Wow. I just saw a couple posts on the other forum that talked about the powers that the old Master cabal had, and they are way off base.

Original Master powers:

Transform - doubled current max hp. This lead to chars who would have full "HP suits" that they would carry around in a backpack (limited items could go in containers). When transform wore off, they would do the "transform dance" where they'd pull out all their +HP gear and put it on, cast transform, then put their normal gear. Often Masters at hero-ish levels would have upward of 2000 hp with transform up, many quite higher. Transform was NOT an offensive spell in any way.

Mana transfer - syntax was c 'mana transfer' otherMaster. You'd grant them an amount of mana (I think it was level based, don't remember specifically) and do a certain amount of damage to yourself. Transform had that one tick where you had double your max hp when it wore off, so often when that happened, Masters would shoot a bunch of mana to their fellow Masters because the damage wouldn't matter once the tick happened.

Mental knife - much the same as it is now, generally cast by the Archmage in the Scion cabal.

Demon summon - Demons were not servitor-type mobs like nightwalkers are now. They were basically just a charmed mob that was at the caster's level. I believe they would throw fireballs and bash. They could be ordered, so o all rescue, o all get all corpse, etc.

Scourge of the Violet Spider - Area spell that was fireball, blind, poison...and it seems to me one other spell. Weaken maybe? Very badass spell that Twist WAYYY underutilized.

Master powers that came later:

Transform - was changed not to work in conjunction with barrier, and only to double the characters natural max hp, not with EQ. Also having transform hurt your skill learning capability (Your mind clouds as your health increases.)

To compensate (a bit) for that, two new powers were added:

Brew: Use an item that was type trash, furniture, or plant (I think?) and brew a potion. Three types (I think? Maybe only two). Silver potions generally did some sort of area spell at high level, gold potions were generally benediction-types (haste, sanc). If there was a third type I do not remember what it was.

Tome: Create a tome that increased your learning capabilities (I believe it exactly offset the decrease from having Transform up, and of course if you didn't have transform up it was a boost). Worked much like the tomes that can currently be purchased in the Consortium.


There's your history lesson for the day, kids!