This should be a meta type effect. Perhaps a way to make our spells do a specific type of damage regardless of which book we cast from?

Another idea could be specific verb/fluffy type stuff tied to us and our familiar and elements? IE, our familiar's atmospherics taking on a more fiery feel?


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In memory of Lisa/Martee. Passed 6/17/2013. A friend. A sister.

Yah, I suspected the damage change would be a massive undertaking.


>>Screwing around with fams and Summoning itself was another idea I had, yeah. Instead of easing magic it could be a Summoning buff and cost-reduction to elementals (and fams) of the appropriate kind.

Anything to make summoning a useful skill, I'm all for. Right now, no offense, but it really feels like we're training the skill for the honor of training the skill faster.

Familiars themselves already ease magic. So using summoning to align our elements so our specific elemental familiar 'works' better would be awesome. Also, don't forget the atmo adjustments too :-)


--

In memory of Lisa/Martee. Passed 6/17/2013. A friend. A sister.

>>In a sense that is what's happening. The directive came down that all guilds were going to have a special skill, and we had a pretty vivid discussion about where Warrior Mages would fall in that. The Elemental Charge stuff was put in to provide a basic framework for later abilities and, as you say, training the skill for the sake of being able to train the skill.

Oh yes, I wanted to point out for purposes of the conversation how it is, even though it was slightly rhetorical because it set the basis for everything to come. I know why the skill exists and why you had to get it out the way you did.


>>Now I have some free time and am looking at doing a little something to both, admittedly, make the skill even more trainable, but also to provide some kind of neat utility.

More trainable isn't that big of a deal... speaking purely as fire aligned, I'd like one more debil spell that is fire based and then training summoning will be less boring for me. But in my opinion focus less on the trainable side and more on the applicable usage side. What we're discussing right now is a good first step.

Another, much larger step, I'd love to see something like ignite become more tied to our summoning. For example, being able to summon a stronger fire presence on the blade to periodically cause a 'shard' type of damage by additionally focusing and spending my elemental charge to strengthen the spell?


--

In memory of Lisa/Martee. Passed 6/17/2013. A friend. A sister.

>>Awesome, now just make it passively regen elemental charge for that element if you're standing still in a room that you do that to.

No passive gain.

>>Bonus charge given for casting proper spells.

This, however, is possible.

-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

>>Hm, maybe not passive gain, but if you're in a room you've done stuff to to have it be prepared for a specific element, could it be possible to summon admittance in that room without sitting?

I'd need to give that Serious Thought, but it's not outside reason.

-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

No passive gain was specifically referring to Elemental Charge. Regen of stuff that regens over time is less conceptually problematic.

-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

>>Isn't that basically doing the same thing as powerful demons do?

My initial concept for this ability will probably become the first Feral Magic spell, if I remember it.

As it stands, this is the nice version.

-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 would also not mind like, slower drain of elementally appropriate pathways. The main Issue I'm Having is that Elemental Charge regens too slow to viably use some pathways for more than a short period. Which is fine...but to re-charge, it takes forever if you're not summoning admittance, which isn't particularly viable in combat due to sitting. I am mostly looking for a way to maybe refill charge just through casting without it taking forever.

- Starlear -

Re: Ideas for STUFF:

More stuff that Summoning does. Maybe some new Pathways or something at some point, but there's enough of them that I think most of the bases are covered as far as plain old TM goes. I would like to see Summoning allow more usage of them, and a way to recharge Charge in combat without sitting or machinegunning spells for forever). More stuff like Barrage perhaps, that focused more on the WM as a Warrior that uses Magic. And on that note...

Elemental Weapon stuff - I miss our conjured weapon spells, but the prevalence of crafting I think has made them a bit obsolete. People get attached to their +5 Tyrium Sword of Doom and would likely not want to use a spell conjured weapon as anything more than a novelty. Therefore...introduce a single new spell that was called something super original and profound, like Elemental Weapon. This spell would be prepared and cast on an existing weapon with an element (eg CAST SCIMITAR FIRE). What this would do is convert the weapon to an elemental form, such that the highest damage type of whatever weapon it is, is reduced to 0, and the full amount of the number is transferred to whatever elemental type. (Essentially, if my scim is poor/mod/fair for punc/slice/impact, and no/no/no for Elemental Damage, when cast, the scim would be poor/no/fair for punc/slice/impact and no/moderate/no for cold/fire/electrical). Also it would give your weapon some fancy verbs while active, assuming the item itself didn't have that verb already. I would also like a metaspell for the Ignite spell to allow you to change the damage type, and you could cast Ignite on a weapon you cast Elemental Weapon on to either add another type of damage, or to add more of the same type.

More Elemental Transformations. I love new MoF and new AeG and I wish there was one for each element. Spitballing ideas:

Storm Visage (Electric): + Discipline, + Mentals, Chance on melee attack to instantly melee attack again (with LIGHTNING SPEED, get it? :D), Retributive Electrical damage (Or maybe a short duration stun?) if you are hit with a metal weapon.

Planephase (Aether): -All Damage Taken, + Elemental Damage Done (Enough to be noticeable), -Targetting Time, -No Cross-Alignment Cost Penalty For Using Pathways (Essentially, while in Aether Form, all Pathways have costs treated as if they are of your chosen alignment. This does not negate the charge reduction from casting spells opposing your alignment). Basically makes you awesome at magic, while reducing your damage taken from spells and weapons due to the fact you're partially noncorporeal. Want to be a mage who focuses on magic as their weapon, put this on and hold a TM focus when they are a thing.

Flowing Soul (Water): +Str, +Agi, You take reduced physical damage. Targets striking you deal up to 5s additional RT (based on the damage the hit deals) as their weapon is slowed by cutting through the turbulent waters making up your body.

Cyclonic Vengeance (Air): +Agi, +Mentals, Targets acting on you in combat must save or be knocked down with a small RT when attacking or casting spells at you, due to the fierce winds you have bound to your body buffeting them.

Ward Break kind of sucks. It doesn't seem like it works against many buffs (I realize the spell is designed only to dispel spell barriers, but as it stands, most of the time, I'd rather just toss Dispel at something). Make Ward Break have a self-cast option. Has "charges" that either work over time or like an offensive ablative barrier - that is, each time you cast through it, it loses some duration until it's no more. Causes TM spells to pass through an Aethereal mist, which latches onto the spell. Spells the mage uses in this way have reduced potency but increased integrity. Spells that hit have a chance to reduce the duration of or outright remove a random defensive spell from the target. The spell would also be able to be used with the current functionality, to be cast on a target and attempt to outright remove anti-magic wards.

Obligatory "I wish YS felt like it did something when I cast it" here. If I personally had to pick something it did, I'd make it buff absorbs in lighter armor, reduce hindrance (not to 2.0 levels) in heavy armor, and scale between a mixture of the two for everything between. The idea would be that if you put YS on, the mage would have similar but not identical protection/absorb/hindrance, regardless of armor type, assuming equal armor skill and item tier. Ideally you couldn't reduce hindrance to a degree in HP that would make it OP, nor could you buff cloth to out-absorb plate. The idea would be something like letting plate hinder like really light brig or heavy chain, but not touching its absorb, and letting leather absorb like really heavy chain or light brig. Chain would probably be the sweet spot, you'd absorb like lower end plate, but hinder like middle-grade leather. Old YS had the issue where it felt too much like it was no good in light armor.

Spell ideas that I posted awhile back but figured I'd dig up since it's suggestin' time:

Asphyxiate - esoteric cyclic - hybrid tm/debilitation - The insidious asphyxiate spell adjusts air density around a single target, trapping air outside a field of high pressure and making it increasingly more difficult to breathe. The spell causes periodic but relatively trivial vitality and fatigue damage with each pulse. While the spell is active, actions will be more sluggish due to labored breathing, and actions which cost fatigue will also have a cost in vitality. A mage must be careful to not lose control of the spell - casters who are stunned will temporarily be unable to keep the air away, giving their target fresh air and needing to take more time for the effects to ramp up again. Requires Vertigo, Paeldryth's Wrath, Blufmor Garaen.

- Increased RTs while effected, retributive vit damage when you use fatigue, prevents vit and fatigue regen.

- The passive damage is on a bell curve. Starts off moderate at the beginning, pulses up to more damage, and then tapers to nothing at low target vit. This is for the damage pulses themselves - fatigue cost damage is static for the entire spell. The idea is that a target can never die from this spell alone. No damage type, as it only deals Vitality damage.

Explosive Decompression - Targetted - esoteric - The explosive decompression spell is most often used to terrifying effect to quite literally steal the final breaths from the target. The pattern of this spell is intricate and can be resisted by hardy targets, but is devastating against targets already softened up. Wounds provide more avenues for rushing air and are exacerbated by the rapid escape. Requires Thunderclap, Vertigo, 50th circle.

- Deals damage proportional to vitality missing from the target when it atrikes a body part. No effect on something with full vitality. Wounds act as a damage boost (Multiplier? Additive?) And increase in severity on the struck part if the spell deals damage.

- Intent would be as a finishing move on something that was low. Cold/Puncture damage.



- Starlear -

I was going to make a joke about 'summon relay' but frankly, I think it might be a good idea. Having the appropriate elemental fam at high levels bypasses the 'woops, can't do that here!' restrictions on 'good' WM spells. So pull out the electrical fam, and bam, cast LB in a cave.

Or maybe fam + align room properly? It would take some work, but honestly I feel like that's appropriate for a 'mage' character.

I'm extremely hesitant to push anything else on familiars for a few reasons. Forgive me if I break from tradition on this one, but I'm inclined to think that familiars are already a pretty "dense" package of utility as it stands. There's some stuff it could do better, and they could sure as Hell be cleaned up on the technical level, but I'm not sure familiars need to do more right now.

It's part of why I want to break off combat pets from being "familiar combat" to newly summonable elementals. Both my design and my aesthetic sense tell me it's time for WMs to do things in new ways.

-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 think a lot of us just want more reason not to pull our familiar away when we hunt, then pull it out again at the guild like some kind of reverse pokemon. A separate class of combat familiars I could be down with.

This. For my part, I want more familiar integration, not less :/


--

In memory of Lisa/Martee. Passed 6/17/2013. A friend. A sister.

>>Sorry to be blunt but they haven't changed since I left.

Because there was nothing broken about them, and in the grand scheme there were projects in other areas that were more vital than giving a well fleshed out guild more toys.

>>But now you're talking about 3.2 already and still no battle fams. Can we get this done please. We've waited a very long time.

I'm not sure why you're bringing this up again, when I just posted a status update on pets two days ago in a different thread you were complaining in.

FGM Ricinus
Logistics Lead
Magic, Sentients Team Member
Cleric Advocate

Electric form should totally make you that one Gremlin from Gremlins 2.

- Starlear

>I wouldn't mind like an RT combat reduction or storm bull SD nerve damage shenannigans.

Honestly I'd really like to see SD become babies first CL again. It really was an awesome feeling to be able to AoE stuff starting around 20, when all the other guilds have to wait till 50. Even if it did require refreshing ES each cast.

I wish we had something cooler the pathway sense to test how much charge we had built up or items that directly associated charge in their look (alterable of course so we all don't have the same 10 items). Pretty much like the HE fest items work where you can look at them, but as charge accrues they change slightly.

[00:15] Chatter[Uzmam] Damian just wants to beat up dancers, what a bully
[00:15] Chatter[Morpion] Wait for them outside the club at 3 am?
[00:15] Chatter[Damian] i enjoy making them scream with pure terror

Late to the party, but I wanted to comment on the original thought by Armifer.

I think that something like Summon <element> Domain reducing the difficulty of spells from the book you attune the area to while tanking Elemental charge would actually be helpful, especially since if it scales, this would allow for people to cap out rituals and buff spells a fair bit earlier and see more of the percentage of boost. Of course things like this do eventually become obsolete, but the ability would be used daily for almost anyone under 120th, during spars or before hunting, especially if you could see 10 or more mana difference should you pull off a 100 domain summon.

If not that, I wonder if making Ethereal fissure's of the same element last longer/have greater potency and eventually easing/powering up combat elementals would make this worth using regularly, and to be honest, that is entirely how I'm approaching this concept. There are a thousand RP things, or tricks, or "nifty" features that I could mention, but I personally want a Summoning ability to do something useful that I'll want to have active as much as possible, cantrips proved how necessary this is for it to be worth the time to make. I don't know many people who can say they've used Aethereal spheres to juggle or light some ones head more than water globe to stun test/kill fleas, despite my love for things like pattern hues.

That said, elemental transformations are awesome, and I know I'd love an Aether one even if it did nothing but give a small damage absorb and dampen all incoming/outgoing magic(disables and tm). I would probably use this more than anything else if I could just go all mage killer.

Cheers.

That would leave you at still being able to gain, but you would have to summon admittance? I really like the double gain bit but I am unsure how much use this new option would see. It would negate people's complaints about thinking they can't cast from an opposing book, but that also isn't exactly a true assumption on their part.

A better way of handling it would be to lower the skill required to pick your opposed element...though I am pretty sure that THEN you would just see all mages be +X / -Aether.

Are there plans for other waysways to gain charge other than casting?

- Starlear

So what if you aligned and domained fire?

Or aligned + fire and - water and domained water?

Sounds like a level 2 align+ that would take priority over the align, pretty much turning it off in most cases?

Pathway Center/imbue? Study the flow of a rush of mana to align a large portion quickly? Little more RT than summon admit, a lot more alignment charge, and use a huge chunk of mana? Make it teach a little better than summon admit too .

_________________________________
An agonizing pain fills you as you feel your tongue turn to powder in your mouth! Through a haze of uncertainty and loss, you realize that something you just said was very wrong.

Id rather avoid doing mental math as a war mage, so I think the simpler and more direct the system, the better.

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