I don't agree that the War Mage experience is any worse off any any other guild, but I do think it's legitimate to be frustrated over the state of our spellbooks.

Being virtually the only ones with TM skill was a bad time and like being the Empaths of violence -- a skill nobody wants to develop for and everyone else could sidestep. But every magic design philosophy change, though they have usually been good thought-out and needed changes, has cut down the warrior mage toolbox to increasingly generic push-button-receive-damage spells.

We lost access to skin damage and several spells to the TM damage directive, as much as we benefited from it in the long run.

We lost access to nerve damage because some GM decided that electric nerve damage was a fantasy trope. I just lay down on the floor and died on that one or I would have just buried the forums with peer-reviewed systematic reviews of the clinical literature.

We lost access to weapon and shield creation because.... I have no idea. Moonblade and Shield of Light appear to function just fine for MMs and Clerics. I'm used to vaporware development for Warrior Mages of spells, systems, and entire hunting areas, but this is the first time I can think of where something that worked got pulled in favor of something that hadn't even been developed yet.

I have faith in the current crop of GMs, but I don't have faith that we have people with a feel for the Warrior Mage guild. My warrior mage plays a little more like a generic fantasy combat wizard with each development change we get swept up in. I don't think it's true that warrior mages don't have an identity and feel except maybe a lot of it has been generalized out of the game.

EHhn, I probably need a hug too. Haha no just kidding I need a spell that deals nerve damage.

>I really wish familiars could pick up weapons.

What? They can't? I rescue weapons with my familiars all the time (don't I? Am I hallucinating?)

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>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.

In general with 3.0 I think we went a little too generic with TM spells (Which is better than the MASSIVE differences in effectiveness and the tier system we had in the past) and we have some cool ideas for different types of TM spells that are more than just a cosmetic wash over "Single shot, multi shot, AoE (single/multi)" - but they need new mechanics and to be approached with caution to preserve game balance. I know I sound like a broken record here, but that was yet another project that's suffered significant delays due to Socharis's passing. It's something I'd like to revisit and work on but I don't know when it will make sense in my current slate of projects or if someone else may get to it first.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>In general with 3.0 I think we went a little too generic with TM spells (Which is better than the MASSIVE differences in effectiveness and the tier system we had in the past) and we have some cool ideas for different types of TM spells that are more than just a cosmetic wash over "Single shot, multi shot, AoE (single/multi)" - but they need new mechanics and to be approached with caution to preserve game balance. I know I sound like a broken record here, but that was yet another project that's suffered significant delays due to Socharis's passing. It's something I'd like to revisit and work on but I don't know when it will make sense in my current slate of projects or if someone else may get to it first.

Now that I'm more awake and had coffee, yeah. This. Generics and lack of Summoning are my core issues. I don't fault the GMs, especially considering the circumstances regarding Socharis. I'd apply to become GM today if I could keep my account active long enough to qualify for it just to help out with the dev.

Thanks for the acknowledgement and response.

Passive debilitators based on damage type that trigger occasionally would help give it flavor. (talking 1-5 second debilitators, nothing like an actual spell)


For Warrior Mages


Fire - small bursts of fire, causing stuns and rare fall overs to douse the flames.

Water - balnce debuffs, chills that cause stuns, slows, rare crits of ice encasement (entangled)

Electric - Drop things ala tingle (with faster recovery for pickup), electrical stuns, rare crit to accidentally attack the wrong target with muscle spasms.

Earth - step in mud, messing up balance crit for weapon or body getting stuck in mud and have to dig out (short rt 1-2 times)

Air - Vertigo-style debilitation with rare crit to get knocked over by a gust of wind.

Aether - dazzled ala prismatic colors rare crit to <something>


Base it on last cast spell, give it a potential attempt for 30 seconds, max occurances say 2-3 per spell.

Example messaging:

A small puff of smoke on the ship's rat bursts into a flash of flame! The rat is stunned!(2 seconds)

The muscles in the goblin's arm spasm, electricity dancing down the limb. His arm snaps out to deal a light hit to a giant hog! (Whoops!)

<<Also there was some caveating that 'we could still include it but it will costs more slots.'
<<And then Mind Blast is still a thing. :/

Mental Blast costs 5 slots, so it doesn't contradict your statement.

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> Fire - small bursts of fire, causing stuns and rare fall overs to douse the flames.

> Water - balnce debuffs, chills that cause stuns, slows, rare crits of ice encasement (entangled)

> Electric - Drop things ala tingle (with faster recovery for pickup), electrical stuns, rare crit to accidentally attack the wrong target with muscle spasms.

> Earth - step in mud, messing up balance crit for weapon or body getting stuck in mud and have to dig out (short rt 1-2 times)

> Air - Vertigo-style debilitation with rare crit to get knocked over by a gust of wind.

> Aether - dazzled ala prismatic colors rare crit to <something>

I kind of love this idea, but could I suggest it as a single slot meta spell near the top of the tree. The meta requires more of the first element than the second. Thematically, you're using your mastery of one discipline to alter the effects of another.

Earth + Fire => super heat fist of stone to add fire damage to the impact.

Water + Fire => Apply more heat to your geyser to erupt steam rather than water. Loses impact damage, but hinders perception and ranged accuracy.

Electric + Aether => Coat your target in a brief ethereal shroud delaying half the bolts. Half hit immediate, half hit a random 3-10 seconds later. Knocks out of hiding if hit with a strong enough blast.

Air + Water => Freeze the air before it blasts your target adding a fatigue hit in addition to the cast.

>Maybe WM magic has always been uninspired and generic, and the literally game-breaking overpoweredness overshadowed that? I don't think that's the case, though. If you critically appraise the design itself, it falls short compared to the richness of unique fun in most other guild spellbooks.

CL and LB were also the prime 'DFA' spells back in the day, with AE a close second (thought AE had the spirit hit), but DFA was neutered, and a lot of spells have a DFA or DFB type component.

Well, I think when only WMs had AoE effect offense, both CL and FR were highly desired. But now Clerics, Paladins, bards, Necros, and I think MMs, have one, and they're all pretty standard. WMs still have the most 'fire and forget' spells, but players generally view those as lackluster (MAB, the ice one, arguably DB).

I think it's more that the 'wow' has been diluted. Now, everyone has at least one version of a 'special' spell, so having 2 or even 3 isn't really a wow factor, especially when your spells will have a lot of environmental conditions not attached to anyone else (indoor, outdoor, natural floor, water, not water, etc.).

I thought about the PvP concerns when I was suggesting my random passive debil perks, it could easily be tweaked to only occur every 5 spells cast or so, just some random flavor with a little bit of bonus.

Honestly, I'd take the flavor just to have it, but would feel a little :/ about no combat impacts.

>>That's accurate insofar as that's what the GMs have said is the case. What Maz means, I think, is if it takes 500 augmentation skill to cap a basic buff (made up number), then once you reach 500 ranks you have your capped buff whether magic primary, secondary or tertiary. In theory, even the hardest to cast buffs shouldn't take more than 1200 skill, potentially less with spell stance and mastery feats, and that's attainable even for a magic tert guild.<<

Yeah, that.

IDK, I loved playing my WM in 2.0. =( Eventually you only used maybe 4 TM spells (out of lots) to do damage - aether lash, lightning bolt, chain lightning, maybe fire rain in invasions - but you strode through Elanthia like Gozer the Gozerian smiting down lesser text beings left and right, or played deadly games of cat and mouse or hide and seek with someone knowing that whoever made the first mistake was going to die, and it felt really epic until you got yourself sniped in the face or fought a Barbarian with Dragon Dance or what have you. It wasn't balanced but it was more fun.

3.0 did away with that epicness/OPness across the board and arguably that was for the best, but it didn't replace that with anything and for WMs pretty much the whole guild experience was based around it, so IMO right now it's a little lacking.

>>Part of the problem is that different damage types matter quite a bit and yet don't perceive it that way due to how damage is summed in DR and the lack of numbers on the player end.<<
>>... and that's a problem for making spells feel different while actually being balanced. And I don't think anyone has come up with a nifty solution yet.<<

A whole lot of this, basically. IMO maybe backing off the balance requirement (for everyone) would be a help. As long as every guild has a few things that feel kind of OP I think it could be fine.

>>One of the advantages of being an MU in a magic primary guild that I think gets overlooked a lot is not just the quality of magic primary spellbooks, but their size. Clearly, a lot of time was spent on making magic primary spellbooks something enviable. I mean, just think about what warmies had before 3.0. I played a warmie back in the day, but had a hard time enjoying it because it was all about casting CL or ALA with 20 other spells that did basically the same thing less efficiently. It seems by design that magic secondary and tertiary guilds have spellbooks that are less comprehensive.<<

Less comprehensive but just as effective, right? You don't need half a dozen ways to do something if the two or three you have work just as well and your overall package is well tailored for your guild.

Mazrian

(Like usual, the numbers below are made up but are being used to express an idea)

Every guild has "Stuff" they can do. For a magic prime, most of their "Stuff" should be through magic system in one way or another. Say 70% magic, 30% "else" (Summoning, Prediction, Communes etc). Magic primes are doing fairly good here.

Which implies that for a magic tert (We're ignoring magic secondaries for the sake of this discussion, assume they're in the middle) we should have the reverse. 30% of their "Stuff" should be magic and 70% should be guild abilities, guild skills etc. But we don't have that. Why? (Okay, Traders do, but that's because they're 100% stuff right now).

Well... there's a bunch of reasons. And keep in mind, I'm talking about where they are now, not in an ideal "end state".
1) Magic was just overhauled and balanced and is a very broad flexible system with modern code.
2) Writing magic spells is relatively easy.
3) We don't have the diversity of effects we once had since the more complex spells tend to be the ones that weren't converted, lost something in the conversion, or did things the guild really shouldn't have been doing.
4) Since magic terts need to support all their magic skills still they need a broad selection of spells, so they tend to get the essentials in every spellbook and because of point 3) they don't miss the depth as much.
5) Guild skills are hard to build right and both Rangers and Paladins are woefully out of date. This means that both pre3.0 and post development often took the shape of a spell when, perhaps, it should not have.
6) Existing guild abilities tend not to consider important things like "Being tied to skills" and "Growing through 150-200 circles".

I could go on, but it really all just boils down to "It's been easier to develop magic for tert guilds than other stuff" and "We aren't currently rewarding having a deep spellbook as much as we should because we took away the idea of spell tier as far as spell power and unique and useful spells are hard to conceive of, balance, and code."

Which is why I've spent a fair bit of my thinking time lately working on Paladin's non-magic stuff. It may not seem like it at first, but that sort of work is going to be healthy for magic primes in the long term as well as the guild(s) in question.

-Raesh

P.S. Rangers, we haven't forgotten you - I have some nifty ideas for how to modernize the Ranger guild abilities but I'm further along with the Paladin ones and don't want to split my attention - I've been learning how easy it is to overwhelm myself with projects to the point where I just don't get any of them done.

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>Is there merit to discussing the option of magic tert guilds not needing all the magic skills?

Hmm. Not at this point, no.

It's clear that's the direction we went with Barbarians and Thieves (And that's been sort of a mixed bag) but I don't think it was ever seriously considered for magic terts. Part of the problem is the existence of the AP spellbook and sorcery (They need the skills for those systems) and also it ends up being really restrictive in what your magic can do. There are some minor themes going on with the guilds in which skills they tend to get more spells in, but I don't know how apparent that is on the user side, and it's not as strong of an emphasis as it could be. (Warrior Mages get more TM spells, Moon Mages more utility and so forth).

Of course, they don't actually need all the magic skills - at least not to circle.

Really, I think there's three things that will really help Warrior Mages going forward, unfortunately none of these are quick fixes.

1) Barrier Review. This will likely end up improving where Warrior Mages stand in a number of ways, both by narrowing barriers (Which a Warrior Mage is well equipped to exploit a vulnerability with their diverse TM spells) and improving some of the existing barriers for Warrior Mages (Compare MPP vs ES as they currently exist).

2) TM improvements. Just giving us a wider range of options and effects - we lost some of the knobs we were planning to have in 3.0 because they didn't work out when we actually tried to develop them, so we're trying to find some new ones to put in their place.

Some ways to make TM spells feel like more than recolors that we came up with brainstorming a few months ago (Note: This isn't a complete or finished list, so I'm not trying to get into a specific discussion at this time)

DoT (Damage over Time) spells
Vitality Draining
Fatigue Draining
Delayed TM Spell
Knockdown (Or other non damage TM)
Focus on specific areas (Carrion Call, the old Limb Disruption).
Reactive TM, likely cyclic.
Slow (Might also be a debil spell) that increases RTs and engagement times.

3) Warrior Mage Sorcery. Just like Moon Mages we don't want or expect everyone to engage in it, but it lets us put together some really weird spells that are hands off to everyone else.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose