can't join a coven and a mindlink, they are mutually exclusive. (city vs commune)

I bet if a telepath joined a Commune and got the moonaltar construct blessing without dropping skills they could.

Ability, probably either a power cost, or fairly high up in the list of the spec.

Just a thought on throwing a bone to covens.

And for Telepaths:



and

From what I understood, the way it was implemented elsewhere was that all members of the special groups got 50% of the NPC's xp value, no matter how many were in the group. That seems a bit extreme to me, but something more to the tune of splitting xp like there were fewer people in the group, or less penalty for being low level in a group of high level people would be handy.

No.

How fancy do we really need to make it? It's just a group. The combat group should have a military name, given it's a group for the express purpose of combat. Squad seems simple enough, even though I don't particularly like it myself. How about regiment?

Would the name be displayed to the world somehow?

Eh, I think this would give an unfair advantage to those with mindlink or coven.

7130h, 6615m, 5985e, 10p, 30900en, 28185w elrxk-ab moon conclave
MOON - CONCLAVE

Syntax: MOONDANCE CONCLAVE
Power: 5 (Moonhart Tree)
If you are the leader of a coven, you may call a conclave, which will call forth all coven members to you. Coven members will only arrive if they are on the same plane and continent as yourself.

7130h, 6615m, 5985e, 10p, 30900en, 28283w lrxk-moondance conclave
You send out a call to your coven to form a conclave.

String of fate would be insanely overpowered.

However, the collective one would be nice... also make a bit of sense if we did the mindlink move. Would be very nice in some situations.

I don'tsee how strings of fate would be OP. It's a double-edged sword, especially if some of your group is not tanky.

No. It's not. There is nothing double-edged about splitting damage over multiple people's healing balances, considering there's a chance that one of the untanky people will just take a full-on face smashing anyways.

Elder formations could be nice. Might allow for different styles based off known elders that could give buffs and debuffs for bashing.

EDIT: Just expanding.
So the Fist of Orlachmar or something could boost up damage output but drain defense.

or the Grace of Ellindel could assist with curing etc...

Sharing damage equally over a group is a stupid idea.

I like the formation thing too.

Elder Formations were gods linking divine power--not something for mortals!

I imagine groups being military units, i.e., squads, companies, etc., so we'd want to stick with that theme. However, I do like the idea of being able to name your squads for flavor.

I like the idea of Elder formations.. you could fill the ranks of the Combat skillset with different formations.. each one giveing a differnet sort of buff to the formation.

Like one could give a weight str boost to all members of the group, or another could give a weighted int buff, and so on and so forth.

Obviously you could only be in one formation style and the formation leader would have to choose it.

could have a basic formation at early stages of combat with a new formation type at each skillrank, all following the old Elder God formations types.

Well... it could possibly be mortals trying to "emulate" Divine battle-patterns in the best way we know how. Though it's obviously nowhere near the same thing.

Yay we could have Weeky insult us again like that time when people wanted to start talking in Ae.

I think the Coven channel should just follow the usual planar communication restrictions unless you want to make it also include the respective wiccan aetherbubbles (the coven can hear and be heard from Night and Moon bubbles). Otherwise, XP sharing alone is probably enough. My real concern is that these new grouping buffs would be seen outside of PvE and the intention for them is to assist with that and not PvP. Any sorts of damage reduction or health benefits should really be out the window. "Posse for avatar/supernal/demon lord raid. Join up so it hurts less/you last a second longer."

As far as other benefits go for covens, I can see some things as related to changes in the moon cycle. I had an entire codebox with the moon phases and how it would change things for each coven, but it was just too complicated. For mooncovens, resistance to astral insanity during full moon, moon waxing affects entire coven 100% of time or increased willpower recovery(possibly not included when counting levels of regen) during waxing phases. For nightcovens, resistance to astral insanity during the new moon and increased willpower recovery during waning phases. I am less familiar with Night abilities and was really trying to find something meaningful for each without having much duplication. My creativity is not equipped for such grand schemes!

Also, the "some other benefit" should require what limitations? Everyone currently in the coven present? Benefits are only active when the covenleader and one other covenmember are in a room?

That's the only buff we get from mindlinks. It doesn't buff our power, AFAIK no telepathic abilities (including mindblast/psyvamp) are based on the telepaths maximum/current ego. The only thing it would increase (and as a side effect) is id balance time, as you are using a smaller percentage of your maximum ego to perform each skill, and id is based on current ego percentage.

The splitting damage thing would be a bit OP, yes, unless it was inequal. Perhaps you could actually take more damage overall, it's just split over everyone, possibly with a minimum amount (e.g everyone takes 20% of the damage, even if there are 6+ telepaths), but with the same limitations as Aegis (it'd drop before it killed anyone else in the mindlink). Could also be problematic with something like hailstorm/boulderblast which hit everyone involved in the mindlink anyway.

The blackout thing would be nice, I'll let someone else comment on the balance issues. Doesn't seem too bad to me.

Could also consider a slight buff to damage or DMP (e.g. every telepath in the mindlink is +1 DMP against psychic, which is very rarely used, but is also +1 DMP for every telepathic attack). Although I think only the health damage from mindblast is actually affected by DMP, and it would be a practically unnoticeable buff considering the number of telepaths I generally find (largest mindlink I've been in is 5 people).

I also wouldn't mind moving mindlinks down to psionics, but having all the extras (beyond a channel) being limited to telepaths. Perhaps requiring a telepath to create and maintain a mindlink, but any psionicist can be brought in? Obviously this would only apply if there was another form of grouping made, like you're discussing.

Night doesn't have that many great utility abilities.

Could we still have cool styles?

The only way the splitting damage thing could even begin to be okay would be if one person died in the link while doing it, everyone died as well.

Really, please let's not go there.

+DMP depending on number of people in group sounds cool, though.