Now that Dexterity pwns, I would like to see some more ways to deal with it presented to classes that historically go after stats that melee characters would value.

I'll keep the focus tightly on the Necromancer class, since I am fairly familiar with it.

Necromancers

Necros have weaken, which has always worked beautifully. In a world where Strength ruled the day, this spell had some real power and could be a pain in the butt at the high ranks. Also, necromancers are very skilled at ravaging the physical bodies of their foes, and so weaken fit the theme like a glove. Also, crimson scourge has stackable -STR, but does not touch DEX. I think this was fine a couple years ago, when dexterity wasn't that big of a deal.

But, now dexterity IS a big deal, and necromancers don't have anything to shut that down. To exacerabate matters, dex-strong classes are almost always highly intelligent as well, and I think that aids in fighting spells. Even if that is not accurate, elves and drow (which are about as popular as humans nowadays, it seems like), resist abilities that are markedly in the realm of AP's and Necromancers. Toss in the fact that dextrous classes, especially at the high ranks, can tank zombies as if they didn't exist, and I think there is a pretty substantial case for beefing up the necro's tool-kit...aside from a hard-hitting chill touch.

My ideas here are simple. First, give a basic spell such as enfeeblement to match weaken in the -STAT department. Second, add -dex to Crimson Scourge. Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense for one's motor functions to be impaired by...oh...a terrible plague that covers the body in agonizing, bleeding, scabrous sores. Somehow I don't think I'd be doing cartwheels while bleeding from the gooch. Thirdly, some kind of INT and WIS-sapping tacked onto a few necromancer spells would be nice. Vampiric touch, for instance, could conceivably leave a victim feeling a bit drained of the brain, and/or demoralized.

I could ramble on, but I think I made my point. Anyone feeling this?

And I was using necromancers as an example. Other classes need some help as well in this department.

I agree with some of your starting point (there's a post by me in someone's thread in the Battlefield a month or two ago essentially to the effect that I thought there were some classes who logically should have anti-non-strength-stat malediction options and never did because they just weren't useful.) but not really where you went with it from there. I don't see the necromancer class getting much more power in the way of crap to dump on a sleeping guy in addition to what they already have.

Now, could I see something like a dex-sapping poison that was mutually exclusive with normal str-sapping poison? Sure!

Along what Quixotic was getting at, how about allowing an option for what scourge could target most? Like, change the syntax to:

c 'crimson scourge' (target) (str/dex/mind)

Now, it would hit the chosen stat hard, while doing lesser stat loss to the other two categories. The trade off for this new, added utility would be that scourging someone will wake them up, so it would be the last thing a necro would do in a battle, and they would not get to stack it unless they did so during combat.

In any event, giving necros more options while adding in the "will wake target" caveat would be fairly reasonable, I think.

Making it so we can chose which way to go with the maledicts would be sweet!

as effectively as attacking their dexterity. If they weigh too much, they don't dodge or evade any more than that giant, but they tend to be more vulnerable and have fewer hps.

Rather than giving necromancers and aps more spells to stack onto their victims, I think it would be great if a necromancer could tailor their current maladictions to their opponents: have spells that could be cast to attack a specific physical affect or attribute (or combination of attributes for decreased effect).

Sleep the victim, then cast a poison that weakens (strength), causes cramps (dexterity), or makes muscles spasm (inhibited attack, dodge, and parry). A disease spell could be tailored to attack physical, mental, or movement regeneration, or maybe the necromancer might give her victim diahrrea so he cannot run as quickly and is in danger of dehydration.

While we are making suggestions, being able to give a victim a mental illness would be interesting as well, particularly if it did not necessarily show up in their affects list (of course there would be indications of the effects via strange actions and echoes). Some ideas might be:

fearful--unable to initiate combat with a foe who 'considers' your strength or higher and has a chance of passing out or simply freezing in panic when put in a stressful situation such as combat

impulsive--attacks what is considered, steals anything seen in a corpse, cannot send tells or group tells to people within the same area, but instead yells what was meant to be private conversation

ocd--Some ideas might be the victim picks up any item found upon the ground or will pause to 'look at' everything lying out in the open. Repeats mundane actions like 'get flask backpack;drink flask;put flask backpack' or spams "where" and "who pk" multiple times for every time the command is sent to the server

schizoid--experiences auditory and visual hallucinations