Make it a huge mana cost, maybe even 150 for shield, 150 for aura and 200 for barrier, so it's a big investment.

This would go a long way to evening out the huge divide between man-at-arms classes and mages who don't know their sources completely. Warriors, in particular, are one of the culprits for this with the new combat changes.

Thoughts?

PS: Valguarnera, if you're going to be a cocky jerk, don't respond to this posting. I don't want your vitriol here.

I'd rather add class-specific new spells than give everyone the same stock spells. ABS is a good general exploration bonus, but as a class spell, they'd suck.

The ABS debate refuses to die.

Why are there so many sources of protection in the game? Aura, barrier, shield, stone skin, sheen of stone, wraithform, calcification, resist ______, invoker shields, resists, protection... That's about half of them, right?

What was wrong with sanctuary being the only form of damage reduction?

Aura, barrier, shield, stone skin, sheen of stone, wraithform, calcification, resist ______, invoker shields, resists, protection... What was wrong with sanctuary being the only form of damage reduction?

The various forms you cited all do different things, and have different In Character justifications. The overall network of interactions is different-- some only apply to certain attacks, some only apply to certain PCs, some can be dispelled, some are inherent to PCs while others are only available from outside sources, some have specific countermeasures like Stoneshatter, you can get a higher total protection for a really dangerous encounter, etc.

It's more or less the same reason we have lots of swords, or that we don't just have one invoker spell called 'Damage Person', and one healer supplication called 'Undamage Person'.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>
>It's more or less the same reason we have lots of swords, or
>that we don't just have one invoker spell called 'Damage
>Person', and one healer supplication called 'Undamage
>Person'.
>

I can't tell you how close I am to rolling a healer with the sole purpose of earning the quest supplication "Undamage Person".

That's sort of like saying, what was wrong with having only warrior, thief, mage, and cleric as classes with no specialization options? Well, nothing really, but that doesn't mean more variety and more interesting options aren't generally better, either.

Class variety adds to the enjoyment of the game, ABS doesn't.

>Class variety adds to the enjoyment of the game, ABS doesn't.

And ABS is only a small subset of what you originally posted.

I'll take it away from class variety then. What's wrong with only having kick as an option during combat.

Variety adds to the enjoyment of the game.

If it doesn't add to your enjoyment of the game, feel free to play without it.

>If it doesn't add to your enjoyment of the game, feel
>free to play without it.

He can't exactly play a game without it, he can only choose not to use it himself. Even if we agree (which I don't) that going ABS free isn't a serious handicap, he's still going to encounter people out there who do have it.

That said, I think his position is just silly. Even though I'm not a fan of ABS in its current state, I still think it's better than complete removal, or "mages all can cast 70% damage reduction at will."

>He can't exactly play a game without it, he can only choose
>not to use it himself. Even if we agree (which I don't) that
>going ABS free isn't a serious handicap, he's still going to
>encounter people out there who do have it.

That's true. It's almost as if I saw his silly and raised him silly.

>That's true. It's almost as if I saw his silly and raised him
>silly.


I laughed so loud at this people at work looked at me strange...

200 mana isn't a huge investment. It would essentially give mages barrier for every fight where it might matter. If this change ever went in, mages would have to be toned down in some other non-trivial way.

Bottom line- the mage classes weren't designed with the assumption that they'd have A/B/S for every fight. At least, not without making a significant sacrifice in the form of time/effort expended.

is how in the design of invokers the need for ABS is removed through their existing shield system.

Was this put in place because of the large amount of time required to attain spell mastery?

If so, the only way the original poster's idea would hold merit would be if their shield system required something akin to the hell invokers go through, and I think that would greatly diminish the novelty of the invoker class. If anything, I would suggest that each mage class should have its own unique hell for attaining damage reduction in the range of scratches and hits.

Invoker shields can be used with the a/b/s wands, and anyone who has played a hero invoker would tell you, I'm sure, that invoker shields by themselves pretty much measure up directly to what other mage classes get for dam reduction/dam avoidance - a/b/s benefits them all pretty equally. They just plain play differently:
A transmuter w/o a/b/s is typically going to be hasted/spiderhanded as well as having some decent damage reduction and potentially malleability.
A good aligned conjurer w/o a/b/s is either using an archon (sanc/protection/etc.) or an angel (rescue, nasty damage).
An evil conjurer is getting barrier from his/her devil or huge damage from his/her demon (risky, that last bit, but often successful).
A shapeshifter is theoretically shifting into forms that either do way more damage than an invoker can per round (offense) or can absorb way more than an invoker can per round (defensive) or some form that has some other combat capability/escape ability.
And so on.

In all of these cases, a/b/s are exceedingly helpful and, in some cases, necessary to win/not have to run away.

I had thought 6 and 7 elemental shields cut into the ABS so you couldn't use them all, and I've had little desire to attempt an invoker up that high.

You can have up to six elemental shields, or else five elemental shield plus Barrier. This mostly matters only for immunities-- the damage reduction added by each shield declines with more shields, and (for example) 4 is not very different from 6 in practice.

Aura and Shield stack normally.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

PS: Valguarnera, if you're going to be a cocky jerk, don't respond to this posting. I don't want your vitriol here.

Gotcha. Vitriol is bad. I see.

This would go a long way to evening out the huge divide between man-at-arms classes and mages who don't know their sources completely.

I don't agree there's a huge divide, and your solution lowers the importance of player skill by taking exploration (and the inherent risk in moving among areas) out of the equations. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.

Warriors, in particular, are one of the culprits for this with the new combat changes.

The only readily observed impact of the recent combat changes is that you see both finesse-oriented and power-oriented melee characters instead of mostly the latter. Mages seem just fine.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

nt

This has been brought up as an idea before on the forums and has a ton of problems. If you're interested in digging through the search and the archives, please do; I've little interest in rehashing it, sorry.

>This has been brought up as an idea before on the forums and
>has a ton of problems. If you're interested in digging
>through the search and the archives, please do; I've little
>interest in rehashing it, sorry.

Nep, there's serious issues with people finding their sources, especially barrier. If someone is new and wants to play a mage and gets owned by every single warrior out there in a flat out fight, are you then saying that mage staying in combat should just keep on sucking it up? That's not fun for anyone and that's probably why you have so many shifters as mages, OR why so many people are playing warriors.

I could be wrong, this is just what I see, I don't have the statistics in front of me like you do. Put yourself in that new player's shoes a sec. I'm not saying my first idea is right, or that this old rehashed idea is right, I'm more or less trying to generate some discussion because I don't really believe that the current source system is as good as you could really do it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond though!

>If someone is new and wants to play a mage
>and gets owned by every single warrior out there in a flat out
>fight, are you then saying that mage staying in combat should
>just keep on sucking it up?

I would say their problems are not because of a lack of barrier.

>That's not fun for anyone and
>that's probably why you have so many shifters as mages, OR why
>so many people are playing warriors.

Warriors are the most customizable single class; for numerous reasons, it made sense to us to keep them as one class vs. splitting classes like mages or clerics did. I'd expect the numbers of warriors to roughly equal the numbers of mages; in fact, the numbers of mages are somewhat higher.

I don't think anyone has ever said the current system is flawless. It's just the best I've seen yet. If you want to get useful discussion going, come up with a new idea and post it. Suggesting a system that's been brought up and shot down a dozen times before isn't the way to do it.

Ideally, research what has been suggested before and understand why we didn't like those ideas, so as to formulate something that solves both the problems you see and the problems we've had with other solutions.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=18140&mesg_id=18225&page=

Honestly? Sounds like you're going all WoW-core with the crafting stuff. And what you are suggesting is, in a nutshell, giving up finding limited wands here and there, and trading that in for gathering up limited/remote reagents which you need to craft the wands. Am I wrong, or was all you really did was add yet another step in a process that people generally find tedious?

Only now there would be a new wand crafting skill or something, and I could worry not only about wasting my wands on failed zaps, but I COULD FAIL TO MAKE THE WANDS THEMSELVES AND WASTE EVEN MORE TIME.

You want to see a grown man cry, don't you?

Well, at least you won't have to (re-)explore the possible wand locations over and over again with every char. And the newbies will have a chance, since the reagents locations, as opposed to wand locations, wouldn't be top secret. Obtaining the reagents dosn't have to be tedious, but it will be dangerous, since their locations will be fairly common knowledge, and they will be stalked. Normal wands would still be a lot better than crafted wands, since they can be used whenever needed, whereas crafted wands crumble, so you have to know when you are going to need them and prepare in advance. Not to mention that reagents will take up more inventory space.

If this system were just put in along with the current system, I'd be fine with it. As a replacement, I think I would cry blood.

.

It's one of the better ideas for additions that I've seen, but that being said, I'm not sure how much of a difference this would really make in play, and I can't imagine ever working my way down my personal "CF stuff I want to work on" list to the point that I'd reach this. Hell, I don't think I've touched the CF code except to do a couple quick bug fixes here and there for about three months. :)

I am by no means a badass mage player, but I do pretty damn well. Also, most of the time I can't be bothered to go find ABS. The class damage reduction is pretty good on it's own, and if you are careful, can easily serve your needs. Will you be able to wade into a group of 3 ragers and rip the hell out of them? No.... but that is a extreme situation. If you think ABS is NECESSARY to play a class, then you just haven't messed with it enough yet.