I see a lot of mages these days who have some form of psionics. What I want to know is threefold. First, is dreamweaving as viable for combat as, say, telepathy? If so, how high in dreamweaving do you have to learn for it to be really effective (as opposed to telepathy (yeah, I'm not going telekinetic even if I choose psionics))? Thirdly, what would be a good race for a dreamweaver? Thanks in advance for your excellent advice.

Dreaming is great for a druid. As a mage, it can be used pretty good, while Telrath was a Weaver, he was timing his demesne attacks with his dreamweaving, causing me some really bad blackouts, along with that forced sleep thing which stacks up. I do think you probably need to be high in weaving to make it viable compared to telepathy, which you don't need much in to slam afflictions on. But all in all, it is a cool skillset. I am not sure if it still has those bugs that Shorlen used to rant about (ones that caused you to die) but it seems like a cool skill set. But it is in no way a game over button for mages. You need to make sure you time you demesne right and use it in conjuction with a demesne, unlike psionics where you don't even need your demesne with that skill set, you can spam stupidity/paralysis/mindblast over and over.

If you have bad curing, this can be the case.

Dreamweaving is awesome if your a druid, but also works good for mage with a demense. I don't use my demense that much, so I can't really go on more about this.

Control is a relatively low level skill that is outright awesome, because it can get you out of most sleeplocks, unless there are annoying Spiritsingers
around.
Embed is when it starts getting cool, especially if you are embedding narcolepsy, memoryloss, or blackout in your demense.
And envelop is cool when you have to fight really annoying things like Marani or in more recent times, Shellma, cause you can pick up corpses in dreamform and not get completely pwned over.

If you're going to be in dreamform alot, go furrikin, cause the level 3 magic resist makes you close to invincible since I think the only thing people can hit you with are violet and kether, both of which are magic. If you're going to embed or whatever, don't think it matters that much.

Psionics Psiblade hits dreamforms too, which I think is psychic damage, rather than magic.

Weavings not bad, but as Ild said.. It's mostly good for Druids. Mage's have psionics available to them and honestly, Psionics are definitely better. That said, however, depending on what your Mage is.. It could be used to good effect. Veyda has used Deepsleep to good effect and it'll knock people from wide awake to exhausted in five deepsleep's. Combined with stuff from Phantasms and the demesne, it could be useful. I can imagine it being more useful for a Geo compared to an Aqua, however.

How about lucidian? Level 2 magic resistance and Level 3 psychic resistance, plus higher constitution and intelligence than the furrikin, plus decent regen (anyone know if it applies in dreamform?)! Also I can see it being a fun rp. The question is: 1. does ego affect dreamweavers beyond the bonus from absinthe? Because lucidian ego is not so good. And 2. is furrikin roll the equal of tumble?

Also, I will be going geo, so that's good!

Not sure why you need to be so concerned with ego, unless you're influencing - the psychic resistance will protect you from a lot of the mindblast damage.

Go Furrikin as a Weaver. I had a Blacktalon Furrikin weaver and well, it was pretty tanky. Go go Furrikin!

Anyway, you'll also have Lich available to you as a Geo. So that's a +2 Int available at night. If you're getting involved totally with combat and you're going to Trans a few things, then I'd take Tailoring as your trade skill for the Splendours. Furrikin's only weakness is that they're not incredibly tanky when it comes to taking physical damage. Roll used to be a godly, but it's the equivilant of a size 6 tumble now, which is still fast.

Dreamweaving is great for a druid but substantially less so for a mage. However, it's by no means worthless for a mage like Runes is; it's simply not as good as Psionics. Your main problem is going to be finding a way to actually kill someone with it - getting them falling asleep isn't very hard, but there's a limited amount of things you can do at that point. You can use embedded memoryloss (blackout) to help confuse/disorient them, and strip defences with undoing, but you'll have a lot of difficulty actually sticking very much as a dreamweaver, which means you'll mostly rely on your staff to actually score the kill. Geomancers can also try to trick someone with chasm behind blackout, however an intelligent enemy will probably figure out what's going on regardless and punish you for it. You can also go for a possession if you can get someone falling asleep, and then force them to drink a ton of absinthe and charybdon, although this costs some gold considering that you'll generally have to give them those.

Dreamweaving is an extremely fun skillset, though, and I do encourage you to try it out.

Ok, I don't see why furrikin would be tankier in dreamform considering that lucidian has higher constitution, and lvl3 magic resist can't be much more than lvl2. Plus lucidian has more will for staying in dreamform longer. Also, in case someone missed my edit, does racial regeneration stack with dreambody regen?

Overall, it looks like a lucidian dreamweaver combo would be very good at resisting other mages (mindblast resist, immune to sleep spells etc.), which can only be a good thing when demesne wars occur.

Furrikin have more buffs to them, and a small fire weakness.

Weakness to blunt damage equals smush to Bonecrushers.. Which most Warriors are these days, and Mages are kinda squish as is.

I second Shamarah though. Dreamweaving is fun and has it's uses, and it'd be nice seeing a Mage that isn't a Psionic these days.

EDIT: Demesne wars are boring. Mage vs Mage is like watching glue dry.

Debatable! For, as you may already know, it's impossible to squish someone when you're ASLEEP! MUAHAHA.

Plus, it's only lvl 1 weakness, which isn't really unsurvivable. AND it only applies to damage (I think), and most warriors go for affliction weapons rather than damage ones. Monks on the other hand might be a problem, but with geo demesne and all the other stuff I can do, they probably won't be able to build up any decent forms. This is all dependent on me being an awesome fighter, of course, but then isn't everything?

Point.

If I keep this up, I'll be a novice poster in no time!

As long as you can survive more than like 3 kethers tankiness in dreamform doesn't really matter because you should just bodysnap out or run anyhow if you're getting hit.

Don't pick your race based on magic/psychic resistances. 'Combat' in Dreamform is utterly pointless (unless you're with a team of Weavers). Probably best to just go Mugwump, allowing you to flick motes at insane speeds.

Honestly, I'm getting tired of playing mugwump. Sure they're fast, but they're also ridiculously squishy (and I say that from experience).

And magic resistance is useful for all sorts of things! Psychic too to a lesser degree. Although, I'm actually more interested in lucidian because it seems like a fresh thing to do (same reason I'm going dreamweaver). Do you have any idea what kind of crazy roleplay combinations could result? It boggles the mind!

Anyway, are there any other race suggestions besides furrikin and mugwump? I don't really want to play the typical dreamweaver race, but I want one that's at least decent as well.

That's not a problem if you play them right.



No it's not.



No it's not.



Merian, if you're an aquamancer.

There is a reason mugwump is considered one of the best races in the game.

I actually play a dreamweaver - though admittedly a druid who hasn't had much time to fight lately - and let me just say this straight out.

Do not base any race decisions on your performance in dreamform.

Dreamform is a broken utility mainly useful for infiltration, occasional spy work, and a cool factor. It's not good for RP - you can't see emotes from dreamform - and combat is a joke. If you have lower magic resistance, you're going to die really fast. And even if you're a furrikin with trans magic and it's nigh-impossible to hurt you efficiently, there's almost nothing you can do. The only way I've found to kill people in solo dreamform is going against people with poor curing, spamming sleep and nightmare, and it's extremely unreliable. And if you're not going solo, your individual dreamform performance is going to be poor.

For everything else, dreamweaving is a supplement. You'll need to find ways to make your skills - blackout, balance/eq hindering, sleep - work with offense from phantasms and geomancy. You will not be killing with dreamweaving alone.

So basically the sentiment is: go mugwump. I think that's sad. All those other races going to waste... Perhaps when they rebalance the races (I've heard people saying this will happen soon, yes?) there will be more choice. But if mugwump is necessary at the moment, then so be it.

Well, if you want to choose a race based on RP, Viscanti or Illithoid would work well. Or any race, for that matter.

Actually, Illithoid would make pretty nice Dreamform-weavers. Hrm.