So I've been thinking about this lately as I have pondered the thought of rolling up mages. Thinking to myself what if I can't find my sleeks.. if I spend all the time on a voker and my locs suck... did I really just waste all that time.

Let's be honest here, to really compete against the big dogs you've gotta have em. So here is what I have come up with.

First we junk the sleek wand system. Wands are annoying to find and gather and I don't think anyone will argue with me there. I'd be for junking the entire wand system, but I suppose limiteds can be intergrated somehow.

Second we remove detect artifact and replace it will a lvl 30 type shield spell. Gain it the same way detect artifact is thru obs/exp XP. So when you reach the threshold you learn your lvl 30 shield spell equivilent. Now this is where I can see two different ways of going about this. This can be your one damage reduction spell or the beginning of a series of three. Either way the premise would be the same. Let's say that when you learn it, it comes in at 70%. At that point it would give you a 70% effective shield spell. As your skill goes up it reaches full shield power at 100%. This spell could not be spell learned and would ONLY go up skill while you are fighting someone that is targetting you. Probably not as hard as evade to learn but not as easy as something like dodge either.

Here you can really go two ways as well. You can set lvl limits like we have now for detect artifact working, and allow mages to get the new spells when they reach them... or if you just had one it would add the the dam reduction value of the next spell in line (aura in this case) at the current spell percentage. So if you were at 83% then when you reached say... lvl 42... you'd have damage reduction equal to 83% shield and 83% aura. So on for barrier. If you decided to make it three spells... then you could do it like an inkover mastering his spells. This would allow you to remove level limits on these spells since only the people who fight a lot would have the spell high enough for better dam reduction. Much like other mechanics in the game it gives longer lived chars more power potential as would be expected of an older and well experienced magi.

In addition, you could further link spell improvement to obs/exp XP and get the occasional improvement like lore and improved compare. Not enough to take you from 70-100 or anything, but helpful percents here and there.

If someone has posted something similar to this I didn't try and steal your idea. I was just brainstorming last night as I leveled my umpteenth mage to 10 and said... do I really want to have to go thru the whole wand thing. My answer was no, not really.

1) I don't see this as an improvement over the current system.

2) Reading this, I feel like you probably haven't played a mage seriously within the last year or so and lack some perspective on the current state of things.

1. What would you classify as an improvement? I see less downtime, more fighting and not having to gather wands all the time to be an improvement. It rewards those who wish to fight with more fighting ability.

2. This would be incorrect. I have in fact played a few mages and I did discover some wands here and there. Running back an forth across the map just to have enough wands for maybe an hours worth of play got old. Checking the same places over again with each mage gets old.

3. I know you didn't have a 3, but I do. It removes the possibility of wand locs being posted. Gives ample opportunity to everyone and not just the people with OOC lists. Don't kid yourself they exist everywhere.

So you played a mage, but somehow missed that they already have a shield spell?

As far as the rest goes, I probably need to put together some kind of ABS idea form letter. No offense to you personally, but I'm not really interested in explaining for the hundredth time why I think an idea similar to one that's been posted before breaks more things than it fixes.

Edited to add: here's a thread where it was discussed to death: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=25&topic_id=1824

You probably won't agree with much of what I had to say in there, but you'll know where I stand if you care to.

Never said I missed that they get a "limited" shield spell. Used it plenty. Sure it's sorta helpful, but meh. Not going to argue about that.

Zulg at one point said if you don't like it propose something else. So I did. With no feedback there is no way to improve it or come up with something else. Instead I got the blanket you don't know what you are talking about because you obviously haven't played a mage in the last year. When in fact that is not the case. Give us some ####ing guidelines or something. Otherwise we are just shooting from the hip.

I guess I'll just leave my suggestions and ideas for Santa Zulg and #### the rest.

A lot of guidelines (and things we like about the current system and are reluctant to lose) are in that thread.

Which would solve everything, but meh.

I read it months ago, but I've been searching for it for the last hour and I can't find it.

I posted the link in this thread! I'm trying to help!

You edited a post I had already read and didn't go back to read again. I thought you just forgot to past the link in and frankly wasn't interested in bothering you anymore.

I found the shield spell pretty useful. My last two mages had very easy sienna locations (one was pick-up) but I rarely went and got them because I just didn't need to. I might have gone through one sienna rod every 2-3 sessions because outside of the longer duration raids, I wasn't fighting that rough of opponents that often that the re-use timer got in the way.

The limited shield spells aren't "on a stick", which is what a lot of mage players want/demand, but it's infinitely better than having zero access to shield if you didn't have a supply of wands, and in many cases, the difference is negligible.