Idea to spur magick hatred

[Sir Diealot]

The problem, Twilight, is that without coded responces.. PCs very seldom do anything outside of that.  Also, with the spells being SO obvious..it's hard for you NOT to realize who a magicker is.. so all you have to do is hack their face off in fear/desperation/boredom ..the latter the most common now-a-days.

[Angela Christine]

Bah, you want to make mages more scary?  Then let them cast while holding a weapon, they'd still suck with weapons but at least they wouldn't suffer the unarmed penalties.  It is silly that you can render a mage helpless by having them sit down and hold a teacup.  Instead of needing both hands empty, maybe just one hand needs to be empty.


AC

[sacac]

hm.. interesting.. I could of sworn that they do this already..
hmm.. So yea, if they don't do this now, that would scare the living bajeevus out of me.

[X-D]

At one time, MANY years ago now, Magickers could cast while wielding, could do so even with both hands full. I'm even sure that the one I was running at the time had at least a little to do with the change. The difference is HUGE, specialy with well branched magickers.

No the thread topic suggestion is a better way to go I think.

Unless people really do want magickers to be frightening in that sort of in your face manner, me, I prefer the more mysterious manner.

[jstorrie]

You know, I wasn't aware of the coded limitations on spellcasting, and I kind of wish now that I hadn't seen all this.

[Agent_137]

You know, I wasn't aware of the coded limitations on spellcasting, and I kind of wish now that I hadn't seen all this.

then you should probably steer clear of any thread with "magick" in it's title.

At least in the future.

[jstorrie]

Maybe that.  Or, maybe people shouldn't discuss the details of the magick code in this forum?

[Xerokine]

For coded spells, I suppose its fine.  However, I would only suppress the initial message, letting people you know you are casting.  I wouldn't suppress any following messages (if any), and I wouldn't suppress the crim code all -that- much.

You don't fear a magicker because he comes up to your face and casts a spell at you, right in front of you, right where you can hack off his head.  You fear a magicker because she sits in her temple with a lock of your hair and makes your head crumple into a putrid mass of goo as you are lying in the comfort of your crowded hovel.

The populace doesn't fear magickers because of coded spells.  The populace has no freaking clue what a coded spell is.  Almost all of them have no idea what someone casting a spell looks like.  They do know that magickers are damn dangerous, and can do weird, amazing, and destructive things.  Thats about it.

You just need to forget what you know about the code.

This includes magicker players.  I think if magicker characters used means beyond the code, ie mailing the staff with other magickal alternatives, and assuming it ever became known, you would see people fear magickers a lot more than even this skill suggestion.  But thats just IMHO.

I'm sorry, but maybe this information so be placed in much bigger font so the rest of the players of ArmageddonMUD know this. From my perspective of playing a magicker, your not feared by nearly as many as you should. You might get the rare commoner that will actually move away or something to show he's frightened, but the rest think they are like Nobility and will get right in your face because they know OOCly you won't touch them, and if you want to take it outside the city-state they will own you because magickers can't use weapons.

[Newbie Magicker]

From my perspective of playing a magicker, your not feared by nearly as many as you should. You might get the rare commoner that will actually move away or something to show he's frightened, but the rest think they are like Nobility and will get right in your face because they know OOCly you won't touch them, and if you want to take it outside the city-state they will own you

This is so true, and this isn't just with the bad roleplayers.

I had a magicker (a while now so I hope this isn't IC, and I hope the person I'm talking about knows who they are) and I was a real in-your-face type person. I had someone bite back and it was wonderful. The person who bit back did so in a wonderful way and was really good about roleplaying the whole interaction. I went to attack the person because we were goading each other and I was furious, but I began casting a spell and the person realised I was a magicker. The roleplay from that point on was also pretty good. But afterwards the person said "oh your a magicker, I could have kicked your ass." Could the person have kicked my ass if I wasn't a magicker? Most likely, but the person became more sure of themself merely because I was a magicker.

I don't see magickers as being any different to other people. People can live a long part of their life without knowing their a magicker, they might become fighters in this time. There's no in character reason for the stereotype that magickers are poor fighters to exist in my opinion.

I think the fact that magickers can be anyone the most frightening part of them. Your next door neighbor, he could be a magicker. Your a byn sergeant, he could be a magicker, your mate could be a magicker. But with players assuming you can't be a magicker if you're a good fighter, that aspect of magickers is lost.

[X-D]

Jstorrie, Your one of them people that does not read docs untill you need something right? Nothing that has been said here about magick code so far is outside a 10 second search of the docs.

Xerokine wrote:
From my perspective of playing a magicker, your not feared by nearly as many as you should. You might get the rare commoner that will actually move away or something to show he's frightened, but the rest think they are like Nobility and will get right in your face because they know OOCly you won't touch them, and if you want to take it outside the city-state they will own you

Newbie magicker wrote:

I think the fact that magickers can be anyone the most frightening part of them. Your next door neighbor, he could be a magicker. Your a byn sergeant, he could be a magicker, your mate could be a magicker. But with players assuming you can't be a magicker if you're a good fighter, that aspect of magickers is lost

I suppose if enough people felt that way the staff might be able to be talked into removing no wield casting:) As I said, speaking as somebody who has been there, It does make a world of difference, Magickers are crazy powerful then....least ones that have been around for a little while.
Heh, and for shits and giggles, to make them downright terrifying add in this stealthy casting.

[Angela Christine]

I suppose if enough people felt that way the staff might be able to be talked into removing no wield casting:) As I said, speaking as somebody who has been there, It does make a world of difference, Magickers are crazy powerful then....least ones that have been around for a little while.

I thought part of the point of the karma system and restricting certain races and classes is that they are Not supposed to be balanced, at least not in the way a H&S would balance classes.  

For example: half-giants are fairly low on the karma pole, but a half-giant can do a tremendous amount of dammage just by standing on the road and subdue-killing anyone who walks by.  They learn slowly, which is a good balancing limitation, but half-giant warriors can be pretty good at subdue right from the start.  It will be a long time before they are good at much else, and half-giant merchants and mages have a tough row to hoe, but a newbie half-giant is not physically balanced compared to other races.

Likewise, from the documentation and the karma scale I got the impression that the magic using classes were unbalanced, which made it a lot easier for my non-mages to be afraid of them.  Sure, they get scary eventually, when they can work unseen and bury entire cities in sand, but I bet a lot of newbie mages get randomly taken out by scrabs and gortoks before they anywhere near that point.  I think that many first-time mages experience a little disapointment with their starting abilities, disapointment that can fester into cynicism.  A rampaging tregil attacks suddenly and you have just seconds to decide if you are going to flee flee flee, do your best with weapons you suck at using, or put away your dagger and try to deal with the menace magickally before the little beast tears your unarmed PC to shreds.  The unarmed combat penalties are severe. Unless the mage is somehow hidden or unreachable, many people will take a shot at hand-to-hand combat because they know that the unarmed combat penalties are nasty, and if the mage keeps his weapon out he can't cast and _still_ sucks at hand to hand combat.  An experienced mage can spank the other classes, but he still has to be prepared and choose his ground, because a surprised mage is a dead mage.  That makes it very hard on non-gemmed because they have no safe place to cast -- they pretty much have to go to the wilderness to study and the wilderness is full of things that want to engage in close combat.

Maybe there is a middle ground.  Some MUDs don't even let a mage wield weapons except knives and staves, but I always found the message that I don't know which end to hold to be silly and artificial.  Even a bookworm could figure how to hold a sword, there is a handle and a blade, if you hold the blade you cut your hands so maybe you should try the handle.  There are other ways to limit weapons, maybe they can only cast while holding weapons that were once alive (wood, bone) or weapons that were never alive (stone, glass, metal) because the other kind interferes with channeling the magick.  Ok, that wouldn't really be much of a restriction, since both dead and non-living materials are basically the same, code-wise.  A glass knife isn't more likely to break than one made of bone, wood or flint.  Or the could be resticted to weapons under, say, a cord long, because anything bigger than disrupts the magickal field around the caster and causes the spell to fizzle.  Of course that would require someone to go through all the weapons in the database and decide which ones were the right size and which were too big.  Or maybe you would have to keep your off-hand empty, so you  could not etwo, dual wield, or use a combination of a weapon and shield -- that would free you from the unarmed penalties without giving you the chance to carry a gigantic two-handed axe while casting.  I don't know.

People run into inept newbie mages, or their scrab-raveged corpses, and this gives them the mistaken idea that mages are weak and harmless.  So they stop being afraid of mages in general.  Eventually they may run into one of the rare mages that have amassed truely frightening power and become scared of mages again, but in the mean time they are stuting around thinking most mages are pimply-faced geeks that can't hurt a kank fly.  Warriors are jocks and mages are (illiterate) nerds, and everyone knows jocks beat up nerds, that's basic high-school psychology.  The idea isn't to turn mages into crazy PK monsters, but rather to do something to make people a little more worried about them OOCly, so that their characters will be realistically worried ICly.


AC

[Ktavialt]

I suppose if enough people felt that way the staff might be able to be talked into removing no wield casting:) As I said, speaking as somebody who has been there, It does make a world of difference, Magickers are crazy powerful then....least ones that have been around for a little while.

I thought part of the point of the karma system and restricting certain races and classes is that they are Not supposed to be balanced, at least not in the way a H&S would balance classes.  

For example: half-giants are fairly low on the karma pole, but a half-giant can do a tremendous amount of dammage just by standing on the road and subdue-killing anyone who walks by.  They learn slowly, which is a good balancing limitation, but half-giant warriors can be pretty good at subdue right from the start.  It will be a long time before they are good at much else, and half-giant merchants and mages have a tough row to hoe, but a newbie half-giant is not physically balanced compared to other races.

Likewise, from the documentation and the karma scale I got the impression that the magic using classes were unbalanced, which made it a lot easier for my non-mages to be afraid of them.  Sure, they get scary eventually, when they can work unseen and bury entire cities in sand, but I bet a lot of newbie mages get randomly taken out by scrabs and gortoks before they anywhere near that point.  I think that many first-time mages experience a little disapointment with their starting abilities, disapointment that can fester into cynicism.  A rampaging tregil attacks suddenly and you have just seconds to decide if you are going to flee flee flee, do your best with weapons you suck at using, or put away your dagger and try to deal with the menace magickally before the little beast tears your unarmed PC to shreds.  The unarmed combat penalties are severe. Unless the mage is somehow hidden or unreachable, many people will take a shot at hand-to-hand combat because they know that the unarmed combat penalties are nasty, and if the mage keeps his weapon out he can't cast and _still_ sucks at hand to hand combat.  An experienced mage can spank the other classes, but he still has to be prepared and choose his ground, because a surprised mage is a dead mage.  That makes it very hard on non-gemmed because they have no safe place to cast -- they pretty much have to go to the wilderness to study and the wilderness is full of things that want to engage in close combat.

Maybe there is a middle ground.  Some MUDs don't even let a mage wield weapons except knives and staves, but I always found the message that I don't know which end to hold to be silly and artificial.  Even a bookworm could figure how to hold a sword, there is a handle and a blade, if you hold the blade you cut your hands so maybe you should try the handle.  There are other ways to limit weapons, maybe they can only cast while holding weapons that were once alive (wood, bone) or weapons that were never alive (stone, glass, metal) because the other kind interferes with channeling the magick.  Ok, that wouldn't really be much of a restriction, since both dead and non-living materials are basically the same, code-wise.  A glass knife isn't more likely to break than one made of bone, wood or flint.  Or the could be resticted to weapons under, say, a cord long, because anything bigger than disrupts the magickal field around the caster and causes the spell to fizzle.  Of course that would require someone to go through all the weapons in the database and decide which ones were the right size and which were too big.  Or maybe you would have to keep your off-hand empty, so you  could not etwo, dual wield, or use a combination of a weapon and shield -- that would free you from the unarmed penalties without giving you the chance to carry a gigantic two-handed axe while casting.  I don't know.

People run into inept newbie mages, or their scrab-raveged corpses, and this gives them the mistaken idea that mages are weak and harmless.  So they stop being afraid of mages in general.  Eventually they may run into one of the rare mages that have amassed truely frightening power and become scared of mages again, but in the mean time they are stuting around thinking most mages are pimply-faced geeks that can't hurt a kank fly.  Warriors are jocks and mages are (illiterate) nerds, and everyone knows jocks beat up nerds, that's basic high-school psychology.  The idea isn't to turn mages into crazy PK monsters, but rather to do something to make people a little more worried about them OOCly, so that their characters will be realistically worried ICly.


AC

Wow. Well put.

[Uglyhead]

I've encountered skills like this in other MUDs. In one it was called 'concentration' or something, so you could cast the spell without having to say the magic words for it. If you were some invisible assasin-mage guy you could get the drop on people better than if you just started shouting "Hocus pocus!" letting everyone know you're there and giving them time to clear out. It was kinda neat.

But anyway, a skill like that in Arm would, I believe, make magic a greater and more interesting force in the game. As it stands, The only magicker I ever tangled with was this one gemmed goober I tried to mug for a few 'sids. BIG mistake. This skill in the hands of ungemmed defilers would help keep me even more paranoid, which, in Armageddon, is good!

[jstorrie]

Jstorrie, Your one of them people that does not read docs untill you need something right? Nothing that has been said here about magick code so far is outside a 10 second search of the docs.

Where?  I searched the docs for more than ten seconds and couldn't come up with anything about it.

[Ktavialt]

Where?  I searched the docs for more than ten seconds and couldn't come up with anything about it.

Oh please... fine fine... 'general information', 'magick' under 'casting'.

"Note that the 'cast' command incurs a delay for casting time. This delay
decreases in direct proportion to your skill in the spell."

Okay okay... so maybe they didn't quite say exactly "First there's going to
be a message to everyone in the room saying you are about to cast." but
they sure add a lot more IC-ish information such as the element names,
the words of power, and so on and so forth. Arrrggh damn those IMM's
for all that IC information... damn them all to hell!!!

Starting to think your complaint's a little flimsy yet?

- Ktavialt

[jstorrie]

Starting to think your complaint's a little flimsy yet?

No.

Among the things I found out through this thread, but didn't know beforehand (and wouldn't, from the documentation):

- What the echo for a spell being cast looks like.
- Casters can't wield and cast at the same time.
- Casters can't even hold a mug and cast at the same time.
- Magick effects on players are apparently all incredibly obvious, so I don't have to feel suspicious about characters who don't have obvious visual magick effects going on.

These are important specifics that I did not beforehand, and would rather not have known.  I don't feel this complaint is 'flimsy' at all.

[Delirium]

- Magick effects on players are apparently all incredibly obvious, so I don't have to feel suspicious about characters who don't have obvious visual magick effects going on.

Hardly.

[adgohan]

The unfortunate fallout of removing casting with weapons was that a magicker lost any sort of defense bonus. It is not having much to do with the fact that they don't get combat skills.

I'm all for giving magickers the ability to wield weapons. I would at least think it's reasonable to to give them the ability to hold a shield. In every book, movie, and mythos I've ever read or seen, a mage is able to wield weapons or hold something while casting. Dalamar, Gandalf, Raistlin, hell, role a D&D mage up and give him a staff. I can understand the reasons it was taken away, but it imbalanced magickers so significantly that there is no real reason to fear them anymore. This is coming from a person who plays strictly elementalists - not because of their power, but because it is a very fun, imaginative and amazing system in the right role playing atmosphere. If I wanted to be powerful I'd play strictly rangers.

[Sir Diealot]

jstorrie... ugh.. it's common sense, as this is code discussion, we would be discussing the CODED ASPECTS of MAGICKERS in this thread ENTITLED - Idea To Spur Magicker Hatred - ..You and your kind are the reason for warning labels like 'caution, coffee is hot' or 'WARNING! BROWNIES CONTAIN CHOCOLATE'.

[X-D]

On further review of past arm and current arm, I personaly think that the probable reasons for magickers being able to wield and cast being removed no longer apply. I think the current mud can support it.

Specialy when you consider new crim code, new soldier/templar scripts
A few other things I can't mention here plus some things like combat negs for being outnumbered...I think allowing magickers to wield/hold at least a single item while casting would go a LONG way towards making them mmore feared...specialy if a skill was added making it so they could mask thier casting.

[Lazloth]

After tweaking one or two spells, my vote would be to allow.

[Vettrock]

Perhaps another idea would be to make it skill in the spell dependant.  If you are very skilled at casting wave of sauce, you could do it wielding a weapon, or maybe you could do it more discretely?

[Sir Diealot]

That was my idea Vet.. Once you got good enough in the spell you could use a word similar to 'nil' to cast is quietly, but with effect.

[Dan]

Something just came to me, why not switch the delay on spells? Not as cool as the other suggestions but I think if you casted right after typing in your spell it would go a long way towards making magickers more feared. Thoughts?

[Sir Diealot]

I like that too..but then we'll get cries of TWINK!..

Because, I mean.. the second most feared and hated thing on the planet shouldn't really have any reason behind it.. It should easily be killed by a 10 day warrior with a training knife.