First of all, none of these things are "done deals", we wanted to share the ideas we found had merit for more player input.

Regarding lash and succumb, it was suggested that "many wiccans on both sides have actually felt is that Night has the two best skills in Choke and Succumb, combined with passive ent attacks. It has been discussed a few times that Succumb should be moved to Moondancers, who only have aeon, and Lash moved to Night so they have to actively drain mana within choke instead of relying on a passive effect to do it for them". While this is probably a balance issue, there was enough admin support that we decided to include it.

Regarding dissolve, you may be right! Keep the comments coming.

Regarding demesne effects being "expanded to affect adjacent melded rooms", I don't understand how this could possibly be consider an "expansion" since currently effects affect the entire meld. This idea is to REDUCE the area of effect to the caster's room plus adjacent rooms within the meld.

Regarding robes and shield, I'm wondering if you do know that shields have recently been focused on (see envoy reports). Certainly, it's something we can look at again.

Regarding First Aid, we are thinking a very short balance. One thing we don't really want is to have a system where people just set up a task to spam first aid every .1 second.

Avalon had a mana-draining skill called positioning that you could enable that would limit the amount of people who could attack you, based on the room's exits (more exits=more attacks). It wasn't something I've really ever seen gamed because it was only used in real, important situations, as the system for picking who can attack in the fight is indiscriminate and half the time it'd let the meatshield newbies fight but leave the top-tier guys unable to get past the melee to land a blow - ie, you'd only want to use it carefully and wisely.

It was a pretty cool system, though and made for less zerg-ish group combat.

I was under the impression that demesne effects would only affect the rooms the caster is in plus adjacent ones, as opposed to the whole demesne.

Also, please don't reduce the number of rooms per demesne.

EDIT: Wow, I was just ninja'd by Estarra.

To me, this seems to imply that effects occur only in the room where you're standing. Am I misreading this, or does it just not work this way?

Yeah... no. This isn't about making bashing easier. This is about giving Guardians and Druids who aren't demigod Tae'dae a chance to actually hunt and visit several areas in this game. The difference between bashing abilities in classes and races is enormous. What a Human Knight can handle with reasonable ease, a faeling druid won't be able to handle even with con-platters and truefavours. This difference becomes more and more noticeable the further ahead you get, to the point that even if I get demigod, I'll never be able to explore and hunt an area like Muud unless I reincarnate or change guild.

Okay, with that explanation, the Lash/succumb switch makes a lot more sense. I also misinterpreted the front-post description of demesne effects. I was under the impression that a fair number of meld effects only hit the room in which they were cast (or if cast with the DEMESNE modifier, follow the caster around.) I took the stated change to mean that these in-room effects were going to be affecting the next room over as well. However, if you mean that the traditional area-wide effects would be changed to adjacent room only and one-room effects would stay the same, I like that change!

I do know that robes+shield have been under some scrutiny, I just wanted to make sure they weren't left out of a complete re-evaluation.

I'd be okay with a short balance for First Aid.

The Lash/Succumb change sounds good.

EDIT 2: Though if I have a Moondancer choked and they use 'Succumb', I don't understand how its going to be any different than it is now.

I hate the demesne changes. Those sound horrid and sound like a pretty big kick in the teeth to demesne holders. I personally don't think there's anything 'imbalancing' about demesnes. Mages and Druids seem fine to me.

I would like some love for Druids/Wiccans/Guardians/Mages in regards to bashing though.

EDIT: However, if Succumb is changed, I'd like a suitable replacement for Terror, please.

I think you are exaggerating.

Are you using sparklberry, health vials, and healing scrolls?

What I'd like to know is if it is being proposed that the current demesne rune would be split to two upgradable runes I'll have to cough out more credits for just to reach the base meld size. Still pondering the pro's and con's as to the massively reduced size of melds and imposed limitations, but might as well start throwing some questions out there.


You're misreading the AB as I had before. If a melder has, say, a meld that stretches between Stewartsville and the Inner Sea, depending on the area the melder currently stands in, the effect of their meld would be active there while they go inactive in the other area.

Ohhhhhhhhh to respect area boundaries and issues like that. Makes sense now.

Would that mean it's then possible to cast without the demesne modifier and have it active on both sides of the border?

I think a reduction in demesne size is a much needed thing. Everyone complains and points out that Demesne are the deciding factor in fights and he who holds the meld wins.

These changes still allow a meld, but not a meld that will decide the fate of a fight.

It's indeed possible though looking at room timers aren't something you can do (or, at least to my knowledge anyway) so timing it together would be wonky unless you wanna learn how fast they tic normally outside of the DEMESNE modifier.

I had a character in Achaea once (I think), isn't this similar to something they have there?

Well, if you can articulate exactly how such a general combat skill (I'm guessing) would work, we'd be happy to consider it. This doesn't sound like people would have to "declare" others (and thus count up who's been declared) or that only "certain skills" wouldn't work. It also seems like a heavy mana drain limits the skill. I'm guessing the skill makes a sort of list of whoever attacks the target and the list stops counting depending on the number of exits. Then only those on the list can attack. I assume the list clears a person every 60 seconds or something if they don't attack subsequently. I also assume that it doesn't stop any passive effects. Anyway, it may be something we'd consider though honestly I'm not convinced this really would stop the effectiveness of "zerg" attacks except in very limited situations.

Here're my thoughts, from trivial to major:

Removing shyness and loneliness would probably require a change to AmplifyPhobia. It might also benefit communes disproportionately. You're removing the fear effects that actually work through Wolf and lessening the scope of Rubeus. It can be done, but there are trickle-down consequences to it.

I like the demesne effect change, but it would make more sense to remove the concept of melds altogether at that point and tie the effects to terrain and adjacent mage. That would fix a long-standing complaint of mages and druids, which is that they're entirely immobile combatants. Maelstrom/Fury/whateverGeoshave could be replaced with a temporary feat (30-40 seconds, 6-ish power) that made the effects fire in adjacent rooms regardless of terrain. Then we could even have mage-on-mage arena combat! Woo!

Anyways, while these are all cool ideas...do most of them do much towards the stated goal? I might be misunderstanding, but I thought by "streamlining combat," you meant "removing the crappy and arbitrary mechanics that discourage people from getting invested in combat." I just don't see that in anything except First Aid.

That still requires a hard coding of a targeting system, correct? To track the amount of people targetting you? These "certain skills" are combat related skills, you don't need to have a "declare" target to use laetitia or puella.

EDIT: Directed to Estarra's post.

I'd just like to point out that Maelstrom, if nothing else, currently isn't exactly the bee's knees. During that wargames where I had the dinky little three room Demesne, I fired it off when the three of you came in, and I'm not sure you even noticed being hit

I'd heard, though, that it was tied to demesne size and remaining time on the effects, both of which may've affected it. If so, though, then how would the changes in both the size and apparently the very concept of how demesnes are used affect skills like Maelstrom, Flashflood, and the like?

Regarding melds, we probably will never get rid of them. There are huge mechanical issues if we were to allow multiple mages/druids in the same room with their demesne effects going. We really have to be able to flag who gets the location(s) and who doesn't and melds provides a nice answer to that. We could possibly include a skill that automatically melds the caster's location and adjacent locations (if available and meldable) if that would provide any sort of solution, but we really cannot allow multiple demesne effects in the same room.

If you wish to list the "crappy and arbitrary mechanics that discourage people from getting invested in combat", we'd be happy to look into it. However, that statement is way too vague for us to even know what you are talking about. We could only look at the issues that people submitted!

For demesnes, please, please, please do not limit demesne size if you are going to add point 2 (Demesne effects on effect room caster is in and adjacent rooms) Demesnes are used just as often to watch an area as they are for actual combat. Making it so that someone needs artifact runes to meld Acknor and watch for people stealing furrikin would be a bad move.

Also, I would agree with Xavius's suggestion to base the meld effects off of terrain and make demesnes a thing for information/influence instead. If there is a mage using the correct skill in the room or adjacent, the effects go off on a room based timer ala ColourMaelstrom. If all of the mages who can do the effect leave the area, then the effect ends for that room.

I also really like this idea and would like to see admin comment on the idea:

I think I've answered Xavius's suggestion re meld effects. It's really not doable.

Regarding Salvation's suggestion, I haven't really formed an opinion on it. I'm not sure why it would matter whether the diagnose list is shown or not (in most cases its probably only going to be one affliction (especially if its a newbie).