Hi,

Here is the special report in its entirety. I will be posting about the feedback on this thread as well as soon as I get it.

Night Choke:

-Add a delay between casting choke and the effect taking place, 4s, where it will be obvious who the caster and victim are. It will cost 0p to start, but it will take 3p upon success. Separation between caster and victim here will break the effect as with the current choke. Have it check for shield when it is cast and when it takes effect, a shield at any point will block it.

Ex: The shadows begin whirling around Alacardael and Akui, 4s later, CHOKE MESSAGE HERE.

-Reduce choke balance to a flat, unmodifiable 3s (currently 4-5s).

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Revolts:
-Have all denizens in a village start off a revolt contemplating their loyalties, with a randomized "shuffle" time immediately after.
*A randomized shuffle time for all denizens throughout the revolt would also be fine.

Flares:
-Increase the value of colossi to be roughly on par, or even slightly below an aethership bombard, with multiple focusers (10-12 focusers) increasing the colossi's value to be about par with 4 bombarding ships.

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Shrine Mechanics:
-Require a shrine room to be fully sanctified before powers may take effect.
-Limit shrines to 1 offensive area power (wrath OR gravity OR distort OR invasion) at a time, and activating another cancels the previous one for ease of flexibility. In short, only one of the four area effects mentioned will be in effect at any one time.
-Add a cooldown period of approximately 20 minutes before you are allowed to call an effect of the same type once again, to take place once said shrine effect is defiled away/fades naturally.

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Demigods:

General Changes:
1. Add more powers - combat/utility/RP
2. Rework ephemeral system - allow demigods+ to permanently purchase powers that they don't have weight for, but make them inactive (aka ephemeral). Add in a command to make currently active powers to go ephemeral, no other restrictions here. All currently purchased powers will go into this list upon the change. All future powers purchased will go into this list.
3. Rework supernumerary system - allow the supernumerary command to activate individual demigod powers and put them into the 'active' list of demigod powers, taking up their alloted weight. Allow only one power to be activated (made supernumerary) per IC day
4. Add in "builds" of demigod powers, sets of powers that you can swap in and out as a whole instead of needing to swap individual powers in and out. You'll need to purchase this with either gold or essence. This will be subject to the one per IC day thing as well.
5. Review the costs/weight for the powers that currently exist, ascendant included.
6. Add back a lot of the old features demigods had, buyable as powers.
7. Allow sealholders access to the domoth powers of their seal. They may only purchase one related power from the seal, however it will cost half its normal weight.
8. Allow the purchase of additional demigod weight with gold, institute a soft cap with this, starting with something reasonable like 200k = 10 weight and then increase from there.

Specific Changes:

Combat:
Additional +1 stat (str/con/int/cha/dex)
+1 regen (health/mana/ego)
Additional DMP to damage types, will definitely have a significant weight/cost
Additional damage buffs, will definitely have a significant weight/cost
Divine beast: Beast power, will improve its stats (hp/mana/ego), perhaps grant access to a special ability,to be decided.
Additional damage attacks keyed to different stats - one damage attack based off Strength stat, one off Constitution, one off Charisma, oe off Dexterity, etc.
Increased endurance/willpower regen

Utility:
Additional influence ability (weaken/empower/paranoia/seduction)
Quasi-Anchor: imbue essence in any location to return to it. People can't follow through with you, essence cost and not instant. Super milestone.
Delivery: Make an item disappear from your inventory and reappear in someone elses (with accompanying messages, of course)
Dessicate: destroys items in your inventory, so long as they have months left, no arties. Stopped by flame sigils.
Ability to bestow a demifavour, buffing a player's stat by 1 for x minutes.
Demigod power that copies commandant arties.
Powers that mimic the commandant arties (related to squads)
Ability to burn essence into reserve power (not active power, there's refresh power for that)
Ability to extend the decay times on items for essence.

RP:
Choice Ambient: passive flavour message in the room like the other choice abilities.
Choice Race: much like the dingbat hats, convert your physical race (not stat, just an aesthetic change) to a player race. Perhaps include typically unplayable races as well.
Untouched by age: Lets the Demi set their own age, a'la Shadowdance Penumbra
More languages: allows the demigod to learn more languages, perhaps even a new demigod language.
Additional divine/guild/org look/entrance/exit messages - expanded choiceentermessage/choicelook
Choice transverse messages

Revisions:
Aegis: Reduce to 35 weight, 20,000,000
Gift: Reduce to 5 weight, 5,000,000
Harvest: Reduce to 5 weight, 5,000,000, make it reset on the 1st of the IC month
JudiciousPresence: Reduce to 5,000,000
EvenHandedBlessing: Reduce to 15 weight, 8,000,000
Destruction: Reduce to 10,000,000
HavocCry: Reduce to 10,000,000
Thunderclap: Reduce to 5,000,000
FearAura: Reduce to 20,000,000
DeathAura: Reduce to 25 weight, 15,000,000
Urlife: Reduce to 10 weight, 5,000,000
BreathOfLife: Reduce to 15,000,000
SanctityOfBody: Reduce to 10 weight, 5,000,000
PurityOfSoul: Reduce to 25 weight, 15,000,000
FortunateWindfalls: Reduce to 5 weight, 5,000,000, make it reset on the 1st of the IC month
Dispersal: Reduce to 15,000,000
CompatriotOfChaos: Reduce to 10 weight, 5,000,000
QuietMind: Reduce to 10,000,000
PlenipotentiaryOfPeace: Reduce to 5 weight, 2,500,000
PeacefulCompanion: Reduce to 5,000,000
BeauteousWorkings: Reduce to 5 weight, 5,000,000
OstensibleDreamer: Reduce to 15 weight, 5,000,000, remove the strengthened illusions aspect.
KnowledgeAwareness: Reduce to 22 weight, 9,000,000
IntrinsicUnderstanding: Reduce to 30 weight, 10,000,000
DistantPerceptions: Reduce to 10 weight, 5,000,000

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Races:

Tae'dae:
+2 dex, total = 10
-2 balance penalty, total balance penalty = lvl 1

Igasho:
+1 dex, total = 11
-1 balance penalty, total balance penalty = lvl 1
+1 fire weakness, total fire weakness = lvl 2
-1 magic resistance, total magic resistance = lvl 1

Mugwump:
-1 electric weakness, total elec weakness = lvl 2
-1 fire weakness, total fire weakness = lvl 1
+1 con, total = 11

Merian:
+1 con, total = 11
-1 con merian lord spec, total = 15
-1 electric weakness, total elec weakness = lvl 1
-1 fire weakness, total fire weakness = lvl 1

Orclach:
+1 dex, total = 14
-1 fire weakness, total fire weakness = lvl 2
-1 magic resistance, total magic resist = lvl 1
-1 cutting resistance, total cutting resist = lvl 1

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Druids:

-Reduce sap eq to 3s unmodifiable (currently 4s)
-Increase sap delay to .75-1s (currently .5s)
-Cause POINT CLEANSE (person) to fail on sapped victims if the druid who cast the sap is in the room (ground or tree elevation only).
-Have Druidry Sap kill you after 30s of not curing it, make it leave a cool corpse like with geomancy fossils (Shuyin's remains are here, preserved in hardened sap).

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Warriors:

-Add diminishing returns (like DMP) to armour stats for wound reduction, have stats over 75 begin to start giving smaller benefits to wound reduction, with stats over 100 giving (almost) no benefit at all.

-Remove the natural miss on power abilities like lunge, crush, etc.

-Alter the hit percentages of knighthood slashing/bashing:
*Change hack down|ups to 75%head/25%chest and 75%gut/25%leg
*Change slash to 66%leg,17%gut/17%chest
*Change swipe to 66%chest/17%gut/17%arm
*Change slice to 66%arm/17%chest/17%gut

Do the same for corresponding Knighthood Bashing skills of course.

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Monks:

Mechanics:

-Cap the momentum loss from changing targets to momentum level 2, i.e. don't drop below momentum level 2 when changing targets (Currently it just drops you a flat -2 momentum regardless).

-Make it so you only lose momentum if you actually hit a new target, ex: don't lose momentum if you try to hit someone and get the 'no one here message' (Ahh, I am truly sorry, but I do not see anyone by that name here.)

-Standardize grapple length and balance recovery. Writhing from a grapple should always take 3s. Monks that are of neutral balance should always recover balance (from grappling) in 3.2 seconds, with the speed mod allowing the recovery to get up to 2.8s (thus allowing the completion of an ender). Do not take weapon stats into account, only racial.

-Grapples will no longer build momentum, but they will sustain momentum (reset the momentum loss timer). If you are at Mo3 when you grapple, you will stay at Mo3.

-Add new optional parameters for kata perform:
*Kata Perform (form name) (target) (part1) (part2) (part3)
*Part1, Part2, and Part3 are over-rides for the defined form name that will tell it what body parts to target instead of the ones that are currently defined in the form. If you leave them blank, it will use the defaults set up in the form (including none, if it is a kata form that does not target any body parts).

-Remove the balance loss when a chain of more than 1 form fails. Right now, if you try a chain and it fails, you lose a burst of balance loss.

Skills:

-Make lunge mods (nekotai nekreve, shofangi skive, tahtetso tahtai, ninjakari jakati) cost 1p less per limb that misses. Ex: If your weapons both hit but the kick misses, that should be 2p, not 3p as it is currently. This is in line with warriors where they do not pay power if the attack misses.

-Add a 3p power cost to Shofangi butojo, with a caveat that it cost 1p if done with the skive modifier.

-Increase the equilibrium time of Harmony Akhoosh to 3s (+1 from original) and increase the power cost +1 (2 total).

-Add a 1s balance loss to Ninjakari Ninukhi regardless of whether or not a target is in the adjacent room.

-Add a 1 minute cooldown to Stealth Veil, have the cooldown take place when stealth veil fades. Overall duration is still 3 minutes, but you need to wait 1 minute before you can do it again.

-Reduce Tattoos TattooMaster's armour effect (that replicates the use of robes) from 84/84 to 74/74.
*Possibly increase a tattoomaster's maximum tattoo weight (100 weight "spirit" tattoo for example) if deemed too harsh.

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I still strongly advise against diminishing returns for armour... it's a bad bad idea since arties and trans skills are involved. You make one or the other completely useless, and that's always a bad idea.

Less effective != useless.

EDIT: Or, alternatively, current armour stacking makes other skills and/or artifacts useless (for the same definition of useless above).

I feel "Additional influence ability (weaken/empower/paranoia/seduction)" would really make influencing too overpowered for the people who get this power, which means everyone will have to just to keep up. Something like the arties/oils/dramatics skills will be more than enough for people to consider getting them without being forced to get them just to keep up.

Ways to get to 100 armour stats (Shuyin's proposed "usefulness cutoff")

1) Shitty robes (50/50) + rune shield (52/52)

2) Splendour robes (70/70 abouts) + normal shield (if you're REALLY lucky, you'll get a 40/40 shield... which will ACTUALLY be 20/20 with the shield nerf for mages/guardians/bards)

so... if you invest in splendours (300cr) and a shield rune (450cr) you can get roughly about 120 armour stats. With Shuyin's proposed nerf, you are making the heavy investment of a trans skill and an artifact worth less than its cost, and I very much doubt that the admin will ever adjust artifact costs. It's a bad idea

EDIT: You are also forgetting about the outliers for warriors. They DO exist and you can't just ignore them. With a change like this, those outliers become even more horrendoursly powerful than they already are.

As far as I know, shields (and the arties) only protect the shielded arm, chest and gut bodyparts, right? Not sure exactly, someone more knowledgable please enlighten.

Secondly, the alternative to not implementing diminishing returns on armour stats is to implement stronger effects on warriors. I wasn't an active participant in the warrior thread, but I think it's pretty much known to everyone that Knight vs Knight (ie. Knight vs >100 armour) is a frustrating experience at best, and an useless endeavour at worst.

If we buff warrior wound/damage to make them competitive against high armour... low armour people will get slaughtered unless we institute yet another set of changes to cater to them.

I would say nerfing the high armour outliers is the lesser evil.

I once more formally urge against this:

-Grapples will no longer build momentum, but they will sustain momentum (reset the momentum loss timer). If you are at Mo3 when you grapple, you will stay at Mo3.

As this is a required mechanic for Ninjakari especially but is used by all guilds (shofangi have some 11 grapples + enders so this devalues alot of skills). While the intent can be seen this is safer left as is and having specific skills adjusted. Including, the change to lock that I do not see in here, when lock is probably the biggest offender.

Lerad:

As far as I know, shields (and the arties) only protect the shielded arm, chest and gut bodyparts, right? Not sure exactly, someone more knowledgable please enlighten.

TrueShield

While any dunce can hold a shield and protect an arm, by practice and training you are able to position your shield by second nature, allowing further protection to your arm wielding the shield as well as your head, chest and gut. Note that while it is physically possible to wield two shields, doing so is so cumbersome that you will lose all benefit from both shields.

Not sure how much I like the idea that night users get back balance to do an action right before choke starts. Though haven't noticed anybody else bring it up.

Turnus:

Not sure how much I like the idea that night users get back balance to do an action right before choke starts. Though haven't noticed anybody else bring it up.

I think the nerfs will probably be sufficient. Four seconds is quite a bit of time, even given hindering.

I was thinking the opposite, losing eq only to have the target run away when done to no effect (at least without costing power). Seems fine as it is, then...

The changes look pretty solid except these, see italics for comments. I wanted to trim the fat here on the demigod ideas, on things that are already covered via artifacts and things that are simply not needed or a good idea.

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Sap: Reducing recovery to 3s fine, I think the 0.5s cure delay should remain as is. Druids/mages are not guardians/wiccans.

Demigods:

General Changes:
1. Add more powers - combat/utility/RP
2. Rework ephemeral system - allow demigods+ to permanently purchase powers that they don't have weight for, but make them inactive (aka ephemeral). Add in a command to make currently active powers to go ephemeral, no other restrictions here. All currently purchased powers will go into this list upon the change. All future powers purchased will go into this list.
3. Rework supernumerary system - allow the supernumerary command to activate individual demigod powers and put them into the 'active' list of demigod powers, taking up their alloted weight. Allow only one power to be activated (made supernumerary) per IC day
4. Add in "builds" of demigod powers, sets of powers that you can swap in and out as a whole instead of needing to swap individual powers in and out. You'll need to purchase this with either gold or essence. This will be subject to the one per IC day thing as well.
5. Review the costs/weight for the powers that currently exist, ascendant included.
6. Add back a lot of the old features demigods had, buyable as powers.
7. Allow sealholders access to the domoth powers of their seal. They may only purchase one related power from the seal, however it will cost half its normal weight.
8. Allow the purchase of additional demigod weight with gold, institute a soft cap with this, starting with something reasonable like 200k = 10 weight and then increase from there. should be essence cost instead

Specific Changes:

Combat:
Additional +1 stat (str/con/int/cha/dex) not needed
+1 regen (health/mana/ego) not needed
Additional DMP to damage types, will definitely have a significant weight/cost needs to be kept minor/reasonable
Additional damage buffs, will definitely have a significant weight/cost needs to be kept minor/reasonable
Divine beast: Beast power, will improve its stats (hp/mana/ego), perhaps grant access to a special ability,to be decided.
Additional damage attacks keyed to different stats - one damage attack based off Strength stat, one off Constitution, one off Charisma, oe off Dexterity, etc.
Increased endurance/willpower regen not needed

Utility:
Additional influence ability (weaken/empower/paranoia/seduction) Not a good idea
Quasi-Anchor: imbue essence in any location to return to it. People can't follow through with you, essence cost and not instant. Super milestone.
Delivery: Make an item disappear from your inventory and reappear in someone elses (with accompanying messages, of course)
Dessicate: destroys items in your inventory, so long as they have months left, no arties. Stopped by flame sigils.
Ability to bestow a demifavour, buffing a player's stat by 1 for x minutes. Not a fan, gods should have that power only. If it's RP related then that'd be wonderful though
Demigod power that copies commandant arties. not needed
Powers that mimic the commandant arties (related to squads) not needed
Ability to burn essence into reserve power (not active power, there's refresh power for that)
Ability to extend the decay times on items for essence.

RP:
Choice Ambient: passive flavour message in the room like the other choice abilities.
Choice Race: much like the dingbat hats, convert your physical race (not stat, just an aesthetic change) to a player race. Perhaps include typically unplayable races as well. not needed
Untouched by age: Lets the Demi set their own age, a'la Shadowdance Penumbra does this mean adjust 'starting/char creation age' only? If so yes, otherwise not a fan
More languages: allows the demigod to learn more languages, perhaps even a new demigod language.
Additional divine/guild/org look/entrance/exit messages - expanded choiceentermessage/choicelook
Choice transverse messages

1. RE: Choke - what Vadi said.

2. RE: Armour - when I receive feedback, I'll make a few clarifications if needed to make sure that artifact shields aren't devalued. What I think can be done is to make sure that the sum of armour values (80 robes + 30 shield = 110 protection) on a part are not subject to the diminishing returns, just the single stats. Ex: We want this -> ((80/2) + 30) = 70, not this (80 + 30) / 2 = 55

3. RE: Demigod stuff - I just tossed in ideas given to me, I assume that when I receive feedback, if this is accepted, we can iron out the details from there. Honestly, since I wrote it, other less...balanced ideas were given, and I just picked the ah, best of the bunch. Plus at this point, I'm just gonna start stealing stuff from the other IRE games when it comes to their endgame content

4. RE: Monks - I wrote out 3 paragraphs on the rationale over at the monk thread, here it is reproduced:

Shuwin:


Regarding grapples, I've ultimately decided to keep the suggestions regarding them as is. While it is true that grapples should be reliable, given their importance to monk offense, it is equally true that if these changes went in as is, we would return to the days where all monks did was repeatedly grapple until their momentum builds, then unleash for high level afflictions. Having reliable grapples ensures that future envoy reports will be much more reliable due to the absence of randomization.

Frankly, forcing monks to actually 'start slow' (due to a reliance in weapon/weapon/kick) and then ramp up as they gain momentum seems fitting and within the intention of the momentum system. It is also my personal opinion that reports to buff lackluster skills tend to go smoother than reports that nerf skills, so while some may feel that the changes are a bit heavy handed, the intent of this report isn't so much as to improve monks (even though parts of it already does), but to bring them in line with the rest of Lusternia's archetypes.

Sorry to nitpick; "Sap: Reducing recovery to 3s fine, I think the 0.5s cure delay should remain as is. Druids/mages are not guardians/wiccans." - how are mages involved here? This is Sap for Druids, in the Druid Special report - and Druids need help! Mages don't have access to sap. Could you explain on this better?

I do wish that druids could forever be divorced from the druid/mage comparison by changing the fundamental way that they handle demesnes, but that'll probably forever be a wish, nothing more.

Sojiro:

2. RE: Armour - when I receive feedback, I'll make a few clarifications if needed to make sure that artifact shields aren't devalued. What I think can be done is to make sure that the sum of armour values (80 robes + 30 shield = 110 protection) on a part are not subject to the diminishing returns, just the single stats. Ex: We want this -> ((80/2) + 30) = 70, not this (80 + 30) / 2 = 55

If we take the first cutoff at 75, don't you mean ((80-75)/(cutoff scaling i.e. 2) + 75) + 30? Else you're better off hovering 1 stat (74) below the arbitary cutoff so that you stay at 74, rather than going to 76 and being dropped to 38.

I still feel that this:

Frankly, forcing monks to actually 'start slow' (due to a reliance in weapon/weapon/kick) and then ramp up as they gain momentum seems fitting and within the intention of the momentum system. It is also my personal opinion that reports to buff lackluster skills tend to go smoother than reports that nerf skills, so while some may feel that the changes are a bit heavy handed, the intent of this report isn't so much as to improve monks (even though parts of it already does), but to bring them in line with the rest of Lusternia's archetypes.

Is too subjective to be used for reasoning. We are not redesigning monks, just trying to adjust them. As stated in the monk thread as well this report fails part of its goal which says the ka system is limiting. Grapples are the primary low ka skills, changing this makes the problem worse. Either change the limitation on grapples (and we can envoy where needed) or change mo1 (I am not counting mo0 as the same thing) to 300 ka.

P.S. Trueshield is a like 4 to 1. 4 shield = 1 armour.

Raeri:


If we take the first cutoff at 75, don't you mean ((80-75)/(cutoff scaling i.e. 2) + 75) + 30? Else you're better off hovering 1 stat (74) below the arbitary cutoff so that you stay at 74, rather than going to 76 and being dropped to 38.

I was just making up an example, I think it's the thought that counts >_>

Vadi:

Sorry to nitpick; "Sap: Reducing recovery to 3s fine, I think the 0.5s cure delay should remain as is. Druids/mages are not guardians/wiccans." - how are mages involved here? This is Sap for Druids, in the Druid Special report - and Druids need help! Mages don't have access to sap. Could you explain on this better?

Sure can. Aeon type debilitating skills such as aeon, aeonfield, choke, etc, are the domain of the guardians and wiccans in my opinion. Even they can be cured while proned whereas you must be unprone to cleanse so I think it's reasonable to have the delay be as it is at 0.5s, shorter than aeon effects. With passive demesne effects hitting which can be timed to hide (BT blind effect) or delay the sap curing beyond 3s. I'm rather wary of changing too many things at once that may change it from being sub-par (I do think druids need some saplock love, too) to nonchalant in getting strong locks.

I'm fine with the 30s thing because if you can't cure it in 30s you should probably be dead anyway. The druid present denial of third party cleanse is pretty strong (obviously a group only buff).. but I can get on board with that change too I think.

Edit: wording slightly changed for clarity.

I'd be up for removing sap/aeon-effect from druidry completely! I don't think admins are though, sadly.

EDIT: Keep in mind that on the whole, druid demesne afflictions are actually fairly weak and ineffectual at helping saplock at all, but I agree that sap is either UP or OP, with no real middle ground.