This is just a thought I was toying with today. It's been on my mind mainly because I am tempted to relearn Druidry (although having said that I am so utterly entranced with Healing, I desperately wish they were in the same guild!), but I remember how frustrating demesne-wars can be sometimes. It might be that that is no longer the case, and if so, great!

I'm not suggesting this should be implemented, don't worry. This is just along the lines of how I remember I originally thought demesnes should work, in terms of being a little more meaningful than a dispellable illusion, and a lot less hastily undone. It would also make druid vs mage or mage vs mage duels a little more evenly weighted, maybe, I'm not sure. And it's always fun to come up with suggestions, even if they aren't very practical.

• Remove saplings and illusionary terrain.
  
• Add skills to geomancy and aquamancy that mimic the tree elevation of Druids, except with mountains (scale) and underwater (dive) elevations respectively. Neither class will have restrictions on skills based on elevation, but some passive effects might be nastier at those elevations and lessened at ground level. Just like climbing, you wouldn't need any environment skill in order to RISE or SCALE DOWN out of those elevations, and the demesne elevations would not consume balance to move in or out of.
  
• Change the forcecast terrain changing skills in the following way. When a mage or druid attempts to impose their environment upon a location:
  
  • If the location is unmelded, and no other mage/druid terrain exists
    The terrain is altered to the new type. Physical silvery/wyrden trees and plantlife/wyrdlife grows, floodwaters rise to birth a magical river or lake that covers most of the location, or taint blackened earth solidifies to form their dry, cracked wasteland. The environment is changed for all intents and purposes so that there are no trees in flood/taint and no swimmable water or scalable mountains in either type of forest. The mage or druid can then meld and either extend their effects or cast new ones through their demesne.
  • If the location is unmelded, but other mage/druid terrain exists
    An ethereal or elemental reflection of the terrain shimmers into existence over the top of the environment, representing the mage or druid channeling the energies of their plane to undo the existing magics. This creates a tree/dive/scale elevation, and skills will treat the location as if it is both the old and new terrain type. If the caster remains in the location (at any elevation) for 15 seconds, the magic is completed and the old terrain withers/submerges/revitalizes/wyrds to be replaced by the new one, which can be melded. If the caster is knocked out of the location or dies, the reflection fades along with the magic, leaving only the existing terrain. Neither environment can be melded until the reflection dissipates or succeeds.
  • If the location is melded by another mage or druid
    An ethereal or elemental reflection of the terrain shimmers into existence over the top of the environment, as with the second scenario. However, the existing meld is not broken and demesne effects continue unabated throughout all elevations. The meld owner receives a message that their magics are being subverted in that spot, and the caster must now remain in that location for 30 seconds in order to break the meld and replace the terrain. The superimposed terrain will allow active skills only to be used at the relevant aligned elevations, so a Druid cannot use any forest magic if they are underwater or on the side of a mountain, and cannot set any passive effects at any elevation. If the existing demesne is linked in such a way that this point is unbreakable, at the end of that 30 seconds the spell fails and only the original demesne remains. At any point if the caster leaves the room or is killed, the elemental or ethereal terrain vanishes, throwing everyone in associated elevations back to the ground. Spells targetted at a distance, such as summoning spells, will only recognize the physical terrain and not the ethereal/elemental one (until it has completed and become physical).

Edit: Maybe 15/30 seconds is too long, and 10/20 or 8/15 would be better. Not sure!

Sounds like King of the Hill. I always hated that game in Halo.

Also, you DO need a skill in Environment to climb. But, by the sounds of it, you're a forestal with healing, so you have totems, which has Monkey. Climbing trees in Environment actually comes somewhere in Fabled.

Really? I thought you could climb down out of the trees regardless of whether you had the skill or not (just using 'down'), but I certainly may be mistaken.

Oh yes, my apologies about that. You CAN climb down, but you can't climb up. Sorry!

Misunderstanding on my part.

I don't like it, in a raid it'd mean it was WAY too slow and removing saplings and illusionary terrain would just standardize everything which is NOT what we can't, we like variety and the differances in the abilities.

But yeah, making it that slow would give far too great an advantage to people that do off-peak-hours raids, at least now if there's one good combatant and a novice mage to forceflood/taint they can put up a fight, with that they couldn't.

I understand the argument, but bear in mind that saplings were created with the intention of essentially mirroring illusionary terrain's advantage. I think the fact the demesnes are completely different in style, effect, and element would ensure there was still some 'variety and differences in the abilities'.


It would make it harder for a single Master-level mage to undo a powerful raider's demesne, yes. There are two other points to consider as well though. First, the raiders will find it equally harder and slower to demesne an enemy territory, so the change would provide arguably as much advantage to defenders as to raiders. Second, I'm not sure that a Master-level mage should be the key to undoing the opposing side's work, if the difference in ability between them is extreme. This change would still allow the mage to break, but they'd need protection by the experienced combatant while they do it - and it wouldn't be move/dispel/forcechange/move/dispel/forcechange every few seconds.