- Mages are too reliant on demesnes.
- A crappy fighter can kick ass with a demesne.
- Demesnes during influencing are a pain in the ass.
- Demesnes in general can be classed as overpowered, like 200 room vibes in a way.

My suggestion is that instead of Mages creating demesnes they become "elementals" of their specific element instead. So a Geomancer could become an earth elemental, Aquamancer a water elemental etc.

This would solve a few problems:

1) Mages/Druids won't have to rely on demesnes for the main part of their combat, basically if you get jumped without a demesne there isn't much you can do.

2) The problem with demesnes during village influencing.

3) It will actually take skill to kill someone as a mage rather than relying on, perhaps in some cases, overpowered passive effects.

Probably some other problems but I can't think of any right now (half asleep)

The general idea being that as you train in Geomancy/Aquamancy/etc you would gain new active (and maybe some passive) skills to use during combat.

I haven't really thought of any specifics but hearing other people's ideas and comments on this will be fun so please comment (even if it'll never happen ).

I really, really like this idea. First, I think that it would make the skills much more unique and interesting. I remember in Achaea, even if you transcended Crystalism, you still had to know what you were doing with Elementalism/other skills in order to even stand a chance in combat. It seems that now with demesnes, you can kill some people without having to try too hard.

Second, I think this could really play into the roleplay of the different mage/druid guilds. Right now, it kind of feels like we aren't given that much to work with. The main thing Geomancers have to work with is "insanity," but most don't do that, and I think that if anyone actually tried to it would just be really annoying and not really work :/. It would be nice to be able to tie the skills in to the culture of the Guilds.

From a purely mechanist scheme of things, I think demesnes need to be done away with. Overhaul the mancy/druidry skillsets and you do a lot to both balance combat and make it far more interesting. I like this concept because it could put some meat on notoriously weak mages. Most mages will wind up killing the weak fighters passively, but find themselves hitting a glass ceiling where no matter what they do, they just cant kill some of the better fighters, especially when one omen/pulp from murphy takes Revan (who is quite tanky for a mage) down to 61 health.

Im 100% for this idea. Demesnes were great in theory, but in practice the idea has shown to be not as great as before.

Watch the Cronicles of Riddick and look at the air elemental. That's my vision of how magi should be in Lusternia. Kickass idea, Kaervas. Unfortunately, the admins have worked very hard on making demesne work, I highly doubt that they'll be willing to change something so integrated into an archtype (it's like taking weapons from a warrior) into something so new and different.

That being said, I really do like the idea, and hope that the admins at least consider this as a possibility. I'm sure they could recruit players to help code

Ahhh, that pulp was an omen sensitive pulp

I can't do omen sensitive pulps.

Even if i get sensitivty off on the first ihit, it will only afect the second

You hit the nail in the head. Trying to code something drastically new like that could be very difficult. Glomdoring and Arenas for example existed in other IRE games, so they potentially had a model to refer to. (Although infuence and villages is something completely different. Kudos to the team for programming that) Heck, I think demesnes themselves are unique to Lusternia (correct me if I'm wrong). They'd probably want to try to FIX it before they completely get rid of it.

Otherwise, it would be a really, really cool idea.

Yeah, removing demesne's would lead to a major overhaul of the archetype, which I think Estarra has said before She is unwilling to do.

Maybe incoportating the elemental idea into demesnes? Like... being able to change into an elemental in your demesne.

Demesnes are very unique and that is what I like about it. Here's the catch though - it's a pain in the ass, quite frequently actually. Trying to come up with a viable solution that still keeps the demesne implementation is probably extremely difficult. But, we should probably try to brainstorm ideas for THAT instead of coming up with brand new ideas. This is speaking 100% realistically, of course. Otherwise, I'd say we dream for the suggestion Kaervas said.

That would be alright, except it wouldn't make us any less reliant on demesnes which is what I hate the most.

That'd be going backwards since we're still relying on our demesnes.

EDIT: by Kaervas.

Maybe give it a limited range from the demesne.

As I mentionedi n IRC, I love the underlying idea behind demense (and having never known Crystalism/Groves, it's a new idea for me this Demesne feel...). Mages creating their homes of power that they use to attack their enemies with. It's one of the things that made me excited about Lusternia to begin with... and scared of mages

The Elemental idea is also extremely cool, and Kaervas' points are valid too. It depends how the administration feel regarding demesnes to what degree they want to change the concept.

I would say, make open villages undemenseable... (the villagers won't stand for such desacration of their land) then just make demenses smaller, like 30-40 rooms, while upgrading mages in other ablities... mages would still have demenses, they just wouldn't be as important... dunno just throwing out ideas...

Demesnes will always, ALWAYS be important unless removed completely and replaced with something else.

Ooor you could make demesnes only target a few people. Like, two or three.

EDIT: That doesn't solve any of the other problems, though.

Who had the idea that each mage guild would get two elemental specializations? If Estarra's unwilling to give up on demesnes, maybe we could try both and see how it works out. Makes better RP sense too.

I'd have to admit, the ability to become elementals would be interesting, though there's already a sort-of skill like that. Aquamancers temporarily gain a waterform for healing themselves and others, doesn't last long and is a power hog, and not many people use it to my memory.

With that said, yes Demesnes can be frustrating to fight in or remove/convert/what have you. Yes, transing an Mage primary guildskill is the majority of what it takes to be nearly a God in whatever you've forced and melded. But at the same time, it does take more than that. It doesn't take nearly as much work as Warriors do, from what I've seen. Warriors have 235351one skills they have to trans to be upper-end effective, generally needing a whole host of artifacts, and/or an incredible amount of combat experience to get a sense of how to do it well. By the same token, the Mage still needs to get the hang of how their demesne operates, the nuances and such. Declaring on prime, stillwatering, needlerain and tsunami/typhoon combos, creating effective reflexes (still should do this one) to handle enemies entering your demesne, and then some are all things I had to learn or be told as to how to make my demesne effective. At this point I've got it to the point where I can raise the effects when they're needed, as well as an idea of which would be more help. Things like timing demesne effects, that I've heard others do, is still something I'm not even on the start to figuring out. I have no doubt though that something such as timing demesne effects with transing the guildskills (which requires the basic knowledge of how the skills operate and work with eachother) is all it takes to be incredibly scary.

I also would hate to see demense go as they seem to be one of the few major support skillsets that exist, as a primary skillset. From what I know, Celestialism, Sacraments and Blademastery/Bonecrusher are all primarily offensive, or targetable (one target) defensive skills. This is part of the 'magic' that drew me to the class itself, even though in almost every other game I play I tend towards the opposite. In fact, it rather surprised me this was under the Mage's portfolio rather than the Priests (as is generally the focus of Priest-type classes in almost every other game).

I think with the advent of Astrology, it's been proven that complex skill/ability management (the bane of my existance in truth) is a possibility. Why not somehow change Mages/Druids work more along those lines. Or make them even more dependant on their other skills? Make effects dependant on the other skills, their effects not so defined or clear cut. Make things like terrains and other outside factors play a role in demesnes perhaps to add another level.

Demesnes are an amazing idea, and it was quite beyond anything I'd ever been exposed to before Lusternia, and I think suggesting getting rid of the entire deal rather than patching the few potholes, and tweaking things to make them not super-kill-death is a much better choice. By the same token, it's what currently helps to define the Mage/Druid archetypes in this world, and a massive system change like that would only serve to counter the histories that we as players have made, the pasts that our roleplay have written.

That said, Demesnes don't have to be the only focus. The elemental idea could perhaps be incorporated. Perhaps the waterform only operating in a demesne or area attributed to that element, doing more than just making you invincible for a few seconds, healing you and about one other person before it fails, could be done. Don't make Demesnes and Staves the only focus of Mages/Druids. Raise the complexity, lower the importance of demesnes, and add another facet to the Archetype. Granted, what I'm suggesting is probably as nightmarish as just dumping demesnes and refocusing the Mage/Druid specialties, but it still keeps them somewhat as they were in function, just more involved.

And now I'm done, feel free to rip this apart as you see fit, or expand where you think you'd like to see it expanded.

Kaervas is correct on this. Remove demesnes and make our skills more active. The elemental idea is a great one, and perhaps an archetype overhaul is what the mage class -does- need, despite what the admin think. Hey, people make mistakes... what's wrong with an overhaul to something that would be more beneficial to the realms as a whole? Just get us mages together and we can work out ideas.

I had this idea a while ago to turn demesne passive effects into active effects. Here's how.

Give mages a new "energy" thing. Every few seconds, you gain 1 energy, and the maximum energy you can have would be, say... 5. For 1 energy, you can use one demesne effect - actively. For 2 energy, you could use two effects simuntaeously. And so on, but the effects only work that one time you use them and they work instantly, so you have to keep timing them and using them carefully. Using demesne effects does NOT take balance of any kind - it just consumes energy. This way, you can time and use the effects actively and however you want. It'd also have the side effect of making things like tsunami/typhoon more useful for knocking people out of the trees/sky because you can actually make it happen when you want.

Obviously, some of them (like jellies) would have to be rebalanced if this were done, but... thoughts?