>>Im confused at Sorecery being restricted from a Primary magic guild, does this mean its unlearnable?

You can learn it, it just doesn't count toward progress in the guild.

Only three guilds get to use Sorcery to circle: Bards, Moon Mages and Necromancers. Other guilds are too focused on or worried about its illegal aspects to permit it.

-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

>>Didn't see Elemental listed as a requirement, is it going away?

Elementalism, which was the original name for the WM guild-specific skill, has been changed to Summoning.

Elemental Magic is not a circle req, and cannot be used as a circle req.

>>Sorcery starts at zero for everyone, right?
Correct

>>To that, I'm sure it's been touched on, but how will Summoning be grandfathered?

To at-circle levels.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>>On a side note, your spreadsheets/graphs of the circle reqs are fantastic. Very informative. Thanks for all the effort.

Thanks! They were a lot of fun to put together. Once I can stop staring down the gullet of 12 angry folders, I'll post my process and the data file I used, so people can make their own graphs. Woo!

>>How about making it equal to TM? Seems like if it trains by the Pathways, then it would mirror TM.

Probably not. The pathway learning will be a rather small part of the ultimate picture, so relating the skill too closely to TM is a mistake.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>Probably not. The pathway learning will be a rather small part of the ultimate picture, so relating the skill too closely to TM is a mistake.

Will circle be calculated on the new skill reqs (sans Summoning), and then Summoning grandfathered to that circle?

Or, will it be circle as calculated using the old skill reqs that determines Summoning?

>>Your circle will not be changing, so I'm guessing it's whatever your circle is at the time of release.

This is correct.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

>>No tactics hard req? I'd think we'd need one to justify being a front-line combat guild with a lore secondary. I think it'd fit the guild better than a scholarship hard req - we're not moon mages.

War Mages have never been the most tactical of guilds, historically. They're more in tune with the "I don't know what this is but I bet my giant ball of fire can make it less dangerous" approach to problems.

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"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

So I think there are some errors in this new req system. Considering we're a combat guild, we get the small bonus to stance allocation, there should be stiffer combat requirements. Your going easy on us. 2nd Weapon should be 0/3/4/4/5. 3rd weapon should be the 0/3/3/4/4. Also we're lore secondary, why such an easy requirement? Bump that up to 4/each for all three 70-150. Another thing - Defending. Thats supposed to be inline with armor, evasion, parry, more less right? Why such a low requirement? Are we considered a "glass cannon" type? I always thought of us as more of a Warrior-Type guild, spells to greatly enhance our abilities... and to decimate the mouth breathers with fireballs!

I'm sure this was just an oversight. Must have hit the wrong tab when you built these :D Probably thought you were building the Trader's Guild requirements :D

Anyways, from my calc's, I will be roughly 40 ranks behind at my current level in Primary Weapon. This isn't an issue, its been the single factor that has held me back for many many levels. I know we're getting Summoning Grandfathered. I more-less consider Mastery & Defense grandfathered since they're going to be a "blend" of other skills. The ranks we have in Existing skillsets (like Primary Weapon, in my case) that are going to see a short fall for Current Level - Are they getting grandfathered as well? I hope not. Honest. People need to suck up the difference, and train accordingly. For me its 1 skill, it'll take a short bit to get there, but I'll get there. In the case where you have say - somebody who trains only their bare minimum req's, There's gonna be a lot of free/easy skill gains. That's their own fault for being slackers.


Uhmm.... I lost my train of thought. UPS Man showed up with a shiny new iPad. Mmmmm Retina Display

>>So I think there are some errors in this new req system

Your weapon requirements have gone up across the board, and you've got a new defensive req to boot. You're substantially more combat-focused than clerics, who share the same skillset. On the opposite side of the coin, clerics have a stiffer lore req.

>>Are we considered a "glass cannon" type?

Always have been, by nature of skillset placement.

>>Are they getting grandfathered as well? I hope not. Honest. People need to suck up the difference, and train accordingly.

I understand that you're hardcore, and I respect that. However, we're definitely grandfathering EVERYBODY to have all of their ranks at-circle, only with the exceptions noted in the initial post. We've done it the other way twice before, and it was staggeringly awful. Any old soul you can find can tell you horror stories of what happened to paladins and rangers back in the day - It wasn't pretty.

>>In the case where you have say - somebody who trains only their bare minimum req's, There's gonna be a lot of free/easy skill gains.

Yep. It's a really unfortunate side effect, but it's the lesser of two evils. I've had hours of discussions about the merits of both ways, and this was the clear winner in the long run.

>>So people who spend equal time fighting and studying books are not good candidates for being "tactical"? You have a bizarre concept of the WM guild. Whatever. It sounds like a dumb skill and I'm glad I don't have to train it.

Seriously, read up on WMs. They're not battlefield commanders. I mean, yes, the commander of the Zoluren militia WAS a WM, but historically that's a rare occurrence. They're far more often near-pariahs who everybody's REALLY happen to have on their side and not the other side.

>>My question is, will Scholarship be a hard req or a soft req? You lol at 4th lore reqs then seemingly give us 4 lore reqs

Soft - Forgot to mention that in the post.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

Hey!! I'm a warmie, and General of Theren Guard! So we are still battlefield leaders! :o)

Overall, I like the new reqs. I'm looking forward to seeing them go live. I train a lot of different skills, so I'm hoping that puts me in good standing, and not needing to worry about anything like third weapon or tactics

Somni

>>And I appreciate that. They are simply too low.

Agree to disagree. The only guild with higher weapon requirements than you are barbarians.

>>Your grandfathering everybody because you already have to deal w/ enough cryin on the boards. [sic]

I think you might be missing the point. This isn't a decision that was made because of any GM's ability to withstand any attitude folks have on the boards (or on any other medium, for that matter). The 'tough love' religion was a prime hallmark of the old days, but it's been fifteen years since then. The attitudes, expectations, and pain points of people have evolved drastically since then, and to apply fifteen year-old methodology to a game that still exists today is a bad idea.

It sounds like a "get off my lawn" perspective, and while I can empathize with that, progress marches ever onward and we can't hold to tradition while the world changes around us.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

I'm confused as to why people are asking for reqs to be higher; aside from that general feeling of 'omg I r badarse cuz req is 400000 ranks per circle', why does it matter? You're not going to levy your way into boost to tert skills because you argued for higher reqs.

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Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.

>>I'm confused as to why people are asking for reqs to be higher; aside from that general feeling of 'omg I r badarse cuz req is 400000 ranks per circle', why does it matter? You're not going to levy your way into boost to tert skills because you argued for higher reqs.

IDK probably because it wants to show off.

I thought I'd break down my opinions on the reqs too:

I haven't played in a bit, so bear with me if I missed an announcement or something.

As best I can tell the Armor and Defending reqs will be pretty ignorable. With the amount of time a WM has to spend in combat to train other skills, these should be taken care of and then some. I think I'm going to have roughly double the reqs on these. Probably more on Defending if MO (a secondary skill) is used in the equation for grandfathering. After that I don't expect it will have trouble keeping up considering how high my other tert combat skills are relative to the new requirements.

I would have thought Tactics would have been used as the skill that generalizes WM combat ability rather than using Defending for this purpose, but I don't have any major complaints about it either way. I guess my take on it is that the guild has always identified so heavily with TM, and I associate the skill a precise way of fighting (granted that may just be my take on things), and thus tactics seems like a natural extension of that (especially considering the lore secondary nature of the guild). However, there isn't anything stopping me from just playing my character that way, so it isn't really a big deal. The Defending requirement probably will be easier anyhow considering it will be trained passively as opposed to Tactics requiring active inputs.

The weapon reqs are really pretty marginally above what they used to be. I was never the biggest fanatic of training weapons, but even so I'm probably only going to get about 10 ranks grandfathered from primary weapon, and none for 2nd and 3rd weapons. Honestly, if I were going to change the reqs at all here, it might be to make the secondary and tertiary more in line with the primary (maybe just a tad behind) so that they can be used in the same hunting ground. It isn't really a big deal though since people can do that anyway without a req change, so the only real reason to do such a thing would be if you wanted to force people to use all three in the same hunting ground via circling reqs.

The parry requirement seems mostly ignorable. Again, with the amount of time in combat this should take care of itself unless you intentionally sabotage your learning by only going with evasion/shield.

I think an interesting change to the parry requirement would be to instead allow it to be filled by either parry, evasion, or shield. You'd still need the same number of ranks (so it'd be more difficult to get the ranks using evasion or shield since they're tertiary), but if you wanted to go that route you could. Basically, allow people to ignore parry at the expense of having to meet the same requirement with a tertiary skill. I'm not sure what kind of havoc that might cause, but at first glance it sounds like it'd allow more variability in WM builds without detracting a lot.

Without more information about how the magic skills will be grandfathered, evaluating the magic reqs is difficult. I'm sure most people have PM/Harness as their top two magics. Looking at my character, they could be grandfathered at a rate of 75%/65%/50%/40% and I'd still have plenty left over to easily meet the circling reqs. It also has the odd result of pushing my TM back into position as my top magic skill, which hasn't been the case for about 7 years now. This all seems to suggest to me that the magic req's should be fairly easy, but no complaints from me about that. I guess we'll see how it all pans out once the final grandfathering scheme is posted and we see how easy it is to get all those magic skills training at once.

My TM has always been well above the requirements so I don't expect any trouble there.

I have an awful feeling that Summoning is going to be a pain to train even with the exp buff, but maybe that's just my fear of underdeveloped skills talking. I'm sure the GMs will balance it if it needs fixing.

The survival skills still look pretty ignorable. I'm sure most people will continue to train evasion and perception pretty heavily, so that just leaves two more survival skills that are at such a low requirement that I'm sure hardly anyone will notice them. That doesn't bother me considering that skillset isn't really this guild's forte.

The lore skills seem pretty simple too. Between appraisal and tactics the top two lores should be simple to get in combat. The third one likely can be trained there too, but I'm not sure what all will be trainable in combat in Combat 3.0 so I guess we'll see. At the very worst that only leaves one of the three for out of combat training, and odds are that people have enough stored up mech lore to ignore this req for quite a while for characters already in the game. Long term it might cause a few headaches for people stuck training a crafting skill, but that doesn't really bother me either.

The scholarship req doesn't really scare me either.

So as best I can tell, the weapon requirements appear to be the bottleneck this time around. It's possible that someone might get hung up by one of the other skills but, unless I'm missing something, most people would have to go out of their way to have that happen. I could see the magic skills and maybe 3rd lore come into play as potential bottlenecks for some people depending on play style and depending on what all is involved to train them when all the new systems are out, but I think that probably won't happen for most people.

Oh yeah, also I'm back again.

-Gandoloth

<<I started playin around '95 >>

interesting. DR didn't come out until 1996. :-)

And tough love or not, I was around the last time reqs got changed, and had some characters that didn't catch up for years. In fact, i still have 1 barbarian on my account that is 52nd circle and hasn't circled since the old req change. I am very glad that reqs are being grandfathered this time around. I think that with the way the economy and population is going, if they hadn't chosen to do it this way, they might have ended up, maybe, with a prime population the size of TF + Plat from canceled subscriptions. There's only so many times people will take it in the gut. Backtraining is not fun.





"we're doing it for the good of mankind," said the philosophers of murder, waiting for the rest of the world to congratulate them"-Elie Wiesel <the gates of the forest>

I started playing Dragonrealms in 1972.

>>It's more of a flavor req. It would blow my mind if any WM ever has to train Defending specifically to circle. The only times that will happen are when you're a mage that learns everything in classes. Parry is similar, to a lesser extent.

He's more a theoretical Warrior Mage then a field Warrior Mage.

> You could, in theory, bump defenses closer to weapon ranks

Shhh! You're gonna hurt somebodies feelings with words like that!

Anyways, now that family is out of town I have time post my response to the dreaded 'omg how dare he! How could ANYBODY want HARDER Requirements! [insert girly screams here]"

No, I'm not trying to "brag" about how many ranks i have in X skills. Infact, I've never mentioned my characters level or skills. Secondly, I'm not trying to 'increase requirements for more free grandfathering!'. Hmmm. Really? Must not have read the full post since I actually argued against grandfathering skills that would fall behind. Hmmm... Ya.

The requirements are not tough - at all. With all honesty, with the minor 'increases' we're gaining, it still feels like an overall decrease. Looking at the changes to magic requirements, it looks like we'll be walkin down easy street. Granted, this may change once the new magic skills come out, maybe it'll be much harder to train Utility, Summoning and others. Maybe we'll LOSE a bunch of ranks in the conversion. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe. If it happens, then my suggestions are null.

The combat requirements aren't very hard to manage if your training TM in combat rather than in a class. So maybe that scares people. As suggested, the defense requirements are so relaxed that no warrior mage should ever have to worry about them. What I'd like to see increased would only ensure that a Warrior Mage would have to actually spend more time training in combat as oppose to sitting in a class, infront of the guild, asleep, to gain their combat requirements. Bumping up the second/third weapon would also help decrease the gap in skills, so when said sleeping Warrior Mage actually does see combat, they'd be able to train in one zone, rather than complaining about how terrible it is that they have to go to several different grounds to train their different weapons.

However - I realize that no matter how bad I want to see the guild, as a whole, be purely awesome - we can't force it on people. Whatever the level requirements are, I'll continue to "overtrain" my character as I always have.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy non combat things as well. I've trained lores heavily for the sake of crafting, getting accurate appraisal, being able to read compendiums and whatnot. I'm all for heftier lore requirements as well - Tho that'd take away from the Clerics 3rd of Magic Prime.... As far as "Tough" combat skills. As they sit, you could get away with spending a lot more time rotating through classes between weapons, and spending very little time in the field. Even if they raised the requirements to some extent, you would still be able to easily maintain requirements in your combat skills in the time you'd spend training TM. You'd probably have to spend the majority of your combat training IN combat, rather than the minority, but it would still come easily. Considering we're Warrior Mages, one would expect we spent time in the battle field, rather than in the books.

Anyways, Kudos to the GMs for all the work they've done for us. I'm sure we're balanced in comparison with the other guilds, so an increase in anything will offset the balance. Lookin forward to see how Everything plays out once skills 3.0 arrives & all the dust settles.

>SGUMIKE

Your entire post (all of them) boils down to attacking people, calling them sissies, girls, etc.

I still want to know your point in requesting higher reqs. What point will it benefit anyone? Mehanically. Not because you want to be the most hardcore of whatever.

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Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.

>calling someone a girl isn't an attack.

It is when the person at hand clearly intends for it to be an assault and attack in pride. In the context of 'girlish screams' there is very little leeway gonif.

But yes, kudos to you for discovering that not every single instance of the word female or all of its derivations are considered an attack. What does this remotely have to do with the discussion at hand, which is ranks required to circle?

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Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.