I like the theme of the confound, but I'm a little worried about its implementation. No other guild has to build up a pool in order to use their spells -- abilities, yes, but not spells.

Now, if you're talking about a situation where an empty pool makes the spells less powerful than normal spells from other guilds, but a full pool makes them more powerful, that could be interesting. I'd just be concerned it would work under global caps.

If instead you're talking about powering abilities and not spells, I'm curious what you mean.


-- Player of Eyuve

Also, before we go too far down the rabbit hole, I'd like to emphasize that we see would like to see the environmental limiter for Trader spells to be very generous (especially by Moon Mage standards). Think Dazzle, only flip day to night, and you have roughly where we're imagining you're in the optimal zone for your spells. My napkin math puts that at somewhere north of 80% coverage.

-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

>>Think Dazzle, only flip day to night,

Ahh, I didn't catch that you said starlight or bright moonlight. So the pool would build (and these spells would function) during the night, or during the day with Xibar or Yavash present.

>>Spell does X. Spell under the environment effect or the pool does X+Y.

It all sounds good to me, as long as there's reasonable balance. I.e., it should not need the pool to feel like a fully powered spell -- it should feel pretty good on an empty pool and extra awesome on a full pool.

Speaking as a primary Moon Mage player, I can say two things:

1) It's annoying to have bits of my spells "removed" at certain times, when other guilds have their spells work all the time. E.g. Dazzle, SLS.

BUT

2) The Moon Mage spellbook is so good, and the flavor so dynamic and interesting, that I don't mind. We are the only guild with a lock on transportation spells, and we're also strong in other important niches (stealth and Distant Gaze come to mind).

I would just be careful with the Trader book, because I suspect they won't have quite the same dose of awesome. Thus having a pool should, I hope, feel like a bonus at the end and not a penalty.


-- Player of Eyuve

>>Traders learn how to capture the supernatural power of starlight into their aura. When the stars and moons are right, R'lyeh will rise from the sea, never to sink again, and Cthulhu will awaken and revel across the world, ravening for delight.

Fixed that for you.

Killing you softly with his song,
- Stormsinger Shavay

---

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
- Arthur O'Shaughnessy

I posted this in the traders board since I didn't know this thread existed yet. It's a bit long winded and rambling and was written out before I had read any of this about starlight infusion and confounds. So, sorry for that. It's coming from a completely different RP direction and mostly pertaining to trader spell ideas rather than the RP of it. But a way to differentiate them from moon mages while keeping them under the umbrella of "lunar magic."

---

Let me preface my post by saying I don't play a trader and don't know how to play a trader, but I have a pretty good understanding of magic in the DR-universe.

Magic is sort of like the vapor trail left by the Immortals. Holy magic being the "fastest vibrating" of sorts, the most recently-left energy, and progressing downwards from it is life, elemental, and then lunar which is above gravity. So lunar magic essentially is magic powered by large bodies of mass and is related to gravity, highlighting both moving objects around and bending light (such as clairvoyance, shadows, and moongate).

It was said in the initial post about 3.1 that the two sort of domains of moon mages, ability to travel big distances and power of prediction, were to remain in the hands of moon mages. That -is- unfortunate since those are two things a trader would highly value. But perhaps trader magic can be other facets of gravity and manipulation of light, with some limited abilities that blend into the domain of moon mages. The way I see it is 1 - light manipulation, 2 - gravity manipulation, 3 - clairvoyance/mind control, 4 - travel assistance. 3/4 obviously move into the moon mage territory, but in ways I think that could work from a lore standpoint.

1) Simple spells for traders could be to move light to aid them and chance speculate paranoia into a spell that creates light around the trader for a perception buff (Augmentation). Similarly, the ability to redirect light around the trader could make them perhaps appear blurred and harder to hit with ranged and targeted magic (Warding). Clarify gem (utility) would obviously be a useful spell for a trader and fit within this framework for trader magic. Delving into things more esoteric, perhaps the ability to see imperfections in other materials (and have a magical ability to purify them) could be in order. So a trader could increase the quality of various materials (metals, fabrics, bones, whatever).

2) On the subject of harnessing the power of large bodies, a trader perhaps COULD affect gravity and have a significantly more powerful version of ease burden (utility), burden could be made more powerful and moved to a trader spell (debilitation), or the ability to affect a small area of gravity increase the weight capacity of a container (this could be cyclic utility spell; on releasing it, it wouldn't spew things out, but maybe a roundtime on moving until you cast it again or take things out to make it right). Traders could have a spell that increases the gravity of an opponent that would make physical ranged attacks more likely to hit (debil) or have it work on just a specific item and replace speculate coin (targeted magic)with this spell.

3) Moving closer to the border with moon mages, speculate finesse would be venturing into the realm of prediction and quasi-mind control. On a related note, the ability to influence enemies to move and react slower (debilitation) would be a useful spell (of course limited to critters with a brain). Traders would have a big interest in the ability to influence people, too (think, how to win friends and influence people), and a charisma and/or scholarship buff (aug) would be in order. A trader would also likely want the ability to communicate wider, so an ability to boost the range of gweths/albredine would be quite useful.

4) This is likely the most controversial of my ideas, but what about some kind of a limited moongate-type ability. It could be a ritual spell with a significant cooldown. The power of it is affected by your magic ability, and the cooldown is affected by say.. charisma (a way of making it like circle based but not exactly, RP-wise think of it like immense willpower to muster up the mental stamina to do it again). Early on, the trader could move him/herself along with a caravan across short distances like rivers. Later on, across big distances like the gondola or the from Haven to Lang. At immense power, like maybe 500 ranks (magic is tert, remember, so this would be a big deal), a trader could get across to the islands. The cool down for something like this would be significant, so it's likely just good for a one-way quick trip and you might want to find another way back.

I know I made this an immensely, stupidly long post, and as I said, I'm not a trader, but I'm just throwing these ideas out so that maybe someone who is more versed on the subject could tweak these into more useable ideas with what I've said as a RP-backing.

Weave straw into gold!

hrm wrong story never mind.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

Spell to combine gems, summing their value.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

>>Spell to combine gems, summing their value.

tie your gem pouches. This is what that does.

Now, if you could take two gems of the same type, combine them to make a single gem of a larger type, that would be interesting.