Spellcraft has always been one of those skills with a major IC impact that flies under the radar a bit. I'm not sure I'd ever looked at the code in detail-- it's a handful of lines of math buried in a massive function. I just knew it boosted your effective level for casting, and that you should always, always practice it to 71/75.

Upon review, it had 3 significant problems which we've addressed FNCR:

1) Even if you had it mastered, it had almost no impact at the lower levels. Its absolute effect on spellcasting scaled with level, whereas the crucial impact of casting level (saving throws) cared only about difference in level. So at low level, Spellcraft often gave you ~+1 to casting level, which is not impressive with respect to saving throws, durations, etc. The newer math keeps Spellcraft's average impact exactly the same at hero, but raises its minimum effect, to help lowbie mages land that extra spell.

2) Worse, Spellcraft did precious little until you got it closer to 100%. So in addition to doing very little at the lower ranks, it often did absolutely nothing, since lower-ranked mages often have low Spellcraft skills. This has been rescaled so that while your skill level is still meaningful, even a 75% Spellcraft is useful.

3) Worse worse, the math was written in such a way that the rate of improvement (mean attempts/improve) did not work like most skills. Typically, a skill is easy to improve at first, and gets gradually tougher as you near perfection. Spellcraft was actually difficult to improve at 75 relative to later on. This has been adjusted to better mimic other skills. The total "attempts until 100" shouldn't vary much, but more of the improvements will come early rather than late.

Four classes get Spellcraft: Invokers, necromancers, transmuters, and shapeshifters. (PCs only, by the way. NPCs do not use Spellcraft. Don't tempt me.) This tends to impact the former three more, since they use more offensive spells which bring saving throws into play.

We've been discussing some other changes along these lines, and more tweaks should be coming. We'd ideally like a situation where any class can participate in PK at any level, and where any character can play a valuable role in a ranking/exploring group. Low-level mages in particular historically haven't done much of either.

We don't claim that this one change will radically alter class balance at the lower levels, of course. It's a complicated topic, and we're likely to gradually address it by the cumulative impact of many small changes.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com