
Thanks for your time ;)
-Drekten.

I liked the idea of muters giving vulns, not sure if I read it here. Having them give out vuln/resistance pairs would make it workable in balance. Ex:

Fur growth = vuln fire/res cold
Vascular Protrusion = vuln cold/res fire
Dessication = vuln water/res air
Mucousity = vuln air/res water

And so on, I got a truckful of these silly things.

Since muters have to do with anatomy and nerves...Why not have a forget type affect? IE Disrupt brain (or something to that effect) in which case either a forget affect (I'm not to keen on this as I am the next...) Or a scrambling of there uses. For example..You cast it on a warrior. That warrior in turn enters bash onto his screen. As an affect that checks a percentile of the disrupt spell he may end up doing something totally random like feinting or dirt kicking. And Enhance brain paramters. Which would basically do like berserk for warriors offensive abilities, raises the percentile of each ability like 5 percent and on up. Example...
af:
Enhance paramaters affected for 4 hours.

skill jab 85%(90%)

Just another idea...

>I was thinking along the lines of "Occular Deterioration." If
>they can enhance it, why can't they screw it up?

It would also be interesting to include with the other 'style'
of muter spells, not the gill growth vs. gill removal, but the
kind like 'decalcify + disrupt bone', where one builds at least
marginally or affects the other.

For example, neurological disruption already has some side effects,
but if their vision were degraded the chance for increased or
multiple vision-related side effects might also come into play.

Dude. You're still alive?

To transmuters!

I admit I've kicked around the idea of giving transmuters an anti-sight-ish spell in the past. My sticking points have been:

1) that I've had a hard time coming up with a version of it that is balanced/appropriate to the design of the class and doesn't duplicate Blindness or Sensory Distortion and

2) that I hadn't been able to come up with a better name than ocular '##### you, buddy!'

Maybe you'll see something along these lines, maybe not. I've learned the hard way not to make any promises. The Valg and I have been tossing around some Goofy 'Muter Ideas (tm) and you may witness them in all their goofiness someday.

>2) that I hadn't been able to come up with a better name than
>ocular '##### you, buddy!'

How about something like 'induce myopia'? The example looks a lot like my own eyesight without my glasses, which I'm told is the equivalent of being legally blind. If it's a form of nearsightedness, then the inventory manipulation thing doesn't make much sense. Even extreme myopics can tell the difference between a sword and a steak at arm's length, although they might think the sword was an umbrella.

One last thing, about that 'no disarm' thing that was mentioned: if you can see well enough to parry you can see well enough to disarm. Once you connect with their weapon, it's usually more a case of practice and muscle memory than vision. So, if disarm goes, so should parry.

nt

This seems reasonable. As far as the claims about it being too powerful in certain scenarios, it's almost (*) strictly inferior to blindness, and we hand that out to a number of classes at fairly low levels. It also matches the class's theme, even down to the help/harm duality embedded in a large number of their other spells (Disrupt/Repair, Slowing/Quickening, Harden/Soften, etc.).

We have some other ideas for the class that are currently being kicked around, and I'll add this into that mix. No guarantees about what comes out of the Design Machine (tm), though. :)

(*) Except for the deal about not being able to access potions from inventory. Being that we allow potion use by blind people, this seems excessive.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I've always wanted transmuters to get a spell the causes the target to lose control of a limb. Call it limb spasm. If cast on a leg it makes the victim move in a randomn direction whenever they try to move or make them fall to one knee(one round lag). If cast on an arm(here's the fun part) it makes them punch themselves silly. Almost like Ash's bad hand, from Army of Darkness.

P.S. You should change fumbles emote to something like;
Vizzagoth utters "fumbleword" and makes a snapping gesture.
Your hand muscles spasm in pain and you drop your weapon to the ground.

I kind of like that as an A-P spell.. power word fumble! They're using that shroud thing to plant spirits in their enemy, who takes over the hand! :)

If you were proposing they got blindness by another name, then it would be a bad one as you say.

However, a few things to consider where game balance is concerned.

Could this give too much of a power increase to assassins? I think so.

No scan? Sounds ok. A few things do this already but it is still an interesting effect.

Items in inventory? Perhaps just have an inventory that is listed as item1, item2, item3 etc, and make they guy use "wi item3". If he knows his inventory well enough to know that's his sword, he'd probably not need to see the sword. If item3 is in fact a steak, he'd grab at a steak and achieve nothing.

Basically this would stop people using where, because all others would have to do is go invis. However, what if they showed up on where as "male storm giant" or "drow thief" anyway?

Perhaps another twist might be that too much light (ie glowing items) in the room hurts their weak eyes.

Just some thoughts.

Ok, You can't see exits
When people arrive/leave its someone if they aren't sneaking.
You can't see exits you have to exit or look around to find the exits
Scanning is pointless
When the person is invis/camo/etc You will not beable to see them at all even if you have something that lets you see it
To see people in rooms You have to Look, when you arrive you just see someone.

Wow, this actually isn't a bad idea