I hate magickers, official thread.

[LiquidShell]

Do you? Then post here.

My personal belief is that the mud is too magick heavy, by Halaster's will they have become too powerful due to the fact that their methods enable them to become overly powerful within a few days.  If there were more methods to prevent spam casting to mon power then spamming to branch in necessity this might not be a problem, but it is.  At current mundanes shouldn't even bother playing combative characters, we should all be merchants, or magickers, because when a magicker rolls around it's one spell death time.  I do not approve of this, and I do not think the community, or staff should as well.  Thus the reason for such a redundant thread.  Once have I played one, and never again will I.

I hate magickers.

[Nile]

I hate the feeling of going into battle against a gicker, knowing there is almost no chance of winning

[Armaddict]

I don't mind them being powerful.

I just hate 'em because people who play them tend to get addicted.  And so we end up with a huge amount of magick going around all the time.

I just always wanted it...well...more rare.  But this discussion really has been done to death, and I don't really know of a solution.

Some people really enjoy playing magickers.  It's what they like.  Some people want to try them out from time to time.  Some people only play them.  It ends up with a steady population that fluxes up and down.  So sometimes it's too common, sometimes it's relatively hard to find.

My other irritation with magick...every single event going on IC always seems to involve magick so that it's nearly impossible to counter until the go ahead is given.  Mundane characters, and even other magick characters, are relatively useless unless its intended that way.  Blam, lack of control in any form sucks.

[Only He Stands There]

I'm kind of with Armaddict. I don't agree that mundanes get the shaft so much, but when it comes to PC magickers, I could stand seeing them a little more rare.

Magickers are, however, extremely easy to kill when you're in groups or if you have the drop on them. People really probably shouldn't go toe-to-toe with a magicker solo - it's a pretty stupid idea, even if you know the magicker is a brand-spanking-new PC, because you have no idea ICly what kind of crazy shit he could throw at you.

[Forest Junkie]

I'll be pithy:

1) If you hate magickers, don't play them.

2) If you're tired of dying to magickers, don't fight them.

3) Anyone who maxes a mage out in three playing days is a twink. You know it and I know it. If they have done so, I can promise you staff is onto them, and will note their accounts accordingly.

[Hot_Dancer]

I really dislike them.

It has become my experience that it's safer to suspect every new person you meet in the wilderness to be a spellcaster these days. They usually are.

Hot Dancer

[Kennath]

Magick is far over-powered. My suggestion: Make spellcasting hard. Make it so that high level spells require every bit of mana and expensive components. Wait, actually make every spell like that. Increase mana regen, and make spells sap A LOT more mana. Then one mis-spell means your fucked by the bad-ass warrior, and it prevents spam-casting.

-Ken

[manonfire]

I f*cking love magickers.

The only gripe in this thread that holds any water is that they ought to be a bit more rare.

Seriously, are you going to ambush a group of experienced, fully prepared magickers and expect to -not- get your ass handed to you?

[Agent_137]

I agree, magick should be more rare than it is, but it's not as bad as you mundanes make it out to be.

There are no maxed out 3 day 'gickers. Imfuckingpossible.

And it's just like any other class, really. Whoever gets the drop on the other has a significant advantage. Rangers have their poison and their arrows and their hiding. Honestly, you should be more fearful of an 18 day practiced ranger in the wild than some bumbling 'gicker.

I remember my magicker, I was quite intimate with his weaknesses, and quite aware of how he could be killed very easily with the right tactics.

This is not WoW. Classes are NOT balanced, nor should they be. At the same time, it's not imbalanced as you think it is, if you play your class smart.

[Medena]

I love magickers.

I've never played one, not because I didn't want to but because there were just too many other character concepts screaming at me for attention.  I am sad that I probably won't ever get to play one now.

I've never been killed by one, never even been attacked by one but they have still brought me many exciting, breath-holding, heart-pounding moments.  They bring a lot of colour to the world.

[Rothairh]

I hate these threads.

[Dresan]

I hate magickers, well not really but i dislike them. Not because they can kill me or  because i think there are too many of them or because i think they are too powerful.  The problem is my characters do encounter magickers and magick is involved in enough plots that i feel it gets old to constantly have to RP the fear. I honestly feel twinky not constantly shivering in my boots which icly is what should happen when a mundane encounters magick.

Its a natural IC/OOC feeling to be wary when dealing with magick because its so unpredicatable. The magicker could go crazy at anytime and kill everyone or you in theory. As a player and ICly as a character i have absolutely no control over the mater and that naturally sucks. This is completely okay with me though, i have no problems dealing with this.

However because of the way the IC world is set up unless i have a really good reason to interact with said magicker my RP feels limited to shivering in fear and trying to get away from said magicker as best as i can. I just wish i had more freedom to RP and interact with magickers in a variety of things/plots without feeling so twinky when i do.

[Apocalyptic_Cow]

If I had a screwdriver I loved, I'd name it Magick. I think it's absolutely fantastic Arm has this system that you can spend years learning about and playing with, and still never consider everything to be done with it. Rather than allowing you to kill better, the main focus of magick, in my opinion, is to give you tools to manipulate Arm's environment in unique and interesting ways. Magick can, and does, push many many plots, and offers many fantastic situations for RP. Sure, sometimes a player gets through that might give magick a bad rap, but I think the cases are minimal, and they usually won't be recurring.

I have never seen a magicker character who just goes around killing mundane PCs for kicks. Every instance I can think of, where a magicker has approached a mundane, they go out of their way to provide an environment for play, and not just go in to notch their belt.

The problems I have seen involve mundane characters who don't approach magick with the fear and trembling it deserves. If you see something horrific on the horizon, you'd best not approach it. If you bump into a magicker when you shouldn't have, don't look at them and draw. Don't challenge magickers to "step outside the gates". You might get hurt. You'd might also get hurt if you did any of this to a mul.

I think it's important that magick on Arm is preserved as the esoteric and harrowing thing that it is. I'd be disappointed if magickers were castrated, and magick reduced to something plowed through with minimal mess to the undies.

That said, I could do with fewer magickers in game at any given time.

[Rindan]

I don't dislike magikers.  I do not mind that magikers cane eat your children with a a wink and a smile.  I don't mind that magikers can OMFGWTFPWNED you.

What I mind about magikers is that there are just too damn many of them.  I have a pile of magikers sitting on my list that I have not yet touched just because I am more of a freak if I pick a city elf these days over a magiker.

Niether magikers, nor their power is the bother.  The bother is that if you close your eyes and point to a noble aid or guy wandering around in the wilderness, you stand a far too high of a chance of pointing to a magiker.

The player population doesn't need to match the VNPC population, but it shouldn't be turning a population that makes up a fraction of a percent of the population into something that is more common then a city elf.

So, do I hate magikers?  No.  Do I hate that everyone and their Gortok is a magiker?  Yes.

[Anael]

I so totally agree with Apocalyptic_Cow (I was about to abbreviate it to AC and it gave me a pause, heh).

I'd like a bit less magick and more characters with lame excuses for not fearing magick such as 'he is crazy' or 'he doesn't fear anything'. I saw too many people go 'hunting 'gickers' either solo, or in pairs. Hey, it's cool. This one's a newb! Bah.

Sorry to derail, but it reminds me of the vast number of players who don't seem to realize what 'castes' mean, with every other Commoner thinking they're better than all nobles united. Or, even more amusingly, thinking they're better than all PC nobles while groveling in front of any NPC.

Back on topic. How come so many mundane Commoners, even those in Tuluk, know so much about magick? Where'd the info from the supersitions page go? How come a good half of nonmagickers will flippantly tell you which magickers can cast the 'eyepoke spell'? Seriously, folks...

I'd welcome magickers to be a bit more reasonable and less trigger happy in certain situations, but then, that's something I dislike about nonmagickers as well.

[Marauder Moe]

I hate the feeling of going into battle against a gicker, knowing there is almost no chance of winning

GOOD!  Your character should feel the same way.[/i][/b]

[moab]

I retired my sorcerer.  She had 15 days of really great experience on her.  I played her for about nine calender months or so.

She had nice phat list of spells.

Yet she was so weak that she could never initiate a successful attack with out a great deal of trickery, friends and pre-planning.

Had she been in a corner, there would have been no way out except for running (magicky-style or otherwise).

Every sorc is different of course - but this was my experience.

[Cenghiz]

Most of my mages are known as mundane by all the playerbase except a few chosen few. If one plays a totally visible magicker, he's a)gemmed b)new to magick. If you're seeing magickers a lot, just give them time. They possibly don't know how to hide from population and still interact.

3 days maxing out?? There's no such thing. If there is, that means that character is doing nothing but casting.

Everything comes with a cost. Magickers cannot interact. Period. They have little means using their abilities for interaction. Of course I'm exluding tribal mages and gemmers. But both are carefully watched. If you even perform a cantrip with a gemmed, you're dead meat. If you show that you're a magicker with your tribal, I'm sure an elder animates and kills you for the good of the tribe.

Arm is a MUD and the M means 'multi'. You don't hunt bahamets alone. You don't hunt silt horrors alone. And... you don't hunt magickers alone. About the suggestion that magick should cost more mana: Magick does cost a 'lot' of mana. I can think of only two elementalist types that can kill in groups. And they're supposed to be warmages. Other elementalist types simply exhaust themselves by even killing a jozhal. Two, only two warriors mean death to most of the 'prepared' mages and to all of the unprepared mages.

Even though killing a mage is so easy, it doesn't happen often. Why? Usually the scenario is one of these:

a)A krathi and his rukkian buddy prepare carefully for an hour to be able to get away from an assault then start foraging. A dwarf jumps down from the up exit and attacks the rukkian. In miliseconds, he falls unconscious and his hp is halved.

b) At the prime of his power, elementalist A wanders in deserted lands with a magickal companion with power equal to a bahamet. Desert elf runs in, desert elf attacks, the gigantic magickal creature guards (size affects your guarding ability), swings his magickal weapons twice, then proceeds with a spell which turns the elf to ash before the player of the magicker can even respond. The magicker sighs and starts looting.

But there are succesful scenarios:

a) Ranger loads his longbow. Ranger fires arrows. Ranger changes his room and slowly sneaks into the magicker's room. The magicker - bleeding furiously with arrows - is a one hit kill for him now.

b) Three desert elves attack poor rukkian. One desert elf gets immobilized, the other two slowly kill the magicker. They wait for the immobilized desert elf to awaken, then happily go to their outposts to announce the act of bravery.

c) Desert elf steals the krathi's kank. Then they start a trick with another desert elf ally, lure the krathi to a very distant place, then attack together and dismiss the krathi so easily. (I confess, the krathi was a new character or the trick wouldn't work because of a spell)

d) Assassin watches magicker from afar, follows him to his hiding place in 'rinth. Waits till the magicker rests and then attacks using a poison. He runs away before the magicker can even cast, then watches the magicker get weakened by poison. After an IC hour of wait, he performs a second assault which causes the death of the magicker.

All these are IC events that happened.

To sum up... If you're aiming to kill the magickers alone, make a Nilazi. Then even sorcerers shiver when they see you chanting. If you're aiming to kill magickers; gangbang them or use tactics and traps. Then it'll all be fine.

*mumbles* I hate magicker hating threads.

[jhunter]

I'll be pithy:

1) If you hate magickers, don't play them.

2) If you're tired of dying to magickers, don't fight them.

3) Anyone who maxes a mage out in three playing days is a twink. You know it and I know it. If they have done so, I can promise you staff is onto them, and will note their accounts accordingly.

Agreed.

And it's just like any other class, really. Whoever gets the drop on the other has a significant advantage. Rangers have their poison and their arrows and their hiding. Honestly, you should be more fearful of an 18 day practiced ranger in the wild than some bumbling 'gicker.

True.
I've been killed many times by mundanes who just found me travelling outside the city and decided: "Well, noone's around. My character is a "raider" (I just want an excuse to pk someone because I have no intentions of letting them live no matter how cooperative they are with me.) and had them randomly jump and kill my pc with no other interaction whatsoever.
I've -never- had a magicker pc do this to me.

The problems I have seen involve mundane characters who don't approach magick with the fear and trembling it deserves. If you see something horrific on the horizon, you'd best not approach it. If you bump into a magicker when you shouldn't have, don't look at them and draw. Don't challenge magickers to "step outside the gates". You might get hurt. You'd might also get hurt if you did any of this to a mul.

Exactly, -every- time I've seen a mundane killed by a magicker it's because the dumbass brought it upon themselves by either attacking on sight or not leaving the area when the magicker gave them fair warning to: "Get out of here or it's gonna be bad for you."
It's like going and trying to poke a mekillot with a stick (knowing how dangerous they are), getting killed by it and then blaming the mekillot.

I have never seen a magicker character who just goes around killing mundane PCs for kicks. Every instance I can think of, where a magicker has approached a mundane, they go out of their way to provide an environment for play, and not just go in to notch their belt.

I have never seen this either. I've only died once to a magicker and it was when I was playing one myself and had done something to give them cause to want me dead. I was given a pretty interesting death scene as well.

Then one mis-spell means your fucked by the bad-ass warrior, and it prevents spam-casting.

Your badass warrior should be too afraid for his life and the lives of his family and friends to -ever- go take on a magicker by himself. And if you don't believe one mis-spell can mean your magicker is fucked by almost -any- mundane (much less a badass warrior) then you quite obviously don't have much experience with magick.
I have lost a few magickers to a single spell failing at a bad time.

3 days maxing out?? There's no such thing. If there is, that means that character is doing nothing but casting.

Right on the money there and with your whole post Cenghiz. It's pretty close to things I've seen and experienced regarding magick.

[Hot_Dancer]

Since magickers got stronger, they've absolutely dominated 90% of outside influence on my characters. This means a lot of boring, programmed, absolutely helpless to the situation roleplay.

Funny, this was never a case before Halaster gave them teeth.

Proof is in the pudding folks, people are only defending them because they were given a class option massively more powerful than the regular options.

It's currently only viable to play a non-spellcasting character that might enjoy any sort of dangerous conflict in the city, even then it'll probably be dominated by magickally based characters and your role will be minimalized again to a speck of dust.

I'm not interested in magical roleplay at all due to the totally overdone experiences I've run into in the last few years, but just to enjoy Arm on a reasonable playing field I've ended up considering my own elementalist options.

I definitely miss before magickers got their teeth, then you knew your character had a reasonable chance to affect an encounter without having a mana stat. The only things keeping me from hiatus til Armageddon 2 right now is a staff that's been beautifully active in my area of play and a clan that has managed to keep and attract a reasonable number of well-played characters.

*Voted hate but it may be because he got called in early to work*

[Tarx]

I've never seen an uber-maxed-out-in-three-days magicker.  From my experiences playing this guild, it's exceptionally hard to do that.

[BuNutzCola]

Since I know some of this is spurned off a recent event, while yes magickers are powerful, pretty much the entire reason for losing can be chalked up to not having used an ability that every character in the game starts with.

Pretty much, go against magickers without a well thought out plan, and you're going to lose. Same is with any class really, assassins after a good while can wreck someone quite well, but if they don't plan and prepare for it, there's a good chance they are going to get their asses handed to them.

And don't even get me started on the wonders of delf rangers and their bows vs any non delf race in general.

[jhunter]

Proof is in the pudding folks, people are only defending them because they were given a class option massively more powerful than the regular options

That's a completely bullshit thing to say and you've just lost -every- ounce of respect I once had for you for saying it.

Sounds to me like you're only saying it because you think that mundane pcs should be out there hunting down and killing magickers solo. Used to do it before (even though it has been said several times that this should -rarely- if -ever- happen) You're likely one of the people that are the cause of them having to be given more teeth codedly.
(Only put that in there to show how dickheaded that statement you made was and can be said in reverse.)

How would you have liked it if the discussion was about desert elves and I popped in and made a statement that -everyone- who likes desert elves and plays them consistently just do it because they're a bunch of pgaming/pk'ing twinks? Actually, through my experiences I've been pk'ed randomly by delves a whole shitload more times while travelling outside with -any- pc. There you have it folks, desert elves are overpowered and I -hate- them.  :roll:

I've had exactly the opposite experience. There has been absolutely -zero- increase in my magicker encounters with mundane pcs since they were given teeth. Why? Because I didn't go looking for them, I stayed away from places that they hear they may be lurking. Huh, pretty much the same way I played it before they were given teeth.

Codedly, a magicker can actually be killed by almost -any- mundane pc. If you aren't stupid about it and you disregard the fact that you should almost -never- typically be trying to kill them by yourself as far as the gameworld is concerned.

[jhunter]

Heh, it's funny because I've seen this several times throughout the last few years.

"Let's go over to this secret cave out west here."

"Nay, I hear there's a dangerous magicker lurking around there."

"Well, I'm gonna go check it out for <insert whatever lame excuse to ignore any fear of magick here>"

"It's your funeral pyre. I'm heading the opposite direction"

*Guy ends up dead or attacked by magicker and narrowly surviving -after- having ran into and ignore warnings by magicker or just ran up and attacked it.*

*Same player posts on the board about how magickers are overpowered and the magicker players are all twinks, hates magickers, etc.*

*I laugh like a madman at the stupidity of people.*

It's like those scenes in some movies where a character heads down a path ignoring repeated HUGE signs saying that way leads to certain death, etc and ends up dying.

[Hot_Dancer]

I've never had a pc killed by a magicker other than a templar on the warpath with a following of half-giants.