I wouldn't be against having some of the more basic skills becoming straight defenses, especially considering some of the more minor ones. And I am all for more active skills in the harmony skillset so long as they generally have a use.

Shiri had some awesome new effects / skills in his redesign (which was rejected because it would be too much of a rewrite btw). My hope is that we can use some of those for the new active skills.

Can we get a copy?

Can we get a consensus about the various mantras then. Which ones are fine the way they are now, which ones could stand some sort of a change and if so, what kind of change.

Ie, which spirit mantra are useful and practical, which ones could be changed and in what way? Which normal mantras are uesful and practical in the current chanting formula, and which could stand to be changed and in what way?

The stuff to be done to individual mantras is the -easy- part. I opened this thread so we could hopefully get ideas that wouldn't be rejected for a useful niche we could fit into in our home orgs. That's what I'm hoping for an idea of first.

I can post a nice table of all mantras when I get home. The (main) issue with most of them is, that they -do- have useful benefits (although often small ones) in (VERY) specific situations. So either scratch / upgrade / change most imo.

Knock Lumuti down to only needing Lum to be chanted. Change the description to "Those who are strong of heart fear few ."

Have Lummun and Ooshuti swap places in terms of skill level (Master, whatever).

Krakuti and Krakmun should be closer together in the skillset.

Bring Akhlum and Akhchu closer together in the skillset.

Lower Krakphet in the skillset.

Make it so you can can start out chanting only 2 Mantras, and then work it up so that at Trans you can chant 5.


- $0.02

Make an active skill with a power cost that counters deepcover/masquarade, and maybe lets you see ghosts dreamwalkers for a fixed amount of time. The espionage skills need some kind of counter other than the user being foolish. It makes sense that, having been at monk-war with the illithoids for so long, the Kephera would have come up with something other than "take it in the face."

A power cost to counter a power move. It wouldn't be able to be spammed, and the advantage is still with the stealth user as they have complete control over the initiative of the thing, and a harmony user must think to counter it.

This would give Harmony something unique, and flavorful, in theme with their origins, and something outside the "passive combat buff" realm,

Countering stealth skills seems extremely narrow. Think about how much that would even come up. Especially because if it's an active skill with a duration, you would only do it if you were aware it would come up...and if you're aware of it, you can just probe/indigo as appropriate to figure it out.

Why not just make it so that Ooshuti also discerns the truth of who people are? I.E., masquerading, impersonations, etc.

Not sure how fair to stealth users that would be. They went and spent all the time and effort to get a nice mask and I decide to start chanting a few words and negate their useful and flavorful skill? If was using the mask, I'd personally be annoyed by the turn of events, since having a counter does tend to lower the "coolness" factor of an otherwise decent ambush skill.

Well, I mean, the whole room wouldn't see it. Just the harmony user. It was an idea!

And the harmony user would tell everyone.

Anyway, can we get back on topic?

Well, the point is that the harmony skillset -as a whole- sucks. Changing individual skills won't help that. It's the system that needs an overhaul. But it has to be an overhaul without being an overhaul + minimal changes + minimum required coding time etc. You get the idea. -sigh-

Would everyone agree with me in saying that Ooshmun, Lumuti, Chuphet, Ooshphet, Angphet, and Ooshuti are the equal to most novice buffs or depend so much on circumstance that if someone was able to chant extra mantras they wouldn't be game breakers. Out of all of them Angphet ((DMP)) and Lumuti ((Immune to Fear)) have perhaps the most combat utility.

I'm not a harmony dictionary, I don't know the effects of those weird names without looking them up. (yay for chanting scripts). In general though, I think there are several harmony skills that could easily be normal utility skills or regular defences because their effect -really- isn't that big. IE faster traveling, fear immunity (wolf totem anyone? That's a NOVICE skill), shrouded movement (doesn't say who anyhow, it's mostly spammy) etc.

PS: That alone doesn't solve the harmony issue either though.

PPS: Besides, harmony with it's glorious utility effects doesn't even have a real theme. It's just random utility stuff. I'm really wondering why Nejii's suggestion was rejected. That would have been an awesome skillset PLUS an awesome theme (plus he even had historical justification for it).

Because they didn't want to rewrite and recode an entire skillset

For me, Harmony is a great skillset... I only learned up to Chuuti and I'm mostly using Angphet/Lumphet/Lummun for hunting, or Chuuti instead of Lummun when I think someone is gonna jump me.
/ends sarcasm

Oh, and please make up a new instantkill skill, one that someone can actually pull against an opponent that's not afk... I could never understand why guardians can instantkill at low mana, and warriors at low health, and we have to get low mana AND health AND ego

Well... 75% isn't that bad technically, considering some insta kills are quite a bit lower. It is the fact it requires it from Health/Mana/Ego all at once with no easy way to accomplish it that makes it so terrible.

I'd take 25% health OR mana instead of our triplet any day of the week...
It's way easier to concentrate your damage on one place instead of spreading it around like crazy, plus, we're a melee class... other then the stupid mana/ego draining mantras which I never use (or have?), the only other way to lower ego I can think of is debating... and who wants to do that during combat?

If they're not gonna change the instantkill, maybe give us some Shofangi/Tathatsu (sp?) skill that does mana+ego damage instead of health, so it can be combined into the forms?

They're gonna change the instakill even without the special report. (Topic please! That's where the ideas are really needed...)