I've always wondered why melee defenses aren't level dependent but save vs spell is. In my experience all the save in the world won't help against 7 ranks. So human mages are given more hps and more skills that the ranks give them, little exp tnl, and in PK, spells that with a ridiculously high success rate. Try your best to defend against them with your Fire AP, but -100 save won't matter. Of course in the mid ranks, which is where this is truly obscene, your lucky to get -40 save. So...the game begins at hero. Until then you rank and hide.

Am I misinfoing myself?

I'd just like to question the notion of CF needing to be "fair" and "sporting", it's Carrion, not Gentlemanly Fisticuffs Fields. Sure, it sucks when you get splattered across the pavement, but here's the thing: almost everything that can destroy you without effort gets destroyed just as easily by someone else. You could be that someone else.

Back in my days, things were even more lopsided and we liked it that way!

When I hear people complaining about gangbanging, I think about a hockey game. Does anyone whine when the puck goes into the corner and two defensemen go after it and only one forward?

But, before the puck hits the ice it is a fair game.

Let's assume A can kill B easily, B can kill C easily and C can kill A easily. So, if you're C, kill A and stay the f**k out of B's path. That's Carrion Fields for you. You need to learn who's A and who's B for your C.

In Gentlemanly Fisticuffs Fields, C seeks to fight A and B fairly and complains about A avoiding him (and thus being cowardly or dishonorable for not practicing the noble art of fisticuffs properly) and B mauling him and being overpowered.

I absolutely agree that the game is more interesting with mismatches. But I'm asserting that level is not a good way to create mismatches.

Level matters in saves, but it matters a lot less than you probably think.

Of course, also factoring into this are that INT and WIS matter in making saves, so that's another strike your hypothetical Fire A-P has against him.

If you have low INT/WIS, are 7 levels down, and aren't wearing much in the way of -spell, yeah, you're going to take it in the pants a lot from magic.

That being said, in a one on one match-up I'd still almost always rather be the Fire A-P, but it's very much in my personal wheelhouse.

When a mage enjoys a level advantage, they are throwing more powerful spells anyway. What is the rationale behind making their spells (and I assume communes) effectively stronger against people ill-suited to defend against them in the first place?

Mostly, I think the game does balance better that way. Pre-hero non-PK-averse mages are very rare relative to the population.

You're saying they are imbalanced but people choose not to play them. That's not a good argument. So we never see human transmuters running around with mercs in the 25-30 range, or necros sitting at 36 putting everyone to sleep, or conjurers sitting at 40. Emm...level 47+ demons/devils against level 31 storm paladins.

At hero it's a different game. No level advantage and access to decent save gear. At the low ranks save vs spells gear will have -2 or -3 save spell and that's all you can find. Now add in a level advantage. Don't forget about edges that pump up spells.

It makes me wonder about the affect of the save spell mechanics working the same at high and low levels. It's tougher to get save gear at lower ranks and your adding in level advantage. Seems like the poor are getting poorer. At hero, with minimal effort, you'll have -50 save spell (divinely) but spells still go through. At the lower ranks, unless you shrine sit for a bless, you're lucky to get -20. I would guess level advantage erases any save spell gear you can reasonably get at low ranks and the result is you are unprotected.

There are enough advantages to having 4-9 ranks on PK enemies without making spells stronger.

When I see a player going after someone on the low end of their range, I can't help but think, what a piece of...

>You're saying they are imbalanced but people choose not to
>play them. That's not a good argument. So we never see human
>transmuters running around with mercs in the 25-30 range, or
>necros sitting at 36 putting everyone to sleep, or conjurers
>sitting at 40. Emm...level 47+ demons/devils against level 31
>storm paladins.

Relative to the number of warriors/etc. cleaning people up at the same level, no, you don't ever see it.

If there's one tough 30s necro for every literally one hundred tough 30s warriors, that's basically a nonfactor to me.

Maybe I am *that* good, but I think the majority of the population could make a level 30 necro, with a aldevari stick and limited prep list and lowbie gear. Rape their range, over and over and over. Never die while taking huge risks.

I could prove my point by rolling one up, but I think you would frown on it. To tell you the truth, I avoid flurry specs, drow tranies, human conjurors and felar rangers. I've never played one, I pick an alternate race if I would play them.

It scares me to think of playing a slow ranking character that plays off the level advantage. My characters, when hunting. Tend to make foes log off. Not fun.

> Never die while taking huge risks.

I don't think the above is true. You might rape your range, you might be a powerhouse solo human necro at 30, but you won't do it at level 30 without dying while taking huge risks. Necros are pretty vulnerable at that rank, too. Just because you MIGHT not run into a competent PKer at those ranks doesn't alter their vulnerability.

honestly I see a level... anything necro and think of them as a free kill.

The only exception is liches. I think mummies are very beatable by a lot of classes.

I mean even with sleep being nasty... teleport beats it unless they have a friend to help them and then your not talking about a lone necro anymore.

At hero?

But I am not sure why it seems shocking. I mean if they don't have an army how do they reduce your HP to 0? And of those techniques a lot can be rendered absolutly moot with +str gear, some saves, a teleport potion, and the common sense to not fight in an area with a trappable room.


Even further then that they are the least sturdy of all the mage classes or in a best case scanario they are a hair above unshifted shifter. (other mage classes have more dam redux, buffs that enahnce tanking, or more defenses)

>Maybe I am *that* good, but I think the majority of the
>population could make a level 30 necro, with a aldevari stick
>and limited prep list and lowbie gear. Rape their range, over
>and over and over. Never die while taking huge risks.

You really can't. Run a 10-1 ratio if you're pretty good and aggressive? Sure, that's doable, although I can typically count on one hand the number of necromancers each year who reach, say, 50 kills without being PK'd 5 times. But the number of things that can realistically kill you is too long to never die unless you're very lucky. Even if you somehow refuse to leave the guild without aura, shield, stoneskin, and protection, it's still surprisingly possible for a warrior to roll up on you, beat you to the first command, and kill you without you ever getting one.

And, frankly, any player who can do that probably can do at least as well at the same levels with even a warrior build that doesn't rank in any kind of power conversation, like human axe.

but everytime I think about doing it I realize half way through the character you guys would change the mechanics of pincer.

Do you really think you could'nt kill 99% of your range with a necro pre-hero? You literally need to land one spell to do it. Because people have crappy saves lower levels, and typically necros are human, they are often times going to be having a huge rank advantage (pre-hero).

You add crappy saves gear + huge rank advantage = that one spell you need to land to kill the guy lands a lot more often than not.

I think you downplay how badass a lowbie necro can be in the right hands. That seems odd to me given your past necromancers. I think if necromancers were being played as much as warriors, you'd be tweaking them.

Its near impossible to kill a lowbie necromancer who knows how to use flight + reduce + invisibility at low levels. You can't lag them with most classes and if they fail their sleep they just quaff. Woe to the player playing a non-hiding class pre-25 with a necro in range as a village app.

>Do you really think you could'nt kill 99% of your range with
>a necro pre-hero?

Sure. I also think I can kill 99% of my range with any character that isn't something intentionally terrible pre-hero.

>Its near impossible to kill a lowbie necromancer who knows how
>to use flight + reduce + invisibility at low levels. You can't
>lag them with most classes and if they fail their sleep they
>just quaff. Woe to the player playing a non-hiding class
>pre-25 with a necro in range as a village app.

I think you'd be surprised how many lowbie necros I've one-rounded as a warrior in that situation. I try to bash but they're already dead.

Or tripped to death as a thief without them ever seeing me or getting a command.

Or bashed before they see me as a warrior/orc/a-p and killed before their first command. Or after it, if you're not a giant, since then reduce doesn't buy the necromancer anything.

Or nuked in one ambush as a ranger, and later bearcharged straight to death.

Or you get hit by one pincer or cranial and that's it.

Etc.

It's not that it doesn't have killing power. It certainly does. It's that it's also about the most fragile thing in the game, and it can't realistically deploy that killing power without exposing that fragileness enough.

> I think if necromancers were being played as much as warriors, you'd be tweaking them.

And yet, there must be some reason that there are literally several dozens of PK-successful warriors for every PK-successful necromancer.

> I try to bash but they're already dead.

That must be so disappointing for you

"Le sigh. I didn't even get to bash."

Yes, he failed his sleep! Now to crush him for two rounds of....oh, he's dead. Uhm. I guess I'll loot.

Or, my absolute favorite, is the roadkill version. Blissfully unaware of invis, you're dashing down eastern, when all of a sudden in between room descriptions you see you yelled something, did LOTS of caps damage, and a corpse showed up. Now to run back and see who the heck you killed.

Level 23 human necro if I am not mistaken is in range of some level 14's. You don't even have bash then, let alone a lagging spec skill.

Let's say you have bash. If you aren't a giant, its unrealistic to think you have bash mastered that early, and even if you do, the code nerfs bash's ability to lag early on. If you are a giant, at level 15-20 you again don't have a lagging spec, and meanwhile you can't buy a reduce prep, but that level 23 necro sure can. Do you see where I am going with this?

If you cannot lag the necro, or catch him with his pants down, or kill him in his failed sleep lag, he will eventually kill you if he tries long enough. Period. The end. He lands that one spell and eventually you are dead. The necro has blind/scourge/curse/weaken/poison at that point. Sure maybe he doesn't get them all off because he runs out of mana or your saves block that, but I think the honest truth is you just never ran into a tough lowbie necro with any of your characters who didn't have hide.

>If you are a giant, at level 15-20 you again don't have a
>lagging spec, and meanwhile you can't buy a reduce prep, but
>that level 23 necro sure can. Do you see where I am going with
>this?
>
>If you cannot lag the necro, or catch him with his pants down,
>or kill him in his failed sleep lag, he will eventually kill
>you if he tries long enough. Period. The end.


What are you doing in that level range anyway? You're either out PKing, or you're ranking, generally. If you're ranking, then you're not going to be level 15-20 for more than a half hour or so. Take the death and just level up. If you're PKing, then you really shouldn't be surprised by the necro, so you avoid him if you don't have the saves and damroll to make a go of it. You're talking about a very specific race/level/cabal matchup here. Even if it is a tough matchup, that's okay, because in just a few levels you'll spellbane that sleep and pincer them to death and they will have little recourse.

I sure dont think its overpowered and you are exactly right about how to rectify it.

That said I was mostly jumping into the thread because I felt the deadliness of a niche lowbie necro was being horribly downplayed.

>Let's say you have bash. If you aren't a giant, its
>unrealistic to think you have bash mastered that early, and
>even if you do, the code nerfs bash's ability to lag early on.

Not really. It just misses more.

And you probably only have to hit once. I've killed dozens of lowbie necros with bashing low-weight felar warriors. You aren't looking to string five or six bashes together like you might be at hero.

>If you are a giant, at level 15-20 you again don't have a
>lagging spec, and meanwhile you can't buy a reduce prep, but
>that level 23 necro sure can.

How sure are you about that?

>Do you see where I am going with
>this?

>If you cannot lag the necro, or catch him with his pants down,
>or kill him in his failed sleep lag, he will eventually kill
>you if he tries long enough.

So will healer. What's your point?

>Period. The end. He lands that
>one spell and eventually you are dead. The necro has
>blind/scourge/curse/weaken/poison at that point. Sure maybe he
>doesn't get them all off because he runs out of mana or your
>saves block that, but I think the honest truth is you just
>never ran into a tough lowbie necro with any of your
>characters who didn't have hide.

I've run into several that were in the hundreds of total kills later in life. I've logged hundreds of kills as a lowbie necro, as well. It's not that it's not good. It's not that you don't have a good chance to kill someone if everything goes your way. It's that if you're dealing with an opponent that's also good, it probably won't.

Also note that I've been slept probably a thousand times by necromancers. It just usually isn't deadly unless they have a group.

The point isn't to come up with scenarios where you catch the necro with his pants down. There are counters to everything you've described. Got thief problems, try a fly potion. Got warrior problems? Well, he isn't gonna sneak up on you so get whatever dam redux you can. Ranger problems, make him come out of the woods.

But, when a caster/communer has 7-9 ranks on you there is nothing you can do because the save system factors in rank. There is no counter to that. IMHO, it's poor game balance.

I mean is it due to spellcraft or is the save check a hard getPlayerLevel() that comes into play even in the case of no spellcraft.

I don't understand what you're asking.

You said upthread "Level matters in saves, but it matters a lot less than you probably think."



My question is does level only matter in saves because of spellcraft or is there actual code that says if you have levels the enemy has a harder chance saving?



edit - further clarification is the save check just a spell level check (which would take spellcraft into account) or does it also look at player level independent of spell level?

It's the level of the spell (modified by spellcraft, if relevant) vs. the level of the target character, modified by all the other assorted things that go in (your save gear/affects, int/wis, etc.)

I figured that just wanted to be sure.

>The point isn't to come up with scenarios where you catch the
>necro with his pants down. There are counters to everything
>you've described. Got thief problems, try a fly potion.

That's no help if you don't realize I'm logged on until you're dead.

Or if I'm in the room when your previous fly potion runs out.

Or if I blackjack you and it's low on duration (probably, though there are some options there.)

>Got
>warrior problems? Well, he isn't gonna sneak up on you so get
>whatever dam redux you can.

But then you can't kill any warriors, either.

There isn't really enough DR in the midlevels to prevent a warrior who knows what they're doing from having a pretty good chance of killing you if you're willing to cast sleep on them.

>Ranger problems, make him come out
>of the woods.

Again, this doesn't help you if you only realize I'm logged on when your next west doesn't go through because you're resting at your pit.

>But, when a caster/communer has 7-9 ranks on you there is
>nothing you can do because the save system factors in rank.
>There is no counter to that. IMHO, it's poor game balance.

There are a hundred things you can do. You wear more -spell. You play a character with good mental stats. You don't let them get the first shot at you while you're not fighting. You pack a teleport potion so if you get unlucky and sleep does land you have a way out. You be caballed, or you group with on of your allies even if the two of you are doing separate things so you have a way to call in help if you get slept. You have something tracking you to wake you up. You have enough curing/healing stuff in inventory that sleep isn't a death sentence. Etc.

I'm not talking out my ass here. I tend to play a lot of high XP penalty characters. I think I've died to sleep a grand total of once in about the last decade, and that was because I had the grand misfortunate of quaffing teleport and landing three rooms away in the same area I quaffed from.

How much save can you get on your own at rank 20? Is that being nullified by a high level advantage?

The rank problem works both ways. Not only is the mage's stuff more effective against me, my stuff is less effective against him. As a caster/communer/bard, I'd like to be able to use my abilities against him.

>How much save can you get on your own at rank 20? Is that
>being nullified by a high level advantage?

You probably can't get a lot of -save at level 20, excepting a certain amount of the better gear that does trickle down. The flipside to that sleep probably isn't exactly a death sentence at level 20 unless you do something pretty wrong or a gang is involved, and the HP gear that's available isn't all that great, either.

>Do you really think you could'nt kill 99% of your range with
>a necro pre-hero? You literally need to land one spell to do
>it.

Unlike Nep, I am exceptionally great at dying to PK. No, really...it's a talent, and that's why I'm going to weigh in. I don't have exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure I survive sleeping necros (pre 30) about 75% of the time. It's called a teleport potion and if quaffed as soon as you're spelled up it works amazingly well. Couple that with a handful of cure blindness potions and a cure poison and/or a few healing pills and you're probably going to live.

Actually, I'm more likely to die to the clever necro that doesn't lead with a sleep, gets a few maledictions in, plays opossum, and then lands the sleep later on.

le sigh. Every time I try to do a lowbie PKer who is not a necro, I fail, so I am the exception that proves your rule.

>Maybe I am *that* good, but I think the majority of the
>population could make a level 30 necro, with a aldevari stick
>and limited prep list and lowbie gear. Rape their range, over
>and over and over. Never die while taking huge risks.

If you never die, then you either aren't taking huge risks, or you are very lucky. By definition, a huge risk is one where you have a high chance of dieing. Otherwise, what's risky about it?

As for your overall point, meh, mid-range necros don't scare me. Skilled warriors are the most intimidating foes from 11 to 44 or so. Other classes are harder to kill, but are nowhere near as likely to kill you. But that's in large part because I suck (I don't spam where and I don't carry enlarge/reduce). And yet even though I suck, I find a simple teleport potion saves me from necros about 90% of the time. Sometimes they can summon you to a locked room or get lucky with some damage, but otherwise spamming flee-quaff is enough.

>As for your overall point, meh, mid-range necros don't scare
>me. Skilled warriors are the most intimidating foes from 11 to
>44 or so. Other classes are harder to kill, but are nowhere
>near as likely to kill you.

Granted I haven't played a necro this century, but I absolutely DO think 40ish Necros are scary as Hell. I can't think of a scarier one offhand but I'm sure there are some. Once they get nonbashable wraithform and more zombie minions, it's a new ballgame - there were some people I literally two rounded with zombies. Not at level 30, though.