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I love playing a Warrior Mage and in general I like TM.

However, TM loses major usefulness in situations where attacking quickly is critical.

In invasions, a creature a warrior mage wants to attack with a target spell is almost always dead before he can get a full target on it if there are other fighters in the room. Often it is dead before he can even start targeting.

In PvP, taking time to target generally ensures that the target has time to do one of the following:

1) Ninja vanish.
2) Walk out of the room.

Either of those renders the TM spell ineffective.

The heinous accuracy penalty that comes from casting without targeting (or with minimal targeting) means that is not a viable strategy in most situations.

As masters of targeted magic, Warrior Mages should have the ability to accurately quick draw with TM.

Call it Pathway Quickdraw. QD would specifically negate the accuracy penalty from casting without targeting, potentially allowing the mage to use up to his base ranks on such an attempt.

Accuracy would be the Pathway to use for greatest absolute power when you had time to target. Quickness would be the go-to pathway for getting to maximum potential quickly. But when you needed to shoot from the hip, you'd reach for QD for maximum penalty negation.

QD fits the Warrior Mage concept and it would be the perfect niche ability. You wouldn't use it all the time, it wouldn't increase your absolute power, but you WOULD pull it out and be glad to have it under reasonably common circumstances.

How 'bout it?

sorry for double post but also want to say i like quickdraw. i dont know about completly rmeoving the penalty. but something to niche good with snapping spells.

>>ref: snap cast penalty<<

Full target lets you use base ranks plus some percentage.

Pathway QD, as I'm it, would only allow you to use up to base ranks.

You'd be strictly better off fully targeting if you had the time to do it.

>Pathway QD, as I'm it, would only allow you to use up to base ranks.

Ah, ok. Not nearly as big of a drain then.

-Durnil

Speaking of TM requests..

When are we going to be able to target people we see hide?


Who is in charge of the target verb?

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a black panther comes flying into view! it hits the ground, bouncing once before sliding to a stop.
A black panther is stunned!

<<...but I agree, you should just be able to target them directly. The problem is Ssra has too many projects to really finish any of them properly. He needs like 10 assistants to do his bidding.>>

The code that handles targeting causes me to have seizures. It's pretty scary.

When Dart, Armifer, and I went through the cast mechanics to add this mod we cleaned them up significantly and by that time I'm not sure we had the energy to deal with targeting. We also are working on other targeting features so it'll probably all get lumped together when that time comes.

-Ssra

"He had a lot to say. He had a lot of nothing to say."

<<I've pretty much finished rewriting the TARGET verb, and this is one of the new features. Next stop is QC.

Are there any other new features or interesting tidbits we may look forward to?

>Are there any other new features or interesting tidbits we may look forward to?

It's Wythor, I'm sure we will be finding easter eggs for years to come.

-Durnil

So the annoying tails of prydaens will soon be fair game? Huzzah!

>>Critters will be getting more accurate body descriptions. For example, four-legged creatures will be given forelegs, and you will be able to target the thorax of a giant bug.

>>Targeted spells will be given expanded damage messaging ('crits'). These crits will use the creature being damaged as a basis for unique messaging consistent with that creature's appearance. Even the same crit, when applied to different creatures, may look very different. For example, you will find that crits against S'kra will reflect their reptilian nature.

This is awesome, I'm really looking forward to it... sometimes my favorite part of killing a nasty critter is getting a detailed description of exactly how I eviscerated it...

Sadist? Mebbe...

Player of Relek & crew

I understand that TM is learned as a function of damage dealt to the creature. Unfortunately, snap casting is the only method for training then, so I've been snapping GZ. It's not particularly weak, but as a warrior mage, I anticipated having a variety of spells to aid my hunting, and was dissapointed to find that some warmies STILL use GZ well into their 40's to train targetting.

It's like there's no graduation curve. We don't STILL focus on runestones to train magical devices, we upgrade to bigger and bigger and more and more cambrinth items...

Why should casting dinky, easy to use spells continue to teach long into the point where we're masters of the elements?

>You actually have less options for magical devices. I've used 1 camb armband for the last 5 years.

Plus, the MD ranks don't really do much for you, and the exp rewards are more broken... 11 mana cap, yet the device holds 100+ mana, and my character can handle 250 mana.

But I agree that some tweaking of the TM formulas would be good. Specifically, the huge bonus multi-shot spells get for learning should be eliminated. Especially when you're landing grazing hits and still mind locking.

I'm confused by your claim. Are you suggesting that warrior mage spells do not increase in potency with added mana?

PD is a 4th tier spell, TKT is a 1st tier spell. It takes more PM to put more mana into PD, so each mana point is going to be worth more. In additon, as a 4th tier spell, it will do more damage capped than tkt.

Your spells work in a similar fashion. For example: ALA is the highest damage single target spell in the game, iirc.

Additionally, you get CL at 40th which can lock your TM faster than anyone can lock any other combat skill in the game.

Hope that helps?

>>Additionally, you get CL at 40th which can lock your TM faster than anyone can lock any other combat skill in the game.

I can actually lock brawling in about 10 seconds, from clear to mind locked. Not sure if it's supposed to be that way, but yeah... CL is outstanding for TM.


Vinjince

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"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

>I can actually lock brawling in about 10 seconds, from clear to mind locked. Not sure if it's supposed to be that way, but yeah... CL is outstanding for TM.

Is this the lodged item trick, or something else?

Eh, I found once my cleric learned Harm Evil locking TM was a breeze for them too... and I got that rather early. It used to be DR before they changed how that works - or maybe it still does work, I've not played my cleric lately.

Out of curiosity how are Stone strike and Fireball for learning TM?

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http://www.drplat.com - The DragonRealms Platinum Community Website. Be sure to vote DragonRealms as your #1 MUD!

>But I agree that some tweaking of the TM formulas would be good. Specifically, the huge bonus multi-shot spells get for learning should be eliminated. Especially when you're landing grazing hits and still mind locking.

"Quickly erases all traces of this post and kidnapps the writer to brainwash the idea out of him"

BAH! What are you trying to do get us nerfed some more. I KNOW you were around for the last "tweak" where they scalled back the amount of EXP you get from each shot of the multi hit spells. Fire Shard spell pretty much became obsolite at that point.

Than came the nerfing of the amount of nerve damage that GZ, LB and CL do which of course took away the most powerful wbeapon we had at that time. Back when I agree some of our spells were a touch on the unbalanced side regarding just how powerful they were said nerve damage was one of them. However the past two year's drive to "even the field" is starting to get to the point where every guild will be so much on an "even" level when it comes to power and abilities overall that selecting which one to play might as well be a dice toss for all the difference there is between them.

Take away CL without giving us a realistic alternative to learn TM and still kill things at higher levels is going to be a death knell for the WM guild past a certain point as most of our 3rd and 4th tier TM spells suck for training TM AND killing things. Fire rain is very nice trainer if all you want to do is tickle your opposition to death while you still get to lock TM. Lightening Ball... forget it takes FOR EVER to lock with. Mark of Arath... I have not played with that but I am told under the right circumstances it CAN train OK. Seriously man I'd like to see some high end options and realistic alternatives first BEFORE they start nerfing things not the other way around.

There is no inherent learning bonus for multi-shot spells.

Multi-shot spells can teach well because landing 20 grazing hits can teach better than landing one massive hit in the same time period. If you have a problem with the way multi-shot spells teach, you have a problem with that model.

Frankly, there are more serious issues with pulse spells than how well they teach.

- Mazrian

>>the point of my post was that some level of nerf to multi-shot/grazing exp might be required to give the other spells their niche

From a standpoint of mechanics, the numbers are pretty staggering. There is a darn good reason why GZ and CL are the TM trainers of choice, and only part of the reason is because other spells don't teach very well.

To get an idea of the problem, here's a simple question. Which of the following two spells would you prefer to train with?

a) A spell that hits several times and can be snap-cast with a small accuracy penalty.

b) A spell that hits once and can be snap-cast with a much larger accuracy penalty.

In the grand scheme of things, being able to fully target a single-shot spell doesn't outweigh the snap-cast imbalance. A single huge hit simply doesn't teach as much as several smaller hits within the same time frame.


- GM Wythor

What goes up
is futile --
unless it goes out