>>Am I missing out on the point of attuning to an element?

Nope. At least not from the cheap seats' perspective (mine).

1) Attunement used to be assigned to wizards, and you had to wait until you could cast Elemental Blade (411) to see what type of wizard you were. It wouldn't change.

2) Attunement was refined to allow wizards the opportunity to select rather than be assigned the element of their choosing or none. It wouldn't change.

3) Attunement was further refined with the opportunity for wizards to complete a quest to change their elemental attunement.

In all three cases, the element to which a wizard was attuned wasn't supposed to be a significant mechanical character property. It was (and actually remains) tied to very few spells and generally is a 'flavor item' that could allow wizards to be separate and distinct one from another. I've never felt compelled to worry about the elemental attunement of any wizard. But lately, the GM team has been trying to find a way to 'encourage' attunement. More spells are starting to crop up with some form of tie to elemental attunement.

And really, while the lore angle (if a wizard is attuned to the element of fire, then that wizard has ??? ranks EL:F equivalent) is of slight interest to me, I will honestly hope that elemental attunement never becomes a significant mechanical character property. The reason is very simple - we want permanence in things that are consumable, and the ability to change those things that are permanent. I'd call it human nature, but it's not really - humans live in equilibrium with their surroundings. It's not until humans establish a culture that they begin to act like Agent Smith suggests.

And, uufda. . . do we have a culture around here!!

Doug

>Am I missing out on the point of attuning to an element? Is it only that certain spells will use the element type instead of a random element?

That's pretty much it. It's quite boring, and often results in more restrictions than benefits.



~ Methais

I'd like to see a small tie in to phantom EL ranks to your attuned element.

I created my wizard back in GSIII days where I didn't know my attunement until I was able to cast 411. At that point - my wizard was more sought after for eblades since he is earth attuned and you won't get any flack from igniting gas and also the fact that there was (or maybe it is still like this) no real resistance to earth/vibe flares on any creature that I can think of.

I recall some people being very upset when they learned what they were attuned to when they found out their eblade was fire or lightning and then creating a new character (if I remember correctly, even if you just re-rolled your character the attunment didn't change you had to create a whole new character).

When the change came around that you weren't assigned an attuned lore, but could pick your own - that was a cool step for players to enjoy. No longer was it just a shot in the dark, but players could actually use this function to build their character, even if it was just for a back story.

It would be nice that attuned wizards would see some kind of "natural" benefit to to their attuned lore. There are 4 lores to train in and so many routes to take them, but only being able to train 2x in lores makes it irritating. I think there should be a few ways that phantom ranks could be tied to your attuned lore:

1) ever 2 levels, you gain 1 phantom rank to your attuned lore. So by level 100, you'd have 50 phantom lore ranks to your attuned element.

2) every 4 ranks of EL, you gain 1 phantom rank to your attuned lore. So by level 100, you'd have 50 phantom lore ranks to your attuned element if you've 2x lores your entire way to level 100. Even if you're attuned to Water lore, but you're focusing on Fire lore ranks - every 4 ranks of any lore would net you 1 phantom rank of your attuned lore. If you had 60 ranks of EL:F you trained in, you'd have 15 phantom ranks of EL:W. You may be focusing your training on fire, but you're just naturally gifted using EL:W.

3) every rank you train in your attuned element, you get 1 phantom rank that caps at 50 ranks. So if you were attuned to fire and you trained up 50 ranks of EL:F, you'd actually have 100. 50 ranks of trained skill + 50 phantom ranks.


Just think of how much more you could diversify your wizard's training if being attuned to an element actually provided some useful benefit. Just thinking out loud....

-Drumpel

All true - and I always found it interesting.

Like our current life experiences. I was born with green eyes. Never really thought about it much, until I started noticing all the blue and brown eyes around me. I couldn't change my eye color for most of my life, but today I can cosmetically make them appear to be blue (kinda) or brown or just about any other color - if I want to go to the expense.

But the eyes still function as eyes (and age as eyes, too! Where the hell are my glasses?!) In the end, I'm changing nothing about how my eyes work.

The initial elemental attunement was probably intended to be much the same - it wouldn't materially change most spell functions (411 being an outlier in its day and truly non-critical). Keep in mind, in that time the Bowels hadn't been spun from the devious minds of the GMs yet. But covetousness and desire to maximize potential led us down the primrose path. And the pile that the Bowels left behind forever altered our perception of function versus intent. A shame, really, since even then wizards had a plethora of spell choices that avoided 'bad elements', and most weren't swinging weapons at the time or relying on 411 really much at all.

Perception, what a wonderful skill / millstone.

Oh, and +1 for similar skills training modifications. Drumpel, keep thinking out loud. . .

Doug

I wonder what Estild thinks about this phantom lore rank idea that would fix this whole 4-way lore split issue that's been plaguing us...

~ Methais