Make Sorcerers Great Again (And Elementalists)

[LauraMars]

If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.

Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.

So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already.  Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead.  Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.

If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves. 

For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.

[Lizzie]

If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.

Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.

So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already.  Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead.  Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.

If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves. 

For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.

All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.

[Is Friday]

If you want people to avoid magickers, like truly avoid them, then you need to make magic have some kind of actual unpleasant consequence.

Sure, there's unpleasant consequences to magick now, but they are either "if this caster has a bad day they could kill me in five seconds" or ""Allanak won't like me being friends with this person and my opportunities there will be limited." The first consequence is also true of people with high backstab and the second consequence is easily stepped around by our natural human desire to make friends and form groups.

So ffs make magic give you boils and warts already.  Give backfiring spells a chance to reduce stats temporarily or permanently. Casting heal should come with the risk of being poisoned instead.  Make things potentially bad enough (even if the potential for good is still there) and people WILL be shitting their pants if a caster tries to make friends, and if you find someone going to a caster for help they truly will be desperate.

If you want people to avoid casters, the only thing you can do is threaten what they love - themselves. 

For bonus points make all curses and unintended unpleasantness only apply to mundane PCs. Other casters are immune.

Cosigned.

[LauraMars]

All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one.

good

Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her?

I don't know that would be pretty crazy if you did that. you probably wouldn't want to try. or only make friends with other mages because you're a filthy mage who kills normal people

And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead?

It's almost like magic is risky or something and the whole gameworld is stigmatized against mages for some reason

It would be mostly unplayable.

Not seeing the downside.

[BadSkeelz]

All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.

"Not wanting to play a magicker because it's too dangerous" just confirms that most people who play magickers play it for the coded power. i.e. They're twinks.

[mansa]

I like the idea of weird side effects and/or different types of failures of casting spells.

I envision something like a "wound" code, that would be temporary/inconvenient to the players involved.   Temporary could be 10 minutes / 10 hours, and could have a variety of coded effects, like a -5% roll on all crafting skills, or the inability to hold something in your off hand, or something that makes you lose stamina while standing.
..Or something that changes your accent so it's "raspy".   Or makes all your clothes dyed red.

There's a lot of cool things that might be possible.

[Lizzie]

All those risks will accomplish is make most people who normally would love to play one, no longer want to play one. Why would I ever want to play a vivaduan who could end up killing her best friend by trying to her? And what Oashi would ever order their favorite Vivaduan to heal their favorite concubine, if there was a risk the heal would kill the concubine instead? It would be mostly unplayable.

"Not wanting to play a magicker because it's too dangerous" just confirms that most people who play magickers play it for the coded power. i.e. They're twinks.

If backstab came with the risk of crit-stabbing yourself and dying to the crit, would you play someone whose primary skill is backstab? If bludgeoning came with a risk of knocking yourself out over the head every time it was your turn in the combat code to make a hit against your opponent, would you ever use a club?

If archery came with a risk of shooting yourself and dying to the arrow, would you ever use a bow?

If physician came with a risk of the bandage insta-killing the patient, would you ever want to use the bandage skill?

If tanning ever came with a risk of you falling into the tanning vat (theoretically there would be a virtual tanning vat) and dying to the noxious mixture in it, would you ever tan a hide?

No? Then why on earth would you expect anyone to ever WANT to play any other kind of guild/subguild where the failure for doing something constructive (such as healing) results in death? That makes no sense.

Magicks ARE dangerous already. They already come with risks. The existence of risk and danger is already in the documents. If people are choosing not to roleplay the recognition and respect/fear of those risks and danger, then submit a player complaint.

[BadSkeelz]

Backstab requires you to go after mobs who you might not kill and who might kill you instead.

Archery requires you to leave the walls (or at least invest in mateirals).

Raising bandage is hella dangerous.

Tanning requires you to get hides somehow. Also you can't kill people with a well-oiled scrap of leather so not really applicable.

I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.

Magick is dangerous to others. It isn't dangerous to the users. So the users are twinks.

[Khorm]

I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.

blow up mana regeneration and force elementalists to use gather. i'd never play one again.

[tapas]

We took power away, certainly.  Even the old help docs on Sorcerers, from before the change, hinted at a range of sorcerers, from those who learn a spell or two, to those who devote their lives to magick, to more powerful beings such as Dragons.  All that has been done is that the line that demarks what you can play and what you cannot play has been changed.  You could never progress to a Dragon, before, either.  IC'ly what you call main guild sorcerers still exist.  You just can't play them.  You can play a variant of sorcerer that existed, but you couldn't play before, a person not quite as well versed so as to become a "main guild" sorcerer.

I'm fine with this generally. But I do wish there was a path for players to progress the role a bit more, even if that leads to an end of play or even retirement.

Something like a blue robe advancing to a red robe.

Its like, if 1 out of 10 characters aligned themselves with a sorc they meet, it would be that rare, interesting tack to take.  If 9 out of 10 characters align themselves with a sorc they meet, it is maybe a unique experience for the character/player doing it, but it becomes on the whole contrary to the world.  I understand that the player doesn't have the context to know if what they are doing is 1 out of 10 or if it is 9 out of 10.  But staff does see that, and it is easy for us to fall into "Ugh another one".  We understand the desire to engage in a unique opportunity.  It just isn't a unique opportunity.

I've had this experience. As a general rule, almost nobody has reacted to my sorcerer with pants wetting terror. A small minority tried to faceroll them, but most would support them if they were friendly enough and occupied a similar anti-allanak alignment.

A lot of characters did roleplay discomfort around my character. Even while they were just sitting around a table and palling around.

[Dresan]

I don't think the game needs more characters that people need to avoid.

I do believe that Redstorm, Luirs and Rinth need magickal defenses boosted in the same way allanak has if not even more. Each can have their unique reasons why those defenses work. (ex.silt sea)

Staff should then smack certain sponsored roles into action against known rogue magickers or other level 3 karma special apps.

Regardless this would emphasis the need for magick-related PCs to work harder to remain hidden or to just take a gem.

[Brokkr]

We took power away, certainly.  Even the old help docs on Sorcerers, from before the change, hinted at a range of sorcerers, from those who learn a spell or two, to those who devote their lives to magick, to more powerful beings such as Dragons.  All that has been done is that the line that demarks what you can play and what you cannot play has been changed.  You could never progress to a Dragon, before, either.  IC'ly what you call main guild sorcerers still exist.  You just can't play them.  You can play a variant of sorcerer that existed, but you couldn't play before, a person not quite as well versed so as to become a "main guild" sorcerer.

I'm fine with this generally. But I do wish there was a path for players to progress the role a bit more, even if that leads to an end of play or even retirement.

Something like a blue robe advancing to a red robe.

If your character has a goal and is using magick to obtain it, I don't see where this is the case.  If your actual goal is power/knowledge/some sort of achievement/customization that revolves around your magick, you might be disappointed. Just like raising up fighting skills, stealth skills or crafting skills vs what you use them to do, we've seen more satisfying results when magick is a means than an end.

[Saiseiki]

Right. Those docs hinted at a range. But all of those were choices. Those Sorcerers chose to only learn a spell or two. Others chose to learn entire paths. The limitation set on players to specific paths implies that the player character has, without input from the player, chosen not to pursue anything beyond that. That's all I'm saying. If that isn't the case, and there's something more to it than that, I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.

Ah, I see.  I think we view it differently.  Please let me know if I am wrong.

You view it as, if Zuzub learns enough, they have the potential to learn all of sorcery, because it is something that is learned.

I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they still are limited by their inherent potential.  Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons.  A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.

The system hasn't changed, just the potential of the characters you are allowed to play.

For some reason, the concept of two variables or "dual systems of learning" resonates.  I have no idea what OG sorcerers were like (evidently massively powerful), but playing at the "intersection" of learning + inherent potential makes a lot more sense than how I've heard the current system described before.

[Saiseiki]

And I suppose my follow-up would have to be - on what scale were OG sorcerers disruptive?  Local/regional/global?  I'm assuming global from the various posts.

[rinthrat]

I think one of the reasons that people do align themselves with sorcerers as how powerful they are.

Your boss turned out to be a sorc, and has shown he's perfectly capable of murder if he has to, in the past. Do you run off and risk getting killed so you can't spill the beans, or do you just deal with it and thank the gods that he's on your side?

What if you're outside, the gates are closed and that sorc catches your rogue with their pants down? Attacking that guy would be suicide, and you won't get anywhere if you run away screaming. A lot of the time, it's a 'tiger in my house' situation. There's something very dangerous living near you. It's too strong to be killed, or at least too strong to be killed without a massive risk to yourself. Self-preservation dictates that you keep the tiger reasonable happy and well-fed so it doesn't eat your face instead.

[Cind]

Pretty heavy focus on sorcerers, elementalists though, are usually a lower karma thing.

It is stated nowhere in the docs that, in order to branch a spell earlier than a RL month or so, you need to keep casting the spell it branches from past its highest strength level (which in the docs is referred to as mon.) I did it the hard way for years, until someone was kind enough to tell me otherwise, based mostly, I think, on the fact that I, as a water witch, and me and a rukkian and a krathi were out on the sands, and the rukkian ingested cleaning fluid by accident. She began vomiting and the krathi asked me to heal her poison and I said I didn't know how. I simply kept healing her instead, this was back during classic full witches. For some reason the two of them just stood there and let me do that instead of going into the city to try to buy cures. I simply left after a while back into the city, because people poisoning a witch on purpose, especially the uninvolved-with-things mess that was that rukkian, was kind of weird.

Classic full witches were great. You had every spell in the elemental tree, save a few truly powerful spells that were kept by House Oash, reserved only for trusted human witches. Classic witches had one weakness; they started out being able to be killed by a typical merchant of the same age and stats. You would have had to have an old man merchant (an early Artisan) in order to be on equal fighting footing with a classic witch. Kind of strange, but a problem in most games nonetheless. In games and movies where magic is depicted as powerful enough not to need melee help, the magic itself is touted as a bad thing at all. Warcraft and Snow White and the Huntsman come to mind. This is an incredibly stupid attempt by old-time europeans to take the onus off of christianity and place it on our older religion, a form of wicca, which is based so heavily on magic, the seasons and farming, that it strongly suggests a deep-seated fear of powerful magic that white people shouldn't really have in their intellectual library. The real answer? Anti-feminism. Anyone who knows much about the religion that became Wicca in the seventies knows that it is a totally female-based religion, in which the horned god isn't even honored if the triple goddess of the moon isn't present, or at least some female deity honored in greater status than him by the coven. (I love studying religion. I'm also offering an answer to the age-old question of why good, awesome magic-users of -powerful- magic in games are even feared. Its one of those ridiculous hold-overs we know we should have gotten rid of. Yep. A woman online was feminist, yay. Don't mind me if I'm this upset about our game dying. I don't care about much besides my friends. And I've made a lot of friends here.)

[gotdamnmiracle]

I guess, after 9 years of playing this game off and on I admit I don't understand one of its main tenants. Fearing and hating sorcery sounds amazing, but I continually have difficulty not wanting to side myself with the magick users I meet (including the two outed sorcerers I met over that time), probably because a large amount is fairly benign. I think this is because, in large part, I really hope to glimpse the more fantastical elements of the game and these continue to remain elusive.

I have played magick users and find from the other side, if you are trying to enlist others in some sort of interesting magickal plot the fear and distrust flares up just enough for them to not be interested. In a game where things are accomplished by players (plural) this tends to kill it. This is anecdotal however.

I think that may be the issue of an incorrect amount of fear. In a game where we've seen just about everything and there's very little that's distinct between inix shell and kryl shell it becomes important to go out searching for the wild stuff. Sorcery appears like a bridge to the interesting things in the game. But this is a veiled non-start as the entire world will be against you and people (generally) are only comfortable playing someone tolerant of magicks and not a person absolutely along for the ride.

The solution, in my opinion, would be other shit to keep people busy. I would kill to have my character involved in some sort of dungeon crawl that didn't require me to be in the byn or tailing a templar, with worthwhile rewards. A sewer run does not equal a dungeon crawl... it would be easier to be afraid of magick if it was slightly more common and slightly more threatening (mummies, NPC rogue magick users, etc.). Don't forget the D&D roots.

[Cind]

our older religion, a form of wicca, which is based so heavily on magic, the seasons and farming, that it strongly suggests a deep-seated fear of powerful magic that white people shouldn't really have in their intellectual library.

Because a lot of people playing the game don't know this I'll clarify something. Farming... is hard. You might spend a billion calories as men of fighting age attempting to farm poor land to get anything to grow, in a place as cold as europe where the sun shines half the year and not every year is a good year for crops. Hence the term 'good harvest.' A phrase of desperation in ancient to semi-modern europe. You know what fixed it? Modern fishing. And they are damn grateful for it, I imagine, but have probably forgotten that solutions they never knew could exist outside of farming. Women's magic was -honored- back then, they needed it to survive like hell.

Other regions of our world are not like this. Hell, there are rivers like the Nile and lakes like Lake Victoria in africa, which I know for a fact hated white colonialism, which screwed them over and put them back where they were in the seventies. That's probably part of the reason why they're doing so bad. The other part is lack of arable farming land, which is only large-scale in Uganda and South Africa (although Niger grows wild lettuce in large amounts, i.e. doesn't need to take care of it) so people who have genetic reasons to study africa can probably tell you that they don't think farming is such a big deal, except maybe in America. And it was all that was keeping people in Europe alive for a very, very long time. Britain is so bad about it that they can't grow anything there but wheat, the least reliable cold crop in the damn world. The romans even tried to grow vegetables there. Because the romans do all sorts of crazy shit they don't need to, they're roman. They couldn't make Britain a part of the roman empire for years. They tried to grow vegetables there instead. I wonder if it even worked.

That's not really, the reason, though, that white people stayed dead-ass last technologically for most of human history, a fact everyone born on earth probably knows, with how prevalent we've been in the last five hundred years. They got the religious fever that the romans left behind for them. The middle ages, the dark ages, our height on our own, became the Italian Renaissance, which became the British Renaissance, which led to Shakespeare directly. Europe was awed by their single smart brother, the romans. They wanted in on that religious shit, and for many years our only paintings were depictions of christianity. Rome brought us christianity. And for the last two or three years for the first time in history, Rome's coffers are in deficit. They are receiving fewer donations than it costs to maintain the Vatican. The world is burning, apparently, if such a thing is happening. I might post a few things about Korea later too, since these were such white posts they're burning my eyes. Being a halfblood of any kind is the coolest damn thing in the world. And it was. And someone decided to ruin that too. Because a long time ago, we were much closer to a normal game. And everyone loves playing a genuine half-elf. All they do is get shit outdoors to bring in the gates and act confused as fuck. And a couple years after I started playing, their lives had to automatically suck too. Don't mind the derail. All I wanted at first was to explain a very odd coincidence with regards to how white people probably actually feel about female magic at all. Those hard-ass christians in the bible belt who are hard-asses at all are oddly afraid of a magic religion that is mostly ritual and not much power. You know what, I'm going to stop. All I wanted to fucking talk about was clarifiying how white people feel about farming: No, don't joke, we need farming to survive! Guys, we don't. If someone is even talking about saving the farmlands in the game, there's a white player behind the screen. Or maybe Mayan or Aztec. Someone whose ancestors depended on farming land-locked crops to survive, and I kind of just named all three.

[Saellyn]

Could you please keep this on topic, Cind? This isn't the farming thread, this is the Sorcery thread. Unless you're attributing farming in the Vrun Driath to Sorcery?

That's a thought. Brokkr. How much of that wheat is actually wheat, and not Sorcerously Modified Organic Wheat-like Product?

[AdamBlue]

Trying to get staff to do anything that isn't coded is like pulling teeth. ESPECIALLY if it's magic.

[Khorm]

Trying to get staff to do anything that isn't coded is like pulling teeth. ESPECIALLY if it's magic.

my experience has been that if i approach staff with an attitude that's respectful of their time and energy i can expect to get the same in return. seems like pretty standard social interaction.

[Lizzie]

I lose more health raising riding than I ever would fully branching any kind of magicker.

blow up mana regeneration and force elementalists to use gather. i'd never play one again.

I played an elementalist who eventually was forced to use gather. It was hard-mode for sure but it was awesome. Would do it again. But ONLY if the guilds were full guilds. Otherwise it just isn't worth the expense.

[Dar]

What are you doing, Cind? The fear of magick in Zalanthas was due to defiling draining life from the land and living beings. It had zero to do with real life reasons for anything magick related.

I would very much prefer if you start a thread titled "Reasons for magick hate IRL" in an non arm related forum.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I think she's referring to other medias, which Arm does have its roots in.

[Heade]

I view it (and this isn't something newly formed since coming on staff) as Zuzub learns enough, they have the tools needed to do magick, but they still are limited by their inherent potential.  Thus, some folks learn fewer spells, some more, some have a potential in one path or another, some have the potential to become Dragons.  A dual system of learning and potential, rather than a system with a single variable of learning.

Yeah, this system was never indicated or alluded to in the documentation of arm for the majority of it's existence. It seemed pretty clear that it was primarily about learning, rather than potential.

I don't mean to be argumentative, but if what you're suggesting was the intended system and/or fluff around the documentation, those who put together that documentation failed sensationally.

I should probably further clarify that I don't think they failed. I just don't think that their intention was as you seem to see it. Of course, you're a producer and you likely have the power to completely change the direction and design of the game, but I think it is wise to at least consider the original design of the gameworld when doing so. It has been a pretty successful recipe for a long time.

I like the idea of weird side effects and/or different types of failures of casting spells.

I think people are starting to mix the IC superstitions about magick with their OOC expectations about how the code works. Magick isn't supposed to be unreliable or chaotic. Those various things are IC superstitions born from things that magick can (non-codedly) do in the gameworld, but not generally by accident.

I think it would be better to add more variations to spells into the game, some less useful than others, rather than making these things some sort of critical failure result. We should bear in mind that things like summoning a flock of toads or something would be a result of magick tied to a specific element, and thus wouldn't make sense as a "failure" result when invoking a completely different element.