Barbarians have access to a very potent suite of abilities, and those abilities are the functional equivilant of magic even if they're called something different. Claiming they're somehow missing out because they can't use magic is being willfully ignorant.

M.

>>Barbarians have access to a very potent suite of abilities, and those abilities are the functional equivilant of magic even if they're called something different. Claiming they're somehow missing out because they can't use magic is being willfully ignorant.

The ignorance seems to be on your part, my friend, and though that may sound conflictual that is not meant as a personal attack. I suppose I could word it less offensively, so I'll simply say 'you're mistaken.'

'Barbarians do not have access to magic' has nothing to do with the Barbarian abilities when put into the thread's original context. I won't, once again, offer a long-winded expose on how Barb abilties differ from magic because you seem to have missed it. All abilities in the game are 'magical,' so no I'm not getting hung up on words.

The focal point of the protest for nerfing BMR was the loss of magic items. Barbs are the only guild in the game whose in-game lore and some in-game mechanics prevent from using magic. Even a Thief can use an albredine crystal or wands or various other methods to learn Magical Devices; a thief can also trigger an insane buff like khri spar and then stack it with a CJ, which a Barb cannot.

Barbarians are the only in-game guild that have a skillset closed off to them, as Empaths can still learn weapons from parrying and multi opponent and such. Barbarians are the only guild whose item usage is restricted. Barbarians are missing out on hundreds of TDPs because magic is ridiculously broken in that you can train 3-4 skills simultaneously up to 1200 ranks. Blah blah blah. Yes, there are repurcussions and big ones if you thought it through.

BMR makes it all worth it. The entire point of my original post was pointing out that the other poster's wariness of a BMR nerf is valid, though I have every confidence it will remain balanced under GMs like Iayn and Darternian.

---

Wish List: Weapon enchanting, Empath romancing, Bardic Screams, and Barb love-beams.

I will say this, magic in Elanthia is a very specific thing. Barbarians do indeed have extraordinary abilities, as do Thieves and Traders. Barbarians do not however use magic of any kind. So calling it magic does not make it so, period.


GameMaster Niamah
Barbarian Liaison

>>Barbarians are the only in-game guild that have a skillset closed off to them, as Empaths can still learn weapons from parrying and multi opponent and such. Barbarians are the only guild whose item usage is restricted. Barbarians are missing out on hundreds of TDPs because magic is ridiculously broken in that you can train 3-4 skills simultaneously up to 1200 ranks. Blah blah blah. Yes, there are repurcussions and big ones if you thought it through.<<

Training magic skills in the way you suggest requires trading time spent training other skills for time spent training magic. Barbarians are free to focus on a myriad of other skills, including extra weapons, in the time they'd otherwise be training magic. I'm sure that if you did a study of TDPs to time spent training there would be no significant discrepencies.

In fact, I'm pretty sure someone did do that study.

Barbs are also learning useful skills at better rates v/s magic primary characters.

The only guilds who really get a free lunch out of this are the magic tert ones, who give up nothing to use magic but receive sweet benefits from the system anyway. Meh.

M.

And I won't even get into the benefits of having most of your guild abilities built on guild-specific systems. That would probably get me board LO.

M.

>>That made me laugh though. You have to leave combat to train magic? Maybe I missed the point. <<

You did miss the point. The only two magic skills you can train without making any tradeoffs whatsoever (except possibly in choosing a training location) are PM and Harness, because casting spells usually carries no RT and doesn't consume resources used for things besides casting spells.

TM trains like a weapon, so every creature that you train TM on is a creature you're not training a weapon on.

Charging cambrinth to train MD is RT heavy. Generally 10 seconds per charge, 5 seconds to focus. Time spent in RT is time you're not swinging a weapon, or hiding, or folding origami, etc.

M.

Nia,

You should probably have moved the post that preceeded mine, too.

M.

>>Barbs are also learning useful skills at better rates v/s magic primary characters.

Useful skills? I hope you're not saying PM and Harness aren't useful, or you're really out of it. PM is the equivalent of me having a skill that dictates how powerful my LT will hit. Call it a Light Thrown Power skill.


Vinjince

---

"There are five possible operations for any army. If you can fight, fight; if you cannot fight, defend; if you cannot defend, flee; if you cannot flee, surrender; if you cannot surrender, die."

- Sima Yi

>In my opinion these disadvantages are made up for primarily by BMR, NOT the actual skill/stat boosts of barb abilities, because without the BMR aspect, a capped dragon dance does not equal what can be done with capped spells/CJs/and runes stacking.

Capped spells from several different guilds, perhaps. But how often are you going to nag 3 different people to cast spells on you just so you can train? And who hunts with CJs active at all times? That's not a realistic comparison.

>>PM boosts the power of your spells. Indirectly or not, it does. PM and mana run hand in hand, just as you described. PM boosts your chance of breaking MR regardless if you reach the hard cap of mana or not. To call this skill useless is plain silly.<<

The thing is, it's not a boost. When you swing a sword or type 'hide', you get absolutely the full benefit of your ranks given that all the conditions you can't influence are neutral.

Not so with PM. Magic works in a way that is just perverse. PM greater than that needed to completely cancel MR and cast at your chosen mana level does nothing for spell power. It is better to have more PM than less, but adding ranks does not do a lot for you.

M.

Vin,

You need to spend some time with the system. Maybe a numerical example will help.

Let's say you're casting a spell at its cap on some target. Casting requires 200 PM, completely busting through the target's MR (so the actual spell contest happens without penalty) requires another 100 on top of that. So you need 300 PM to get the most out of that spell in that situation, all other factors neutral.

If you have 1000PM ranks, ranks 301-1000 don't add to spell power. After awhile, having more skill just doesn't matter. That's probably why your anti-magic roars don't seem to do much.

That's what I mean when I say that PM is not worth very much. Harness and PP help offset the severe drawbacks inherant in working with the magic system. I suppose you could call that useful, but plenty of guilds have kick-butt abilities without having to work skills whose sole purpose is to offset the penalties that come with using those abilities.

M.

Vin,

No brainer? What if HT were changed so that with the hammer you used you could never get the benefit of more than 200 ranks of skill when attacking, and the biggest hammer available only let you use 400 ranks?

>>What I'm saying is, if you already HAVEN'T reached that cap, then getting more PM will add more power to your spell because you'll be able to add more mana.<<

Adding more PM will only potentially add more power to the spell. If you don't cast with more mana, you are not benefitting from those extra ranks. I cannot think of any other skill in the game that uses the same model.

>>Ok, now we go from "not useful" to "not worth very much". Make up your mind. PM and Harness are either useful or not.<<

Don't be dense. Those ranks are useless after a point, and are only indirectly useful before that point.

>>And I'm curious. What other guilds have abilities that don't have penalties/difficulties? <<

What other abilities require you to train an entire skillset JUST to power the abilities? An entire primary skillset?

M.

>>I just don't get this. How is extra ranks USELESS? Against a single target, no doubt. Having 1500 ranks of LT against 50 evasion is no better than having 800 ranks of LT against 50 evasion, so those extra ranks are useless in that sense. I expected you to understand this, but apparently not. The extra ranks are NOT useless because you will come across different targets that will require more ranks to overcome their MR. Just like I may come across someone with 1500 ranks of evasion, and therefore those extra ranks of LT will not be useless.<<

Again, don't be dense.

If you have 1500 ranks of LT and you're throwing at something with 50 evasion, you're going to one shot your target or take off a limb. You get the maximum possible effect of your 1500 ranks - it just happens that the maximum effect is capped at completely destroying a body part.

PM doesn't work that way. All PM does is allow you to get to the actual spell contest.

You do not benefit from PM ranks in excess of what you need to overcome MR and cast the spell at the mana level you chose. It's possible to have the spell go off (cast at mana level), completely overcome MR, and still fail to affect your target regardless of your extra 1000 PM ranks because PM doesn't contribute to the contest.

That is not AT ALL the same thing as your extra 1000 ranks meaning nothing because you could oblitherate your target with the first 500.

>>Is this actually a penalty?<<

Yes, actually, it is.

If there were no magic skills...

Contested spells would just be stat contests that skew heavily in favor of the attacker, like most stat contests (including barb stat contests).

Buff spells would always be activated at maximum strength, like non-magic buffing abilities.

TM would just be a weapon skill. Probably a lot like ranged weapons work now, but using "spells" as the weapons.

No time would have to be spent working magic skills. Instead, time could be spent working skills with other applications.

The entire magic system is a collection of penalties heaped upon mages, who would otherwise just get their spells as abilities. The penalties are less significant for magic tert guilds since they give up less to use the system, and more significant for magic primary guilds that sacrifice heavily to use the system.

M.

Everyone in Elanthia has magic resistance, however mages (everyone but trader/thief/barb), don't resist beneficial magic due to their training or usage of magic or something. They do resist offensive magic but the order for resistance is generally mages -> traders/thieves -> barbarians. Later on in the post when I use barbarian, that may be swapped with "target" or "bystander" as appropriate.

MR is resisting changes to mana's natural flow, BMR is based upon MR.

When mages cast spells, they alter the natural flow of mana.

If the alteration occurs "near" the barbarian, it is resisted (AoE and targetted spells), whereas if it doesn't, it isn't resisted (self cast spells).

How effective mana is calculated on non TM spells, generally TM is swapped out for effective mana and targetting is similar to fully preparing as far as getting through resistance.

Mage prepares spell, if mana used is above the cap on the spell pattern it is reduced to max mana, then check against magic resistance, subtract the mana lost due to resistance, calculate the effects of the spell at the new mana level.

That is one of the flaws but it also helps prevent certain situations where person A can just add 20 extra mana into a spell and have it work, the problem with this model occurs on the higher end because adding more mana is easier than training stats/skills to get through the resistance so at the high end while magic resistance keeps going up, the ability to overcome it (generally achieved by adding more mana), can't occur because the spell cap has been reached.

There are three levels for spell success.

Complete failure due to magic resistance. The sparkly lights, that means that the resistance has reduced the effective mana in a spell below the minimum mana required for the manifestation of the spell pattern. TM spells will not have this level unless it is a mixed spell, such as divine radiance which isn't just TM, I believe.

Spell is resisted. Undetectable except on barbarians, if a spell goes off and the barbarian does not scowl, and there isn't complete failure, the spell is resisted. There is no way to tell except by the effectiveness of the spell how much it was resisted, and this will vary from 1% - 99% (assuming 0% is overcoming resistance and 100% is complete failure due to resistance). This level is possible against TM spells.

Magic resistance is overcome. Undetectable except on barbarians, if a spell goes off and the barbarian scowls, that means the spell is at the same power cast. This level is possible against TM spells.

Modifiers for spell's ability to penetrate magic resistance are listed below.

Beneficial spells are resisted more, or have less penetration, than other spells because the spell was not designed, I'm talking a mage IG designing a spell, to force its way through magic resistance.

Offense spells are resisted the least because they were designed for combat, and to force through magic resistance due to combat conditions.

The other factors for how easily a spell gets through resistance depends upon the tier/difficulty of the spell being cast and how it is being cast/what is it trying to affect (directly at target, in group with target and multi-casts, or AoE).

The higher the tier, the more penetration, however this is offset on unevaluated spells by the extra mana possible to put into some lower tier spells. On spells which have gone through evaluation, I haven't noticed this issue which makes higher tier spells more useful in beating magic resistance which is a good thing since that was a big issue in the past.

Casting directly at a target is hardest, then AoE, then in a group and multi-cast. Despite what people may say, grouped casts do check against magic resistance.

That is the basics of it from my understanding and is a combination of Magic Theory as previously described by GMs and interpreted by myself, and actual game mechanics which I would label as current fact (how to see if a spell is resisted etc...).

The only part I'm unclear on is the exact part PM and TM plays in the TM spell magic resistance calculations but I know of an easy way to check that later tonight so I'll post again.

My thoughts on why resistance is setup as it is now versus TM spells.

Remember that PM/mana does affect the max/min power of a TM spell (extra bolts for CL, bigger fireball, etc...), and then TM determines how much of that power is applied.

Both targetting matrices and spell formation involve the manipulation of mana from its natural state. In TM spells, the spell formation occurs outside the sphere of influence of the barbarian and is guided to the target via a targetting matrix which is within the sphere of influence so the matrix is resisted and the formation of the spell is not. This would be the Magic Theory explaining how TM works vs just a gameplay consideration which is below. (My testing later tonight should be able to verify this for pure TM spells barring lurking variables).

Resisting both the formation of the spell pattern and the targetting matrix would result in a hit to power, as well as accuracy so it only affects one for gameplay reasons. (My testing later tonight should be able to verify this for pure TM spells barring lurking variables). Similar to how regular combat currently works, if it was just one number then that leads to a linear relationship between accuracy and damage (as accuracy goes up, damage goes up) which restricts the bonusing of abilities, skills, and spells because you don't want to boost accuracy a huge amount due to how it has a large effect upon damage past what increased accuracy should provide and you can't boost just power without also a boost to accuracy (when talking about changing offensive factor).

The problem with this setup is that who needs to decrease the power of the spell pattern if the matrix itself is negated? Not going to hit = not having to worry about the power behind the spell. Having the ability to make the power behind something meaningless is not a good thing. To a certain extent it is a good idea, just because you put 20 extra mana into that spell shouldn't make it more accurate, but in practice it doesn't work out as well. That is essentially the same position as having one number determine both accuracy and power which should be avoided.

Effective ideas to resolve this issue?

Even if MR is re-scaled the problem would still persist of being able to negate the power of the spell (destroy accuracy and it will not hit) more easily than negating accuracy (destroy power and the spell will still hit but be weak) and it would still be the only way to affect a TM spell.

Barring Magic Theory stating that PM isn't a factor in TM spells and thus mana put into a spell, I believe MR should be shared across both the power of the spell (PM and Mana) and the accuracy of the spell (TM). Even if Magic Theory does state that PM isn't a factor in TM spell resistance calculations, I think it should be added for gameplay reasons.

I'm not sure how exactly it would balance in practice, but resisting only one aspect seems like the wrong path.



That was something I posted a while back in the warrior mage complaint folder.

http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=23&topic=2&message=5226

PM does increase power beyond the mana cap. As do stats.

Also it was found that mages often have far more magic resistance than they should have according to the system, while thieves and traders have a lot less.

I am --- Navak

>>More ranks of PM just allow me to attempt a contest against stronger critters/PCs. They don't contribute to my side of the contest. Woo woo. Yeah, crazy usefulness of PM there.

Being able to cast a buff spell at 60 mana with 3 seconds of prep time, or overcome the magic resistance of a dragon dancing 100+ barbarian is a HUGE amount of usefulness.

You really have to be magic tert to understand just how important PM actually is. For as strong as my spells are, for as much as I train my stats to cast, the fact that I have tert PM makes all dancing barbarians at/above level utterly untouchable.

Turn my tert PM into primary and all of the sudden I'm not having to wait 15 seconds for a full prep and I'm able to actually cast on barbs above my level.

>>It's obvious that running a character that just gets handed abilities that don't require skills to use has given you a frame of reference that can't encompass this debate.

Heh, I always find that kinda funny coming from mages. Oh how much I would give if getting 500 longbow also gave me 800 ranks in two other weapons without trying.

-Teeklin

"Gown Removed Carelessly. Head, less so." - Joss Whedon

>>Being able to cast a buff spell at 60 mana with 3 seconds of prep time, or overcome the magic resistance of a dragon dancing 100+ barbarian is a HUGE amount of usefulness.<<

Not really. That PM is just mitigating penalties that are built into the system.

Imagine if longbow were changed so that everyone had longbow resistance and to shoot at a dancing barb with your 500 effective longbow ranks, you had to have 1000 ranks to start with. And the best longbow you could get would only allow you to shoot with 500 effective ranks. That's how the magic system works now.

>>Turn my tert PM into primary and all of the sudden I'm not having to wait 15 seconds for a full prep and I'm able to actually cast on barbs above my level.<<

??

If you mean "turn my 500 ranks into 900 ranks", then yeah...but what's your point?

M.

>>I'm done trying to explain this. It's obvious that running a character that just gets handed abilities that don't require skills to use has given you a frame of reference that can't encompass this debate.

Yeah, ok. Barbarians and Thieves just get handed abilities that don't require skills to use. The way you're going with this, I must agree that it's best to end it before you spill out any more nonsense.


Vinjince

---

"There are five possible operations for any army. If you can fight, fight; if you cannot fight, defend; if you cannot defend, flee; if you cannot flee, surrender; if you cannot surrender, die."

- Sima Yi

>>How do you go about verifying this assertion vis a vis PM? Higher PM definitely unlocks features and levels of performance in buffing spells, but I haven't noticed any additional oomph with contested or TM spells from piling on 110 extra ranks of PM beyond what can be attributed to overcoming MR.

I have.

Of course this is only testing up into the 600 range, but depending upon the spell and how it is setup, you can reduce the amount of mana used to achieve the same effect simply through improved PM.

You can do the same thing by increasing stats.

>>Generic TM damage doesn't scale with mana input - mana just helps overcome MR.

Not for TM.

>>The only way to keep PM locked constantly is to give up learning other things, just like most other skills. Constantly training magics involves trading off magic training for other training.

PP and MD do suffer when I'm in combat, but that's mainly because of my choice on how to train in combat.

I am --- Navak

I'd say it shouldn't be because the formation of the spell pattern is not the part being resisted, the target matrix is the part being resisted. Does that happen in practice? Not exactly however, I was not able to achieve a consistent result.

The mana you were holding contributes to the spell.
You manage to channel quite a lot of your energy into the spell. The rest is wasted.
Invisible strands of aether roil in the air, twisting into a tight braid. With a mental command, you send the unseen coils of the aethereal whip slashing through the air at Navak!
The piercing screech of tortured air assaults your ears, punctuated by a sharp CRACK!!
Navak's shield jerks suddenly.
Roundtime: 1 second.

(min prep + 21)
The mana you were holding contributes to the spell.
Invisible strands of aether roil in the air, twisting into a tight braid. With a mental command, you send the unseen coils of the aethereal whip slashing through the air at Navak!
The piercing screech of tortured air assaults your ears, punctuated by a sharp CRACK!!
Navak scowls and appears agitated.
Navak's shield jerks suddenly.
Roundtime: 1 second.

So from what I can tell, randomness is a bigger factor than mana in overcoming resistance but more mana can help as well.

Randomness also caused the difference between 2 CL bolts and 3.

I am --- Navak

I had to do a double take earlier. I thought I unignored the WM folder by accident.

>What the hell is this? A magic argument in the Barbarian Guild folder? Including detailed descriptions on how PM and Harness work when scaled to higher levels?

~ Mehathi Malk'Irhhnth

La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid ...

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