I still think a passive-damage wouldn't be horrible. Body-snappers is just as bad as ghost.

EDIT: That is, for sneaking in. Not for sneaking out, I guess. Maybe a commune one, to remove elemental melds from their villages, and a city one, to remove forest melds from their villages? Shrug.

Dreamweaving isn't a problem because our bodies are insanely vulnerable when we try to sneak out, and coalesce has a massive equilibrium time so you could catch us outside of the village too. (I'm the only person I know of who uses it for raiding anyway.)

The nasty part of ghost is the escaping ability it gives.

Hardly. Bodysnap and Coalesce strip equilibrium for a -long- time. More than enough time to be spotted and hindered (possibly killed outright).

Edit: By Shamarah. (I'll probably try a hand at using it for raiding eventually, still too small to be raiding on my own though.)

If you don't set your guards to follow or place them wrong, sure.

Since village influencing changes were being discussed here too, I've decided to post my wish list.

1. Eliminate all experience lost in open villages. I prefer this method over conglutinating for the simple reason that if a person dies for real, they will be out of the contest for a period of time. Instead of always being able to jump back in and with grace.

2. Make all denizens in open villages invulnerable to attacks of any kind without peacing the room.

3. Restore all villages to their original condition when they revolt, ie no demesnes, no flood, no taint, no forest.

4. Disable melding in open villages so it much much more difficult for a single mage/druid to dominate the whole village.

5. Change crusade/sanctuary so that they can not be placed in rooms that do not have atleast one denizen that is ready to be influenced, ie not tired from a previous discussion. And once all mobs have been influenced in the room, those campaigns should fade after a few seconds.

6. Fix debating by lowering the amount of ego damage you take from being countered. Offense should not be significantly more risky than defense in debating.

7. Increase the time that villages are held by organizations to lessen burnout from having influence villages alot within a months time.

8. Eliminate all randomness of the revolts by changing the goal of village influencing itself from convincing villages to swear loyalty to you to convincing them to enter contract with you. Safety in exchange for Tributes. The contracts would last certain amounts of time depending on your rulership style, and the expiration date would be posted on the Politics board so that everyone who wants to will be able to make plans to be there.

9. Leave all villages open for violence while they are in play as is currently the case instead of making some peaced.

10. Set a time limit for village influencing, and I personally like Marcalo's suggestion of three hours. Which basically that gives organizations two ways to succeed, the current way of reaching the victory benchmark, and another way that allows organizations that are superior in influencing battle three hours after the first denizen is influenced to win. I don't even want to imagine the battles in the future between Hallifax, Gaudiguch, Ackleberry, Glomdoring, Magnagora, Celest, and Serenwilde if a limit isnt placed.

I made some more edits (in bold) to my original post.

Note that 4. and 5. under miscellaneous is something we've been planning to do already but haven't gotten around to it. Just included it here for your information.

Yes. Very yes. Do this.

The prismatic barrier, or the state in which it pops up?

4 and 5 are great suggestions, and I hope that they are implemented.

Estarra, I still love the ideas and you and your team still rock!

No matter how you set your guards unless you have at least 10 in every room a decently tanky knight with sprint could easily sprint into your village untouched and I know because I have personally done it.


I am also against hindering ghost when there are other abilities that allow you to easily walk into villages. It is also incredibly easy to stop a ghost from leaving your village, you just have to use your heads. I'm not going to detail them here as I know how terrible some are at seperating IC and OOC information.

Dont mean to offend Esttara, but some of the ideas... well i think they're either pointless or theyll cause problems elsewhere.

Laetitia is only help to a certain extent. Im inept in influence and usually I dont even need a beauty enchant or a chanter, just that having both makes me save up on sparkles and bromides. I can even influence a mob while another person debates me with that setup and maybe if im unlucky i'll need to laetitia myself once or twice. Im not trying to brag, just pointing out that laetitia is not and was never a problem. If you have more than 1 chanter on you after a sip and a sparkle all those laetitias are hitting you over max anyway and arent really helping you. Also, it is not the reason why debating is pointless at the moment. Last influence round i even laetitiaed the person who was debating me so that he would think he had enough ego to do it. What makes debating useless are the formulas itself.

anti-ghost... honestly ghosting is stupid as a get away tactic. If i ghost vs a seren army, the chances are im dead before i got eq back. Having a door is enough of a counter for it and if the players were smart enough the skill is easyly disabled. So its usefulness lies in its offesnive application, well until you realize that theres a lot of things you cant do as a ghost, like enter archways and such and that you actually dont have eq when you materialize hence have to take several beatings before you can do anything again. I remember someone saying on the other thread that in achaea there was at least a way to see through blackwind/astral form to prevent raiding. An uninformed comment as blackwind and astral form also hides you completely, here all it makes you is untargetable and not invisible. So you can actually see us and hence be there before anything happens. Not saying that ghosting does not have its ups, of course it does but it also isnt the problem.

Guards being buffed up would be nice but thats a problem in itself. Some guards are just weak, ie celest guards. Notice we rarely hit hags, this is because hags hurt tons honestly they're a lot meaner than a plague lord or an archon, plus why the hell do those things fly. When it comes to centaurs, cavs, marshals well they're physical and they cut down anybody who doesnt have high physical resistance which is ummm mages?

Anyway, the too much conflict part that people were telling us about wasnt related too much to influencing or demesnes. It was more about astral killing, raiding etc i thought.

With the upgrading of the guards, would the guards be able to start giving afflictions? Or hitting through Serpent?

Guard upgrades are a BAD idea. All it does is emphasize tankiness even more. If incredibly tanky people can take a ton of guards, nerf them.

Alger, I'm not sure how you've come up with this stuff about guards, but all guards work on two tiers, all guards in the lower tier are the same strength, all guards in the second tier are the same strength. Also, they all do the exact same kind of damage.

Which is why I asked about afflictions. Damage unless stupidly strong will just leave the status quo as it is, afflicting them so their ability to tank is impeded somehow though will help quell single man, wipe out the entire population raids which everyone but the raiders are getting sick of.

Alger-

Laetitia is far from useless, it heavily causes imbalance in favor of the cities. Having only one Laetitia work at any given time would be graet to help balance the playing field. I'd also like to see Glomdoring get something to help them regenerate ego as well, at least we have Light Coven on top of Sun Totem (which they also have).

I'm not sure an anti-ghost nexus power would be fair to the Necro users. But perhaps a power that allows us to detect any enemies entering or leaving the village or city/commune.

Shadowdancers have penumbra - +3 cha ego regen, and it sets their age to 18. Coven of 3, 3 power.

Is the age anything but cosmetic? Or does age actually affect things?

Cosmetic. Kind of an easter egg. Rowena maintained her youth via penumbra - thus, so can Night Totem users.