Sorry if this is too old hat. I apologize for not keeping up with the wizard folder since I don't currently play any wizards.

However, with my main character a sorcerer, I'm sore about the permanent attune to an element with no reset. Culture is the only thing I can think of off hand which does not have some reset option (besides race [like culutre] and profession). Society resets, fixskills, fixstats, can change deity alignment. Being something that mainly affects the wizard profession, maybe this is the place to rant about it.

Honestly I'm a cheaty face anyway. I trained in elemental lores as needed, attuned to lightning, and dumped the lores with a fixskill that was going to expire. This was years ago near when align was released, and I just thought lightning was powerful. Honestly, Kaldonis is more of a firestormer, but hey I'm stuck to lightning. (Plus for sorcerers elemental attunement is 90% meaningless, so I didn't at first consider it as anything but a foofy game mechanic.) It doesn't even make sense I am attuned to an element, so it's a bug if nothing else because I have ZERO ranks of elemental lore. If from migration or fixskill the attunement is no longer appropriate, it's in fact a game bug! So I can go for technical rather than opinion and preference.

Anyway, you can feel free to respond mocking me, but all you who also want some way to change element attune, please jump on this and let's get critical mass. I've heard lots of rumors that wizards have been on this for a long time, and here's a silly sorcerer who just wants it for roleplaying (or evidence as a bug, your choice); I guess technically fire is better against trolls, for all the zero times I use my attunement for anything at all besides eblading arrows for someone else. Honestly it shouldn't be especially tied to any trick with the advguild or premium points. It should be simple skill checks (prevents keeping attunement after skill changes, and power to people that train enough different lores to attune their choice).

If those topics don't sound like fun, what about the attune relation to professional titles? Wizards might not be especially effected, but it's the place to get input to not stomp on someone else's garden. I'd think at least one professional title should be tied to attunement directly for each element, and freely available at least to professions knowing elemental spells. Honestly I wouldn't likely use them (I like my profession title and some other options I have), and I'm not asking particularly which ones (can be new ones), so not trying to steal the wizardly fire (pun not intended at first).

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

PS: Attune me to acid.

Not really a worthwhile discussion based on what I want to see for the professions. I'd be against it (as I was all the others on the list), but I can't really muster the will to challenge 'the apathy to adversity' when there are so many other things that require attention.

A suggestion, though -- this could affect other professions. Perhaps Magic System or Game Design would be better suited so solicit other adherents?

Doug

I also fail to see the logic in allowing almost -ANY- other facet of a character to be re-set in some way but not attunement. I'd love to change Gondain's, because I picked Fire at level 10 based on, "Sweet, a fire-eblade for hunting trolls!" Not my proudest moment as a gamer. With the existence of ATTUNE RANDOM, it's not the biggest deal, but I'd love to be able to change Gondain's attunement to Air, which is much more in line with how I see Gondain and also with my planned extensive training in Air Lore. He's no Fire mage.

Worth a lot of time and resources? Probably not. But I also suspect a change like this wouldn't require such.

- Gondain

Personally, I'm against it. As has been said, there are several things that can't be changed without re-rolling your character: e.g. race, profession, and culture. Attunement is something that's an inherent part of your character and has nothing to do with training. If it's going to be changed, I think it should be something on the order of a stat reset potion. My wizard is not trained at all in the lore related to her attunement because her attunement is part of who she is. Her lore training is based on what she most wants to accomplish.

[House of the Elements]
The four corners of this room contain gateways to the very elements themselves. Powerful fluxes come pouring out of each of them creating the most violent energy maelstrom you have ever seen as they contend with one another. Standing in the middle, somehow unscathed by the charged gobs of freezing acid that threaten to melt the very fabric of the space they swirl through, is Master Mysterioso, the Elemental Attuner.

Dodging desperately, you somehow avoid a bolt of lightning. What's that doing in here!

>ask Myst about attune

Attuning to an element is easy, remarks Mysterioso enigmatically, just walk through whichever gateway you fancy, inhale, and walk back out again.

>go fire gate

It looks pretty hot there, are you sure you want to go through with this? Type go fire confirm within 30 seconds if you really mean it.

>go fire confirm

Treading carefully around rivers of lava and dodging jets of steam, you approach the gateway to the element of fire.

A roaring ball of fire streaks out of nowhere and envelops you.

Eyelashes disappear in a puff of smoke, eyes and brain swiftly following

It seems you have died my friend.

An assistant flits in, gathers what little remains of you and deposits the charred remains outside. He mutters something about staying alive before wandering off.


...

>ask mysterioso about staying alive
Staying alive is the difficult bit, explains Mysterioso patiently. Only fire can exist within the elemental plane of fire, and those beings with inferior mental powers find it impossible to keep control of their spirits when all but one element is driven out of them. Maybe I have an amulet that could help you with that.

Mysterioso rummages in a sack and comes up with an amulet. Its out of charges, so I'll drop the price to 25000000 silvers, he offers generously. Just stop off at an Adventurers Guild and put a charge in it. The cost shouldn't be much more than 750000 bounty points. Mysterioso carefully inspects the amulet he is holding. It'll hold together for another trip into an elemental plane, but I give no guarantees it will not crumble if you or someone else attempted more than one trip with it. Just say the word BUY and I'll teleport the funds from wherever you have them.

>>Things change.

Interestingly enough -- people don't. At least not that much.

Something to consider?

Doug

<<
Interestingly enough -- people don't. At least not that much.

Something to consider?

Doug>>

Why, Doug, what ever do you mean? :)

~Taverkin

>By the way, YOUR RP is not effected by my changing my character's attunement in any way.

I never said that my RP is affected by your attunement. I said my RP would be affected by GMs retconning what attunement is. It isn't like hair color or height as those things change naturally over time. No one is born six feet tall. Some are born bald and a few years later have a thick shaggy mane. Some are born redheads whose hair color changes to blond or vice versa.

If your character is born human, he stays human until you re-roll him. If you choose Paradis for your halfling's culture, the only way to remedy that is by--you guessed it--re-rolling. Attunement is the same way. That is not my opinion. That's what GMs have always stated in the past when this subject has come up.

Now, I have an opinion on whether or not that should change; and if it does, how. I'm not sure why you find that so offensive. You seem to find it perfectly acceptable to offer up your opinion on things that do not personally affect you.

You're right in most respects, Throgg. Just as the player chooses the profession, the player can choose the elemental attunement.

Should we allow freely swapping between professions?

Doug

Tough to say, Doug. I seem to recall being much more of what I would label a "hardliner" back then, in the sense that I was far more likely to view game design from standpoint of strict realism and immersion. I have one RL friend who plays this game and also played back then, and from time to time I'll call him up and we'll argue game design. He's still a "hardliner" (and he hates when I call him that!), espousing many of the opinions and ideas I supported at that time. And we hardly agree on anything anymore - which, oddly enough, makes the conversations so engaging we can go on for hours arguing our side!

Maybe some time I'll hit you up in game or on lnet and tell you the names of some of the characters I played back then. I'm not sure you'll remember me, but if you do it'd be interesting to see if you've noticed the same change. A fun experiment!

~Taverkin

I don't think so, Throgg. Wyntrfrsh is probably right on this one. The player chooses attunement for his or her character in the same way we choose eye color or facial features. The fact that we have a choice as a player does not in itself suggest that this is a choice our character is making for themselves. If attunement is inherent to our characters, then it's not a choice the character makes. According to Wyntrfrsh, that's how the GMs have characterized it.

To me it's neither here nor there. We could easily provide the ability to change attunement just as we provide the ability to fix skills or stats. And like I said before, the cost of such a change should fall in line with its practical value, which in the case of attunement is next to nothing. Having said that, I see no reason that we need to be able to change it as often as we want (although if we could, it wouldn't really make any practical difference anyway!). That's why I suggested the periodic free fix similar to fixskills, at least until the GMs figure out what their plans are for attunement and start fleshing it out as something meaningful.

~Taverkin

The thread was started by a sorcerer who chose lightning, but now feels fire is more suited to his character. He said himself that attunement is "90% meaningless". I don't think the problem here is that he simply wants the benefits of fire attunement. There aren't any!

Give us a little more credit. You know it is possible to care about both mechanical benefits AND the vision we have of our characters. Believe it or not. I'm lucky in that my lores match my attunement currently, but it would bother me a little bit that I couldn't change it to match if I needed to. Even though attunement does nothing for me.

~Taverkin

Oh, here's a thought I just had! Right now, elemental attunement is pretty unimportant, aside from affecting spells 435 and 415. How about if attuning to an element made learning lores of that element less costly. For example, I attune to fire, and each rank of fire lore I learn costs only 5 TPs instead of 6. And if I later change my attunement, those ranks of fire lore vanish (or perhaps I need to spend more TPs to retain them).

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

If I remember right, years ago attunement was originally designed to be randomly set to an element when you created your character. And the ONLY way to change it was to delete the character slot for the character. Not just rerolling the character, but actually deleting the character. My guess would be that the original auto-setting of it was to show that it was something that was inherent to the character's being and could not be changed RP-wise.

I'm not sure about the theory of thought behind how and why it is, or should be, now though.


~Aulis
Forums Manager
QC'er

This is news to me, if I understand correctly.

Are you suggesting that when you attune randomly, it stays at a particular attunement until you go back to your base, or attune random again? That's not my experience, but the elf mage is still unattuned (again, a choice).

I just tested, and find that there's no difference between unattuned and random. Specifically, I got three different elemental types in three casts.

Does it work differently when attuned?

Doug

Arg, slight bit of a problem here; spells not working as I remembered. This might take a while.

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

>Personally, I'm against it. As has been said, there are several things that can't be changed without re-rolling your character: e.g. race, profession, and culture. Attunement is something that's an inherent part of your character and has nothing to do with training.

I would at least like to point out you cannot attune to an element until you've trained enough in a given lore. So it does have something to do with training, and is not something fixed by the initial mangler (no one can get 20 elemental lore ranks for level 0).

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

>How can this be the implication when it's been explicitly stated by GMs that attunement is innate? The player is also allowed to choose the character's race, profession, and culture, all attributes that are permanent once chosen unless the player rerolls the character. It isn't your character who's choosing the attunement. It's you, the player.

I should note a reason I raised this discussion was because the opposing GM is now gone, which others have said, but I already knew.

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

>I would at least like to point out you cannot attune to an element until you've trained enough in a given lore. So it does have something to do with training, and is not something fixed by the initial mangler (no one can get 20 elemental lore ranks for level 0).

>~daid (player of Kaldonis)

This isn't true. I attuned my main wizard to fire as soon as I rolled her up. She currently has 26 ranks of Air Lore. She has never had 20 ranks of Fire Lore.

>>There was also a time when

Heh. Sort of yes, but in my opinion, a red herring to the point. Happy to discuss why, if there's a need. In the end, I ask the question -- yet again -- should we allow for freely swapping between professions? What I'm trying to discern is when are 'innate' or 'character defining' positions immutable, and when not?

Doug