Ok the topic is up!



Basically all good things.
Oh and sickening is "taint sick" from geomancy if thats what the question mark is for.

I am curious what pacts and pledges would get instead, maybe some unique things? I can hope.



I am a geomancer without a demesne rune. I support the lowering of rooms in a demesne TO AN EXTENT. If the terrain is naturally your type it should count for a fraction of a room. This would resolve the needing 3 people to meld 1 cosmic plane issue while still toning it down to an extent. Yes I am aware this helps kill melds in general use.


Demesne only hitting current and adjacent rooms... I actually support this. It utterly destroys my group potential but it makes for better flow and stops the long range mass hindering, although it also stops people from being hindered when breaking that meld.

Dissolve should not remove shields. Period.

New skills? We have skills to remove them. Can make one skill if you want. Maybe spend 1p to kill a sapling (instead of chop chop in some cases), we can call it layBare or something, its late. Illusionary terrain and chop should both be moved down, and a skill to remove them for a power cost should be added. I would add that it stops returning them for a period but then you just have meld wars again, still I suggest the idea that when used the power version should stop using them for X seconds.



Good idea. On one hand choke isnt nearly as close to an insta without succumb, but on the other Moondancers get fiercer if you get sleeplocked. Good combination, toning down and vamping.



Warriors, yes. Even as Viscanti in full defs with splendours and 52/52 trueshield I can easily take 1500 from some, which I think is 20% or more of my health?

In this we are including things like Cairnlargo, Staffs, Cudgel (lowish caps because of bleed), and monks I presume? Monks in reference to damage moves on a prone target mainly, if wounds builds up they can still get nasty, but this isnt seen to the same extent.

Denizens scaling should be limited. How to make that limit is hard as you neither want super faelings nor squishy warriors. Warriors are the best bashers, period. Speed + raze + tanky. Maybe them taking damage should do some mana damage based on health damage from denizens? Thats a really random idea I admit though.

Zergs arent the issue, the combos are. Would Viynain and Urazial as a team be just as scary if nightshadeblues didnt effect haegl? No. Thats a song that actually should only effect listeners skills (like confusion) and mana loss from music just as a note (and yes I had the darn thing, it was nasty).

Finding specific combos is usually as simple as asking, should I stand next to you? If the answer is OH GODS YES, there is probably something to look over. Some things are meant to do well, like same classes together. But when everyone can mana kill, should they be clumped? (Yes I am referring to SD + Crowform + Harbinger).


In my opinion healingscroll should be changed to take equilibrium (like all the other scrolls) so it is like a healing enchant that actually SCALES to what is most damaged. It would make it a better healer and make it so skills dont have such a rebalance factor. Tomes could be read without eq specifically but only current bookbinders could read it (to prevent making it a credit perk). Before you add new healing methods you need to be sure things will support it. If you remove scrolls how many skills would become obscene? I am betting the list would either be the above or were changed after scrolls were intro'd. Why was leech buffed? More healing means more needed draining. Simplify things, so you dont NEED things like healingscroll and combat becomes more of a flow and requires less tracking.

As to combining skills, sure gimme some creddies, let me relearn em. It would help alot with toning things down in terms of lesson use thats 1715 lessons per skill combined that would be saved, and lets face it, resilience is mandatory at fairly middle tiers.

I feel streamlining should mean no class is mandatory in any fight or is the single handed winner, but should be an extension of the goal. If mages arent all powerful it makes guardian more appealing and people wont care if I went Nihilist again (that comment not assessed by the Lusternian Truisms Commission). When the classes revolve around being mandatory it stops being fun and starts being a job for some. No one should have that kind of influence in combat, no one.

If the problem lies with the combinations of Succumb/Choke and Lash/Wane, why not switch Choke and Wane?

Actually, there are many things wrong with Choke and Succumb - one being uncurable aeon (most annoying affliction in-game), and the other being a passive mana drain affliction. I admit I don't have any ideas on how to fix those aside from switching the abilities (like the proposed idea) or changing them to look like Lash and Wane (Clone abilities are pretty meh).

Let's talk about further redundancies and the high entry cost:

• Three forms of impalement: crucify, pinleg, gut impale. These can be stacked, of course, and each of them is also very hindering.
• Slit throat and crushed windpipe. Do virtually the same thing and can be stacked, preventing eating, smoking, drinking, and speaking.
• Stupidity and void. Void is just stupidity with a higher chance to trip you up. The cure is even the same.
• Aeon, sap, and choke. Three forms of slowing a person down means three special cases I have to code in my combat system for dealing with all the things that are preventing me from curing them.
• Paralysis and severed spine.
• Dealing with incurable room-wide things that require you (or the person controlling the effect) to leave the room: aurawarp/homeostasis, octave/maestoso, recessional, etc. These are all special cases for curing.

Lusternia kept probably 90% of the afflictions from the Achaea base, and over the years has about tripled the count by adding in so many unique, flavor things. The flavor is great, but the complexity is astounding. There are probably a dozen afflictions that prevent a person from standing, at least a half dozen that keeps him from eating or drinking. Instead of just anorexia, asthma, paralysis, and slickness, we have to deal with things like a crushed windpipe, homeostasis, scarab beetles, a locked throat, a severed spine, etc, etc, etc.

In addition to combining some skills to lessen lesson costs, I highly suggest that the use of 'root' skills be reconsidered (in some particular cases). As I have whined about numerous times before, it is ridiculous that a Tracker has to transcend Environment to be an effective Tracker. That is, setting traps means you have to first disarm other people's traps. Disarming, however, sets your skill level in Tracking and Environment against the skill level of the one that set the traps. Please only have Tracking level checked for Disarming Traps... Environment is a largely extraneous skill that should not be required for anyone (up to the Transcendant level).

lots of great stuff in here

my two cents as well as those of my alleged puppetmasters

Aquamancy Currents will need updated to reflect the demesne change because they currently only work several rooms away from the caster. The demesne change would make this skill unable to be used.

Not sure why Sickening is on the chopping block. Sickening in Geomancy gives a level 1 sip malus. It can also be cured by focus spirit. It hits every 45 seconds and lasts for around 30 seconds (so it's not like you need to cure it constantly).

As far as reducing the investment of certain skillsets, I was thinking along the lines of a skill in Tarot/Runes/Dreamweaving that increased the amount of items produced like Mastermixer in Arts. Investing 1 gold tint per ger rune, for example, is really expensive. I would say make it increase the item being made by 2 or 3 fold, weighted to 2.

Dissolve is a nice skill how it is and it would need to have more restrictions to compensate for an upgrade to strip shields, which is really just making it a whole new skill.

I thought conglute was moved to master level...?


I routinely sell mercury for 300 per bit. Your price estimate also doesn't include power/powerstones, which can get a bit pricy depending on who you buy from. Yeah, there's price gouging, but the base comm isn't as low as you think it is. Maybe if you gave alchemists and forgers the option to deliberately aim for sugar/mercury/whatever, thus tripling the chances of getting said random comm? I don't know, just a random thought. Sugar is more of an ouch for the reasons Xiel mentioned... it sucks seeing a batch of magic ink ingredients sugar out. Mercury is just.. 'oh well' and try again.





That would be wonderful. I feel bad for how Dreamweaving costs 1p per mote just to create the damn things, and then another 1p to simultaneous puncture/flick. Maybe skills like 'master inscriber' or 'dream-master' type skills to give these effects. I know tarot cards can be mass-inscribed, but can dream-motes be mass-created?

Trans discernment then (or whichever skill that is that reduces paralyzed time)

True hilarity begins when you start turning quicksilver batches into sugar.

Discipline.

Ohhh yeahh.... heh. That would make a -huge- difference.

Heh, haven't fought in awhile eh Dag?

The thing I mainly agree with in this is the last one. Healing needs something, homeostasis and aurawarp are managable to an extent, I just fought in it against a Celestine for awhile. Octave is somewhat required unless we change the whole mechanics of it to be a personal effect or some such. Recessional and such just cause you to flag trying to eat again. So its not evrything, it is very specific that some things dont need to be done.

As for costs:

Example vial of health: 8 galingale, 2 sargassum, 1 yarrow, 1 juniper. If you lower galingale to 4 per that might help. Quicksilver could use being cut by 50% or so.

For herbalists dont increase chance of spices go with a higher number of spices when you harvest.

Motes/Tarot/Runes:
In each case.......
- TrueWeaver: Increases number of motes created per set (its power costs are ouch)
- TrueScribe: Reduce the number of applications to paint cards.
- TrueRunes: Decrease tints used or allow two inscribes at a time from the same set of tints.


Lower the effect of discipline for paralysis cure speed. It is really bad when at lower tier paralysis can mean you never attack. Make max speed be at fabled or virtuoso so you can stop a good 700 lessons earlier than trans.

Regarding the motes/tarot/runes, I think it's already been suggested to make abilities like MasterMix in Arts, in that you can get 2 tints per mix, effectively halving the cost of tint-making, as per your suggestion. I would also like to see some way of mass-weaving/scribing/etc. I think it already exists for tarot (?) but afaik, not for runes or dream-motes.

If discipline were changed to top out earlier, I'd like an "ability" to mark when it occurs, such as

Proprioception: You are so in tune with your body that the time required to focus out of paralysis is greatly decreased.

I thought the already raised the floor for focus body time, was that not enough?

I know that the trans focus time is ~1s, whereas the not-trans (read: Virtuoso) is closer to 2.

I was giving more specifics in case the idea of creating 3 runes from 1 is a bit off.

Or when you see fabled you know you are done? It steadily drops its not a sudden 1s from 4.

While 2s focus body at virt is so-so, focus body at inept (or even adept) is pitiful. There's no reason for it to be so abysmally slow.

Please don't. I don't know how you picked that list, but all of those afflictions have unique functions and far more of a role in combat than say, broken jaw. Also note that pacifism is cured by focus mind while peace is herb only, and combining them could have bad consequences. For example, if you combine them into peace, then you massively buff the stopping power of telepathy with unfocusable peace; if you combine them into pacifism, then all afflictions possible in a dreamweaver's masked mote can be accounted for with eat kafe/focus mind. Other than that there are some very good things on that list, and I've got some things to say about demesnes when I next get a chance.

Ceren raised some good points I missed. Combining the two would result in problems for those two specs as he stated because of the way they were different cures. Out of the two options he mentioned making them into pacifism isn't too bad an option from a balance stand point but it would make dreamweaving curing a snap. If you have to do this, at least give dreamweaving some new afflictions which run off of different cures or are duration based. Also, if the change is in line with pacifism harmony monks can now passively force a focus mind which might need to be looked at depending on spec.

I think crucify is the signature skill of necromancy so I don't see that going away. Regarding pinleg and gut impale, we could get rid of one, I suppose. Note how this would leave a hole for warriors. If the problem is stacking, maybe the solution is simply not to allow them to stack?

We could get rid of slit throat or crushed windpipe (or somehow combine them?).

I'm not sure I think there is an issue is with stupidity and void if they're on the same cure. I don't think it's that much of a chore on systems.

Sap and choke are all signature moves which I'm not crazy to get rid of, and they're different from aeon in their own way so I'm not sure if they're duplicative.

We could replace severed spine with paralysis.

I don't agree it is too burdensome to move out of a room for the skills you mentioned (I have no idea what may also be included with the "etc.").

What are the dozen of afflictions that prevent people from standing? List them and we can consider combining.

What are the dozen of afflictions to keep people from eating or drinking? List them and we can consider combining.

I know you've listed "crushed windpipe, homeostasis, scarab beetles, a locked throat, a severed spine, etc, etc, etc." as duplicative but could you expand on that? Again, I have no idea what "etc, etc, etc" refers to.

Anyway, these were the types of things we were thinking would be included in reports sent. (Did you send one, Zarquan?) We're still open to considering them if they come up in this thread!