I think there is some fundamental ... thing.. to astrology I must be missing which will make the AB files click. I want very much to make this work for me, as I find the skill to be amazing, RP-wise, and it looks like it has decent application in combat (though I'm not much of a combatant at all yet)


I couldn't find a mushclient plugin to dissect that was less than 2 yrs old the last time I looked. the Thingy Maboby looks like it would be nice.. if I had windows and didn't want to have it run in my client.

I'm guessing the major combat point of astrology is to drop negative impact spheres to prep for a meteor. And negative/positive is simply determined by the sign Sun is in as compared to the Zodiac sign?

I need to code all this up into a mudlet script, maybe that'll help it make sense. But I keep wanting to understand it before I writeup the plugin.

From AB ASTROLOGY VOLCANO:



So yes, angle of the Sun sign decides the sphere's status - positive or negative and by how much. The exception is, of course, if Papaxi interferes - if Papaxi is a negative, any sphere you cast has a (small) chance of being negative. If it is positive, the reverse is true.

You can also STARGAZE to get the precise configuration around that sign, and use it to calculate the expected effects and cost.

Astrology also revolves around affliction through either nativity or zodiac rays. Afflictions from nativity rays are always set - no matter what time you cast a nativity ray on someone, they'll always be afflicted with the affliction determined at the time of their birth. Zodiac rays come from planets going through their normal revolutions through each zodiac sign. With zodiacs, you can have different effects depending on which planet is in which sign at that point in time when you stargaze.

You can use zodiac rays in a number of ways:
First) Single casts of zodiac rays will afflict a target with an affliction depending on which planet is in that zodiac currently. If more than one planet is in the same sign, then you get a random choice between the planets in the sign to afflict a target with.
Second) Constellation rays take rays from two different signs (can't be from the same sign) and afflicts them simultaneously on a target.
Third) Stellium rays activate ALL the planets in a given zodiac at that time.

Now, if you're following this, let's say...Eroee and Moon are both in Skull while Tarox is in Antlers. You can single cast an Antlers ray to afflict someone with asthma (since Tarox in Antlers does this), or you can try to single cast a Skull ray for a random choice of sensitivity (from Eroee in Skull) or hallucinations (from Moon in Skull) to afflict a target with.

You can also choose to use a constellation ray using both Antlers and Skull and afflict a target with asthma and hallucinations/sensitivity. Or you can use a Skull stellium to activate both Eroee and Moon in Skull to hit with hallucinations and sensitivity both.

In case you aren't confused yet, planets can go into retrograde - meaning that if both the Moon and Eroee in Skull went retrograde, if you single cast a Skull ray, you'll afflict the target with both hallucinations and sensitivity without using power on a stellium.

Hope that helps!

If you need code parts for the thingy maboby just message, once you break everything down into numbers you can work with it becomes really easy.

To confuse things more, if you have multiple non-retrograde planets in a sign, you can still cast that sign's ray but it will randomly choose betwen the planets to afflict with.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time as an Astrologer. The flavour of the skill is great and the strength of the buffs is great for you and your citymates.

I suspect that you will have a tough time getting kills as a wiccan astrologer due to the difficulty keeping someone in place for a meteor to hit. Another problem is the variability in spheres. The minimum number of negative spheres at any one time (taking papaxi randomness into account) is three. In my ~4 months as an astrologer there were 4 neg spheres most of the time, less frequently 3 and less frequently than that, 5. You will struggle to kill anyone over 4000 health with a 3 sphere meteor by itsself. As a Celestine both of these problems were alleviated by Inquisition which keeps people in place, strips their fire/magic defences and gave me time to stack symbol strikes/negative spheres/sensitivity/ablaze. Without Inquisition as a crutch you'll need to find other ways to deal with these things.

Edit: Not sure why I assumed why you were a Wiccan with a name like demonnic, but anyhoo most of the comments still apply to Nihilists though you do have Crucify and Omen to help out!

Choke! Also, Xiel mentioned the multiple planets in a sign thing already.

I am a wiccan, though. Demonnic's been my handle since fidonet. Yeah, I was thinking choke + pigwidgeon + try to stick stupidity might help with keeping them in place. And I'll be messaging Saran for code parts. That'll rock. When I get the mudlet code worked up for it, I'll be sure to release it.

Keeping people in place as a wiccan is easy, just sleeplock them.

EDIT: actually that is a little harder to do without hexes, but still entirely possible.

I have a lot to learn about combat still. I'll probably be getting my arse handed to me regularly in the arena tonight while I try to figure it out.

Sleeplock is exactly why I was thinking it would be difficult. If you can't kill just with the meteor, you'll need multiple damage attacks which is likely to break the sleep lock. The meteor timer isn't random though, so you could time it to hit just before the sleep tick. Never played a wiccan though, so no idea how feasable this is.