I can understand using shards to fuel IoE, CoL, Burn, and Dazzle, but nothing else on that list.

>>* Completely unavailable if enough moons aren't up
>>Moon Gate
>>Teleport
>>Burn

Incorrect.

While I don't disagree (nor really agree either) with your point, distorting facts doesn't help your argument.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

>> Incorrect.

I thought Burn required a moon, and that teleport/moongate kill you in interesting ways until 100th circle.

Burn isn't completely dependent on moons, so theoretically you're only without it 6.25% of the time.

And while you don't need it for combat, it can definitely be a pain trying to get past a shield without it.

-Artificer Nilassa

>>IOE is heavy on restrictions although the moons being out can be circumvented its still got its flaws, luckily this is going away in magic 3.0.

To clarify, IOE's revision is no longer themed on the moons at all. The same sort of restriction applies, but the new version is keyed to the planets rather than the moons. No "planet shards," but there's heavy redundancy across planets.

>>Shadowlings should probably have their restriction waived, but its not really limited to nighttime use only. It can still be used in the day granted that there is no visible daylight so its only a real hindrance while hunting.

I still honestly have no idea what I want to do with Shadowlings. I dislike how they currently exist from a game-design perspective, but I don't think I can justify removing the demon-shadow-kittens either.

-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

>> the new version is keyed to the planets

Cool. I like the idea of working the planets into our magic a bit more.

>> I still honestly have no idea what I want to do with Shadowlings.

I have a couple of ideas on that.

First, I would suggest retconning the lore to have the spell "actually" use existing shadows to create a conduit to the astral plane (or somewhere) with the intent of drawing mana into our plane, kind of like the ethereal fissure spell, only with the side effect of extra-planar forces animating said shadows into a creature.

Second, tie the critters into the new combat pet mechanics.

Third, give it a cast loud/quiet feature like a lot of 3.0 AOE spells The "loud" version being that the mage uses shadows from the area to form an independent shadowling. This shadowling, created from a large and independent mass of shadows provides a high attunement-regen rate to all moon mages in the room. It acts independently, but spends most of its time hiding. If it feels threatened by a creature or player, it hides, retreats, and leaves the room. If another "loud" shadowling enters the room, they advance in hiding, ambush, and fight to the death (mua ha ha!).

The quiet version would involve the caster explicitly using his or her own shadow in the spell, as opposed to ambient ones. This creates the attunement-regen ability for the caster only, and at a lower rate than the "loud" version. The offset is that this shadowling's behavior is now influenced by the caster's will as well as the extra-planar forces, and it will follow the caster around, even into combat, as an actual combat pet. I'm not saying it should be a terribly effective one, dealing lots of damage and whatnot, but a little hiding and sneaking, a swat or two, and an MO penalty versus the opponent would be nice. Not to mention attunement regeneration in combat. If we want to give it some spice, we can say that if a "quiet" shadowling dies in combat, either a) the mage takes a spirit or concentration hit, or b) the mage becomes shadowless for a period of time (visible in LOOK, please), during which he cannot summon another creature made of his or her own shadow (I could see shadow servant being made of the caster's own shadow as well).

I think that would also make it worth being a ritual spell, thus fitting into that "summoning spells are rituals" aesthetic you mentioned a while back.

so.... yeah. That's my idea. It might not even be possible (programming-wise), and I think this kind of direct interaction with the plane of probability might verge on sorcery, but... we could have underground shadowling-fighting tourneys, and make bets. And I want a combat pet, even if it is a crappy one.

>> I'm assuming both the LOUD and QUIET options of your proposal are cyclic since they involve a combat pet.

Fine with me.

I like a lot of these ideas. But I'm also a bit skeptical that we can pull a combat pet out of shadowling.

I'd be fine seeing the spell as a low cost, mostly fluff thing that interacted in cool ways with other spells. Maybe it can be cast in various ways to give minor boosts to various things, but has cool verb/atmospheric options. I'd love to see it interact in some cool way with shadow web and shadow servant. Or do small delivery tasks. Or point people in hiding. Or maybe just having one out makes all perception checks in the room more difficult? Maybe it could interact in neat ways with hypnotize? Maybe just having one out could give a random "save" to attacks against us by other combat pets (sacrificial shadowling?).

To me, there's a lot to be said for the fun factor even if the ultimate utilization of the spell isn't all that mechanically helpful stat/skill wise. The sheer concept of summoning shadow creatures is awesome, and I don't want to see that go away.

PS: If we can we have shadowlings that give us barbarian-attack-immunity, ignore everything I just said.

>>I still honestly have no idea what I want to do with Shadowlings. I dislike how they currently exist from a game-design perspective, but I don't think I can justify removing the demon-shadow-kittens either.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the spell functionality existed in a different way (without summoning something), but we could still summon a (fluff) shadowling via a generic cantrip.


-- Player of Eyuve

I don't have TV, but I can see a combat shadowling acting like TV.

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You do an incredible backflip with a beautiful twist rotation, gaining nearly five feet of air and landing neatly on your feet without so much as a wobble!

>>I don't have TV, but I can see a combat shadowling acting like TV.

You see the shadowling clinging to the enemy's face so he/she can't see?


-- Player of Eyuve

>>But their might be points of large periods of time where no planet at all is up

I've been watching the planets extremely closely since day 117. I haven't hit a full IG year yet, but that's about 3/4 of one. I record their movements generally multiple times in a (RL) day. (I do it with a script -- I'm not completely nuts.)

My notes confirm your intuition. There was a period of about 50 IG days when there were no planets up -- roughly days 205-257. That's close to two RL weeks. After which time, Er'qutra (a day-only planet) rose and was the only planet visible for another 40 days (10 RL days).

I wouldn't panic yet though. We don't know yet how dependent the spell will be on planets actually being "up" -- it could depend on their position in orbit, or maybe the spell will be useable but just weaker when planets are down. Also, Raesh has said several times that the heavens are broken, which implies they might (maybe) one day get a fix.

At the very least, I expect that the GMs will take this feedback under consideration. I highly doubt they will give us a spell that is totally unusable for that kind of length of time.


-- Player of Eyuve