The entrance of outlanders means there will be wanted mages trying to retrieve/raid against tribunals. I know this has been taken up before, and the answer was "Use wands/scrolls". This might be possible yes, but it will limit the strenght of the mage by ALOT, a #### load in fact. I dont think manacles have been changed much in a long, long time. So it dont conincide with the current situation of the game. Why should a level 20 warrior be able to remove all the offensive power of a mage, which depend on casting to retrieve effectivly. That you can use wands, really, isnt enaugh if you face an enemy in PK range. If you have imm knowledge, or general sick knowledge of wands.. maybe. But against a fairly skilled player that might prep abit, it wont work.

Really, really consider atleast making manacles work like immolation'ish. Making spells fail sometimes, that would make them more tuned in with the backdraw warrior types get from them.

One aspect of this issue that you might be missing is that Tribunals perform what is generally viewed as beneficial service to CF. It is like the guild guards. Both provide a limited safe haven. You may complain about guild guards yelling when attacked and taking too long to kill, during which time the target teleports, but the idea is to provide a safe haven -- but not an unsurmountable safe haven.

Tribunals are much the same way. They are designed to maintain order and a safe haven, but not an unsurmountable safe haven. They are given very powerful abilities in exchange for keeping the peace; but they cannot use use these powers just anywhere. They are supposed to have an advantage.

At least, this is how I've always interpreted the keepers of the law and their relation to CF and the other cabals. In past wars against Arbiters, they were given the freedom to use their special guards against any member of the opposing cabal anywhere. With the changes in the cabal structure, I think opposing cabals are now getting off light with only the mages having to plan for the manacles during raids, and not being chased down Eastern Road by 4 Tribunials with 8 guards when not raiding.

To be fair, this only really hurts 3 of the 16 classes: transmuters, invokers, and necromancers. The last one of these that I played that spent any time fighting Arbiters was a Master necro and it wasn't so bad. I actually enjoyed the challenge. But I didn't raid solo or anything like that.


Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker

>Really, really consider atleast making manacles work like
>immolation'ish. Making spells fail sometimes, that would make
>them more tuned in with the backdraw warrior types get from
>them.

If you have the immolation effect and then make it so that manacled mages are restricted totally from casting word, teleport or other transportation spells then this would make sense to me.

I agree that it's far more difficult for mages to be lawbreakers, and I don't know why that should be. Maybe there's a good reason, but I don't understand it personally.

You all might consider a "Don't ask this any-####ing-more" board wherein you create a FAQ-like series of topics that, if brought up again, will result in your being banned and having your house/apartment burned to the ground by a horde of trained militant gerbils.

It still is a very, very big problem. One that affect a range of classes ability at a large scale. That is an out of range power.

only one other cabal power gives the TARGET 100% control on the decision to deal with this power or not.


There is nothing you can do as a character fighting a rager to "decide" to not deal with deathblow or spellbane.

There is nothing you can do as a character fighting an empirial to decide to not deal with imperial training.

There is nothing you can do as a character fighting a scion to decide to not deal with nightwalker...or druktar or any of the others.

However. It *IS* solely your choice on whether you become wanted or not. You hate dealing with manacles? don't get wanted.

(the other power is centurions)



"Death awaits ya all, wit nasteh big pointeh teeth!"

Manacles is THE only power that totally make a classes useless. Deathblow can be dealt with easily enaugh. Centurions can easily enaugh be avoided. Imperial training can be dealt with.

The fact that you chose to become wanted, isnt evident as a outlander. If you raid for the scales, you WILL get wanted. If you strike one of your main enemys you will get wanted. Marans cant chose not to strike evils, because it can have side effects can they?

Play an outlander then tell me it is your choise to get wanted or not(at hero, with raiding involved).

And as Big Z pointed out in the last thread that looked
alot like this one.. being manacled is not the end of
mage fighting ability.

I've had law characters in the past who were killed by
manacled mages. Several.

Grurk

>And as Big Z pointed out in the last thread that looked
>alot like this one.. being manacled is not the end of
>mage fighting ability.
>


Personally, I got the impression that manacles/Tribunal-cabal-raiding-imbalance was something the IMMs were looking into but it was going on the back burner. I did not realize, reading Zulg's post, that he was saying manacles/raiding-Tribunal was balanced and was not a work in progress. Is that what you are suggesting?


>I've had law characters in the past who were killed by
>manacled mages. Several.
>


This is shocking. You've actually been killed by manacled mages raiding the Spire? Who? What mages killed you under those conditions? That's just unbelievable. Partially because I can't imagine being killed under those circumstances, and partially because I was around throughout Grurk's career as a Tribunal against Outlander, and I don't recall an Outlander mage killing you in the Spire while manacled. Which mage was it?

Anyway, my observations are these:
1. Tribunal and Outlander are engaged in Cabal warfare.
2. Tribunal is as much an instigator of the Cabal war as Outlander, meaning that Outlanders really have no choice except to engage in the Cabal war.
3. Under current Tribunal laws, Cabal Raiders can be flagged.
4. Under current manacles system, Mage Raiders can be effectively nullified.
5. There are no existing mages like you and Zulghinlour suggest, whipping out a few staves/wands/scrolls, kicking defending Tribunal ass, and taking the Scales while manacled. Moreover, given the changes to Tribunal enemies (removing garble and insect swarm) I don't think we're ever going to see an mage doing that.

Thus, I think either (1) Cabal Raiders should not be flagged, or (2) out-of-range Manacles should be toned down, to balance the Cabal War.

>Thus, I think either (1) Cabal Raiders should not be flagged,

From my understanding of the law, Cabal Raiders are not flagged. However there are a lot of tribunals who quickly flag people who step into the Tribunal courtyard in order to raid to give an advantage in defending. I mean, which raiders will tell a Tribunal that they are going to raid so as not to get the flag?

Think this is up to the Tribunal Imms. And also, don't mess with the Tribunals. All part of Cabal Wars.

> or (2) out-of-range Manacles should be toned down, to balance the Cabal War.

My opinion is Manacles ought to be like immolation where there is a high chance of failure in casting spells. Most spell casting mages are scary at hero ranks.

I thought he was talking about Shifters. Heh. Surprises me too.

"Personally, I got the impression that manacles/Tribunal-cabal-raiding-imbalance was something the IMMs were looking into but it was going on the back burner. I did not realize, reading Zulg's post, that he was saying manacles/raiding-Tribunal was balanced and was not a work in progress. Is that what you are suggesting?"

While I am not entirely in the 'what's what' loop, I haven't heard
anything about this being on the burner to get worked on.


"This is shocking. You've actually been killed by manacled mages raiding the Spire? Who? What mages killed you under those conditions? That's just unbelievable. Partially because I can't imagine being killed under those circumstances, and partially because I was around throughout Grurk's career as a Tribunal against Outlander, and I don't recall an Outlander mage killing you in the Spire while manacled. Which mage was it?"

While I'm not going to get into specific names, it's true, I have
been killed in the past. Not Grurk, but some of my previous
Arbiter/Tribunals. If you look hard enough, I bet there are logs
of it out there somewhere. There are some very nasty scrolls out
there my friends.


"3. Under current Tribunal laws, Cabal Raiders can be flagged."

You cannot be flagged for retrieving your item. Also, if you want
inspiration on how to raid the Spire as a mage, watch the current
Sunwarden sometime. She seems to do just fine.

Grurk

While I thank you for the kind words, Grurk, most of what I do is luck and having all three protection sources. Once I get manacled inside the Spire, or in the city, especially without my item, I am practically dead, which some of your Tribunals from yesterday can tell you. Manacles make it where I am truly up a creek without a paddle and unless I have some back up from other players, I'm useless. I agree with the people who would like to see this tweaked, if not just for me but for the sheer fact that two out of three types of mages within the Outlander cabal are screwed at raiding because of out of level or in level manacles. The abudance of "speciality" scrolls/wands/staves are not easy to find, and I've played for years. And that is even if you can get them out of your sack or hold them for the fact that you are holding onto protection sources. So here's a take of it from someone who gets manacled on a daily basis.

Let's assume you are quickened and protected before you go in.

Let's assume you have a supply of slow wands. Say 5. And plague wands, say 1. These can be packed in a bag and simply removed as long as you have one slot free.

If only opposed by lowbies, you can use slow and plague on the outer, keep focussing on it, and then zap other guards with slow as lowbie tribs call them. Sure, they can keep calling guards (unless this has changed), but you can keep zapping.

Similarly I would have thought a similar tactic would allow you to take down the inner. Plague lasts about 40 hours. Can a quickened arcane not beat down a slowed executioner?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I figure with plague it could be done, since you can break off to rest and the inner would not recover.

If you have so many protective wands that you can't get other wands from your containers, you are causing your own problems. Having so many protections is making yourself a species of "one trick pony" when you could free up a single slot to give yourself many other options. I haven't even mentioned hellfire wands. Or there is a flight wand which can then be followed up with buffet wands for great damage.

Sure, this would be a royal pain in the ass to carry out against higher level defenders, but it could be done, and then they've have to come after you when you have all your powers.

If you want the other side of the coin, at least when manacled you can use a potion to escape and come back to do a bit more damage later. A trib that is insected can't use magic to escape.

First of all, yes, it is a viable tactic. No, a transmuter could not take the exectuioner plus hero guards plus manacles. They don't hit enough and they don't hit hard enough. While plague stops it from healing, you don't do enough damage to it and you have the chances of being plagued yourself, which just screws you in the longrun. Second, if you keep say... 3 barrier wands, 3 aura wands, 3 shield wands and your sack in your inventory... that's 10 slots by itself. Say manacles takes off -5 dex for 14 hours. Even with 23 dex, that's going to cancel out your quicken if you don't have any -dex gear because of the amount of high hp gear with -dex gear. So, you try to get a wand out of your sack, you can't carry that much. Believe me, I've had it happen to me many times with less wands than what I said in there. About the insects, Outlanders can't insect, otherwise hell, we might kill more people.

If you are fighting a hero, you can prevent him getting first attack on you. Therefore I was not considering hero guards. The only potential imbalance as I saw it was that out-of-pk's could manacle you. (Although I suppose out-of-pks could manacle and then hero could come, but that pre-supposes a couple of defenders already.)

Sure, you can get plagued yourself, but plague cures are abundant. Including ones that weigh nothing, are found on the ground, and are not limited. I used plague wands a lot and when I got plagued, I used plague cures. In my case I used ones from a shop, but I know where they can be found on the ground. They aren't as effective but because they are weightless and non-limited (i.e. not berries) you can just keep popping them until you are cured. So plague is an extremely viable option.

You carry what I would consider to be too many protective wands (although admittedly arcane probably needs wands more than many other magi). I would say that 2 aura, 2 shield, 2 barrier (if you are luckier than me) and one protection (non-limited) would generally be more than enough for a mage. No wonder I could never find any wands. heh That's 6 slots and if you wanted more you could just stash your other wands somewhere nearby for the raid. We don't crash often and if we did you'd know to replace them before anyone else.

About insects, I've died because your inner guardian insects people, and in the context of this dicussion we were talking about fighting the inner. Massie and Blindlebrin plus beastcall wasn't lethal until insects got thrown into the equation by your inner and I couldn't get out of your cabal (given beastcalls blocking the exit, plus briars, plus the two players in my pk). I don't think I ever raided without someone having insects on them by the end. That's why I liked to have a large undead army (so that they might take the insects instead of me).

Personally, I don't pile on high hp gear with -dex. For example, why wear a +66 hp -2 dex item instead of a +50hp -svspell item that doesn't reduce dex? I always got rid of my boa's when I could. If those 16 hp are that important to you, then it's not a matter of game balance that is causing you problems, it's gearing for hp to the extent that you don't cover stat loss enough. You have 23 dex, which gives you a lot of free slots if you don't walk around with so many wands. Personally I consider inventory space to be an advantage of arial, drow and elf magi. Less space, to me, directly translates to carrying fewer limited protections.

It sounds to me as if your problem could be avoided were it not for:

1. Gearing for hp above all else, to the extent that you require quickening not to have reduced dex. Stats are, imho, very important, to the extent that I'll naturally max all of mine rather than spend trains on just hp.

2. Carrying too many protective wands, which forces you to rely on brute force and your own casting instead of having additional options when you can't cast.

Alright, I was just thinking about this and what this has been about. Mages look at manacles as not being balanced, mainly because they make them unable to cast anything... well, why not balance it out on the other side. Look at warriors... how can a axe spec warrior pincer with a pair of manacles on? How can they raise their arms wide enough to bring their axes apart, then back together? Or how about a sword spec? You can't move your arms enough to block well with swords with manacles, or flurry. *thinks of a kid with two sticks flailing about with stiff arms trying to imitate flurry* If we can try to balance it out so mages have a chance against manacles, why don't we balance it out to be more realistic? Some spec moves, and I can think of at least one from each spec, can't be used while affected by manacles. Well? What is going to be said on this one. I'm anxious to see.

I'd have no problem with giving magi a failure prob of 75% say, with a 25% chance to successfully cast, and a fighter a failure prob of 75% too. People would still consider manacles overpowered though, I suspect.

I do agree that manacles hit magi much harder than they hit fighters, and moreover the same is true of all other trib powers, pretty much. Magi don't parry guards as well as fighters, and those citizen hunting parties are nastier against magi imho.

I've always viewed (perhaps wrongly) manacles as cuffs with a length of chain between them.

I wouldn't be opposed to the effects of manacles becoming more akin to bind hands, but I'd hate to take away from that skill's uniqueness.

However, if the manacles cause great enough -dex and -str, they will, in a very real sense, cause problems like you describe for a great assortment of skills like pincer, flurry, and even dodge. The problem with this is that, unlike mage hinderance, it is possible to completely shrug off these effects with enough +stat equipment.

Or, with the relatively new items-affecting-percentage code, there could be a specific negative percentage slapped on skills and spells when burdened with manacles. It might already -- I don't really know.

It all depends on how strong the Imms want manacles to be, and who to be in worst shape from them. Do we want a very small subset of the classes to be greatly hindered, or do we want a lesser but still significant hinderance to all classes? Or if the mage's hands are so precious to casting, maybe there should be reprecussions for broken wrists too?

Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker

Outlanders and tribunals are at war. If outlander mages want to raid they shouldn't have to be Astillian, pulling zillions of wands and scrolls out of their butt because a level 25 tribunal manacled you. It's not fair and it doesn't make much sense. Make it a failure rate or fix it some other way, I don't care. But as it is it's ridiculous and imbalanced.

Why don't you actually try out your hypothetical attack and demonstrate how well it works.

To me it looks like the only people who think the situation is balanced are the ones who've never run up against it.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

Well, whilst I haven't tried to take the scales in a long time, I have been wanted quite a bit with magi and I still don't find manacles overpowered since potions work through them.

What makes it balances in the Outlander case, imho, is that when tribs raid, they can find themselves held at the inner by someone they couldn't see (since chamo negates the need for duo). They can be insected and unable to escape using magical transport when things go badly. They can just flat out walk into a gangbang that they were unaware of because of chamo, and have no chance for escape. At least the mage in my example can whittle the inner down using the tactics I described (plague being about 40 hour duration per successful zap from one of a number of multiple charged wands), unless there is someone that can remove plague.

A trib, on the other hand, is dead if he doesn't know which outlanders are on when he tries to raid and they turn out to be in pk.

A mage that is manacled just has to leave and try later.

At best, I could see an argument for allowing manacles to be weaker in the spire so that there is some chance of spell success. However, we all know that that would be abused by magi manacled in town walking to the spire to fight.

I'm not playing a trib right now, incidentally, and I fully intend to be a wanted man. But I still believe an arcane with a pile of slow wands (which many magi carry) and a plague wand should be quite able to take the inner out if only lowbies/midbies are defending. I genuinely believe that I could do it in that situation. Sure, if there was someone in my pk I would have a harder time, although against with abs I'd still expect it to be possible, but such things are not supposed to be easy just because you have abs. However, I don't walk around with three of each kind of abs wand so that when manacled I can't get things out of a container, or wear -2 dex items just do have an extra 16 hp.

I appreciate you are pointing out that what I'm saying is all very well in theory but probably not in practice, but I still think the difficulty/hassle of it is balanced out by the increased risk of death that tribs put themselves at (based on not seeing enemies and getting insected by the inner).

""I've had law characters in the past who were killed by
manacled mages. Several.""

HAHHAHAHA, right! Gimme a break dude. Stop lying. Either that or really really sucking.

That you are not quite aware of the power of some of the scrolls/wands/staffs out there.


I won't mention them by name, but there is more than a handful that are at least as damaging as any hero invoker.




"Death awaits ya all, wit nasteh big pointeh teeth!"

they are damaging to a player but not to an inner or outer guardian. You will have to carry a backpack full of scrolls and wands to kill an inner, maybe more

Grurk didn't say "manacled mages have solo raided for the Scales many times"

He said "I've been killed in the past by manacled mages"


It is possible to kill with a manacled mage. You seemed to imply that it was either a lie, or that it should NEVER happen barring complete incompetance.

Neither of your assertians is completely accurate, in my opinion.



"Death awaits ya all, wit nasteh big pointeh teeth!"

We're talking about in the context of cabal raids on the Spire. With MODERN, CURRENT cabal powers.

I'm sure in the past, perhaps utilizing entropy or old-school sylvan/arcane powers, some manacled mage killed some lesser-skilled Tribunal warrior outside of the Spire. That's irrelevant to manacled Outlander mages, with current Outlander powers, raiding the Spire.

Is it remotely possible? I'm sure anything's possible given clever planning and arrogant opposition - I can turn over a hundred hypothetical situations in my head that have a .5% chance of panning out. Is it probable enough to merit the status quo? My opinion is no.

I realize this thread is kicking the #### out of a dead horse, but if you're going to shoot down the kickers, please stick to the context in which it is given.

How many Trannies are going to solo raid, against a single
defender, and take the Codex? I think the answer is going to
vary from none, to very very few.

Invokers and Necromancers have a higher chance of doing it, against
just a single defender. Necros have pets. Invokers have powerful
spells.


Ok, so.. we established a Tranny isn't likely to solo raid and
succeed. Manacles shouldn't matter much to them then.

Necromancers. With an army of undead, and some decent protections,
I don't see where manacles would make much difference to them.

Invokers. Probably the most hamstrung by manacles. But, you can shield
and put up all the protections you want outside of town. We've all
seen logs of prepped invokers only taking hits and scratches. So, they
just need to come up with some scroll/wand/stave based offense.
Perhaps a pet. It's possible. I've seen it, I've been victim to it.
And in my view, this hasn't changed from the times of Sylvan to the
Outlanders of today. If anything, it's easier, in that there are more
S/W/S out there to find.

Finally. Is it hard to fight Tribunals in thier element? Yes. I
think it no more difficult, however, than the many times I walked
my way up the forested road to raid the Outlander cabal, unaware
Malkhar was hiding in the woods for me. Was it unfair I could not
see camo? I mean, shoot.. camo makes you invis to almost every
other class... is that really fair? Yes. Just as manacles are fair.
Any cabal, in it's home turf is going to be a tough. It's the way CF
cabal wars are.

Well, keep in mind Malkhar was no ordinary ranger - he was the by far the best ranger since ... ahem.

Seriously, though, I already ran through my arguments. All I can add is that the difference between your Tribunal raiding Outlander vs. Outlander raiding Tribunal is that the Tribunal *doesn't have to be in the PK range of the Outlander to screw him over*. Whereas the Tribunal's danger entirely rests on an Outlander in range, on line.

Camouflage is a class skill. It makes you hidden and lets you hit people really hard. Other outlander powers do really cool things too. But none of them will completely utterly shut a mage's class skills other than scrolls and wands down. It's possible to kill people with wands when you can't cast anything and your protections are up. But it makes for a horrible imbalance in the cabal wars. It doesn't matter if it's a tribunal necromancer, warrior, bard, or orc. A tribunal of any level can manacle a hero invoker and limit their effectiveness hugely.

Grurk, I hope you understand that your opinion here is somewhat informed by your allegiances in what it sounds like you usually play.

"Camouflage is a class skill."

I hope I'm not giving any uber-Outlander powers away, but
I'm pretty sure they still have camo as a cabal power.

Grurk

Okay, chameleon/camo is still a cabal power.

That doesn't change my point at all. At all.

Id be damned the day a mage kills me with just scrolls or wands. I have to be linkdead and/or afk

which can do three eradicates quite often. Certainly enough to kill defenders if you have a couple of them. Usually it is only used by some unsuspecting newb who kills himself instead of his enemy.

Manacles should be toned down.

...perhaps more than any other issue in the game.