A few of us have been chatting about this on the Official Discord server, but I wanted to bring it up here in a more formal setting. Hopefully with a little more coherance on my end, and ask for consideration of an adjustment -- any kind of adjustment -- to Emuin's Candlelight.

This is a fabulous spell. Its ability to store and defer damage is transformative. It also contains our replacement Evasion buff, so it's truly a spell I cannot live without.

My concern: when the spell drops, all of the stored damage (both wounds and vitality) unload all at once. Depending on what happened to load up EMC in the first place, it is entirely possible that there'll be enough stored within to kill me if I'm forced to take all of it at once.

In PvE? This is totally reasonable. I need to be cautious: "incaution and hubris ever bring their own punishments."

If EMC is dispelled it's game over. In a PvP context, coming at a Redeemed necromancer with a dispell ability is devastatingly effective. A single Debilitation attack can kill me. In a game with prolific use of sorcery (and where Rend wands are MT incidentals), there's no scenario that I emerge victorious in a fight against an evenly-matched opponent using this tactic. This is our Achilles' heel.

All of our eggs are in one proverbial basket. Surrounded by naphtha.

And it's a little disheartening for a single spell to basically be a silver bullet.

With that said, can anything be done to minimize this?
- Can the spell be harder to dispell, given how uniquely hazardous losing it suddenly is? (Even if that means it the spell slot cost rises.)
- Can the Redeemed get native access to some sort of Worm's Mist equivalent? I don't really want this, but I'm looking for a way to protect THIS spell specifically (without requiring a sorcerous solution).
- Can we trade off existing functionality for some special handling when EMC unloads suddenly? I expect to be in a bad place if this happens, but just... exploding is not ideal.
- If an unload is going to cause an instant and automatic death, can we make another type of sacrifice? A massive stun? Sacrifice of favor(s)? Something else? All of the above?

I don't know what the correct balance is, but hope we can have a discussion about whether this is the way it should be. It's a really bad weakness, especially since this is also the source of our Evasion buff.

- I

This is especially difficult because EMC is also the Evasion buff for Redeemed, meaning they really just don't have the option of foregoing EMC in PvP. So saying, "just don't use it" isn't really valid here. Given what Redeemed give up, I think this is something that should be addressed. I've seen a little of this in action, but haven't had a chance to test things directly yet. One possibility is that the problem here is that the high HP damage reduction barrier is only being calculated once, even though multiple hits have been happening.

Of Inneth's solutions, I personally would lean towards making the spell resistant to dispelling as the simplest and easiest answer.

A more interesting option might be some sort of metaspell is to have the spell sort of "holy backfire" when dispelled, causing much less damage to the Redeemed, and directing the rest at the person who dispelled it. This fits with the sort of divine punishment/retribution theme of the Redeemed, and creates an interesting pattern where, when attacking a Redeemed you should try to dispel EMC first before doing damage, if you're planning on ever dispelling it at all. Or the thought of, "how damaged has he already been, how bad will the backlash be if I dispel it?"

This solution would also mitigate the issues of potential mech abuse if the damage were just lessened when it was dispelled and players might choose just to have someone dispel it to avoid the damage entirely, because the dispeller would be risking serious injury or death.

- Saragos

> Eh, I wouldn't say that having someone else (can't you also target yourself with dispel, too?) would count as mech abuse as much as "interesting way to try to ejector seat your way out of a bad situation".

Hey, if the GM's are cool with that, more power to you. I just assumed that they wouldn't, or would want a cost attached.

- Saragos

Silly Q, but what if the evasion buff got decoupled from the ward and became its own spell? It's not like they are paired due to a system requirement for balance.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.