The a/b/s system is fine in my opinion. It does not require drastic changes or a complete system overhaul to placate the minority that seem to think otherwise.

That being said my idea was to pepper Thera with minor protection wands (such as 5% or 10%, as an example) that can be either sold or distributed in locations where an adventurer might travel to regularly, not drastically out-of-the-way. For example, Dagdan, the bustling gate to the northwest that it is, seems unfortunately devoid of non-sentient life for the most part. Perhaps a trader along the eastern road has several of these handy charms available for sale to the passing adventurer. Perhaps some of the lesser mages of Thera carry these traveler's aids, and a younger mage may find that these lesser wands are within his capacity to use them.

The goal of these wands is not to bolster a mage beyond A/B/S, but to provide a useful but not overly powerful substitute. These lesser wands would not be compatable with the higher, more powerful counterparts that we've come to know and love/hate. They could be used to help a mage tackle tougher mobs that a warrior would normally have little trouble with, without having to worry that the wand would disappear and then be impossible to re-locate. These lesser wands could help younger mages better protect themselves through the tribulations of ranks 11 - 30 (if that is something the Imms envision as a goal). Hoarding of these would be easily countered by the maximum inventory of a player, and would force him to discard the lesser wands as he found the original A/B/S wands.

The drawbacks of this addition are that the A/B/S system in place takes into account the drastic change that such a protection wand can make and distributes a requisite risk with reward. Classes that have inherent protection, such as transmuters and invokers, might take to these substitutes to easily complement their inherent protections and create an unfair advantage to non-wand-users, without subjecting themselves to the trials necessary in aquiring the greater wands. Also, this might create a situation where many more wand-users will have these lesser wands at the ready, and create a kind of "secondary" inherent protection by always equipping themselves with these wands.

In conclusion, these wands could help younger mages survive their rank, newer players to become involved in PK, and more elite mages to provide a better choice of options in dealing with mobs alone.

Comments? Questions?

-Urog slowly waiting out the work day.

A number of such devices have existed for a long time, and can be obtained at fairly low levels. Heck, any mage in PK range can buy (or barter for) at least one at a reasonable price.

Some are in moderately common use- one in particular has roughly two dozen copies in play at present.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Any chance that one get get a better sense of if a thing is protecting you in such a way? I know there are alot of things that seem to reduce armor, but I have a feeling they reduce dmg too. Not anything specific, just maybe in affects something like.

'Minor Ward' affects armor class by -10 10 hrs
'Minor Ward' affects resistance very little 10 hrs

I may be wrong, but in my experience the ward spells are just plain damage reduction. Maybe a more newbie mage friendly way of setting the spell up would be for it to eat a set ammount of damage.

Like maybe major ward could eat 50 hps per hit & minor 25 hps per hit for spell_level*10 max hps and have that taken out before all dam redux.

so a level 50 major ward spell would stop 500 hps of damage over 10 hits.

This would be very useful at low levels, give them a huge limit so they're always in but can't be stuffed in bags. I can see this being a hit at lower levels and higher up I think their use would diminish when everyone would get more umph out of having a/b/s.

Just a thought, what do you think?