>>This bit has me confused. Are you saying without an attunement, the spell 411 cannot be cast unless you happen to have the lore ranks for the unknown lore requirement that cast of 411 will take? So, we'll need to recast 411 multiple times until we come upon the flare type that we have lores for? Or will 411 somehow know that we have a certain lore (without attuning) and hone in on that lore?

Wasn't to hard to test and yes, you currently have to cast multiple times (depending on luck) if unattuned or attuned and set to random and you don't have enough in all the lores to successfully eBlade the item you are casting on. The first time the eBlade took it put on an electrical flare and then the second time it took it put on a water flare. Which makes since I guess since Water or Air could both be lightning. I tested many more times and could only get water or lightning.

>>It doesn't seem very user friendly if we have to recast 411 over and over until we land upon the lore type that we have trained (without attuning).

I agree, please just make it smarter in that it knows which lores you have enough skill in to eBlade the item your casting on and only randomizes between those lores.

---

Elemental Lore - Air...............| 120 30
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 105 25
Elemental Lore - Fire..............| 105 25
Elemental Lore - Water.............| 152 52

>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace but is deflected. The energy dissipates into the air.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace but is deflected. The energy dissipates into the air.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace which seems to absorb the energy. After a few moments the mace begins to shine with a brilliant luminescence.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>look mace
The mace is surrounded by a scintillating silver light.
>
You feel at full magical power again.
>pre 417
You trace a simple rune while intoning the mystical phrase for Elemental Dispel...
Your spell is ready.
>cast mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy jumps from the faenor mace to the ground.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>look mace
You see nothing unusual.
>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace but is deflected. The energy dissipates into the air.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace but is deflected. The energy dissipates into the air.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>pre 411
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Blade spell...
Your spell is ready.
>cast my mace
You gesture at a light brown faenor mace.
A bolt of energy leaps from your hand to the mace which seems to absorb the energy. After a few moments the mace begins to shine with a brilliant luminescence.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>look mace
The mace is surrounded by a scintillating blue light.

We are apparently the slot machine profession.

Get lucky and your eblade will actually use the lore training you have and work on your item. (Unless you want to attune, a permanent decision with no ability to change it although unimplemented spells may use this ability.)
Get lucky and your bolt will hit a vital location.
Get lucky and your stoneskin will react when you're instantly killed by an attack because you're caught in offensive stance.
Get lucky and you won't fumble your final enchant cast and completely obliterate your item.
Get lucky and that 414 will deflect a single attack.
Get lucky and that 430 will add crit padding for one attack!
Get lucky and that 901 will stun shock!
Get lucky and that 516 will add 20 extra mana!
Get lucky and that 508 will add extra TD!

I don't understand why you like this method or why it has to be applied to every single ability we have. It leads to less than desirable results and disappointment overall.

>With 411, all you have to do is attune to the element for the lore you are properly trained in. Attunement is being encouraged, as it should be.

Spiritualists don't have to attune to anything to get their spells to even work. Random, with the existence of the lightning flare, rules out the use of many spells such as 502 in many hunting areas involving water.

I'm not going to agree with this, PC1234, but I think I know what you're saying.

The position described in 'getting lucky' in a list of ways as presented sounds like nothing else happens. In fact, each of these extensions from Lady Luck have a base effect that need to be considered.

Anyone can get lucky, once in a great while. And that luck can be reflected as an add to the base effect. But if it becomes a frequent enough occurrence, then it isn't luck at all - it's base effect.

Now, do I wish luck would visit my characters with greater frequency? You can damn well betcha! It's a great feeling to know I've beaten the odds (as it were). But where is that magical line where luck simply becomes base effect? It's a constantly moving target.

Having more ways for Lady Luck to grace our door is a good thing. For me, the problem is dialing it in to happen with sufficient frequency to be detectable, without being frequent enough to have to be considered base effect.

Doug

This is exactly correct and the intended design. If you don't want to attune, that's fine and it's completely your character's decision, but it ultimately means they can't control the elements to the same degree as someone who has attuned to a specific element.

I also want to note that this element of 411 doesn't really fall into the same category as other random flare based effects. If you're not attuned, it simply means it may take you repeated casts (411, then 417) to get the desired result. On average, no more than 5 casts. That's drastically different relying on a random effect during combat. More so and as noted above, you can easily remove this aspect if you so choose.

GameMaster Estild

I don't like that intended design.

Attunement should be an option that provides benefits above and beyond what everyone can accomplish. It shouldn't be required to avoid annoyance, as is the case with 411.

I would prefer it if you received stronger or more frequent flares to your attuned element. While having the required lore ranks allows you to always be able to eblade your weapon without having to cast it over and over until you get lucky.

Why is that not a suitable design?

How can I prepare and cast the elemental bolt spell I want to cast, but I'm not able to prepare and cast the elemental eblade I want? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Why don't we prepare and cast bolts randomly?

If you're not attuned, it simply means it may take you repeated casts (411, then 417) to get the desired result. On average, no more than 5 casts. That's drastically different relying on a random effect during combat. More so and as noted above, you can easily remove this aspect if you so choose.

This is highly frustrating. You could have chosen to make it user friendly without attunement. Being able to always cast your attuned element is not a benefit, unless you consider not being annoyed and wasting time a benefit.

>>Spiritualists don't have to attune to anything to get their spells to even work.

CONVERT is a similar mechanic for spiritual spells, primarily for Paladins and Clerics. While Empaths are not necessarily required to CONVERT, they usually need to pick a specific LORE path with probably the most lore impacts of any other profession. I wouldn't say the utility and ability to ATTUNE is anything dramatically different than others.

>>This is highly frustrating. You could have chosen to make it user friendly without attunement. Being able to always cast your attuned element is not a benefit, unless you consider not being annoyed and wasting time a benefit.

I can understand having an RP reason to not attune, but it was just confirmed that there is going to be a way to change your ATTUNE selection very shortly. This will provide you with the same flexibility that Clerics have with CONVERT.

>>The method to reset your elemental attunement will be available in the very near future.

>>GameMaster Estild

>The trouble with your suggestion to limit it to only the maximum lore, or a lore sufficient to make the cast effectively makes the attune benefit rather useless. One can very easily game the system to always get the flare you want with minimum lore investment and no attuned element. We do not want that by design.

I have to disagree with you here. If you spend TPs in order to get air flares on a weapon, I don't think it's "gaming the system" to want to actually apply that to a weapon reliably. Having your spell not be annoyingly randomized is not really a good argument for attunement in my mind.


>One thing I think you may not be aware of, but there is also an added increased crit-weighting benefit to the flares from an attuned cast that you do not get with a random cast.

Well there you go! I was unaware of this, but it's a much better implementation for attunement. This gives wizards a reason to use their attuned element that doesn't depend on creating annoying RNG situations for the player.


@PC1234 wrt crappily randomized lore benefits with minuscule proc chances. I *Very Strongly* agree with your argument, but I don't think it really applies to this spell. Having 2% chances to get small benefits in exchange for very real TP costs is terrible design but that's not really what's happening here.

CAMPBELLS

Since we have changes to attunement during this review would it not be appropriate to give everyone a one time chance at changing their attunement in addition the upcoming ability to change attunement?

When the new attunement reset method is implemented, everyone will be able to use it once without much effort. After that, it will require a significant amount of work to change it (similiar to CONVERT and Intercession (325, T5) (except the attunement reset won't rely on silver)).

GameMaster Estild

I'm not sure but...

When I prepared arrows for an archer, I attuned random for a desired result of fire and ice. I would cast/dispel numerous times because I was eblading small groups at a time and bundling them into blue, red, or dispel and re-cast.

I don't want to have attune random prevent me from having access to every element but is it that much to ask, while under attune random and not taking advantage of the benefit of attuned crit weighted e-blade, for us to be able to designate 1 of 5 options when using 411? I can see how this may end up having a side effect with 415 or 435 but is 'prep 411' 'cast arrow fire' impossible?

As someone has already mentioned, there is now a bug in Elemental Blade where if the arrow removed from the bundle uses the last charge, the arrow bundle can no longer be re-bladed, or dispelled and re-bladed. My current fix is to, if I don't catch it in time, throw all of my arrows away and buy new ones (unpreferred), or catch it in time and dispel/re-blade my arrows (works). Ideally, I would like to be able to simply re-blade them when the charges wear off (ideal).

Thanks!

Thanks for the quick fix!

>I don't like that intended design.

>Attunement should be an option that provides benefits above and beyond what everyone can accomplish. It shouldn't be required to avoid annoyance, as is the case with 411.

>I would prefer it if you received stronger or more frequent flares to your attuned element. While having the required lore ranks allows you to always be able to eblade your weapon without having to cast it over and over until you get lucky.

I appreciate your comments, and understand you do not like the design of the random element factor. However, considering that the spell has always operated this way (and doesn't mean it always has to, but...) I really do not see a good reason to change it. If you are randomly attuned, then the spell will act randomly.

The trouble with your suggestion to limit it to only the maximum lore, or a lore sufficient to make the cast effectively makes the attune benefit rather useless. One can very easily game the system to always get the flare you want with minimum lore investment and no attuned element. We do not want that by design.

One thing I think you may not be aware of, but there is also an added increased crit-weighting benefit to the flares from an attuned cast that you do not get with a random cast.

~Contemplar~

I understand the spell has always operated as a random flare. However, as you pointed out immediately after, it doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I would like to propose the following:

Without Lore: +20 and random flare
With Lore: +20 and trained lore
With Lore + Attune: +20, trained lore, and weighted flare

I had forgotten about the weighted flare attunement bonus when I posted previously. There is a bonus for attunement above and beyond what everyone else is capable of. This setup removes the frustration of having to cast the spell repeatedly until you get lucky, while still maintaining the bonus provided by attuning.

The trouble with your suggestion to limit it to only the maximum lore, or a lore sufficient to make the cast effectively makes the attune benefit rather useless. One can very easily game the system to always get the flare you want with minimum lore investment and no attuned element. We do not want that by design.

Are you saying that a weighted flare provided by attunement is worthless?
Perhaps you should provide an attunement bonus worthy of attuning, if that is the case.

Also, I disagree with your statement that the proposed setup above would be gaming the system. Lore training would be required to achieve the flare you want, just as it is now. The only difference is that lore training would provide a greater benefit, and to achieve a further benefit, the worthless weighted flare that you mentioned, would require attunement. There would be stages of advancement rather than an all or nothing approach.

Surely, advancing the benefits in stages is a far better design than the all or nothing design. Is that not something you want? Almost all of the other benefits provided through lore seem to advance in stages, the only exceptions are those that unlock at certain lore thresholds.

>I'm not sure why people are enthusiastic about this revision. The lore requirements to get a weapon to the [temporary] equivalent of 7x is excessive.

Would you really want it to be easy for an 11th level minor circle spell to create a 7x flaring weapon?

<Contemplar off his GM hat>

Lastly, I want to express my opinion only here. I understand why you want to be able to choose which element to cast at a weapon, and it is a valid point. If such a thing were to be allowed we would need to think about logical ways to allow for such. I am less inclined to use the relevant lore to determine that, but perhaps something outside the Lore box like Harness Power, Elemental Mana Control or even Magic Item Use to determine if you can choose a specific element.

I am just tossing a few ideas out there for you to consider. I cannot promise you anything will be done, but I will read and consider what is discussed and bring it up to the Dev team. Just don't hold your breath for any quick adjustment here though! ;-P

~Contemplar~

It feels like the goal is to make things as difficult as possible. Rather than take a straight forward and simple approach to spells that makes logical sense.

We can prepare and cast any element we want when casting bolt spells. But the moment we want to prepare and cast the element we want for a simple eblade, an 11th level spell in a minor spell circle, it has to use all these strange requirements that no other spell requires. (Talking about your HP, EMC, MIU suggestion here.)

No lore = random flare
Lore = Lore skill flare
Attune = Lore skill flare + weighting

Please explain how that is unreasonable.

What I meant was that the choice to attune, or not to attune become much less of choice for the player.

Why is the goal to force us into making an attunement choice? Provide benefits for attuning, while still providing benefits for training lore and see what people decide. If not enough people are attuning, maybe increase the benefits and see what happens. You don't have to make spells incredibly frustrating to use in order to force the choice. If the benefits are good enough, people will make that choice on their own.

I'm honestly less than thrilled about a weighted flare, I would rather increase the intensity or frequency of the flare. I'm also less concerned about the ability to choose a specific element, I will avoid rooms with water in them. My frustration comes from having to cast the spell repeatedly until I land on the flare that matches my lore training. Based on my ability to control the elements when it comes to bolt spells, this should be well within my power to control the element chosen when casting the spell.

K.I.S.S. and keep it fun. If you have the ability to make something less frustrating, do it. This isn't exactly game breaking stuff here. The entire balance of power is not going to be thrown off if we no longer zap ourselves in water rooms because our lore training allows us to specify a flare, that we actually spent hundreds of TP's training.

Game design trivia insight!

Did you know?

In Rolemaster (and here in the ICE version of Gemstone II and III prior to de-ICE-ing), every elemental character was expected to ATTUNE <Element>.

In fact, in Rolemaster, every character of any type (even spiritual) should have chosen the element to ATTUNE to, not just wizards.

That ATTUNEment is viewed as much a physical characteristic of the character as is eye color, sometimes maskable but never alterable.

And finally, prior to de-ICE-ing, there was absolutely zero sense of not being attuned in the lands. The option to ATTUNE <Element> was introduced sometime during the GSIV rollout, I believe - but beforehand, a character's attunement was randomly determined and assigned. It's one of those 'customer feedback' implementations that I'm sure has created more problems than it was worth.

---

I have been for years the most vocal advocate for remaining unATTUNEd in the lands. There simply wasn't reason. However, there is at no time any justification in my view to support making unATTUNEd characters more desirable. My feedback about remaining unATTUNEd always included the thought that one should check what benefits ATTUNing would bring, and decide - ultimately all wizards should be ATTUNEd. I'm very pleased to see things happening that will allow for us to make those choices.

The current 411 implementation, with the ability to cycle through random elements, is already generous beyond measure. I actually like being an 'arcist' in the sense of being able to 'manipulate' all the elements. But if the wizard wants control and predictability, the answer in my view is ATTUNE.

I do not support 'paths of predictability' outside of ATTUNE - for those who may not remember, I'll bring it back to mind; we tried it here a while.

Doug

>I have been for years the most vocal advocate for remaining unATTUNEd in the lands. There simply wasn't reason. However, there is at no time any justification in my view to support making unATTUNEd characters more desirable. My feedback about remaining unATTUNEd always included the thought that one should check what benefits ATTUNing would bring, and decide - ultimately all wizards should be ATTUNEd. I'm very pleased to see things happening that will allow for us to make those choices.

For the post-cap wizard, there is also still a single choice for attunement that doesn't result in significant mechanical disadvantages. How is that really a "choice" instead of a decision forced upon you if you don't want to unnecessarily cripple your character?

Air attunement is not a reasonable option without a single target follow-on bolt with DF similar to 510 and 910.

Lightning attunement is not practical given the prevalence of water in several post-cap hunting grounds.

Fire and water are not practical because that eliminates a significant number of creature targets, since many are one or the other (see liches).

This leaves you with one rational choice, earth.

While it's true that spiritualists can CONVERT, it's not at all the same situation where their spells cannot be safely used at all without making such a choice. 502 and 415, in comparison, simply cannot be used AT ALL in areas with water due to the chance of the lightning flare outright killing you instead of the creature. The only way I could support attunement or random is if you could disable the lightning flare from the option list.

Erm. . . no? I don't think I agree with anything you said, Destiny. I might have misunderstood a point or two, though.

I'm not sure if everything you said is in support of the concept of 'mechanical disadvantage' or not.

I'll take up this stand, though, very quickly - there are hunting grounds throughout the game's levels 1-100 where the wizard profession is at a disadvantage, sometimes significant. That disadvantage is always expressed in some 'mechanical' way, because that's what we have to work with.

One of your points is that a wizard cannot choose to be Lightning attuned because of Nelemar? That wizard suffers the mechanical disadvantage of shocking herself? Is that what you are contending qualifies as a mechanical disadvantage?

As you can imagine, if that is generally aligned in concept, I'm marshaling thoughts about unattuned and the Confluence, hunting the 3rd floor, attuning random and perhaps most tellingly. . .

Choice gives a modest benefit - it doesn't diminish the lightning attuned wizard that I might choose earth - sometimes I'll get a small benefit, sometimes she will. That's not what I define as a 'mechanical disadvantage'. Especially since she can still cast fire, just as effectively as I can in Nelemar.

Doug

>>Because of these two spells, you forfeit the bonus altogether if you choose something that isn't earth, unless you choose to forgo many post-cap hunting areas entirely.

Yes, I see the point - I think my problem is that 'forfeiting the bonus' is a slippery slope. It means the bonus becomes the base effect - and is no longer a bonus. Right now, it simply is a bonus, it doesn't always apply. I fully concede your point when the bonus becomes the base effect. But my view is that shouldn't be what we strive for.

Doug

Actually Doug, Gemstone II had nothing to do with ICE or Rolemaster. It was much simpler both mechanically and lorewise than either GS3 or GS4, and took place in a world called--yes, Elanthia. For a time even, GS2 and GS3 were both running concurrently on GEnie. For that matter, I believe that the world of Simutronics' wizardly combat game on GEnie, Orb Wars, was also called Elanthia.

--Hal

Not sure if this is an oversight or not:

502 combined with 411 should produce a reduction to the target's DS as stated in the Wiki (and previously in this thread).

How does this work for UAC? Does it reduce UDF by a percentage or something? After testing with 13 ranks of Air Lore, attuned to Air, with Air e-bladed gauntlets my target's UDF and MM look to be identical when compared to 4x hand-wraps.