So, one of the goals in Magic 3.0 is to prevent a spell from ever making another spell useless. My question is, why wouldn't someone who has access to a DFA spell use it over another spell when dealing with another PC?

DFA spells negate the Shield skill. While in 3.0 we will be able to use an additional 60% of our Evasion to mitigate this fact, you're still talking about cutting out 100's of ranks at the high end here with these spells. Surely this breaks global caps.

As far as I can see presently, DFA's are only ++'s and no -'s to offset the gross advantage you get from using them. So then, why wouldn't anyone who has a DFA use anything other than that in order to kill another PC? There are a small few situations in which you cannot use a DFA(Ex: You can't use them indoors, Burn requires a moon or sun to be in the sky, etc.) but these are very niche situations.

Are some limiters being placed on the number of ranks which can be negated when using a DFA in 3.0? Or perhaps a primary contest is being introduced to determine just how much of the Shield skill will be negated, ala Backstab? (Ex: Hiding vs Perception and then Backstab versus Defense)

Inquiring minds would love to know :)

~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://drzeal.forumotion.com Learn How to PvP!

I consider "PvP focused" to be a valid niche for a spell.

I mean, we can totally have Yet Another DFA Argument, since I think we're slacking on our quota for the year, but the basic idea that one TM spell may be more suitable for murdering PCs than another TM spell doesn't bother me.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

Since we're on the topic of DFA here. I was really wondering why Vivisection isn't a DFA spell, I mean how do you block something with a shield that you don't see coming? I think if the person or whomever fails the perception check it should be. The same arguement could be made about sniping with a range weapon, but the arrows are still visible, while Vivisection are invisible blades. I'm not really complaining or anything, the spell just strikes me as what a DFA spell should be.

...Ya, I can't see anything overpowered about a DFA snipe that can be used without restriction. Can we get it on the backstab calcs too? I mean, it's logical.

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>Like I said nothing crazy or game breaking, just a small bonus to fit the idea of the spell.

It already has that. It's called snipe. With magic. Necros basically get to bonus a secondary skill (TM) with a primary skill (hiding). Hiding is realistically going to be way above TM at-level, so they have a significant 'little bonus' as it is.

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<<I have always found it a bit silly that we chant the mantra of "skill based game" yet we allow TM|backstab to bypass shield.>>

Ranged|TM bypasses parry... your point?

Somethings need checks somethings have a balance with other checks and circumstances.

<<Shield will always block a sneak attack>>

Shield does have the random chance of being in the right place at the right time bypassing hard earned weapon ranks. Not during a sneak attack but in normal everyday combat.

These types of scenarios are almost everywhere in this Game on both sides of the fence.

Yamcer

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"You know, while I understand the importance of seeing the (personal) validity in other's arguments, it's impossible for me to believe fully that others are correct. If their argument was correct, I'd change mine." - My GF

The skill based game argument seems to be the driving factor for why Combat 3.0 allows the skill check at a penalty as an additional evasion check. Eliminating the skill from consideration would, in essence, exceed the global caps on penalties.

-pete

I tend to agree with that. With DFA already being horribly inaccurate against evasion, if it's going to be going against shield ranks treated as evasion, it should at least be not double-dipped penalty-wise.
- Starlear -

>>I tend to agree with that. With DFA already being horribly inaccurate against evasion, if it's going to be going against shield ranks treated as evasion, it should at least be not double-dipped penalty-wise.

I think it should get the penalty against evasion still, even with shield ranks being used as evasion. Ideally, it would be balanced such that if the target has exactly the same number of ranks in evasion as they do in shield, DFA confers no advantage or disadvantage. DFA would still be useful if they had more shield ranks than evasion ranks, but you'd be better off with non-DFA if they had more evasion than shield, so it wouldn't be a no-brainer choice of spells in all situations like it is now.

DFA penalty against Evasion isn't that bad at all, i've had somebody with 150 ranks lower TM than my Evasion hit me easy enough. A few people actually, though I haven't done any extensive testing on it.

> This is already how it's (theoretically) supposed to work. DFA is only better if your opponent is holding a shield. Of course, everyone is always holding a shield.

That wasn't the suggestion. The suggestion was that DFA be only better if your opponent is holding a shield and has more shield ranks than evasion.

>> So, theoretically DFA would be almost (<important word here) exclusively Paladin killers. Woot!

With the characters who trained in the existing system, yeah, probably. I don't see a huge problem with that. There's also bunch of guilds where the choice between DFA and non-DFA probably wouldn't matter much. And if Everything 3.0 goes the way I hope it does, there should start being people who train shield/parry and mostly ignore evasion at some point in the future. At the very least, it's a step up from the current situation where there's never a reason not to use DFA spells in PvP.

>Oh, I don't see a huge problem with it either. There should be/will be 'best choices' for any opponent. I was mostly just pointing out that the suggested scenario was really only likely to occur in the one guild whose armor and survival skillsets are placed that way.

Imagine that. A spell which bypasses a certain skillcheck has as its best opponent the guild whose skill placements make that skill check thier best and most likely skill.

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Hey look ma! There are rules to useing quotations!
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