In the interest of holistic balance, I would like to suggest a downgrade to my archetype.


In their current incarnation, demesnes maintain equivalent efficacy regardless of size. There seems to be something near to a 400 room maximum placed on any individual's demesne, but the mere suggestion that such a limit should be reached by anyone (and it already has been at least once that I am aware of) creates a situation wherein it can be, at times, extremely difficult to navigate the world without being subject to demesnes of varying degrees of aggression.

Couple this to the fact that a strategically located megedemesne, encompassing upwards of 200 rooms and with edges located in nigh-impossible to reach locations, and situations can (and do) arise wherein the feasibility of destroying such a massive demesne is small at worst and extremely time consuming at best. I cannot speak for whether the original intent in the design of the archetypes using manses was intended to permit for such situations, but if so, I believe it was done without proper forethought.

I would like to propose a change that would create a diminishing return on the efficacy of demesne-spanning abilities after an initial seven room radius from the demesne's center. I leave the specific mechanics up to those with such knowledge, but the end result should be to create a situation where the larger one's demesne, the weaker it gets as the number of rooms away from the "prime radius" increases. This, I believe, will not only allow for entirely viable demesnes of a manageable size, but dissuade the use of megademesnes in all but the most desperate of circumstances.

I realize that the fundamental nature of demesnes as they are currently implemented likely does not provide for such functionality. If not, a much smaller limit on the number of rooms a single individual's demesne may encompass should be imposed, along with a new ability to expand the size beyond this limit for a temporary period, but with an accompanying drain on both mana and willpower.

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Also, would it make sense if the public highways are not demesneable?

Perhaps make it seven rooms out from the demesne owner's location?

Also, make that affect summoning attempts, also. Just make them less likely to succeed.

As long as willowisp gets a similair downgrade in the summon department i'm tending to agree with that.

I have had a 400 room demesne for a while now, upkeep is a bit rough but it is at least 350 for the majority of the time. I let the majority of people pass through unless they are trying to break it. i like RPing with my demesne having it talk to me and whsatnot (Ravin is quite mad in game, one day he'll ne nice and the next day he totally off the planet.)

Id be a bit upset at losing one of my main killing skills, but give us a better demesne and sure bring out those nerf missiles.

We already copped a summon downgrade by the way. I summoned munsia 14 times and not one got through, costing me 3 power and eq each time it failed, so change that too.

EDIT 1: If you're gonna nerf summon, nerf it for everyone but help out the geomancers. Without summon my demesne is well pretty useless, I think I would just dissolve the whole thing if demesne summon was made useless, because the demesne isn't worth the eq and mana to put it up otherwise.

EDIT 2:Also in achaea you could forest summon someone into your grove from anywhere in the forest, it still hasn't been nerfed, you could bring them in and you at whim hitting them into a totem.

EDIT 3: Thats a poor idea Daganev, how would you have a demesne spanning an area with no use of highways, most of the fighting and killing is done on highways. how bout we make it so that you cant use weapons on highways? or no ents on highways? (yeah its a bit extreme)

Just seems odd to "own" such a public highly used area.

Especially since sometimes you don't care about the area but need to use the road to get to the other side of that area.

But I can see how its not a good idea to implement.

Do you mean can't? If you mean can, what's your reasoning?

I'd agree to that, if Geomancers demesne did more then 800 damage, while Hartstone's demesne does 600 damage plus good afflictions.

I can see how not allowing demesnes on Highways would be bad, because it would be too easy for non mages to drag mages into the highways and render them useless.

In regards to demesne summoning, I think it should be just like grove summon in the other IRE games. As in, it should take a bit to go through, with a message or two (And Hartstone should get the damned ability as well). Of course, it wouldn't take any power that way. I think it's just stupid as it is, instant...

Oh, and why would you not allow demesnes on highways? It's the only way for Mages/Hartstone to get certain people. Where would that leave? The blasted lands and Glomdoring for Geomancers, the Inner Sea for Aquamancers, and I suppose the mountains and the Oleanvir for Hartstone (which has to be forested). Rather limited that way.

I think demesne summon should still be instant. That's because it's the primary way to take care of someone who's dissolving your demesne on the edges. Most people, when they move to break your demesne, will (I know I do this) stack the commands of moving and forcing, so in zMUD, se;aquacast forceflood. The only way to beat that is to make a trigger for demesne watch's firing of them entering your demesne, and hoping that it summons them faster than they can break the demesne. If it was downgraded to take a few seconds, this'd be completely impossible.

Or you could always put up an illusory environment, forcing them to strip it first.

The best way to balance out demesne would to keep the ability to make it large (perhaps 200 rooms instead of 400) but change it so that the actual demesne EFFECTS only work 10 rooms away from the Mage. Like a sphere of influence. They could walk around their demesne and the 'sphere' would follow them.

And make monolith and/or shield stop demesne summon.

I think the "walking sphere" idea would make sense. Making it so that no matter where someone is, they will always be surrounded by rooms with demesne effects, and I would be willing to accept that.

As for summon. Hartstone should -not- get it. There are so many reason. The number one reason I can think of is that unless a Geomancer fuses every room or has statue to paralyze, we have -no- effective way of preventing someone from just running through. It's easy to run through our demesne, and I've seen it done. It's only fair we have some way of summoning our enemy or traveling to them before they leave.

But should it be instant? Consider the Avenger system in Lusternia where as teaming does not give you suspect unless you scored the kill (sometimes you don't even get that due to bug), any Geomancers (or Aquamancer though I haven't seen any do this yet) can set up on the highway with a group of 5 or 6 people and demesne summon anyone they want on the highway they don't have suspect on into the demesne and all jump the person, how is that remotely fair? And this has happened to me on several occasions, that's utterly bs that a Mage can spand his demesne across the entire highway and threaten all those that pass through even though when they have not proven to be a threat. And this is of course what Ravin have kindly done when he threatened any Hartstone that crosses his demesne on the highway.

It..sounds a lot like wisp to me. If someone has gone through the trouble of tainting and melding the area, I don't see the problem. I also don't think it should be changed from being instant. As Ravin has learned, it's instant only when it works, which is starting to be the case less and less. It costs three power each time, successful or not. I hate to state the obvious, but if you know that being summoned could potentially happen, you shouldn't be walking in his demesne to begin with. I don't think Ravin was summoning every random person who happened to walk into his demesne. I think it makes for a great tool, whether or not it's actually used, because it makes the demesne a whole lot scarier to be in.

And also, I think shielding does stop a demesne summon. But I'm not 100% sure on that, because it's been a while since I used it.

That's a bad argument for anything, especially when Ravin's covered so much of the roads. Demesne powers shouldn't get BETTER when you have a larger demesne.

I think it's a sound argument. Considering I said that Amaru's idea could work, which would then in turn only allow for demesne summon to work within a specified number of rooms. But then we should also make wisp (I think that's the summon skill in the forest, right?) only work within a certain number of rooms. Not that any change like that would -ever- be implemented. Demesne summon alone should not be downgraded, I think that would be rather unfair without downgrading other demesne skills that work throughout the entire demesne to someone's advantage.

EDIT: Although, after thinking about it a little more, if there really was a need to make our demesne summon not instant, it should only work outside of a certain range. If you're near the person whose demesne you're standing in, you can instantly be summoned, but if you're quite a ways away in a huge demesne, maybe it could give a warning message first, but the summon would come quicker than it would with someone using a planar summon. Not that I'd like for this change to be made at all, but for the sake of trying to look at this from another point of view that could work.

It's not a negotiation. If something is overpowered, bugged, or whatever then it should be changed independent of any other changes.

If demesne summon is overpowered, change demesne summon. Changing wisp has no effect on demesne summon.

Uhh..I'm not saying that summon should not be changed unless wisp is, as if I believed it were a negotiation. I'm trying to prove that there demesne summon can't be overpowered unless wisp is, because they are -very- similar skills. If I can be wisped into a huge group of people in a forest by a Moondancer, why can't I summon someone into a group when they're my enemy and in tainted areas that are under my influence?

I really don't see anything wrong with either of them, as inconvenient as they may be. I think they're both fair skills that have logical benefits in certain areas.

Going back to the Demesne suggestions. I'm thinking a combination of a limiting of the rooms, even just down to 300 rooms, along with diminished effects the further you are from either the center or the mage. If it's from the center, there should be a new skill to create a new center (thereby destroying the original one) that would take maybe 3 power or so to do. I wish I knew more about coding, because I would know if these suggestions were even possible, but perhaps the further from the center, the less frequently the demesne effects fire.