>>Magic is being offered to Trader's as a 'new deal'. Without grandfathering, everyone has a clean new slate. By the same token, it's also NOT being added to the guild requirements, as a nod to the folks who've been enjoying the guild for so very long without magic. However, with all that said, converting SPECULATES as a whole to the magic system means established Trader's are taking a huge hit to some of their effectiveness.

Sucks to be them?

In my opinion you don't get to complain about not wanting to be forced to use magic, get your way, and then complain about not being able to use your abilities that we were told were being converted to spells. I'm not really sure how else they saw this playing out.

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“I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.”

Had a thought, what about giving us a magic bonus pool (ala when skills merged) that equates to what barbs and thieves received in grandfathered magic ranks? That solves the "we're new to this" without the "we need to penalize you because of how we wrote this lore" issue.

Right, the metric it would be based on would be the ranks a tert skillset would require at your current circle if it were a circle req. Pretty simple and straight forward way to address the discrepancy between thieves/barbs and traders in their magic roll outs.

Why not go with the original intention? 1 rank per skill per circle. It’s still a penalty, but it’s one that will be easier to bear.

If they add it as bits to the bonus pool, based off your circle or trading, then it wouldn’t be too difficult to retroactively grandfather. There could be some RP around it. Go to the negotiators and ask for a contract. You personally sign away your first born and you get some bonus bits. Make this for existing traders only, and everyone else “signs” when they join up to the guild.

> So is the problem "I can't cast Finesse right now at the same ability as I could when it was an ability and want ranks faster" or "I just eventually want a free magic specific RPA"?

You're acting like those are somehow not connected with each other.

Let's recap.

- 3 days ago, we could get a +x% buff to trader bonus, perception, evasion, shield, and charisma. This is in addition to a (frankly OP) ability that was speculate coin.

- On Christmas morning, we opened up the surprise gift that is trader magic to find it had strings attached. Trader bonus, charisma, perception, evasion, and shield buffs are temporarily nerfed. It will takes us weeks to months to get them back to where they were. Our debilitation ability (coin) now uses debilitation (skill).

- No one is suggesting that doesn't make sense, but no one likes to be nerfed. It puts a damper on this exciting thing that we looked forward to with high anticipation.

- For the traders who will take the option of going no-magic, they are permanently giving up abilities that they used to have in this guild. Key, defining abilities. For these traders, speculate is more or less worthless now, outside of the rare situations where you want a luck buff. This is an intentional choice to play your character in a mechanically discouraged way. It takes a special person to make that choice, and most of them are already necromancers.

- Those of us that will persue magic are now grasping at straws trying to find a faster way to regain our lost abilities. Level 100 traders will need about 180 magics (+ feats) to get speculate back. That takes time. Level 150 traders will need closer to 400. Likewise with defense (that's a 20% loss to evasion and shield, by the way, including a loss of your primary debilitator. Not insignificant, and it could mean a lot of traders have to stop leveling while they back-train magics)

That's the problem. That's what we're trying to propose solutions to fix. This has nothing to do with unfair advantages. This has everything to do with regaining ground we've already tread.

>>On Christmas morning, we opened up the surprise gift that is trader magic to find it had strings attached. Trader bonus, charisma, perception, evasion, and shield buffs are temporarily nerfed. It will takes us weeks to months to get them back to where they were. Our debilitation ability (coin) now uses debilitation (skill).

Ever since the concept of Trader magic was announced, let alone when speculate updates were rolled out since then, GMs have been saying over and over that most will be converted over to the magic system, and Traders had the ability to start listening to magic classes to prepare for it. While I can sympathize with the idea of feeling temporarily nerf because you can't do something skill-free, this was not exactly a surprise string attached.

>>All I recall that we cut from Speculate is two skill buffs (one of which shared with nine guilds, the other shared by seven) and a stat buff (shared with five).

>>If we cut one of the mechanically novel abilities, it was likely unintentional.

Speculate finesse had a bonus to selling pouches/bundles tied with it. The ePedia page is even listing "Trader Bonus" as one of the things that the Finesse spell does. https://elanthipedia.play.net/Finesse

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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.

> I must admit I may be missing something. Is there a key, defining ability to the Trader guild that got lost in the transition? All I recall that we cut from Speculate is two skill buffs (one of which shared with nine guilds, the other shared by seven) and a stat buff (shared with five).

I'm mainly referring to speculate finesse. This is a spell, and IIRC is required for all but the top-end traders to use their trader bonus when selling pouches and bundles. However, if it is true that the bonus is there regardless of spell potency, then I'll shut up. I think The charisma hit is still noticeable, we're talking about going from 10-20 to 1-2 for a while, but the bonus was the big one.

Speculate defense was also one of those really useful spells. Originally evasion, and then improved greatly (recently), it was one of our few abilities that grew with us all the way to 150. Losing dozens of ranks in evasion and shield while we train up magics has affected my ability to hunt, and I had to stop while I try to get back to where I was.

Speculate coin going through core debilitation is also a huge nerf. You're taking a special mechanic and balancing it off a tertiary skill, even though it already had diminishing returns built in. http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Traders/Game%20Master%20and%20Official%20Announcements/thread/1524990 That's like changing cleric devotions to go through survival checks to determine if they're effective or not, or changing summoning to check against performance.


> Ever since the concept of Trader magic was announced, let alone when speculate updates were rolled out since then, GMs have been saying over and over that most will be converted over to the magic system, and Traders had the ability to start listening to magic classes to prepare for it.

Seriously Tev? Telling people to get a leg-up on back-training, without a reliable means of doing it, is not a reasonable response.

Either way, the statement is wrong: http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Traders/Game%20Master%20and%20Official%20Announcements/thread/1452840

There's another post in there on grandfathering. It was originally planned and announced to compensate for the speculate change.

> @Navesi

Awesome testing!

>>I'm mainly referring to speculate finesse. This is a spell, and IIRC is required for all but the top-end traders to use their trader bonus when selling pouches and bundles. However, if it is true that the bonus is there regardless of spell potency, then I'll shut up.

Dude, I don't want you to shut up. I do think you're edging close to being worked up and maybe step back a little, but criticism is fine. You have the privilege of telling us you don't like how we've handled things. That may not change how we handle things, but it's out there and it's food for thought.

But that said: I actually did go through the value stuff just now. There are two separate, stacking bonuses Traders get. One is based on your Trading skill, regardless of special abilities up or not. The other is circle-based and active/inactive based on the presence of Finesse. This was correctly updated for the spell and not dependent on any particular mana amount. If a Trader (and only a Trader) has the spell up at all, they get the full force of the Finesse bonus.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>I don't recall any trader asking for no guild requirement. In fact, it was just the opposite. When this was first pitched, traders were told they would have a token guild req and be grandfathered at the same rate of other NMUs.

According to Armifer, people complained about not wanting to train magic skills as a Trader. So they tailored the release to not add magic requirements. With no requirements, there's no grandfathering. The initial proposed requirements were pretty low, so even at 100th circle the highest skill would only be 220 ranks, assuming I mathed right. That's just barely half the required ranks to cap an Intro spell.

Would it have been nice to have gotten some grandfathering? Sure, but at least we don't have magic reqs am I right?

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“I’m sorry that your mystical, godlike powers do not instantly work as you would like them to.”

> Dude, I don't want you to shut up.

I didn't mean it like that, but I don't want to raise a stink if I'm in the wrong either.

> This was correctly updated for the spell and not dependent on any particular mana amount. If a Trader (and only a Trader) has the spell up at all, they get the full force of the Finesse bonus.

Thank you for checking. That's good news.

> You'll also note circle requirements for magic.

A token req. Magic is never the gate for any magic tert guild, especially when we're only talking about two in the age of sonawret crystals and lunar magic power perceive options.

> Your mileage may vary. I know that's how it worked when Paladins and Rangers were given a heads up that they'll have to start using TM for their damage-based spells.

Fair point, but we're not talking about TM. Coin passes through debilitation, and rangers / paladins received a nifty little bonus to debilitation during 3.0 in the form of EXP switch.

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new spell suggestions

- Fabrication spell. Adds a pair of magic horses to our caravan to increase movement speed or maybe summon it to us.

- Neomatics spell. +trading, -appraisal RT.

- Illusion spell. Charm a clerk or minister with regards to contracts. Maybe they give you a higher value one than your level would support, they accept contracts for other outposts, they'll accept expired contracts, or they'll overpay you for the contract.

- Illusion or Fabrication spell. Improve the quality of entire gem pouches, increasing their value.

- Noumena metaspell that adds a +wisdom and increased +aura regen rate or aura cap, or reduced research speed.

- Fabrication spell. Creates a mirror that can reflect moonlight/starlight into a room. If a nearby room is considered outdoors then the room you're in is too. Either that, or it literally transforms the roof of whatever room you're in into a see-through skylight. It's considered outdoors for the duration of the spell.

- Noumatics spell. It forces a shop to update it's inventory, if on a rotating stock, or makes a shop sell us goods it normally wouldn't.

- Noumatics spell. Follow-up to the spell above that allows traders to enter shops with guild restrictions, such as the empath shop in crossing or the HE / Guildfest shops.

- Fabrication spell. Creates a magical link between all of your worn cambrinth (mechanically, creates a new camb object of size = total camb that you have on you), held or worn, and interacting with any camb object not the link will sever the connection.

- Illusion / Fabrication spell. Create a crystal version of yourself. Check based on evasion and tactics that attacks aimed at you (that you dodge) could shatter the figure instead. If the attacking target is near you (melee/pole) then they will suffer shrapnel damage. The figure can re-form over time.

- Illusion spell. Cyclic. AOE. -OF and/or -DF. Magic determines successful application of the spell, but tactics determines the impact (capped by mana). Create multiple copies of yourself that distract and torment your attackers. They won't dodge

- Illusion spell. AOE fear spell that "attacks" creatures in the room. If successful, it damages their position and balance. They may fall down trying to get away.

- Fabrication spell. That crafting pet we all want so badly :)

- Fabrication spell. The tool buffs mentioned before. +tool stats (think DA for tools).

- A few skill buffs. +Lockpicking, +ranged weapons, +magic skills (namely augmentation and attunement), and

- Fabrication spell. Crystalizes our blood (small vitality hit) to slow or stop poison, disease, and bleeding (they go dormant while the spell is up - they don't actually go away until healed).

- Fabrication spell. Create crystal. Creates a one-use light-thrown or heavy thrown weapon (bonus feats count) that explodes for additional slicing damage (short-range AOE?) when hit.

- Illusion spell. Blinds the target (disorient)

- Fabrication Cantrip. Cast on a caravan. It grows an edible crystal that will keep your caravan full and happy.

- Illusion Cantrip. We cast it in our shop (like focus moonbeam) and our shop can stay open when we're not physically present.

- Neomatics Cantrip. Create a telepathic device. Anyone who walks into a room with the device will receive a marketing advertisement that you can bake into the object. Only triggers once every minute to prevent spam. Person sees it as a whisper or say to the room.



- General ability. 100th circle, shop at least 6 months old. Concierge Service. Allows anyone to go to a counter in the crossings plaza and ask clerk to buy <item> in <shop name>. They'll confirm the price, and have a moon mage on staff pick up the item for you, plus a small fee paid by the purchaser. You can ask ask clerk about shop <item> in <shop name> to see the shop description before you buy.