I'm fairly certain I am capable of getting and staying empowered (despite my difficulties in that regard with roles I actually want to play) long enough to ruin (at least) half-dozen characters by aging them with wither significantly. Can we just pretend I did this and then change it so that wither doesn't age?

I am fine with insta-kill skills, and am fine with losing 1/3rd con. It sucks that a class has the ability to completely shorten the lifespan of a character though. It serves no prupose.

Having played a few shamans (but not access to code), I am fairly certain that +age affect of wither does not occur all that often. Coupled with the fact that few characters stick it out to age-death, I just don't think that's going to happen.

If you want, do a search of the Battlefield and count how many characters have age-died. Then, look at how many age-died with an abnormally few amount of hours. Let me know what you find out.

My arial harbinger who age died so quick Lyristeon thought it was a bug, all from having to fight two shamans all the time. I stopped playing for a year after that.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

I just don't see the benefit in having wither age people. It detracts from the over-all character experience. I'd much rather it did something additional to the combat at hand tho? Maybe add like a -hp effect, or additional -stat? Just don't have it age folks

whaddya say?

Either it fires once or never against a character and it's meaningless, or you spam it on someone and it causes them to age die 100 hours earlier...which is just silly.

Maybe I don't understand but its one of those things that has no tangible upside. There have been a handful of chars that were "griefed" into an early age death, definitely not many, but why is that effect even there?

We should just remove it or replace it with something useful that does not have the potential to permanently kill people.

My comment merely referred to the fact that I didn't think the original poster would succeed in getting it changed by spamming it on people.

Some people you can't just 'con kill' in the typical means. Therefore you have another option. Killing your character is usually the main target most people have towards others. This is another way. Which isn't exactly easy if they are intelligent and wary of it and defend against it.

Some people don't and that is on them, really.

Spamming wither on someone hoping to age die them is almost as bad as stalking a ghost and multi-killing them on the douche-o-meter.

Honestly, though, if you are trying to grief someone by spamming wither in the hope they age die, you're in for a long, long wait. It just does not happen that often.

You don't target a specific person. You don't care who gets ####ed, you just run around withering basically anyone and everyone you can find and eventually you'll get lucky and ruin someone's character. Which means you win?

As an example, from help orc "Average lifespan: 515 hours"

Krunk's age at age-death

"Age middle-aged, 61 years old (409 hours)"

I don't know for certain that is wither related, but I strongly suspect that it is. I'm not upset Krunk age-died when he did. It worked out best that way for me from a RL perspective, but should some shaman really be able to deprive me of 200 hours of gameplay (assuming average + chief/leader bonus) because I got caught without saves and they happened to get a good roll on wither?

FYI, Alzhinghul was 551 hours at con-death.

nt

You know, except for the giving any thought to damroll part.

nt

We should be able to get the years from that. All orc age deaths I see with the graveyard search show oddly low hours, though.

Which clearly no one supports and we've generally been moving far away from, and players are eventually punished for pursuing by any means... Particularly if they get creative about it.

Yet we still have abilities, rooms and programs that function in that manner.

Kind of an inconsistent policy.

This causes it to have a *significant* impact on orcs, arials, and humans, and other short-lived races. Dwarves, giants, and elves live for *so* many years that you could spam wither on them for the entire life of the character and it barely makes a difference.

*I also happen to probably have the worst-hit orc from this, having age-died Muzgash at 241 hours due in part to wither hits. Your saves are just *so* godawful as an orc due to low int/wis stats that you're almost guaranteed to take a bad wither hit at some point in your life.

Is it not con based?

I thought krunk aged died early because he became Chief later than other people normally would, given how strong Krunk was he should have been chief way earlier than he was. But I think wither did play into it some when I look at it.

Alzhingul died at age 66, as did Thrunna,(446 hours), and both of them got to Old.

Age dying still middle aged seems odd, unless it was related to gear or something.

I think 600 was a long shot for Krunk though, because of how late you got chief.
Orcs start at 16.
You went to 61
336 hours in you made chief.
Probably in your late 50's then.
So + 40 years = roughly 8 hours per year?

Alzhinghul went to 66 in 551 hours
Chief at 131 hours
Same Metric he was probably around 31 at Chief.
Had 35 years remaining = 420 hours So roughly 12 hours per year as a leader.

So I look at Krunk again.
Chief 336 hours in which is roughly +42 years if you assume 8 hours per year.
Means around 58? So if you reached 66, thats 8 years at 12 hours, 96 hours to get there, and you made it to 409, so 73 hours for 3 years.
(And Zulg retouched hours/aging between alzinghul and krunk so hard to know what that change did.)

Dying at 61 instead of 66 is what hurt Krunk more, and I believe wither removes years from the max, so if true Krunk dying middle aged confirms that he was withered because his age death went below his age to trigger old.

So yeah, you probably got screwed by wither since you age died middle aged.
It could have only been once though, and if it took off say three years, that'd be noticeable on a short lived race. Where as to an elf, it's like 6 hours of play time if that.

What gameplay purpose does the aging affect of wither serve?

nt