Magick in game.

[Cenghiz]

Why is 'many magickers' hurting the game?
Because they can kill easily? Bah.. A ranger, a warrior, an assassin or a templar may also kill you easily. With my player chars I often avoid conflict.. If there's a hooded figure in 'very far', it's often wise to simply change your route and head elsewhere. I don't think elementalists kill in swarms. (Sorcerers, in the other hand, get forced to.. I'll explain.)
An elementalist may become something powerful that can kill groups with ease but.. What's the use in that? Often having some wine, a good lover of opposite sex and friends to chatter is more fun.
I'm often hearing about people wanting to press more on mages. That nerves me a bit. I often play magickers, if everyone starts attacking my newbie mage in the desert, he'll retire to his temple/cave and won't leave before branching the spell of doom. The pressure won't make him disappear. He'll just wait for his time and spare 3 hours to practice instead of 15 mins because he cannot do anything else without being attacked.
There are more uber-mages, because the pressure is stronger right now. I remember, with my first mage, I hardly ever branched a spell.. (No I'm lying, I branched twice in his 20-days of playing time if I remember right.) Because he needn't branch. He would go do some mundane jobs to make a living and spend the rest of his time to interact. His plot was always something peaceful - first was making a perfect set of izdari of granite and jasper, then he seeked people knowing izdari, then he took interest in warmages' wisdom, not to become more powerful, but to become wiser.
Now, any magicker of mine gets employed, then he needs to up his skills to be of use.. Or he does not get employed then he needs to up his skills to stay alive in the desert. I know any warrior who managed to kill a beetle will try his chance (I'm not exaggarating, forgive me but too many very very very very inexperienced warriors have attacked my magickers who learned to become the hell itself)
Let's imagine the pressure became even stronger. It's nearly impossible to interact with an ungemmed person. Then, all crafting subguilds would go 'poof' at first.. Don't think any mage around likes hoarding coins by woodworking or stonecrafting. If that doesn't let you interact, a subguild is useless to me. Bard? Linguist? Bah.. All gemmers would start becoming scavengers/hunters/thugs etc. The amount of more agreessive mages would increase dramatically. Currently, as far as I know there are only <a number which is really low> mages who can be called a warmage around Allanak. But if you can interact only with sharpened wood, bone or obsidian, why to make class X which's rather used for spying purposes? No mage would dare setting foot outside before branching X, then Y, then Z just in case. And then... sorrily I don't think a battle - even a very well emoted battle - is not good RP if you immobilize your victim in moments. It's not even RP. It's the clash of skills consisting of '0's and '1's for a brief moment only.
I will never stop playing mages. I play rangers, merchants and mages, so since I got my first karma 33% of my chars are mages. Press mages harder, I will have to make more agreessive mages - a lot of people will have to and there will be more mages with auras of invulnerability killing first, asking questions later.
As I tried to persuade the playerbase many times in past posts, mages should have a use. That'll make the game high-fantasy? So be it. Everything evolves including games. It's for sure better than a gameworld where you come across three suk-krathis and then die to an elkran in one single day. Let them find pearls for you and then spend the money getting drunk instead of getting forced to kill three PCs including yours on their way to foraging a bit of granite and finding out raiding is much more profitable.
.....
So, the choice belongs to the playerbase. They try to find uses for mages where it's possible - of course Tuluk's remaining 'no no' to mages is good for the game, there should be tasks for mages hard to accomplish like foraging branches for Allanaki merchants - and mages will manage to show their mundane personality drinking, playing Kruth or izdari and seeking lovers, or they become harsher on mages and all mages will become invincible by raw power and/or politics.

[amoeba]

This topic does seem to be wandering a bit.  On the topic of sorcerors, any class can be killed, including a sorceror.  Even sorcerors have their weak moments.  You could easily argue that Tempars are amoung the most powerful magical classes out there, yet they die right and left.  I am not equating sorcerors with templars, yet there are corollaries you can draw from compairing them.  The difference I see is one of access.  A templar is always around, always availible to be watched and plotted against.  A sorceror on the other hand pops in, does his thing and dissapears back to his nice comfy hiddy hole, or worse yet, infrequently logs in.  This makes it near impossible to plot against one with any degree of predictablity.  

On the issue of how much they affect the game, I would argue that it is not near as much as is stated.  When I play a mundane, oocly I have little or no concern about a sorc ruining my day, much less whacking my character. I just haven't seen it happen.  The people at risk from sorcerors are those people in a position to be a risk to them, namly up and coming magickers.  Like was stated, they are the highest karma possible characters, are sorcerors really out of hand? I just don't see the problem.

[Intrepid]

I've had an elementalist pc kill a sorc before.

And I know my psi could have killed a sorc.

Anyone can die to another pc--sorcs aren't invincible.

[Hot_Dancer]

I'm mostly with LoD on this..

I'm definitely of the opinion that mageling characters should have a hard time, a very hard time considering the level of power that's available to them.

HotDancer

[Agent_137]

Straw-man? What is that?

here's a real answer:

a straw man argument is when some one takes the concept your talking about, twists it into something different and more easily defeated, and then defeats it. Using outlandish examples only slightly related to the original concept is an example of this, though this case is also related to the logical fallacy of "non sequitur" for  "does not follow."

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lilyth/strawman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29

I suggested this:
We are here to have fun.
PC-centric plots involve more PCs than non-PC-centric.
When PCs are involved, they are having fun.
Therefore: we should have more pc-centric plots so that we have more fun.

CRW suggested this:
We are here to have fun.
Playing a sorc is fun.
When PCs are playing sorcs, they are having fun.
Therefore: we should all be sorcs!!

So while the logical fallacy is non sequitur, it's setting up his strawman argument against having more PC centric plots.


And of course, this whole thing is a derail, which is why I didn't retort to CRW, i just wanted to explain the concepts since runningmountain asked and got silly responses.

and apologies to any Philosophy majors who have even more precise definitions of these concepts, I've only got enough to minor in it.

[Maybe42or54]

Last RPT I was in, only one fricken Pc died. And it was because of magick. So I don't like it. I loved that PC.

On the note of this thread though, I have heard of, or seen a possible 7 magickers. These ones didn't look too weak also.

[Delirium]

One of my most long-lived characters (150 days played) died an emoteless, brutal and quick death to a mage.  Yet I have absolutely no problems with how powerful they are, or the proliferation (or lack thereof) of mages.

See, the thing is, everyone, no matter how well established, skilled, or cunning has a match out there somewhere, NPC or PC.  That's one of the things I like about Armageddon, and one of the things I think it's important to learn to accept.  Yes, you sink a lot of time and effort into creating a PC and get very attatched to them, but the important part is the journey, not the destination - play your character to the hilt while you have them, and enjoy the fond memories when they are finally gone.

Everyone dies in Armageddon.  Get used it.

[X-D]

Hurry up, somebody Archive Delirium's post.

No joke, I feel exactly the same way.

[Agent_137]

Twenty 'sid says Delirium makes the strongest magicker her karma will allow, now.

[RunningMountain]

Sure, everyone dies, Delirium. Thanks for letting us know about that. At least you made it to 150 days. Who cares if a character living that long died? You had your time and lived long enough, it's those who are just starting out, and can't get a nose in front of surviving because of magick.  They take the worst of it.

[Agent_137]

they should join a clan, then, that way they can die to magickers when they're middle-aged and successful, what you termed as "long enough."

[Delirium]

Twenty 'sid says Delirium makes the strongest magicker her karma will allow, now.

Bzzt.  

Thanks for the twenty sid.

[Larrath]

Twenty 'sid says Delirium makes the strongest magicker her karma will allow, now.

Bzzt.  

Thanks for the twenty sid.

Psionicist.

[RunningMountain]

they should join a clan, then, that way they can die to magickers when they're middle-aged and successful, what you termed as "long enough."

Unfortunately, this seems to be the only solution that would work. Clans tend to barf out some pretty long lived successful PCs.

[bloodfromstone]

Delirium's point is a good one. It's something I had to go through when my first beloved character died. Anyway, yes, there are lots of magickers everywhere. I play an outdoors, non-clanned character, and I've yet to have one blow me apart. It might happen tomorrow. Great. My 'rinthi PC died to an almost insta-kill backstab from another PC. There's a lot of assassins in the 'rinth and it's just a matter of time before they blow people away. We've all had character's get scooped up and mercilessly killed by a templar or deemed to die by some noble house's militia, too. It's all the same. If people want to play magickers, I don't really see the beef. There's a lot of magickers out there. Fair enough to say you don't like this fact, but I really wouldn't expect it to change, nor would I assume anyone who disagrees with you is playing high karma magickers.

[Folker]

About three years or four years ago, when I began playing, I created a verry verry boring warrior character. It did a lot of crappy shit, he hunted in the 'rinth, etc etc. I was a total newb, even more then I am now. But then suddenly and for no clear reason, a templar walked in and pretty much force initiated the chara into the Dragon's Arm. Literally, my warrior was sitting in Trader's Inn chatting with some aid, a Templar walked inn, asked me if I wanted to be a member of the militia, then tossed me the cloak and recruited me. Then he told me that I must be ready for a war and walked off. That's it ... it took me a few hours to realize there's a templar's quarters somewhere in Allanak.

The reason this happened is not because my roleplay was so superb, the Templar went outside of recruiting procedures, to recruit my chara, the true reason was that there was an upcoming war between 'Naki and Tuluki war, and Templarate was gathering every able bodied pc to toss it into their massive RPT.

Well, I missed the RPT, I didnt intentionally log off or anything, I just ... didnt login for a couple of days, and when I did log in, my chara was the 'only' dragon's arm pc alive. I came up with some story about being ordered to walk around the villages, gathering recruits and missing the war. But my chara AND me as controller, were riddled with a severe case of survivor's guilt. I regretted, and still regret missing that RPT even though I 'KNEW', it would cause the chara's death. Anyway, I was a newb, so I jumped off the shield wall because I could no longer endure that warrior's continued existence. Even though he was 'in' the shit, nobody to supervise him, absolute twink, cool crimflag abilities. Everyone coming to me for favors, afterall ... I was the only militia man around. And the Templar didnt bother telling me there are some kind of special militia docs or whatever. There was no GDB then.

After that chara I quit for a long long while. Got back only like ... half a year ago tops.

[RunningMountain]

What does that have to do with anything, Folker?

[Folker]

It has to do with a notion of logging off from RPTs, aswell as magical RPTs not being worth it if it's almost guaranteed that their PCs will die to a bunch of NPCs. The fact is, that I knew that if I attented the RPT, my chara would die, and I still regretted miserably that I missed it. I am positive it will be the same for the majority. Yes, you may think that this rpt that got your PC killed was not worthy of the time spent on that PC, but I'm sure you'll regret missing that RPT, even if it saved your PC.

[LauraMars]

Ruh roh.  Battle of the titans.

Be nice, guys.

Personally, I like being chased by defilers.  It adds spice and flavor to my day.  I would be very happy to be chased by defilers every day of the week.  And I like getting lost in sandstorms (well, no).

[jstorrie]

After a while it can get to feel like everyone is on an equal footing in Zalanthas. If you know the right strings to pull, it's almost impossible to get yourself killed by a templar (unless you're a defiler or tried to kill him or whatever.) This sort of homogeneity gets dull. I don't want to play a game where everyone's on the same level, or at least in reach of everyone else's level - that's not Zalanthian.

Magickers can be the ultimate un-leveller of playingfield. If you're not a top magicker PC yourself, there's next to nothing you can personally do to stop a top magicker from taking you out. That sort of ultimate dread is good.

[John]

Unfortunately, this seems to be the only solution that would work. Clans tend to barf out some pretty long lived successful PCs.

IMO mostly because they have rules basically amount to "Don't be stupid, stupid!"

[Anonymous]

IMO mostly because they have rules basically amount to "Don't be stupid, stupid!"

Heh. What are the three quickest ways for a lowbie to guarantee her own death in/near Allanak?
- Leave the city without a buff, experienced escort.
- Screw around in the 'rinth.
- Break the law.

What are the three things most clans forbid, to the disgust of many new players?  ...

[FightClub]

Delirium's point is a good one. It's something I had to go through when my first beloved character died. Anyway, yes, there are lots of magickers everywhere. I play an outdoors, non-clanned character, and I've yet to have one blow me apart. It might happen tomorrow. Great. My 'rinthi PC died to an almost insta-kill backstab from another PC. There's a lot of assassins in the 'rinth and it's just a matter of time before they blow people away. We've all had character's get scooped up and mercilessly killed by a templar or deemed to die by some noble house's militia, too. It's all the same. If people want to play magickers, I don't really see the beef. There's a lot of magickers out there. Fair enough to say you don't like this fact, but I really wouldn't expect it to change, nor would I assume anyone who disagrees with you is playing high karma magickers.

Yeah that said, I come to realize it's truth, magickers are no less twinked then nobles using their half-giant guards to subdue people.  It's just another insta death ability given to trusted players.  Sure magickers can be abused, like npc guards can be abused.  Yeah at times there are too many, other times not enough.  Balance is great, but it's hard to come by.  So yeah I guess once again I must concede to let it happen, until I make my uber buffed drov elementalist and blow you all to hell.

[Ghost]

There is no comparison between a templar and sorcerer, or noble and sorcerer.

Sure a templar has a lot of way to kill you if he wants.  But he is restricted.  He is inside of the city walls, he has politics to attend to etc.

Same as a noble.  They have a lot to do beside going around subduing people and killing them.  I never heard of a noble actually running around getting people subdued anyway.  That would cost them more than you would think.

But a sorcerer?  What does a sorcerer have to do?  They do not have to attend to politics.  They do not have problem with being low on coin, they do not have problem with anything at all.  And now, what differs them from all other pcs is that, they have a world filled with people who would have them killed, and also, they have enough power to blow all those "I-hate-you, you-should-die" people up.  

I am with LoD in this, that I do not like high magick beings, or RPTs formed around that.  Like a year ago, there was a nice RPT involving a group of raiders to hold a fortress of Allanak.  It was a low scale and it was an AWESOME idea to do something like that.  A templar at that time was hiring up people to make an assault to take the fortress back.  There were people hired to blow the front gate of the fortress and people to fight their way in afterwards.  That was one good example of nearly no magick RPT.

Or three years ago, when I was still a newbie I remember there were some RPTs, or plots happening with little to no magick in them.  There were active raider groups, and everytime Byn goes out for an escort trip, it would mean meeting with one of the raider groups.

Anyway.  As I said, I am with LoD in this.  I would take any low magick RPT over a high magick one.  Though I do not know if there are too many sorcerers or not (I have not encountered), I would actually like the idea to make them NPC only and never be in the heat of things (such as Tektolness), or at least, I would like to see them special app only.  But that is just me.

[moab]

But a sorcerer?  What does a sorcerer have to do?  They do not have to attend to politics.  They do not have problem with being low on coin, they do not have problem with anything at all.  ...  they have enough power to blow all those "I-hate-you, you-should-die" people up.  

Ghost, as much as I love you, man, you are wrong on this.