I'd like to see some elementalist, cabalists, or something else within the Warrior Mages, as a guild with Lore skillset as secondary, I think they deserve Lore thrown in with this Magic development, I mean heck wasn't that the reason all Magic Primaries have Lore Secondary, because it means that they are Scholarly, well throw some more Lore in there.

Yes, I do agree it shouldn't be some great specialty ability to have it, water elementalists shouldn't have everything therein, but a little lore, some cosmetics, and maybe a few items, to make them feel a little more real may go a long way.

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

>>If you take a dangerous electrical current IRL, your primary concern is whether or not the charge crosses your heart, since it's incredibly easy to stop it. Electricity does cause involuntary muscle contraction (the basis for tasers, and some electrocution horror stories), but I'm unaware of lasting nerve damage being a particularly prominent feature over the, you know, heart attack stuff. Electroconvulsive therapy could be brought up as a counter-point that does inflict measurable neurological damage, but it does so because you are literally cooking off a portion of the brain -- autopsies of people who have gone through regular ECT show the portion of the brain that got the voltage had been blackened.

The dangers to your heart are actually from the involuntary muscle contractions. Being the son of an electrician I can tell you one of the most dangerous things in dealing with electricity is not that you get shocked, but that you grab onto something while you get shocked. The contractions will mean that you won't let go which means you get a nice complete circuit flowing through you.


_______________________
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
-John Milton

>>At some point, the insulating aether was making you magically/spiritually invisible.

That's right, I forgot about that. I haven't heard it talked about like that since WAY back when people were lobbying to be able to attack incorporeal undead.

I'm betting the notes from back then are pretty scrambled and/or lost on the computer of whatever GM was WM guru.

>>...you guys really never had any of this written down on your end? Boo. That explains lots.

Documentation, especially about fiction, is pretty spotty and in earlier years had a distressing tendency to be passed down as an "oral tradition" rather than anything official. Years ago I found out a critical piece of Moon Mage backstory for the first time, and only because it was casually referenced in Rigby's original Necromancer documents.

It's not the fault of any specific GM, though: when you have such a highly polarized, guild-specific development atmosphere, that's one of the things that happen.

-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

I've had a change of heart on the electric nerve issue.

Sure, electricity commonly damages nerves (and quite a lot of other tissue)... but so does extreme cold and getting your shoulder wrenched.

DR's damage system just isn't built around that level of 'lay realism.' If it was, other damages would have side-effects too... and that would be something handled by the damage system itself instead of being flagged at the source.

Since being a damage type is really the only level of distinction any other damage type usually has, it seems odd that Electricity should be the only 'flavored' damage, and it doesn't seem like DR's really built to flavor damage in the first place.

A purposed source of nerve damage would be very nice, though. Also: for damage type to be important but that's been said alot already and I think responded to.

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"Magic has rules and so does posting on these forums." -Annwyl

>>-nothing to see here. just a bonedancer "moonmage"-

I strongly wager that this guess is wrong.

Bonedancer being necro-ish in lore existed before Armifer same thing with risen-y'shai(yeah thats right, we moon mages do it better). Which makes me wonder what it is exactly.

_______________________
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
-John Milton

the bonedancer was a reference to Lasarhhtha, who from what I've gathered was one of Rigby's. Anyhow... back on topic...

just was wondering if any blackfire possibilities are on the to-do list for some WM sorcery love.

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You've seen life through distorted eyes;You know you had to learn;The execution of your mind;You really had to turn;,the book is read,The end begins to show,The truth is out, the lies are old, But you don't want to know - Black Sabbath

>I believe Armifer posted sometime back that they were scrapping blackfire production, just leaving incinerate spell-scroll only the way it is.

It was a huge thing for sure. Turning people to stone will be cool though, or whatever.

Anyway if you want to read it all it's most of the Complaints folder still. Here's a link Gulphphunger picked out as a good start.

>http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=35&topic=5&message=4891

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"Magic has rules and so does posting on these forums." -Annwyl

>>The user of Blackfire, due to its uncontrollable nature, will take as much damage as his target might take. In all cases, this means Blackfire is blatantly suicidal. As the cartoon cat once said, great trick, but you can only do it once.

This I do not like. I could see.. potentially taking damage, but 100% of the time makes it not viable even for roleplay standards in my opinion.

A possible different option, albiet code intensive, would be instituting social outrage for casting blackfire spells. Super heavy crazy instant mob mentality would be fine by me, even tossing in some executions/mandatory open stances, whatever.

Punish the reckless wizard who uses this unstable realm-endangering magic, but do it with the flair that you guys are good at putting out.

>Blackfire

I'm curious, will the caster have ways of protecting him/her self from this backlash? Will our normal barrier spells help, for example?


Elemental Lord Opieus, Expert Warrior Mage of Elanthia
"For a bunch of radical empiricists, the Philosophers' system relies on a whole lot of faith." ~Armifer

>>Could your original ideas be toned down to a more acceptable level?

There needs to be a critical reason that Blackfire as it stands can never be considered a Warrior Mage's go-to spell -- and, if we consider the SO example, bear in mind that isn't meant to stop Necromancers from using their spells in the situations they're designed for (actually killing things in hunting areas).

Honestly, I thought the suicide option was a rather elegant solution in that regard: it gives Warrior Mages access to the Death Ray when they feel compelled through RP or circumstance to use it, but introduces a direct 1:1 cost that prohibits over use. Also, it can be spun in messaging to make Blackfire usage metal as hell. I have been fighting against arguments to nerf Blackfire into compliance instead, but to maintain that position I really do need some way to hand the Blackfire sorcerer's head on a platter to The Bosses.

-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

I guess the word I should have used was mitigate. Maybe reduce it to massive bleeders all over your body instead of instant death, if you're lucky.


Elemental Lord Opieus, Expert Warrior Mage of Elanthia
"For a bunch of radical empiricists, the Philosophers' system relies on a whole lot of faith." ~Armifer

>>If the intent is to make incinerate/heart suicidal, I'm sure that Armifer isn't going to allow the Warmage to protect himself from the backlash.

I think a suicidal ability is pretty awesome when it's instant-kill. Looking for a way to kill that Tropicalo dude with 600+ more ranks in all his skills than yours? Grab an incinerate.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

Heh, really guys? You'd seriously suicide and lose the spell scroll memorization just so you can insta-kill someone once? Don't forget with Magic 3.0, regardless of if you're raised or not when you die you lose all spell scroll temp-memorizations.

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~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://soundsoftime.bravehost.com

Readable and usable by all guilds, or is this insta-kill functionality limited to Warrior Mage only as is current Incinerate(if I remember correctly)?

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~Leilond
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Leilond
http://soundsoftime.bravehost.com

>>Bear in mind my description of "instant-kill" is referring to exactly what Incinerate is doing now (which is not strictly instant kill if this is going to become a Thing, but is close enough for government work).

Bearing that in mind, I hope the same could be said for the backlash against the caster. And what about this Heart of whatever spell, I've barely heard any information about this... so little in fact that I can hardly remember the name.


Which would be worse? To live as a monster or to die as a good man?

>>But then I'm one of those poor schlubs who will use (reasonably) sub-optimal abilities if they have a high enough style factor.

Your not the only one! It's one of the reasons I use Mark of Arhat so often, I love the messaging. Hoping to see Dragon's Breath rewritten in this manner.


Which would be worse? To live as a monster or to die as a good man?

>>Your not the only one! It's one of the reasons I use Mark of Arhat so often, I love the messaging.

I was just thinking of MoA. I think of the two options listed in the original post:

>>Mark of Arhat:
>>We also want player opinions here. Damage over Time spells are often seen as lackluster, so you have two options here...
>>1) Advanced Targeted Damage over Time TM. Damage potential would be about half again what a regular spell is, but doles it out over 20 seconds or so.
>>2) Introductory Debilitation. MoA becomes an elemental damage amplifier debuff. Think Heighten Pain for Necromancers but with an emphasis on improving elemental instead of physical damage.

I'd like to see option #1, I dig the current messaging a lot and think we'll have enough ways to increase our spell damage between the proposed TM booster and the pathways.

>>...that would make an interesting peusdo-retcon in the lore, too... the Blackfire Cabal using waves of barely-trained fanatical sorcerers as kindling.

I was just thinking of arguing the Blackfire Cabal was way better at controlling it than a bunch of dabblers playing with the Elanthian equivalent of the Anarchist's Cookbook.

That said, a suicidal / self-annihilation angle would certainly be appropriate.

-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

I'm okay with the 1:1 if we gain some means of learning the secrets of the blackfire cabal, perhaps by joining said cabal ::cough:: with crazy SO penalties for doing so.

A nice compromise, imho. Use incinerate and die yourself, or join the cabal voluntarily and suffer the outrage of society by doing so.

Would the higher ups go for that?