I was thinking about the wand system, and my overall hatred of it, and the basis of that hatred, and one of the things I found most discourages me from searching is the fact that mage mobs are a pita to kill. Conjie mobs mostly suck, and aren't really that bad to deal with, as they rarely have servitors. Shapeshifter mobs usually aren't that bad either, as they are more akin to melee mobs than not.

However, invoker, transmuter, and necromancer mobs are something that I will avoid fighting unless I *know* they are holding something I want. This led me to thinking about what makes these things so difficult/annoying to deal with. Necromancer mobs can mess you up in non-trivial ways (scourge) and prevent you from even getting anything from them (blind). Invokers stoneshatter and have unpredictable damage, and transmuter mobs do both.

Saves are very heavily level based when it comes npc fighting, and because mage mobs have many times the hp that a similarly leveled pc would have (and usually innate dam redux). They become always not worth it to fight for learning, and usually more difficult to fight for other purposes as well. Even a low level necro or muter mob can land a spell that will screw your character for a consierable length of time (assuming you can't cure it instantly and with things carried on your person).

Basically my point is, is there any thought given to making mage type npc's have considerably less hp than a similarly leveled melee type npc? After all, adding just magic missile, flash, pugil, and zap to the Azuremein mobs turned it from one of the best ranking areas for it's level to one that people very rarely, if ever, use anymore. Why? Because the risk isn't worth the reward. You are going to eat spells, and they are going to do way more damage than you can cope with unless you have a healing character in your group. The only way I can see to fix this is to allow pc's to lag npc's to keep them from casting, or seriously reduce the amount of hp a mage mob has to limit the amount of opportunities for spellcasting.

Going back to my original starting point, I had a wand on a necromancer spec'd mob. Even though I mostly killed this npc fast, and had very decent saves and a bunch of levels on it, it still would land a debilitating spell on a semi-regular basis, making me hate gathering from it. Compared to spec'd mobs (which can be disarmed unless they're also hth) there is very little to do to stop a mage npc from messing up your life, and I think that to offset that, they should be considerably easier (time wise) to kill.

To end: Do mage npc's have hp that is on par with other npc's of their level? My experience tells me yes. Is this the right level of hp for them to have, balance/gameplay/funstick wise for them to have? I think that deserves some looking in to.

>To end: Do mage npc's have hp that is on par with other npc's
>of their level?

Yes

>Is this the
>right level of hp for them to have, balance/gameplay/funstick
>wise for them to have?

The rewards of fighting those types of npc's is scaled to be higher to compensate, and I think it's fine.

Or on any mage-type npc's for that matter. Even spec'd mobs get more action ranking wise than mage mobs, because you can neutralize spec moves, but spells are going to suck, pretty much no matter what.

I've seen a number of groups recently ranking on all or near-all mage NPC areas.

(This might also be a reason you can't find some people in your PK range.)

Yes, you can kill with a deafened mage/bard also, provided you've spent a lot of time gathering damaging wands/talismans/scrolls? in advance. My argument wasn't directly related to ranking anyway, more just killing mage npc's in general.

For instance, would you willingly rank a rager solely on mage mobs for anything other than an rp angle? Are ragers generally set up to kill mage mobs easily? The cabal, specifically designed to kill mages is also the least capable of actually killing npc mages because their strengths (avoiding spells and lots of damage fast) are completely negated by mage npc's having normal hp for their level, and spellbane not working. I'm just suggesting that perhaps the hp might be something to look at.

I understand if you don't agree, and I'll not belabor my point anymore, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

I wouldn't want to try to rank exclusively on mages as a rager, but the time that they can rank in Azuremain and from 42-hero would seem really easy.

My last two heroes have ranked on mage mobs and particularly with 1 berserk + 1 defender in the group it seemed well worth it. Phat xp payout.

Of course, I'm kind of deranged and like ranking.