Ok, this discussion was going on in the Dreamweaving and lvl 80 thread, but, that doesn't really fit, so, I thought i'd make a new thread, so that it might get some attention from the divine.

Basically, Possess, as it seems, takes 10 power, lasts for 10 seconds, and allows you to do anything short of make them quit (game, city, order, clan), suicide, or heartstop..

Now.. 10 seconds is quite a long time, and it allows you to essentially stip a person clean of their equipment, have them attack something big and nasty, then coalesce and jack their stuff and run...

Usually.. I would think a trans skill that allows theft is totally ok.. but this allows you to essentially strip your target naked AND kill them.. that is a bit overkill.. and i'm a Dreamweaving user.

Some Possible Solutions:
1) Make it so that with each order given, the next has a greater chance to either fail to be followed, and then, with each failure, there is a greater chance of being expelled from the person all together.

or

2) Set it up so that Willpower plays a part. Based on your total Will at the time, the length of time you can remain in the body varies.

90-100% = 10 seconds
80-89% = 9
70-79% = 8
And so on and so forth.

Anyone else have any comments or opinions on this trans skill?

Possess takes 10 power, the person must be asleep, you must be in dreamform, and you cannot just coalesce and run as coalesce has an insane eq recovery time on it.

You will find that using it for theft will be few and far between as it is more a nusiance trying to get your victim to sleep than anything else.

Soll has a log in the other thread where he did it to Nayla during a fight, and was able to force her to drop all of her soulless cards and all of her vials. It was a spar though, and she was in his demense, but still.

Yrael could do the same thing with less power, without use of a demesne.

Well, then maybe it just seems really powerful to me *shrugs* I'm not going to argue if no one agrees, however, i'd like to see a non-dreamweaver's opinion

I really don't like those suggested solutions. They'd just destroy the skills potential for what it's main use is: Spying. Read one post, go to read the next and get chucked out. That's just not right. Plus~; Possess has a 12 odd second eq, so you're still off balance when you leave the body, and getting forced out prematurely would just leave you dead, basically.

Coalesce has a 25 odd second eq, so if you'd just done possess/kick guard you'd die too, in enemy territory. I agree that it may need toning down on some level, -perhaps-, but 1) Remember we need the target asleep to use it, and that's hard to keep. Curing our sleep methods is quite easy, and if you let yourself fall asleep, well, just accept it. No-one who dreams is safe now. 2) Your suggestions would make it useless, and not worth using for the setup costs.

Well, I was just trying to think of anything at all. need to see which solutions might be too strong, and those which won't be strong enough, to find the middle ground.. since it seemed just a little toooo beefy. But, maybe i'm wrong, and i'm not screaming "NERF IT!!! NERF IT!!!" I just thought it seemed really uber, but if no one else sees a problem with it, then maybe i'm just not seeing all the restrictions on it (as I don't have all the higher up stuff yet, so, can't actually test it to find out the details yet), hence this thread

As Faethan said when I had a similar idea ages ago, the thing's way too abusable, even if it's just a maximum of 5 actions or something. It's a good thought, but it could do with changing to something else. It's not like pooka, where you'll, say, empty one vial before you can get away, (can't strip generosity AND do it before they put it back up again) or like dominate where you just eat faeleaf to stop it, this just allows for EASY EASY robbing. Not fun.

There is no easy robbing with Possess. You force them to drop all their items, then you have to be out of their body (not tested yet but assuming) to envelop -one- item at a time which takes eq each time. In the mean time they have already picked up everything they dropped and walked off.

If you try to coalesce, you have 25 seconds of off eq time before you can do anything, again they pick up their items and walk off.

The best you could hope for is robbing in teams, where one person possesses, and the second person picks everything up and runs.

Pooka, the person does not have to be asleep, he/she just has to be in the room period, you can't resist it at all.

Dominate all you have to do is strip deafness and away you go.

Possess, you must have 10 power to burn, you must be in dream form, your opponent must be asleep. Now this isn't to say it will never happen, just that for most people the trouble of robbing someone with possess is not worth it.

You should be smacked hard for comparing pooka and dominate with possess, pooka is utterly useless for theft, since it's only one command at a time, simple triggers, or hell even manual, since it only works every 10 seconds, will prevent you losing anything, not to mention you generally notice it when there's 45 fae banging on your head.

Dominate is a useless power, since tarot using nihilists have no way at all, to strip deafness, and if you did take hexes, they've eaten faeleaf before you even regain equilibrium from throwing the hex.

I think the first step to be taken is giving commands through possession a seperate balance, say 1 second, you can still give your target 10 quick orders before possession wearing off, this skill is just far too abusable, Serenwilders and Celestians, even their prince, have already proven they just aren't responsible enough wielding power like this.

Hah, to that last part. Of COURSE we can all be judged by 2-3 people, whereas no, Magnagora's full of angels that never do a thing wrong in their lives.

But yes. Oh, incidentally, pooka CAN be used for theft, since you can rob vials with it. Or other basic things, just not packs and stuff.

Dude, I think we can safely assume that their bloody PRINCE represents Celest?

The first that happened was all our shops getting robbed by bug abusing serenwilders, the second the prince of Celest trying to have our citizens quit city and guild, next to childishly spamming us with possess, forcing us to read 700 posts.

I haven't heard of a single complaint of geomancers doing anything like the above.

This is enough to come to the conclusion neither serenwilde or celest can be trusted with anything remotely abusable. I'm not saying geomancers won't abuse it in the future, they just haven't yet, so let's fix it before more abuse hits us.

No, we can't assume that, because from the tone of your post it's definately the players you're attacking. But let's not get into that again.

Yes. Would say possess needs some correction there.

You're right, but it's 1 command every 8 seconds. Soll SINGLEHANDEDLY, in under ten seconds, made them drop every card in their inventory, and every vial. And I'm under the impression he took them all, took, then gave them back at the end of the spar.

Only Nihilists with hexes (which are rare) can strip deafness. I wish we could fling Princess at others, though.

And Possess, with 10 power, dream form, your opponent is asleep. If you're nearby, possess, make them drop everything in a matter of seconds, move 3-4 rooms, make them do something like quicken or trueheal or dismiss/summon their pet(s), possesson time is up, bodysnap, run 2-3 rooms, and grab the crap, while they're just getting their eq back from quicken/darkcall thrall/kicking a guard/whatev.

Can't tell me that's not overpowered. All we need is to send a dreamweaver into one of your defensive groups w/ guards at Rockholm, make them give all of their crap to a guard (preferribly one like, halfway down the list), then kick the one at the top of the list. And he's screwed.

So you're saying the leader of an organization does not represent that organization...

It's hardly a matter of being "responsible" with the skill. Discounting the bit with Jelaludin which I've apologized for doing in the first place, my conversations with the Administration have indicated that the purposes for which I've used the skill are exactly what they were designed for. So unless by you summoning demons and attacking people with them you are being irresponsible with the power you wield, you're just wrong.

I HIGHLY doubt possess was designed by the Administration to force people quitting their city and guild, or reading 700 posts simultaneously.

You're doing a bad job weasling out of it, what you've done is just childish .

Y'know, I wonder. Did I just forget that I in fact posted that part of your quote as a complete sentence, then edit it to what it is now, or are you completely ignoring what I actually said?

Possess was designed with the idea of getting 10 seconds to read as many posts as possible and/or hearing channels. Rhysus may have tried to get someone to quit a guild/city but was unable to. I have watched people using these skills closely and have yet to see anyone abuse it.

As for theft with it, you have to be... basicly an idiot, to get robbed via possess. Besides all the set up time/costs, they have an eq lag after leaving possess. After that a slow eq to envelop, or a huge eq to bodysnap/coalesce. At best you might lose one item, if your slow on picking things up.

To Thorgal maybe it's just me, but you seem to complain about any decent, usable, skill that you don't have.