Reflexive Magik

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Well, I'd like to see them become permanently blind

That would be -horrifically- OOCly incosiderate to the player. How would you liked to see 'You are blinded!' every time you try to do something? Basically, permanent blindness would cause a player's enjoyment to plummet, and any player affected by it would likely store their character. And storing characters is icky-bad.

Other than that, some of your ideas are quite nice. I espicially like the bit about the torture devices; a fine idea. There's more than whips to torture, people.

[Crazed Krathi]

That would be -horrifically- OOCly incosiderate to the player. How would you liked to see 'You are blinded!' every time you try to do something? Basically, permanent blindness would cause a player's enjoyment to plummet, and any player affected by it would likely store their character. And storing characters is icky-bad.

This is the point.  It is very mean and dangerous.  Blind is merely one aspect and if a player were suddenly confronted with that possibility... well, you'll see a lot of "Oh my God! it's a magicker, RUN! RUN! RUN!"

The other aspect is - while it would be a permanent affect it could be cured with great difficulty.  There are in game mechanisms to allow this.

It'd be up to the player to decide if they wanted to continue playing their character, but the possibility is there.

Anyway, blindness is but one outcome and potentially the worst one which is why I used it as an example.  And it is just an example.  The entire goal is to make the player fearful of messing with a magicker.  Until a player fears it - it won't carry over for long in the game.

[Kankman]

When I first read Rindan's idea I liked it quite a bit. As the thread continued, I still leaned on his side, but I think Tlaloc sumed it all up quite well. Rather than making coded reasons people should fear magick, and torture, the general masses should tighten their belts and tuck in their shirts, rp-wise.

The last time one of my characters was tortured, one of the first things I did was email the mud account with a summary of what went on and a small description revision. I took it as a great opportunity to add a permanent affliction to my character, something they would always take with them. If my character was put into a "bone cruncher of doom" and took a loss to my strength, it would have felt a little less personal. Sure my character would be injured, but I -could- still ignore it in my roleplay, so it doesn't solve the problem to make the change.

As far as magickers go, we really just need to act afraid of them. Somehow. If typing "east;kill magicker;get all corpse" is an OOC reaction, then let me provide an OOC reason to not do so. Often times magickers are special applications, that take a chunk of time to pass though. People put a great deal of thought into these characters, and when they are killed quickly without any RP it sucks just that little bit more.

It bothers me to no end when I see magickers sitting at the bar in un-named taverns being wholeheartedly accepted by those around them. Yuck. Where's the fun in that? Where's the conflict? Those fuckers are outcasts of society for a reason. Now if you've decided acting offensively to them is a stupid idea, good for you, that's right. However, there's no reason that a bit of fearful, or at least nervous behavior can't escape you. Its good.


Non-leathal conflict is good.

[Marauder Moe]

Perhaps instead of giving magickers something to make them more dangerous, give them things so that they can be less?  I'm talking about flavor spells.  Little mostly-benign curses and such.  Vivaduan might make you sweat a lot, making you thirsty and/or sweat-staining your clothes.  Krathi might give you a burning itch between your toes.  A whiran could make you belch a lot.  And so on.

On a side note, perhaps mild diseases should be randomly coded as well?  It would help keep people from assuming that -every- time they get sick its a magick curse.

[Anonymous]

This single act will increase the player's fear of attacking a caster (no one wants to put their char in that kind of jeapordy) or of torture and you'll start seeing responses that everyone would like to see. The players have to fear attacking magickers. Most people simply can't maintain a 'fear of magickers' ICly if they've actually encountered a bunch and not only survived but kicked ass.

The moment that it happens that one can kill a magicker and still walk away permanently affected in a negative manner is the moment that players will start hesitating about attacking a caster.

This is OOC info and should -not- be determining how all your chars react to magickers, either way.
I've had a char struck deaf through magick...as far as I know it was permanent, it lasted over 2mnths IC and it was removed....by the char's death. Had he live longer he would've probably gone out of his way to never be anywhere near a magicker again...because of IC experience (having himself gained a normal fear of magick to an absolute terror of it). Not any OOC decision on my part.
I'm not going to let that experience as a player change how I play every char since then, I'm going to make my role, stick to it and watch them go through changes because of things -they- experience.

They will have the fear of magick to a greater or lesser degree depending upon the char, everyone shouldn't have to fit one carbon-copy mold of a specific degree of fear, how people react to fear depends on the person.

[slipshod]

I still think too much is being made of magicker offense.  That's not what this is about.  The proposed ability is not designed to give an edge to mages, but take an unfair one away from the others.

Think of what a reflex is, and why it's appropriate for a spellcaster to have one.  The are people who are constantly.. consciously controlling their associated element.  They can lose that control, and being attacked is a good catalyst.  Imagine a cool and collected Japanese businessman walking down the street.  This guy is all work, no play.  Solid as a rock.
Then a piano falls from the top of the highrise he is walking by.  He looks up.  He screams.  Same thing with a Krathi who has a club swinging at his head.  He momentarily looses the control he always keeps on himself, and poof... someone's got singed nosehairs.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps instead of giving magickers something to make them more dangerous, give them things so that they can be less?  I'm talking about flavor spells.  Little mostly-benign curses and such.  Vivaduan might make you sweat a lot, making you thirsty and/or sweat-staining your clothes.  Krathi might give you a burning itch between your toes.  A whiran could make you belch a lot.  And so on.

On a side note, perhaps mild diseases should be randomly coded as well?  It would help keep people from assuming that -every- time they get sick its a magick curse.

You know, I really like this idea.  Imagine if each magicker was given a 'curse' type spell whose effects would be, at worst, similar to a really annoying but non-lethal poison.

The flip side would be that it would become bothersome to players after a while if someone was cursing them every 24 hours with some spell that made them automatically emoting out nasty fart.  So maybe make it require a rare or expensive component or something.

Either way, just wanted to say I liked this idea.

[Ueda]

I still think too much is being made of magicker offense.  That's not what this is about.  The proposed ability is not designed to give an edge to mages, but take an unfair one away from the others.
Same thing with a Krathi who has a club swinging at his head.  He momentarily looses the control he always keeps on himself, and poof... someone's got singed nosehairs.

I don't understand what your trying to say in here.

[flurry]

I was thinking about Tlaloc's post and this question came to mind:  realistically, wouldn't PCs who are "exceptions" in that they are mostly fearless about solo combat with mages also be relatively fearless about combat with other terrifying things?    In other words, if you play someone who would boldly solo-attack a magiker, wouldn't it be unrealistic to have them back down from solo-combat with a silt horror?

Maybe a silly question, but just a thought.

[Malifaxis]

Ueda the highly confused wrote:

I don't understand what your trying to say in here.

Okay, think of it like this.  Think of the magicker as a high powered martial artist like Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee is sitting at a bar, drinking (we'll not get in to a 'Bruce Lee didn't drink' arguement here, this is an example).  He's with a few friends, talking and laughing and chilling, getting a bit tipsy.

Lets say you decided, for some INSANE reason to go up and fuck with Bruce Lee.  Now, you've heard of Bruce Lee.  You know Bruce Lee can punch STRAIGHT THROUGH YOUR SKULL.  Or break all your ribs.  Or tie your legs in knots.  Or uppercut you and put your head through the hoop from the 3 point line.  By all rights, you should be SCARED TO FUCK of ever even seeing Bruce Lee frown within 50 feet of you... but you're a twink IRL, so you decide to calculate the facts.  Bruce Lee is drunk (decreasing his hit/dam rolls).  Bruce Lee is talking (decreasing his chance to see your emotive of walking through the bar towards him).  Bruce Lee is sitting (meaning if you hit him, you do more damage).  So you grab your weapons (broken bottle, wielded primary, and a flagon wielded in the off hand).

Now, Bruce Lee was very against the idea of hurting people that were just being random fucks, because they were just random fucks and he could kill the entire population of india within five minutes if they all came rushing at him... and he knew it.  So he held back unless he was in a match.  BUT, you catch him off guard...  you go up, and you somehow manage to surprise him (gotta love those modifiers), you swing in with your bottle, and you scrape him on the shoulder.  Bruce Lee, BEFORE HE CAN THINK ABOUT WHAT HE IS DOING, *reacts* to the assault.  He spins, ties both your arms in knots, breaks all of your ribs, shoves both your legs up through your urethra, and punches your head off and through the uprights half a football field away.  If Bruce Lee had known you were coming, he would have simply batted your attack away, and embarrassed you in some non-lethal manner.

Bruce Lee had immense amounts of martial power, and had to have *insane* self control to not break everyone who surprised him in a physical manner.  Just like if you surprised a krathian, who has to constantly keep his inner fire under wraps, that most likely there would be some crazy backlash that would make your head explode.  Or make all the bottles in the bar boil.

Please, for the love of Tektolnes, tell me you understood that, Ueda.

[Supreme Allah]

I love Rindan's suggestion and Malifaxis' example.

At least from my experience, it seems that any other combat class can from day 1 butcher pretty much any unprepared magicker in seconds. This is not to say that magickers are completely vulnerable - some more experienced ones may indeed be able to fend off the newbiest of warriors. But even then, this magicker will take hideous wounding and require insane reaction speed to type out that lengthy magickal phrase without dying in the delay it takes to actually get that spell off. Also, keep in mind that not every magicker's needed reaction can be solved with the use of a nifty alias simply due to targeting purposes.

I play off my characters' fear of magickers as much as possible, but that doesn't change the fact that virtually any of my characters could probably have gutted every magicker they ever came across. Though magickers may have the ability to hold their own when fighting under their own terms, the sheer speed and lethality of an armed warrior vs an unarmed other doesn't allow your average Joe Magicker even a split-second of error against Joe Bynner. I do feel that Rindan's suggestion, or something similar to it, would solve this.

I simply don't feel that the current code is totally consistent with the world of Zalanthas. The common folk fear magickers, but codewise, any moron with a pointy stick could cut the vast majority of them down in seconds.

While it'd be nice to just go with Tlaloc's suggestion and have everyone shiver or shift their weight when a Krathi walks in - few if any ever having the nerve to challenge them - the unfortunate fact is that until players have a reason to believe it isn't so, you're going to see the aforementioned morons with pointy sticks being the bane of magickers for ages to come.

[Kankman]

I love Rindan's suggestion and Malifaxis' example.

At least from my experience, it seems that any other combat class can from day 1 butcher pretty much any unprepared magicker in seconds.

I don't think magickers are intended as combat classes.

[spawnloser]

It doesn't matter if they can't hold their own in hand to hand...they should still be able to unleash their element and a reflexive release as per the above examples would make sense.  You know how you blink when something comes at your eyes?  That's a reflex.  Unleashing the element when a sword is coming at your eyes?  Why couldn't that be a reflex?

[Supreme Allah]

Although I feel you overanalyzed three words of my post, Kankman, I refer you to this, just as an example:

More than any other mage, sun elementalists are employed for purposes of combat. Although the elementalist him or herself may have certain goals in mind for their life, the fact remains that sun elementalists can do only one thing well, and that is to slay with the heat of the Sun.

Magickers shouldn't be able to fight in the traditional sense, no. I agree with you there I suppose.

But at least one appears to have his magicks very combat-oriented. Despite this, this one particular type of magicker as well as all of the others could be killed in a split second due to something as minute as a typo or just slow typing speed. And again, even if he were experienced enough (likely 10-20 days at least) to prevail in making the other guy - who could, as I said before, be the newbiest of warriors - flee or burn to crispy little bits, he would walk away very close to death, himself.

[slipshod]

Spawnloser sed, "why wouldn't it be a reflex?"


It would be a reflex.

I think some people are still coming at this from the pretense that it would be an offensive reflex, when by the very nature of the suggestion, it is defensive.

Even if it is magick in a combat situation, it doesn't have to be seen as an offensive boon

-edited to show what the first line was in response to, since that poster above me got his submitted before mine, and made mine look sad ):[/quote]

[slipshod]

I realize that it was a rhetorical question, and I misquoted it.. but I'm so hungry.

[Ueda]

Ueda the highly confused wrote:

I don't understand what your trying to say in here.

Okay, think of it like this.  Think of the magicker as a high powered martial artist like Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee is sitting at a bar, drinking (we'll not get in to a 'Bruce Lee didn't drink' arguement here, this is an example).  He's with a few friends, talking and laughing and chilling, getting a bit tipsy.

Lets say you decided, for some INSANE reason to go up and fuck with Bruce Lee.  Now, you've heard of Bruce Lee.  You know Bruce Lee can punch STRAIGHT THROUGH YOUR SKULL.  Or break all your ribs.  Or tie your legs in knots.  Or uppercut you and put your head through the hoop from the 3 point line.  By all rights, you should be SCARED TO FUCK of ever even seeing Bruce Lee frown within 50 feet of you... but you're a twink IRL, so you decide to calculate the facts.  Bruce Lee is drunk (decreasing his hit/dam rolls).  Bruce Lee is talking (decreasing his chance to see your emotive of walking through the bar towards him).  Bruce Lee is sitting (meaning if you hit him, you do more damage).  So you grab your weapons (broken bottle, wielded primary, and a flagon wielded in the off hand).

Now, Bruce Lee was very against the idea of hurting people that were just being random fucks, because they were just random fucks and he could kill the entire population of india within five minutes if they all came rushing at him... and he knew it.  So he held back unless he was in a match.  BUT, you catch him off guard...  you go up, and you somehow manage to surprise him (gotta love those modifiers), you swing in with your bottle, and you scrape him on the shoulder.  Bruce Lee, BEFORE HE CAN THINK ABOUT WHAT HE IS DOING, *reacts* to the assault.  He spins, ties both your arms in knots, breaks all of your ribs, shoves both your legs up through your urethra, and punches your head off and through the uprights half a football field away.  If Bruce Lee had known you were coming, he would have simply batted your attack away, and embarrassed you in some non-lethal manner.

Bruce Lee had immense amounts of martial power, and had to have *insane* self control to not break everyone who surprised him in a physical manner.  Just like if you surprised a krathian, who has to constantly keep his inner fire under wraps, that most likely there would be some crazy backlash that would make your head explode.  Or make all the bottles in the bar boil.

Please, for the love of Tektolnes, tell me you understood that, Ueda.

I still don't see why you think the code doesn't give a magiker a fighting chance against a warrior!

[Gorobei]

It doesn't.  I'll tell you a story.
My brother made his first character, a warrior.  He wandered around, exploring, killing rats and the occasional hooded figure for a while.  He liked to use the temples as resting areas at this point, by the way.  One time he walks into the temple (Ruk, I think) at half hp and notices three characters he's never seen there before.  He managed to kill two of the PCs (the other one ran away).

I've never made a warrior PC, but I'm fairly sure they're not -that- overpowered.

[Ueda]

At least from my experience, it seems that any other combat class can from day 1 butcher pretty much any unprepared magicker in seconds.

Though magickers may have the ability to hold their own when fighting under their own terms, the sheer speed and lethality of an armed warrior vs an unarmed other doesn't allow your average Joe Magicker even a split-second of error against Joe Bynner. I do feel that Rindan's example, or something similar to it, would solve this.

I simply don't feel that the current code is totally consistent with the world of Zalanthas. The common folk fear magickers, but codewise, any moron with a pointy stick could cut the vast majority of them down in seconds.

"from day 1 butcher pretty much any unprepared magicker in seconds. "

All I have to say is the vast majority of magikers I've ran into or heard about could kill someone attacking them like that!

[Malifaxis]

Awesome Allah wrote:

At least from my experience, it seems that any other combat class can from day 1 butcher pretty much any unprepared magicker in seconds.

Slipshod wrote:

The proposed ability is not designed to give an edge to mages, but take an unfair one away from the others.

Crazed Krathi wrote:

People don't fear anything in the game that does not affect their character's permanently. I offer kudos to those who actually act with fear and the like - but the vast majority of people don't fear a damned thing that won't kill them.

Slipshod (who is infinitely wise) added:

Even if it has its origins in OOC, the fact remains that most people aren't as intimidated by magick as they should be.. again because of the knowledge that initiating combat before they can cast strongly increases your chance of success. And the argument that a casting alias is up to par with 'hit' or 'kill' doesn't really pan out. Even if the magicker begins to cast his/her spell before the fighter attacks, there is a brief delay before the spell is actually delivered.... vs. no delay for typing hit or kill.

ubeRindan quipped:

Newbie or ancient magiker, there is a set formula for killing one, and it pretty much revolves around attacking when they have no spells up.

Spawnloser wrote, in 12 point french font:

Why can't a magicker get off something that is so second nature to them to defend themselves?

ShaLeah wisely intoned:

Whenever combat is initiated, no matter if you're a warrior, thief, assassin, merchant, psi or anything else, the code causes your character to dodge/weave/exchange blows with your opponent, that's a gimme, you defend yourself. How feasable is it to be so shocked you lose control of the element you have only the barests of controls upon anyway? Very, in my opinion.

I'm going to stop quoting now, becaue the game just came up, and end it with this:

The reason that I believe that an unprepared magicker does not have a fighting chance against a newbie warrior is due to the incredibly simple fact that THEY DONT HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE AGAINST A NEWBIE WARRIOR IF THEY ARE NOT PREPARED.

A prep'd magicker MAY have a chance of survival, depending on the type of mage and the spells he or she has active at the moment, and also the aliases they have.  MAY.  But probably not.

Tell you what, Ueda... if you want proof, you play a magicker, you PM me when you hit the 10-15 day mark.  I'll find a newbie warrior, hire a hit out on you, and YOU WILL DIE.  (this is a completely farsical statement, I would not do so because it's insanely OOC, but I'm getting tired of arguing this because it seems so completely obvious to anyone who's played a mage and gotten jumped.)

k thx -mgmt.

[Anonymous]

the simple fact that this thread is 5 pages long may lead one to believe that those of us in support of the idea think it is incredibly important.

I actually don't feel that it is necessary or required, or that magickers are inherently unplayable without the change.  That said, I also don't think that the game wouldn't benefit from this, or that it isn't a great idea (dbl negatives).   It is.  

We didn't -need- to be able to tack emotes onto 'say' and 'talk', but DAMN!
How much better is it for the atmosphere of the game now that we can?

[Ueda]

Tell you what, Ueda... if you want proof, you play a magicker, you PM me when you hit the 10-15 day mark.  I'll find a newbie warrior, hire a hit out on you, and YOU WILL DIE.  (this is a completely farsical statement, I would not do so because it's insanely OOC, but I'm getting tired of arguing this because it seems so completely obvious to anyone who's played a mage and gotten jumped.)

Flip the situation K, a 15 day warrior is in a room right and a 10 day mage comes in and does a spell the first think K. Who won the fight?

The mage because of a code advantage

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

...the mage because of a code advantage

Maybe. But still, this is not as likely as it is when dealing with a warrior preparing a suprise attack. What one should realize is that we are not trying to give mages an unfair advantage...we have so many things in game which reflect the realism of the world. This 'reflex/random possibility of effect' idea is simply that. Give persons something to worry about both OOC and IC, and reinforce the scariness of magicker hunting.

The fact is this. Magickers should be able to kill easier. They have access to untold amounts of super-natural power! So your example should happen. A warrior should also be able to kill easily, as it is now, but NOT without some sort of catastrophy happening based on chance.

Your character, and you, should not look up to magickers as they do to templars, but they should certianly be as scared of, and perhaps moreso, of magickers than they are of templars.

[JollyGreenGiant]

I don't know if I'm for or against reflex spells, but if I were proposing one, it might look something like this:

Designate an existing spell as a "reflex" spell.  Any time combat is initiated on the caster and the caster is not already in combat (but not when the caster begins combat), the spell activates at whatever strength the caster currently has in it, with the normal chance of failure and normal mana cost, assuming that spell isn't already active on the caster (or attacker, depending on whether it is an offensive or defensive reflex).  The reflex spell activation does not require the caster to be standing, and occurs instantly after combat is initiated.  

It isn't something the caster is consciously calling forth, just something they do by reflex.  This would only apply to elementalists, not sorcerors.  The reflex spell should be one of the starting spells for the class.  Perhaps it could even be designated at character creation, which spell the magicker wants to set as a reflex spell.  They could also choose not to set one.

[Ueda]

The fact is this. Magickers should be able to kill easier.

The fact is Magickers ARE able to kill easier. Maybe not when  LOWER level mages that are attacked by surprise.