Penalty to sorcerers and subguild elementalists

[Dresan]

2.  To help alleviate powerful combat / magick combinations, sorcerers will codedly have a reduction in the max of all combat, weapon, and stealth skills they can achieve.  For combat and weapon it is a fairly significant cap reduction and is relative to the class (i.e. it's percentage based).  For example, a raider who could achieve "high" master in a combat skill will now max at "low advanced".  Stealth skills (climb, hide, sneak) have a reduction, but to a lesser extent.  More along the lines of going from "high" master to "high" advanced.  You can still branch in all cases.

This was also applied to subguild mages which I applaud.

The penalties sound impactful on paper but don't really seem to be much when you consider them in context to the game.

For example, I doubt people play raiders for their wilderness stealth skills. If you are playing a stealth class, 15 percent doesn't really hurt you completely. It might screw you over a bit more if you are an infiltrator but it basically makes you close to the old version infiltrator class. No magic empowered max backstab at least. Less parry and shield_use is a bit of a pain but very usable so is high advanced bash, disarm and kick, charge.  Oh yeah, high master to high advanced weapon skills arent levels even most regular classes reach.


This might be an unpopular idea but perhaps that percentage could go up a bit more so it feels a bit more impactful to anyone who isn't going to be twinking their combat skills to max.

[Armaddict]

Wow, you ARE a savage! xD

I think 30% is a pretty substantial hit, though it is indeed circumstantial; a 15% nerf to in-city stealth is a much bigger deal than out of city stealth since wilds npc's are much more binary in their stealth detection than when you use it in the city, where it is...largely geared towards adaptable, aware PCs.  15% off of maximum stealth in the city is a major game-change.  15% in the wilds is impactful, but less so aside from far rarer scenarios.

However, in the city, 30% off of combat skills is less impactful, since combat within the city is far rarer.  You often train within cities, where you will notice it, but for a long time, combat has been far less prevalent in city streets.  In the desert, 30% off of maximums for combat skills is far more noticeable.

In all those cases, it is not necessarily an incentive, but a chosen sacrifice; you are like a magus in Pathfinder, or a Fighter/Mage in classic DnD.  You have sacrificed some BAB for spells, and sacrificed some spells for BAB, weaker in both, but able to use both to bolster and try to make up for it in different ways.  In the city, combat is more likely to occur in alleys and private, where spellcraft is not going to get you instagibbed.  But it DOES make you take risks of discovery, and overall I think that's the main gist of what I wanted out of any change.  It isn't that they can't be strong.  It's that they can't be that strong and so easily keep it secret.

It's already faced a fair degree of pushback from generally reasonable people, so I think before pushing the envelope we should probably see what impact it has on the whole scenario.  Maybe it needs to be dialed up.  Maybe it needs to be dialed DOWN.  We kind of need to see the impact before we double down on it.

[Bogre]

I'm severely against this change. I'm not sure why it's necessary to just make entire characters that much markedly worse. It makes even playing those classes decidedly less appealing when you can't escape ANY of the classes getting nerfed just to have access to some spells of situational or dubious utility. And the best thing about them was the varied opportunities and ways to build them - you could play a real character, not having to rely just on magick, and have a rich character/flavor/etc. I hate playing mages just to sit around and try to fill out the magick spell list, which is why the aspects appealed to me a lot. Now you will always be faced with them being a much worse version of whatever they were before, or worse than every character around them in 90% of situations.

 I'm not sure what the problem is that is trying to be fixed - that too many players played mages? Well - it sounds like the majority of the subclasses will now be special app gated, which does a great deal to fix that. Were they felt to be too strong when linked to the tier 1 combat classes? I think a better fix would just be to restrict them from being  raiders, enforcers or fighters and still allow them to be capable at what they choose to do. Is the problem that too many people were being PVP'd by subguild mages? Never my experience, I've been ganked way more by players with access to crim-code or incriminate or karma races like mul/etc. Again - changing the classes won't really change player behavior, if anything it will just make them that much more quick to jump to the 'F you get annihilated' spell, which means they'll just grind til they have it. Addressing problem players is a better way there. This is just telling characters that they shouldn't knife fight anymore because they should just use their bazooka.

Roughly speaking, a blanket percentage nerf like this will take probably 600ish total points of skill ceiling away from tier 1 combat class subclass mages, about 450 from tier 2, and 300 from tier 3. None of this is really decreasing the LETHALITY of any of these classes, which is the major problem. Since the offensive skills aren't as much effected (master vs advanced in weapon skills when the game barely allows you to get journeyman), you'll still have people able to blitz in PVP. But it makes the characters much worse in PVE to gith or spider beep-squads, failing a hide/sneak check and getting deleted, or players trying to gank you with shitty methods too. Which really sucks when you have spent a lot of effort on a concept, character, AND a special application. And the magick aspects are VERY situational to make up for that.

Mundane subguilds typically add something like 4-5 skills from master to advanced PLUS bonuses to non skill things PLUS a stat boost. So now, compared to mundanes (unnerfed class + subguild) and full elementalists (who get a full subguild) you have a character that has between 600-900 fewer skill points available, 1 less stat point, a situational and sometimes typically terrible spell list (sarcasm: those Krathi Agony and Nilaz Anathema aspects were really dominant and game-breaking out there) which is gated behind sometimes MAX KARMA and A SPECIAL APPLICATION. You still have all of the 'you get to be kill/gem on sight' downsides. Oh and if you aren't the type of player who skillmaxed everything before and burned through charactess, you have no idea of what's on the spell list and if your entire concept will fall flat on the face or not. Like why are the aspect subguilds subject to the same  as SORCERERS?

In summary - I think this does very little to hamper feels-bad PK and PVP, increases the feels-bad deaths to NPCs or gank-PVP for those playing mages, increases the pressure to spam-cast to make up for the deficiencies, decreases the potential enjoyment of a character and the world significantly, decreasing interest in exploring character concepts and builds. In short, it adds very little for what it takes away from players and characters.

[Armaddict]

I haven't seen anywhere that it was posited that was was specifically for PvP balancing, which is what you seem to be weighting most of that on.  If the specific instance was too powerful for PvE scaling, for example, that would make everything you just typed an affirmation of the change rather than a detriment.

The main complaints that I saw fielded against mages were:
1) They are too powerful (I believe this is where your pvp perspective came from).
2) There are too many of them.
3) Subguild mages are so good that there's very little reason to choose other subguilds.

I believe 1 and 2 are just different phrasing for 3.  So the change was based on creating a sacrifice for choosing that subguild.  There are a variety of impacts that could have, but they are not guaranteed.  However, it does seem to be an attempt at creating some of them:

1) Subguild mages are still powerful, but will have increased reliance on their magick.  This makes it a bit more of a challenge to keep it hidden since more frequent use is likely.
2) Subguild mages are still powerful, but not as powerful as solo characters as they were.  This makes it more sensible to try and work with groups, teams, or find social connections to assist, which again increases chance of discovery.  In the case it's not a secret, then it makes it more likely they have to withstand the social drawbacks of playing a mage.
3) Subguild mages are still powerful but are more vulnerable to a death that a mundane would not suffer, but less vulnerable to other deaths that a mundane would suffer. 

All three of these seem to be weighted towards what I believe Halaster said in discord was the specific goal, which was to cut down on their number as 'the standard character' and make them more specially suited.  They are done with consideration and a role in mind, rather than just being a better mundane.

It remains to be seen what the actual impact of this will be, but I think your current train of thought seems to be weighting the wrong things.  I don't believe this was a change based around making them less powerful in PvP, I believe that it was to make them less of a trump card over their mundane counterparts.

As I said in discord, pretty much every mainstay RPG where there is class and skill selection creates some drawback for hybridizing via weapon and armor restrictions, decreases in reliability, lower skill cap in each of their hybridized areas, or something of that nature.  It's very unusual, from a game design perspective, for a hybrid to be safer than the pure classes they mix while fully performing the same roles.

[Roon]

-30% to combat skills is a gigantic hit. While I'm glad something is being done about the overpowered hybrids, this nerf feels like an overcorrection. It basically puts heavy combat classes at the level of the mixed classes (miscreant, stalker, laborer). It takes you from the highest possible peak of combat skill, to the bottom of advanced. You basically lose two full levels of skill. A -15% to combat skills would have sufficed. That's approximately one tier on the class scale.

The light combat classes (infiltrator, scout, soldier) will be comically bad. Their combat skills will be less than the mixed classes, and their stealth skills will be at or below subclass level. There won't be any point playing them at all. You would be far better off going full elementalist with a mundane subclass.

The mixed classes will be entirely incapable of combat, capping their skills so low that there's no reason to even attempt to make use of them. Meanwhile, their stealth skills will also be below that of mundane infiltrators and scouts. Again, hard to see much reason to go for this. You could have got comparable stealth skills with a subclass, and then you get to be a full-fledged mage instead of limiting yourself to one of the subclass magic categories.

For the most part, I see very little reason to play the elementalist subclasses now. If this change had come before full elementalists returned and mundane subclasses were buffed, it might have been fair to nerf hybrids this hard. But when you have the option to just go full mage with a mundane subclass that gets one or two masters and a slew of advanced skills, that's just going to be a much better character.

Maybe if it was harder to detect the magic subclasses with that one method that you can't really protect yourself against, that could be an argument for going hybrid even with their totally obliterated skillsets. It would make sense as well that people who can better hide their nature are more likely to have lived a life that would give them a skillset that could pass for any regular person, while those who can be detected with THAT ONE METHOD can't easily live amongst ordinary folk.

[Lizzie]

I'm not sold on a 30% reduction in combat skills for a main guild, if you choose a magick subguild. I think it's a bit much. But I am sure that a reduction is necessary, and hope that once things get moving in-game, the staff will adjust as needed. We'll see.

Meanwhile, that 30% reduction won't really have an impact at all on merchant-heavy guilds.

[Dresan]

Originally the mage subclasses were designed for warrior and ranger guilds, not the classes we have today.

The more I have read people's thoughts in this thread the more i think its not enough. I am not really sold that this is a huge impact to anyone but the few who want to play infiltrators and go the magickal backstab route. But to Armaddicts point, i am willing to wait and see.

[Roon]

The more I have read people's thoughts in this thread the more i think its not enough.

Not enough? What, should the penalties be so big that your skills cap at apprentice and low journeyman? Calling such an incredibly heavy-handed nerf "not enough" comes off as weirdly vindictive, like what you really want is for the aspect subclasses to be removed entirely.

I am not really sold that this is a huge impact to anyone but the few who want to play infiltrators and go the magickal backstab route.

The impact is going to be enormous. You know the mixed classes, which are only just barely capable of meaningful combat in their mundane state? That is now the limit for any aspect character, even if you pick a heavy combat class. As is subclass-level stealth for the would-be master stealth classes, who also become so inept at combat that they don't even really count as combat characters.

If that's the desired outcome, fair enough--but that is the outcome. Can't just handwave it away and arbitrarily decide that it only affects "magical backstabbers." Can't just choose to believe that it won't have the effects that we know it'll have. It's simple math.

I'm pretty sure these characters will suck. Compared to a full elementalist with a synergistic subclass, a hybrid character gives up like two thirds of their element's spells in exchange for... a handful of skills at journeyman and low advanced? The mundane subclasses are so robust these days. Look at something like swordsman. That's pretty much on par with a fighter at -30% skills, getting all the skills that really matter, and then you get to be a full elementalist on top. Hell, the swordsman very likely has higher caps in its skills than a fighter does with these aspect penalties.

A -15% to combat skills would have been more reasonable. That's still a hell of a lot of power to give up for what is typically no more than 3-4 actually useful spells and a bunch of largely useless filler.

As it stands, I would go so far as to say that the touched subclasses are now better than the aspects. They typically get at least a couple of highly useful spells, and even some mundane skills at subclass level. I would take that and an unnerfed class over an aspect with these staggering penalties.

Calling these penalties not enough seems silly. I wonder what you had in mind. -50%?

[Armaddict]

Calling these penalties not enough seems silly. I wonder what you had in mind. -50%?

For me personally, I'm not really sure what to expect here.  I don't expect the classes to be gimped, I expect that they will be more versatile than full mages with subclasses but with comparable combat skills IF the full guild mage chooses a weapon-skill subclass.  That is to say that they get a full mundane skillset, with partial spell subset, rather than a full spell skillset with partial mundane skillset.

I do think this might be a little on the heavy side, but I'm really, truly unsure what to really expect here until we get feedback, and not just 'this sucks' feedback, but in-depth feedback.  Someone trying to play it the way they functioned before and saying it doesn't work doesn't mean this change isn't working, since the idea is that they will work differently.  I will say, however, that it is easier to go heavy on the first iteration, then tone it down, rather than start light and increase it, because otherwise we get 2-4 bad interactions (nerfs) vs 1 bad interaction (big nerf) and 1-3 good interactions (nerfing the nerf).

Personally, for my stated goals of subguild mages, I would have tied in spellcasting with the watch skill; make spellcasting EXTREMELY noticeable, so that without watching a direction, you have an extremely high chance of 'You notice: ' messages for spellcasting and spellcasting effects.  Magick is always going to be strong, and should always be strong, but to compensate, I just want them to face additional dangers that mundanes do not need to, and the first step to that is to make it very difficult to avoid the social parts of being a mage.

That and make the wilderness hard so you can't just avoid all the places that will give you bad effects.

[Halaster]

I'm pretty sure these characters will suck. Compared to a full elementalist with a synergistic subclass, a hybrid character gives up like two thirds of their element's spells in exchange for... a handful of skills at journeyman and low advanced?

Don't forget the gain rate of skills.  Full guild elementalists have the slowest (worst) gain rate of combat skills than anyone.  Worse than heavy mercantile.  And gain rate is determined by your class.  Your full guild / swordsman may have the potential to get to pretty high levels of slashing, but that's going to be incredibly slow and painful.

[Roon]

I'm pretty sure these characters will suck. Compared to a full elementalist with a synergistic subclass, a hybrid character gives up like two thirds of their element's spells in exchange for... a handful of skills at journeyman and low advanced?

Don't forget the gain rate of skills.  Full guild elementalists have the slowest (worst) gain rate of combat skills than anyone.  Worse than heavy mercantile.  And gain rate is determined by your class.  Your full guild / swordsman may have the potential to get to pretty high levels of slashing, but that's going to be incredibly slow and painful.

Sure, but in my experience, that's only really an issue for defense. Offense and weapon skills will go up fine until you stop missing, even with classes that have shit gain rates, and will probably plateau well before the cap regardless. If you do have the rare luxury of sparring against someone who you could max out on, it's also pretty easy when you don't even need to go all the way to master. Defense is the only real concern, and I'd call that a small tradeoff for having access to all of your element's spells instead of just whatever aspect you'd pick.

Many combat skills don't use gain rate at all, and offense/weapons are bottlenecked by the inability to miss attacks long before gain rate becomes a concern. When you look at how handicapped the combat classes will be with the aspect penalty, a higher gain rate isn't much compensation. If anything, the low starting offense of elementalist classes is a greater benefit to raising weapon skills.

Having somewhat higher defense barely helps when your raider has the parry skill of a miscreant, and worse still if you chose a light combat class. I will take access to all of an element's spells over that any day. I think -30% to combat skills is far too steep a cost.

The problem with gain rates is that everyone sort of converges. High gain rates might get you to the point of convergence faster, but then you're the one who gets nothing out of your training. Since having less offense/defense also increases your chance to gain, there's a built-in "catch-up mechanic" that makes it so even the classes with low gain rates aren't left in the dust. The less you have, the faster you gain, and the classes with low gain rates just don't appear to be hindered significantly. They might be a little bit behind, but honestly, not very much. It's a natural product of the "have less = gain more" design philosophy.

Defense is the only one that even bears thinking about because you can always force failures, but that ends up being a pretty small portion of your character's power if you also have a full array of any given elementalist's spells to add to your arsenal. Defense is great for full mundanes who rely wholly on raw combat prowess for every facet of their survival. For a full-blown mage with every spell available to their element... meh.

And when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty of it, at least two of the elementalist classes have spells that let them take so many hits that it easily makes up for a lower gain rate on defense. While their associated aspect subclasses can also get those spells, that tends to lock you into a "pure protection" grouping of spells, whereas a full elementalist gets everything, including the omegapwn bomb spells.

As far as mundane combat skills go, parry is by far the most important. Losing 30% of your cap is a gargantuan blow to your lifelong potential. It turns a raider into a stalker, by and large. You lose two entire tiers on the class spectrum. Having a bit more in the hidden defense skill doesn't come even slightly close to compensating for this when it's held up against the alternative that was available to you: every spell for your element. That's a lot to give up for... higher gain rates, and mostly just in defense, because you will reach the point of "nothing can dodge me anymore" regardless of class and that invalidates the value of better gain rates in offense and weapon skills. It's the age-old problem of bottlenecking everything behind hard failures.

If we imagined that mages could easily join the clans that enjoy a daily sparring schedule, maybe there would be merit to the idea of better gain rates. This is just not the case. Mages of any type are almost always forced to get their combat training from fighting NPCs, and unless you go to some heinous lengths with your skillgrinding, there is a hard limit on how good you can get. That limit occurs before your gain rates are relevant. If it takes a few more days of play for a full elementalist, that's a very small price to pay.

[Master Color]

Having actually played a dangerous sorcerer (pre change to sorcerers), these feel like some very strange decisions that put them back to into the unplayable territory they had to endure from 2015-2019.

[Roon]

If the changes are to stand, I think they become a lot more reasonable if the -30% to combat skills does not apply to parry. Of all the combat skills, this is the the tier-defining one. I think it's fair enough to limit the weapon skills, backstab, archery and so on for characters with the aspect subclasses, but tanking their parry skill by this much just makes them suck. Make an exemption for that one.

[mansa]

If the changes are to stand, I think they become a lot more reasonable if the -30% to combat skills does not apply to parry. Of all the combat skills, this is the the tier-defining one. I think it's fair enough to limit the weapon skills, backstab, archery and so on for characters with the aspect subclasses, but tanking their parry skill by this much just makes them suck. Make an exemption for that one.

With the changes:

If you pick Raider + Elkros Subclass, you'll get Parry at Master.  With a -30% reduction, it will become Low Advanced.

If you pick Miscreant + Elkros Subclass, you'll get Parry at Advanced.  With a -30% reduction, it will become Low Journeyman.

If you pick Elkros Elementalist + Swordsman, you'll get Parry at Advanced.  With a -30% reduction, it will become Low Journeyman.

If you pick Enforcer + Ruk Subclass, you'll get a reduction on the following skills:

Skill	Current Proficiency	New Proficiency
Crossbow Use	Master	Low Advanced
Blowgun Use	Master	Low Advanced
Throw	Master	Low Advanced
Sap	Master	Low Advanced
Backstab	Master	Low Advanced
Threaten	Master	Low Advanced
Guarding	Master	Low Advanced
Subdue	Advanced	Low Journeyman
Rescue	Master	Low Advanced
Parry	Master	Low Advanced
Bash	Master	Low Advanced
Disarm	Master	Low Advanced
Kick	Master	Low Advanced
Flee	Master	Low Advanced
Blind Fighting	Master	Low Advanced
Shield Use	Master	Low Advanced
Dual Wield	Master	Low Advanced
Two Handed	Master	Low Advanced
Slashing Weapons	Master	Low Advanced
Piercing Weapons	Master	Low Advanced
Bludgeoning Weapons	Master	Low Advanced
Chopping Weapons	Master	Low Advanced
Sneak	Advanced	Low Advanced/High Journeyman
Hide	Advanced	Low Advanced/High Journeyman

I wrote this out so we can get some perspective of what it will look like going forward.  -30% basically moves you down one proficiency tier, and perhaps if you were at the low end of that proficiency tier, it would move you to the top of a second proficiency tier.


The big question I have is:

Is "Steal" or "Climb" considered Stealth skills?

[Roon]

If you pick Elkros Elementalist + Swordsman, you'll get Parry at Advanced.  With a -30% reduction, it will become Low Journeyman.

Unless I've grossly misunderstood something: no it won't. The -30% penalty is exclusive to characters who pick a mundane class and an elementalist aspect subclass (what I call a 'hybrid') which doesn't cover an actual full-fledged elementalist with an ordinary subclass. The latter is not penalized.

I wrote this out so we can get some perspective of what it will look like going forward.  -30% basically moves you down one proficiency tier, and perhaps if you were at the low end of that proficiency tier, it would move you to the top of a second proficiency tier.

This is just mathematically false. -30% moves you down two tiers. Plainly put, a -30% brings you from the highest fringes of mastery to the bottom of advanced. That's a two-tier reduction in power. A heavy combat class goes from the top of master to the bottom of advanced. It brings a fighter to the level of a laborer.

The big question I have is:

Is "Steal" or "Climb" considered Stealth skills?

Climb is. Steal is not. Steal's a manipulation skill.

[mansa]

Ahh, I had to reread the original post, as I make many mistakes:

March 11, 2024 (Monday)

Halaster
- tweaks to camping, but mostly on hold while waiting on player feedback
- subguild elementalists now have the same max skill penalty as sorcerers.  Which is a 30% reduction in max combat/weapon skills, and a %15 reduction in max stealth skills.  This does not affect starting skills or gain rates, just max. It affects all skills regardless of whether they're guild, subguild, or racial.  It also affects the 'touched' magickal subguilds.  None of this applies to full guild elems.

I have glanced over the last sentence in that paragraph without reading it, which confirms that full guild elementalists don't get any combat reductions.


Skill Brackets
I was considering this:

Skill Brackets are separated by equal portions of 20%, so the reduction is 1 and a half tiers.  The tricky bit being whether you sit on the high end or the low end of the tier.
-> If the skills are out of 100 cookies, that means you could be "master" at 81 cookies, or you could be master at 100 cookies, and a reduction of 30% would mean a reduction of 30 cookies.

So, if you were at 81 -> 51 cookies -> (journeyman)
If you were at 99 -> 69 cookies -> (advanced)

[Roon]

That would only be accurate if all skills go from 1 to 100.

I'm afraid this just isn't how it works. I'm not allowed to elaborate.

There are many more things wrong with your figures, but we have to leave it at that because we can't talk in real numbers. Suffice to say that yours are wholly imaginary and do not match up with reality.

[Krath]

No....mages and sorcs should be overpowered. Seriously. Nothing is equal, in RL and most definitely a fantasy setting

[CirclelessBard]

I had to edit a post that violated Rule 1. Opinions may differ on this topic like any other, but please do not resort to name-calling and insults. Thank you!

[Brytta Léofa]

If the changes are to stand, I think they become a lot more reasonable if the -30% to combat skills does not apply to parry. Of all the combat skills, this is the the tier-defining one.

That was my thought as well.

However I think you may be overestimating the importance of parry compared to skill-gain rate. About that, you said "that's only really an issue for defense". But IMO defense is the critical combat factor in Arm. Inadequate offense means you get to try again; inadequate defense means you get to make a new character.

High defense means your PC can wander almost anywhere in the world and survive. Parrying is great, but it's not even a factor until your PC is fighting someone/something at close to combat parity.

tl;dr: Always be dodgin'.

[Riev]

I always ascribe to "Defense is more important than offense". Until crits happen and those are awful.

As a casual bystander? I would suggest making the reduction 20% instead of 30%. The higher reduction is going to put people into high Journeyman levels of skill and the way Arm skills seem to work (since we're on a blacklist if we even begin to understand it) ... Jman levels of skill are unreliable at best and frankly seem to fail/critfail more often than apprentice skills.

[Dresan]

No....mages and sorcs should be overpowered.

Not quite the line I've been waiting for but its close enough.

1. Sorcerers/mages should be magically powerful. Not have equal access to max-level martial/stealth skills.
2. Sorcerers and mages are indeed very powerful...in the setting. That doesn't mean our characters have to be at those levels of powers.


Just like we aren't allowed to play sorcerer-kings, the mages and sorcerers we play don't have to be the most powerful the setting can offer. It was really either going to be nerf the mundane skills or nerf the magick skills of players who went the magickal subclass route. Either way, there has been massive power creep over the last few years and at some point it needs to be curtailed.

I do still believe the nerf should probably be closer to 50% of mundane skills because really? Your magicker is gimped without master parry?!?  

The alternative is to go back to full mage guilds and remove mage sub guilds all together . While magickally powerful there was a clear RP/utility sacrifice to playing full-guild magickers that people are glossing over with the ability to play hybrids. After all, Raiders class was already the wet dream of the old warrior guild, its always been nuts they can add magick on top of everything else they can do...especially with additional changes over the years that now lets them do so without the any of the wielding/glowing for hours inconveniences of old. 

Again, willing to wait and see how this turns out but something had to be done. The  current state is OP and has been OP for a long time, and that's OP in quite a ridiculous way. At this point, you might as well be arguing for staff to give magickers access to an admin-level slay command so that magickers feel sufficiently powerful.

[Riev]

The current state is that someone in power believed that they should make magick a sub-set of your skills and let mundane skills (primary classes) rule. The theory was sound, but the game suffered due to some mundane skills being very powerful when combined with certain magick spells.

I agree with Krath here, that magick and sorcerors should be powerful. They should be scary. They should be unfair. In this setting, magick is scary and full of terror. Even a simple one-path sorceror is fucking terrifying.

Lowering their skills so that they are "less effective" only serves to make them less scary. Like when True Sorcs became Path Sorcs. And when mages got 1/3 of their spells. They became less scary because you knew they didn't have both fireball and lava storm (or whatever).



Long story short - The staff are balancing the game using code. This makes me feel that they will not be able or willing to monitor their karma-access roles to ensure the 'super scary' roles are being scary rather than murder machines. As an RPI, they are relegating control to the code because We The Players are untrustworthy scavs only out for ourselves.

Nothing in this thread has convinced me otherwise. I hope I am wrong.

[Lizzie]

I'm a fan of the original full guild mages, and I'm not a fan of the subguild mages.  However, I'm also a fan of filling out options for full guild mage's subguild options, OR giving them a couple of low-cap utility mundane skills right out of the box.

For example - full guilds could come with: listen, forage, desert sense, and skinning, all up to a maximum of high apprentice, even if their subguild doesn't come with any of those.  Full guilds could also come with at least one weapon type, at novice, which could improve up to low apprentice.

And then for subguilds, any option they choose - IF combat/weapon skill normally can master, for elementalists - it won't master. The best they'll get is jman.

That's how I'd do it, if there was a return to full guild elementalists, and we did away with magick subclasses entirely (which would be my preference).

[Master Color]

I agree with Krath here, that magick and sorcerors should be powerful. They should be scary. They should be unfair. In this setting, magick is scary and full of terror. Even a simple one-path sorceror is fucking terrifying.

The reality is that:

A. Nobody treats magick as frightening or scary. Even when it is.
B. Players will just complain that they can't kill them easily enough.

[Riev]

I agree with Krath here, that magick and sorcerors should be powerful. They should be scary. They should be unfair. In this setting, magick is scary and full of terror. Even a simple one-path sorceror is fucking terrifying.

The reality is that:

A. Nobody treats magick as frightening or scary. Even when it is.
B. Players will just complain that they can't kill them easily enough.

Heck. Why should they if there is no punishment or reward for doing so?

The player of the magicker will kill you because they have a fireball and you dont.
The player of the mundane will kill the magicker because they can flaunt that they beat an "OP witch".
Keeping someone alive is "a guarantee that they will kill you later" and for DECADES now we have cared about staying alive, and not the story of our deaths.

So yeah. Why treat it as scary? Its just inconvenient and if I bash them first I "win" soooooo...

[Dresan]

Generally speaking i have no issue with powerful mage/sorcerer characters but that is not what people are asking for. What people want to play is magic warriors with stealth, ride and wilderness skills with zero down side or limitations.

Its not that a mages dont have powerful abilities to keep them safe. Its just that master parry is more convinient and does not have any of the downsides that come with magick upkeep or glowing like christmas trees in the night, right? I also think this is what made full mage classes more balanced. They actually had to rely on magic to achieve anything, instead of hust buffing already strong mudane skills.

I do believe the next step will be further nerfing of mage subguilds followed by the eventual removal the of subguild mages with the exception of touched classes. This of course comes with the reintroduction of full mage classes again. But if full-mage classes need more powerful spells than they aready have that do stuff like prevent bash or block weapon damage through impressive visible displays of magick prowless i would be very supportive. 

[Lizzie]

For me, it's the idea that a full-guild mage is relegated to either
1) being gemmed
2) being a secret ungemmed city mage with a city-centric subguild that automatically comes with the listen skill
3) picking a wilderness-centric subguild that automatically comes with direction sense.

Listen for secret city-based is important, if you want a good shot at remaining a secret mage based in the city.
Direction sense for any mage who is based outside in the wilderness is a no-brainer. With very few exceptions, most mages can't really function without it, outside cities.

So rather than further limit the subguild options, I say just give all full-guild elemental mages a low-cap of those skills right out of chargen. They can still select subguild with higher caps of those skills if they want. But they would have a greater variety of options for subguilds if they don't mind not "getting good" at those particular skills.

[RheaGhe]

For me, it's the idea that a full-guild mage is relegated to either
1) being gemmed
2) being a secret ungemmed city mage with a city-centric subguild that automatically comes with the listen skill
3) picking a wilderness-centric subguild that automatically comes with direction sense.

Listen for secret city-based is important, if you want a good shot at remaining a secret mage based in the city.
Direction sense for any mage who is based outside in the wilderness is a no-brainer. With very few exceptions, most mages can't really function without it, outside cities.

So rather than further limit the subguild options, I say just give all full-guild elemental mages a low-cap of those skills right out of chargen. They can still select subguild with higher caps of those skills if they want. But they would have a greater variety of options for subguilds if they don't mind not "getting good" at those particular skills.

So first off.

I love the idea to add a few small utility skills to fit the classes.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen as far as I know.

That said, from what I read about the Karma changes, and from the discussions I observed at the time. The subguilds were going to be gradually phased out, and the gemmed restrictions on full guilds with them.

[Riev]

I hate to agree with lizzie (haayyy gurl) but I did prefer the main-guild magickers. I had always felt that your "main class" was something you were born to do, while your subclass was to fill out holes and/or to be the things you worked at. For an old quote:

Your main class is Mario
Your Subclass is Joe the Plumber

Both allow you to be able to do the job of a plumber, but in Mario's case? He was born to do it. He is naturally better at it, and will succeed more often. Joe the plumber can make a business out of plumbing but his real talents may lie elsewhere.

Magickers are born with magick in their blood. It is where all their potential lies. You weren't born to be a Plumber, but also happen to be a witch... you were born a with. I know it seems unfair, but in a world where magick is powerful and scary, it always made sense.



To whit: I don't want to play a super powerful sorceror with master parry and stealth skills. I want to play a sorceror with enough survivability and utility to be scary and enact plots. Unfortunately, many of our players want to play "I can kill you without risk".

A semi-recent sorceror went out of their way to NOT kill people, and yet some players hated how powerful they were because they "could not win". A player who spent months building a reputation, killing very few, in a very hard and iso role was chastised and bemoaned because some people couldn't "win". I don't think code will fix that, only a change in attitude.

[Lizzie]

I actually agree with Riev more often than I disagree (yass gurrl), I just don't advertise it because Riev needs to protect his rep or some such nonsense.

But yes, about the guild vs. subguild situation. This is true in every game I've played, all of which had main and sub guilds/classes/skillsets (whatever you want to call them).  The main was "what your character is designed for, primarily" while the sub was "hobbies, interests, side-talents" to give your main more depth and personality.

That's the whole point of -having- a main and a sub. If not, then just do away with mains entirely, and let people pick one sub from each category: combat, non-combat, and utility.

Or, ditch classes/subs altogether and shift completely into a template-based points system.

Magick has never been intended to be a side-gig. Either you're a mage, or you're not a mage.

[perfecto]

I agree with Krath here, that magick and sorcerors should be powerful. They should be scary. They should be unfair. In this setting, magick is scary and full of terror. Even a simple one-path sorceror is fucking terrifying.

The reality is that:

A. Nobody treats magick as frightening or scary. Even when it is.
B. Players will just complain that they can't kill them easily enough.

Heck. Why should they if there is no punishment or reward for doing so?

The player of the magicker will kill you because they have a fireball and you dont.
The player of the mundane will kill the magicker because they can flaunt that they beat an "OP witch".
Keeping someone alive is "a guarantee that they will kill you later" and for DECADES now we have cared about staying alive, and not the story of our deaths.

So yeah. Why treat it as scary? Its just inconvenient and if I bash them first I "win" soooooo...

Played a Whiran Travel once unmanifested at the time, was the hunting type so I was out riding a beetle around Nak.  Had all my spells aliased to quick fire, just out of habit.. Guess I was looking one way, riding another.. (not paying attention ooc) Rode my ride straight over the edge into the giant fissure north of town there.. Even after failing my climb checks upon decent downward.. the VERY long decent downward.. I had time to consider casting and saving myself, and chose not to.   Because you're right, the way you die is just as important as the way you live.   Kudos fellow sandboxer

[Lizzie]

I agree with Krath here, that magick and sorcerors should be powerful. They should be scary. They should be unfair. In this setting, magick is scary and full of terror. Even a simple one-path sorceror is fucking terrifying.

The reality is that:

A. Nobody treats magick as frightening or scary. Even when it is.
B. Players will just complain that they can't kill them easily enough.

Heck. Why should they if there is no punishment or reward for doing so?

The player of the magicker will kill you because they have a fireball and you dont.
The player of the mundane will kill the magicker because they can flaunt that they beat an "OP witch".
Keeping someone alive is "a guarantee that they will kill you later" and for DECADES now we have cared about staying alive, and not the story of our deaths.

So yeah. Why treat it as scary? Its just inconvenient and if I bash them first I "win" soooooo...

Played a Whiran Travel once unmanifested at the time, was the hunting type so I was out riding a beetle around Nak.  Had all my spells aliased to quick fire, just out of habit.. Guess I was looking one way, riding another.. (not paying attention ooc) Rode my ride straight over the edge into the giant fissure north of town there.. Even after failing my climb checks upon decent downward.. the VERY long decent downward.. I had time to consider casting and saving myself, and chose not to.   Because you're right, the way you die is just as important as the way you live.   Kudos fellow sandboxer

Imagine the story arc for your character if that event was the catalyst for manifesting. Consider that you might've failed the cast and died anyway. But what a great way to manifest! Abject fear and imminent death, and the "sound of survival" pops into your head as the air rushes past you on your way down.

[Windstorm]

I have fairly extreme mixed feelings on this subject and I've been reluctant to share them.

I guess my problem with combat and fighting in Armageddon is twofold:

1. Coded "fighting power" in Armageddon often comes by way of somewhat ridiculous pathways. Either finding questionable ways to get skill failures, or finding high-powered characters to spar with endlessly. PCs who do this can have outsized world impact not even via roleplay but just by sparring a lot; Armageddon is unique in this way, and it is not a good way. It's far more overdue for a change than magickers were.

2. Combat is simply too instantaneous and the nature of it being that way lends itself toward PCs who have gamed their way to higher combat power via oft-unrealistic time investment playing it understandably safe - IE, slaughtering all competition pretty ruthlessly - because they dumped a lot of time into getting there.

I honestly appreciated subguild magickers in that they basically threw the sparring gods closer back toward the range of mortality because no matter how many hours you've dumped into sparring, you could still get fireballed by somebody capable of parrying an attack. With subguild magickers being basically dumped out of meaningful combat capability, I feel a finger's been put back on the scales that empower PCs who go out of their way to spar a lot, and I don't like it.

If we must go ahead with this, I have to beg that we also make sparring less a pathway to godliness. Put a (low) upper limit on how much it increases skills.

[Riev]

no matter how many hours you've dumped into sparring, you could still get fireballed by somebody capable of parrying an attack. With subguild magickers being basically dumped out of meaningful combat capability, I feel a finger's been put back on the scales that empower PCs who go out of their way to spar a lot, and I don't like it.

As a note, many of the sub-classes offer things like Parry so you can still have a full-guild Krathi with a decent level of parry for defense.

Back in 'the day' before these changes, ONLY main guilds offered parry. So there is still that. However, you are correct, the constant in-combat spam needed to 'git gud' can allow people with no Thematic/In Character earned power to suddenly force things to shift simply because "they spent a long time sparring Gortoks"

[Lotion]

I think allowing gemmed into the Byn and the reduction of skillcap for parry+shield for non touched gick subguilds will allow weird metagame strategies around sparring. A raider with a rukkian subguild who is allowed to use various defensive magic while in the sparring ring could raise their def to the cap a lot more easily than anyone else and become a fantastic sparring partner. Every successful parry or block is a missed opportunity to raise your def and with a reduced cap to parry and block your sparring will suddenly have the potential to look very different.

[Riev]

And if that Byn Sergeant allows that to happen, I will leave their friends, familiy, and children splayed out in their public meeting room.

But you're not wrong, for the same reason that getting a REALLY good defensive elf (or half-elf, amirite?) turns into a sparring dummy.

Defense is king. There can be no offense without defense.

[Lotion]

And if that Byn Sergeant allows that to happen, I will leave their friends, familiy, and children splayed out in their public meeting room.

But you're not wrong, for the same reason that getting a REALLY good defensive elf (or half-elf, amirite?) turns into a sparring dummy.

Defense is king. There can be no offense without defense.

Having a strong warband seems like a good incentive to allow it to happen. If the labor of the gemmed is a useful tool this would be an incredible way to harness that kind of utility.

[Riev]

Agreed, but this is similar to 'hiring elves' which was never AGAINST THE RULES it just never seemed to happen (unless I was a Sergeant and @Armaddict was around).

I think penalizing subguild magickers will slow down the issues you're seeing, though I do think 30% is a heavy penalty.

[Dresan]

though I do think 30% is a heavy penalty.

I am going to use this as an example of the general sentiment of some people. However, after reflecting of the upcoming changes within the magefall setting, i have no idea who this sentiment is trying to fool.

Its as if:

• advanced weapons was commonly achieved by everyone
• or if advanced parry was pure shit, even in combination with high defense skill and insane level of magick buffs
• or magick defenses werent powerful and didnt make many mundane attacks moot
• or if certain magickal attack spells didnt rival backstab damage and could be done while wielding weapons
• or that those weapons couldn't now be powerful magick tools

The only thing that balanced all this out in the past was mages were isolated roles with fewer social opportunities. Now with the upcoming setting, mages seem potentially have access to more opportunities then my mundane city elf. While I do think this will be a fun and nessesary experiment to better intergrate the increasing number of mage players in the game, I can also see it very quicky spiralling out of control and making this the second coming of CAM. This could turn mundane characters or those that refuse magickal tools and assistance into second tier roles.


Magic cannot become common and still be mysterious, additionally as has been said before just because magick is powerful in the setting, does not mean you get play sorcerer-kings. At this point 30 percent penalty is probably bare minimun and something more severe like outright removal or strict limitation of magick subguilds (allowing only full magick guilds) is what will be required to keep mundane roles the majority.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'd rather not nerf mages and let the spec app system do it's thing, probably with a x mages per y mundane sorta criteria.

[Lizzie]

I'd rather not nerf mages and let the spec app system do it's thing, probably with a x mages per y mundane sorta criteria.

I'd be okay with "soft caps" on mages rather than following a specific rigid formula. Like, the game could accommodate up to 4 mage characters MINIMUM total, no matter how many people are playing at any given moment. And if there are a lot more players making characters next month, you could add a 5th mage opportunity. Out of any given 5 mages playing in the same month, at least 2 of them will be dead or stored next month anyway. It's good to have backups already in game

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'd rather not nerf mages and let the spec app system do it's thing, probably with a x mages per y mundane sorta criteria.

I'd be okay with "soft caps" on mages rather than following a specific rigid formula. Like, the game could accommodate up to 4 mage characters MINIMUM total, no matter how many people are playing at any given moment. And if there are a lot more players making characters next month, you could add a 5th mage opportunity. Out of any given 5 mages playing in the same month, at least 2 of them will be dead or stored next month anyway. It's good to have backups already in game

I'm cool with that too.

[Usiku]

Just to be clear... The option of being allowed to hire Gemmed in some capacity for the Byn does not equate to change in the laws around magick. Byn Gemmed will not be using magick in the sparring ring, if they did they would face the same consequences as any Gemmed using magick out of turn within the City.

[Bogre]

Just to be clear... The option of being allowed to hire Gemmed in some capacity for the Byn does not equate to change in the laws around magick. Byn Gemmed will not be using magick in the sparring ring, if they did they would face the same consequences as any Gemmed using magick out of turn within the City.

Brief summary of changes to the clanning of Gemmed —
There will be a Gemmed NPC in the T'zai Byn and PC officers will be able to decide if they'd like to recruit Gemmed in a limited capacity.
The Tor Academy will welcome Gemmed and magick-powered sparring under the watchful eye of the Scorpion Elite.
The Templarate will have final say on Gemmed accepting employment from a clan. Bribes accepted!

It's sort of pointed to in the Magefall announcement. I mean, it does say House Tor, but I find it unlikely that if its allowed for Tor you won't find people doing it secretly in the Byn. Just like those Bynners could never leave the gates or head into the 'rinth.

[Riev]

Just because "the docs" say you can't have magick on in the ring, doesn't mean people won't put magick on in the ring.

Like @Bogre said ... Bynners also aren't allowed to leave the gates, or go to the 'rinth, and Allanaki Bynners shouldn't be on spice, etc etc.

The rules have to be enforced by PCs first, and if those PCs would rather their elf-mage friends with maximum agility because of spells? They're not going to tell anyone. Which means staff have to enforce it, and no staff wants to enforce that.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Byn Gemmed will not be using magick in the sparring ring, if they did they would face the same consequences as any Gemmed using magick out of turn within the City.

Just because "the docs" say you can't have magick on in the ring, doesn't mean people won't put magick on in the ring.

Like @Bogre said ... Bynners also aren't allowed to leave the gates, or go to the 'rinth, and Allanaki Bynners shouldn't be on spice, etc etc.

The rules have to be enforced by PCs first, and if those PCs would rather their elf-mage friends with maximum agility because of spells? They're not going to tell anyone. Which means staff have to enforce it, and no staff wants to enforce that.

It's illegal. It's not against the rules.

Which means that staff will for sure make sure that you are doing your dirt on the DL, or they will indeed enforce the game world's response.

[Dresan]

I want to note that sparring with magic is like sparring with real weapon, i am not too concerned with people doing it.

However in the past, good sparring opportunities with mages were at times harder to come by, even if you were a hidden mage. Now its potentially easier to train up a mage within certain clans vs being a  mul or halfgiant.

Also magick tools will probably go into more common circulation, sure maybe you wont see people showing it off at the tavern but available enough to the point where anyone adverse to magick will find themselves at great disadvantage in this setting.

Heck, this setting makes mages more fuckable than my mundane city elf. Only time will tell how it will turn out but i can see mundane characters having a harder time being a relevant majority.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I want to note that sparring with magic is like sparring with real weapon, i am not too concerned with people doing it.

However in the past, good sparring opportunities with mages were at times harder to come by, even if you were a hidden mage. Now its potentially easier to train up a mage within certain clans vs being a  mul or halfgiant.

Also magick tools will probably go into more common circulation, sure maybe you wont see people showing it off at the tavern but available enough to the point where anyone adverse to magick will find themselves at great disadvantage in this setting.

Heck, this setting makes mages more fuckable than my mundane city elf. Only time will tell how it will turn out but i can see mundane characters having a harder time being a relevant majority.

This might be a valid concern, but I think a cap on mages solves that problem. A mage can be as scary as they wanna be, but if they are 1 in 10, they are in a strong minority.

[Riev]

Byn Gemmed will not be using magick in the sparring ring, if they did they would face the same consequences as any Gemmed using magick out of turn within the City.

Just because "the docs" say you can't have magick on in the ring, doesn't mean people won't put magick on in the ring.

Like @Bogre said ... Bynners also aren't allowed to leave the gates, or go to the 'rinth, and Allanaki Bynners shouldn't be on spice, etc etc.

The rules have to be enforced by PCs first, and if those PCs would rather their elf-mage friends with maximum agility because of spells? They're not going to tell anyone. Which means staff have to enforce it, and no staff wants to enforce that.

It's illegal. It's not against the rules.

Which means that staff will for sure make sure that you are doing your dirt on the DL, or they will indeed enforce the game world's response.

I fully understand the difference, man, but my point is that the things I listed? Are "illegal" for Bynners to do.

All this would do is require staff to be MORE present in checking if spells are on mages, unless they set up a way to have a Byn Krathi Guard who refuses entry to people who are glowing or whatever.

As I understand it, even with the staffing changes, they are not keen on enforcing these kinds of things. Illegal, or against the rules, the end result is taking staff attention because a player really wants to spar with magick on.

[ABoredLion]

I know this is an old topic and I'm late to the party, but I did want to offer my opinion on this very belatedly and hopefully hear some discussion, or perhaps staff offering further on their reasoning on this, if it is true and the numbers are as they say. I also want to be clear up front that I will speak from the perspective of a character type that takes risks, is typically out in the open world, and often involved in some kind of potentially dangerous conflict with either the world itself, or other players if necessary.

While I didn't play for the last year or so before Arm shut down, I have quite a bit of experience as combat mundane characters, I played old full-guild mages(though only the lower karma ones), and I played what was arguably among the most devastating and tempestuous of the magicker subguilds alongside characters in environments where combat was a constant risk.

I understand these changes in regards to sorcerers to a degree, as they legitimately could just get to a point where fighting with them was borderline impossible. However, even still, they had to play by hit and run tactics usually and were not able to just front face the threats of the world gathering together. One specific spell that a specific type of sorcerer gets (I don't know which one, but you know it when you hear it) which is apparently not something fire mages get anymore (re: Halaster's post) enables them to do this more consistently and get away with a lot more, but as the society is generally against them and reinforced by staff to be such, we're just talking about evening out playing fields for character sorcs.

Admittedly, the occasional Power Ranger squad pops up and the Plainsman's gathered goons empowered by all 15 elements and their mum's pizza rolls shows up as a united front, but usually that's not something the game is balanced around as it's a rarity. Over many years of play, the amount of Power Ranger teams that have popped up and not been dead in like, a month at most are very, very few.

So what are we really balancing the elementalist subguilds here for?

Most combat is relatively one sided once it's begun, and now that major clan groups are also recruiting elementalists potentially(on top of Templars having always been able to get them), you will see more than ever that the non-gemmed elementalist just gets stomped out. No changes necessary. You could have given nongemmed elementalists a boost, and barring a huge change in the design of the game world and emphasis of staff's chosen roleplay location, the non-gemmed elementalist's abilities are all organized around existing things.

I hate to dash people's mystique, but at the end of the day, a spell that does damage is just like a kick that does damage.

The very best (iconic) spell of spells to reference for damage concerns, is not going to kill anyone faster than your common fighter class who has spent 50 days played in the Byn getting extra extra swole and rough circling it. The difference is the time investment, and in the spell caster's case, historically they're the ones getting nonstop staff attention if they act out of line. Now, admittedly, staff has made quite a few changes to the game as far as combat in the last year, but it was absolutely routine in my experience in a combat clan to see hits to HP that were 30-50% of your HP in a single hit if it hit you in a bad location(I saw the wrist changes, eliminating/lowering some of that slightly), and even with honest to goodness top of the end armor and sparring weapons, you could still do 20% or more of someone's life per combat round on an even decently trained PC one versus one without those special hits, which isn't a very common way to fight in the first place. Combat only ever got 'questionable' when you and the person you were up against were equivalent. Then combat would slow down, and it might be chance, who gets lucky, and you could feel that in the moment. In these moments, a spellcaster's deadliness rises.

Up front, a great deal of magicks essentially just provide you skills you may not have. I can't get specific on this for obvious reasons, but considering there's "Tar of the Council" on Armageddon's Whiran images and you can clearly see that his feet are floating off of the ground on the helpfile, you might assume that he is not concerned with "tripping". In my experience most of magick is in the vein of this, just pretty scripts of effects that are mundane otherwise essentially. It is our roleplaying and the reactions of people around us that make magick actually feel like magick. The story, the setting, and the effect despite having not necessarily earned a skill to do that thing you're doing.

So what does all of this have to do with me saying that dropping those subguild elementalists' skills is a bad idea?

Mundane guilds are very, very strong in their current form for violence, especially if you pick one of the heavy combat ones and they also grow very, very fast. I've seen and experienced well trained mundane main/subguilds hunting magickers before, and once their skills get to a certain point, they aren't worried. It has been my experience that the only time the fear really comes into combat mundanes is when a sorcerer comes out, or they're up against an equally trained mundane skilled class with the right mix of magicks.

Even the idea that roleplay should enforce fear of magickers fails more now, because it's hardwired into the documents even further that commoners went to butchering magickers during the Magefall thing, and now their clans can also have them, enabling them to have IC reason to understand and react to spells, and generalize what mages might do in different scenarios. So now any non-gemmed antagonists are supposed to potentially confront those groups, when those groups can gain access to effective abilities similarly, while the non-gemmed are also being mundanely weaker, despite having every aspect of society against them already.

Further, it's another of these steps which are backwards from the spirit of roleplay and collaborative storytelling. I've always found it bewildering to create arbitrary caps on different skills rather than letting players' experiences and time spent bring them to a place that they're at, but I understand the underlying spirit of there being some amount of balance. This is just another step further from that with more arbitrary limitation.

Just putting up the raw numbers, two 100 days played characters with similar combat experiences, the same main guild, and a magick subguild on the other one, yes, the mage probably kills the other if two people post up and stare at each other and just start slapping sticks. That's not how the game world works though. What happens typically for nonfatal, surprise murder encounters is that a mundane somewhere will snitch their hearts out, and the whole world starts hunting and whispering and slinging stuff at the non-gemmed. Even scary magick armor and 'mon un SuperKickbutnotreallyKick,becausethisismagick' won't stop you from getting killed by the Byn unit that spots you after. You get lucky enough not to get rolled, you get combat locked by casting a spell, and now you sit here until you're dead. Almost all of magick is pretty much, 'once you're seen, you're screwed' even if you weren't setting out to be a Big Bad somewhere.

As far as the dangers, you can cast fairly quick, but there's time between effects and reactions people can have to them, and combat goes very, very fast.

If staff were determined to lower skills, the only pertinent skills that should have been lowered were offense. Not defensive, not utility. Life is already going to be hard enough for any non-gemmed. From experience, it is a slog to walk that line. The reason that sorcerers can handle this change a lot better than elementalists is that there's overlap between different spells that aren't offered by the same schools historically that work to cover these bases and enable the defensive nature necessary to survive any antagonism from an aggressor. Their mixed toolkit of magick types seems to give them a little of this and that (aside from that one lucky one) that covers these bases and the other skills just make those aspects even more insurmountable.

To genuinely compare a subguild elementalist to a sorcerer for necessary balancing is ridiculous. With the split up of their aspects of magick, most elementalists have very exploitable weak points and the ones which really don't seem to, actually have the most obvious of weak points ever in that if they go outside once they're "out" and are outright dead or forever facing random attempts on their life going forward. Many different weak points had different interactions from other abilities which historically gave elementalists some coverage for varied events but they're often lopsided now or are missing entirely, and that thing which invalidated needing that particular skill potentially (see our guy Tar of the Council) may not even be in your particular selection so you're losing things there too.

Now, full disclosure and respect to current staff and changes made since I was really being choked by Armageddon's lure, there were some spell effects and even new spells added by staff. So some of these apparent weak points could have been reworked within spells or effects changed; I experienced some changes while playing one of my characters, so I know they were reworking some things, but my point still stands. It does seem like a gross step over the line to compare even the most devastating of mages for skills which can actually negatively impact Arm's culture in any way to sorcerers for their power. It wasn't ever even close and non-gemmed mages are even worse off now, because the system's against them, their defensive skills, stealth, and manipulation skills are going to be bad for the environment they're dealing with.

Further, these are all locked behind special applications, which means you're not getting to do them often even if they were potentially, at the very highest end, anywhere near a sorcerer. Which they weren't.

This change is a bad decision. An unnecessary one.

Mages trying to kill you should always be scary, at least a little bit, no matter your days played. I get that on staff side, when you can just create a mage NPC and take it into combat with another NPC you probably load up nearby to test how quick one can potentially kill the other or whatever, that the numbers might seem skewed (I'm sure you guys have some way to test this kind of thing) but that's not indicative of actual roleplay experiences. If you're not attached to characters at all or playing roles, then you can throw danger around willy-nilly and it doesn't matter beyond the moment of combat, but that's just not reflective of long term experience in the game world. It's also not particularly reflective of the newly fleshed out stance on PKs, which will drive people to not kill(something I agree with) but will also result in inevitable killing or enslavement(essentially killing if you don't care for that playstyle) for anyone who doesn't care to play gemmed.

Defensive changes are massive in Armageddon despite what I believe to be relatively low point values. The difference between advanced and journeyman parry is huge in experience. The difference between master and advanced, also. The same goes for shield use. Most stealth skills are borderline useless even at 75% of potential max in my experience, and something like climb (barring notable exceptions) dropping even that amount massively escalates danger in most of the places where such a thing is impactful. In Armageddon's environments that I felt like you actually, truly needed climb skill, it's always been that you just kind of do it or die environments/moments. Binary on the ups, and any slight failures on the steps down = death. That's terrible news for 90% of these elementalist subguilds, especially if they're doing their thing.

Now, admittedly this all could be a move toward making less magick in the game and pushing people away from playing magickers, but I'm hoping that's just not the desire. The special applications probably already did that, and I'd assume that staff are happy to let people play what they want to play and just want to enjoy the game world that they put their time in too generally. That's why I'm going on the assumption this is a balancing concern mostly.

[Kavrick]

To begin with, I'm going to be frank and say that I skimmed through this because it's 8am and that is an absolute mountain of text. That aside, despite the fact I cannot talk for staff and assume their intent, their changes fix a handful of rather important problems with elementalist subguilds.

1. Subguild elementalists had an entire main guild which they could use to hide the fact they are Gicks. The fact that the percentage of gicks in the game was so high, yet it was rare that one was ever discovered proved this.
2. Taking a combat main guild would make you incredibly hard to kill, removing any real weakness that a mage might have.
3. Taking something like an enhancement rukkian or several other subguild options would simply enhance your mundane skills by a significant amount. This means that subguild elementalists were often just straight up better than a true mundane with any other mundane subguild option. A fighter, no matter the subguild will never beat a fighter with access to magic. This meant that mundane characters were basically redundant as long as you had access to magick subguilds, and without them requiring a special application, you could just roll a subguild mage into a subguild mage into a subguild mage with no penalty.

Making full-mages the default means that you can play a magick-user if you wish, and they have their strengths and weaknesses. Subguild mages are still an option and incredibly potent, but are limited by special applications.

[Lotion]

The gick nerfs did not go far enough. Ever magick user's bash skill should be hardcapped at jman.

[dumbstruck]

I don't think that people will play subguild mages after the changes.

I don't think subguild mages were actually good for the game.

So I don't feel like it's a loss.

It was far too easy for mages to never be known as such to anyone they didn't want to know it. I also have beef with the fact that the way that it was set up empowered the hell out of a small margin of players to minmax and grief beyond reason.

It was problematic for me, because it split the thread rather than threading the needle. Which it still does now, just in different ways. By all reason and rights, mages /should/ be able to be as good as a mundane at mundane things. However, in practice, that turned into a handful of people using that reasonable position to exploit pvp. If people were simply exploiting pve things, I don't think anyone would have had a problem with it. But not only did it make mages as good at mundane things as mundanes, it also neutered the hell out of magick, magick users, and so forth. Why? Because the way the guilds were split were terrible. Just straight up. Imagine a wind witch that can neither fly nor become invisible? A water witch who could not heal people. A fire witch - no, their stuff was already geared heavily toward 1 play style and it really just exacerbated that.

I think that the thing that needed to happen was for people to get the things that they use in pvp dinged and cut down a bit. Which it did. But it's also affected all of the pve things (namely crafting and crafts, but to a lesser degree, also utility skills). I think it was the right call for pvp skills. I think it was too much on the pve skills. By all means let a subguild drovian with a master sneak guild be sneakier than an elf. It makes sense. But the place where I have an issue with it is in the way it's affected crafting and foraging and so many other things.

That said, I've still considered making a mundane guild/subguild PC in the foreseeable future. So I wouldn't say it's unplayable. And the fact that the cost is so high makes it so less people are going to make subguild mages. But I don't think that that's an issue at all. They were both overpowered and neutered. It's not a good play experience generally. Nothing will be 'optimized' and if you're playing an ungemmed subguild mage, once you've outed yourself, you're out. So most people who play them will be more likely than before to be secretive about it. But again I don't really find that to be a problem.

[ABoredLion]

To begin with, I'm going to be frank and say that I skimmed through this because it's 8am and that is an absolute mountain of text. That aside, despite the fact I cannot talk for staff and assume their intent, their changes fix a handful of rather important problems with elementalist subguilds.

A lot of your reply is a bit off topic and a bit of a counterargument for something I'm not really talking about. This isn't about the re-inclusion of main guild elementalists (and the technical removal of common subguild elementalists) or even the shifting of subguilds to special applications. The thread is about a blanket -% nerf to the maximum skills of subguild elementalists across the board.

I originally wrote up a reply for all of that, but it's a bit of a derail.

More to the point of the thread, lowering the defensive abilities of a villified ENSLAVE or KILL ON SIGHT enemy of the state means an across the board shortened Time-to-Kill. In potential PvP environments, as time to kill is shortened, preemptive aggression and defensive actions increase. This isn't an Armageddon specific environment thing, it's just game design. If the intended goal of staff was to dial back slightly on player kills, increasing Time-to-Kill for everyone across the board would be net wins. All magickal effects require set up and/or maintenance. You don't just get an effect without a spell. This is another disadvantage for magickers NOT seeking violence. Ironically, this pushes them more to be the one aggressing when they're discovered. To run around spelled up and if you saw them, well, now you're a liability.

In Armageddon, typically the people hitting first are the ones hitting last. It's just not a change I like at all. That's ignoring the noncombat stuff this % negative would affect, like climb, sneak, riding, direction sense, who knows what else, which is just huge quality of life across the board or outright necessary in a lot of situations.

[Halaster]

In Armageddon, typically the people hitting first are the ones hitting last. It's just not a change I like at all. That's ignoring the noncombat stuff this % negative would affect, like climb, sneak, riding, direction sense, who knows what else, which is just huge quality of life across the board or outright necessary in a lot of situations.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49825.msg1102426.html#msg1102426

- subguild elementalists now have the same max skill penalty as sorcerers.  Which is a 30% reduction in max combat/weapon skills, and a %15 reduction in max stealth skills.  This does not affect starting skills or gain rates, just max. It affects all skills regardless of whether they're guild, subguild, or racial.  It also affects the 'touched' magickal subguilds.  None of this applies to full guild elems.

the line perhaps causing confusion is "It affects all skills regardless of whether they're guild, subguild, or racial".  That means of the skills it affects (combat, weapon, stealth (not climb)) it doesn't matter how you get them.



https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49825.msg1102436.html#msg1102436

- based on feedback, removed Touched subguilds from the elementalist subguild changes above, so their skills will not be affected



https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49825.msg1102785.html#msg1102785

- Carved out exception for climb in the sorc/subguild elem skill nerf (climb isn't nerfed like sneak/hide)



So in summary, all subguild mages (except for touched) have their combat and weapons skills max reduced by 30%, and their stealth skills (except climb) max reduced by 15%.

[ABoredLion]

Gotcha on the combat, weapon skills, and stealth skills thing. Thank you for the clarification.

Doesn't change my point on this nor my suggestion about the nature of time to kill and defensiveness being the thing I'm arguing primarily for, but it's great that you caught the climbing thing.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you mean 30% of the max of the given class's skills, not 30% of the max of that skill itself's potential max. 30% loss of shield use and parry is massive. It's beyond the difference between a heavy combat class and one tier lower, I'm fairly sure. Like, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm vaguely thinking it's dropping over two stages down on the class proficiency chart in those areas. Meaning a heavy combatant is now a light combatant IF MAXED OUT, with none of the benefits of a light combatant, and if you happened to pick a light combatant... well good luck honestly. You gave up more than half of the element's potential magick for crafting I hope.

[Roon]

To be perfectly honest, I think the aspect subclasses are so underpowered after this change that there's no real reason to worry about them wreaking havoc in PvP. While I won't miss the gamebreaking stuff they used to be capable of, this overcorrection leaves them vastly inferior to full elementalists with mundane subclasses in any meaningful metric of power. A raider with an aspect subclass will have the combat skill caps of a stalker. A miscreant with an aspect subclass will have the stealth of a rogue-type subclass. An infiltrator will have the combat skills of... a craftsperson? And, what, the stealth skills of a fence? And low advanced backstab?

Pretty sure these characters will be absolute garbage for any form of PvP. You could get an objectively superior character with something like Ruk/swordsman or Krath/thief. On top of that, the aspects require more karma than their parent elementalists and are only available through special application. It's such a severe overcorrection that it's kind of cute. They're basically irrelevant now and I don't expect to meet any.

[Kavrick]

I don't really understand what the big deal is personally. How many players actually reach the cap of their offensive skills? And is having slightly lower parry or shield use really that much worse when you have access to defensive magic? This seems a little overblown.

[ABoredLion]

If your cap is low journeyman, everyone can reach that literally by getting unlucky fighting scrabs. It'll just happen.

I can't explain defensive magick here for obvious reasons. The answer is yes, for the context and conversation as far as RP and fewer escalating interactions, especially where secrets are concerned for non-gemmed. I can't stress this enough, but I would give 50% offensive weapon skills to keep these subguilds defensively where they're at as a default, to put that into perspective.

That would be considerably more healthy for them all.

I would sooner see a no-heavy combat classes on those subguilds rule go into place than any of these options. Just being able to play medium combat (unnerfed) would be an already huge upgrade over this, without getting into issues with like archery often being useless below some agility without near master, hide being nearly worthless short of master for every situation you actually, genuinely need it in. There's just so much to unpack in this.

[Roon]

I don't really understand what the big deal is personally. How many players actually reach the cap of their offensive skills? And is having slightly lower parry or shield use really that much worse when you have access to defensive magic? This seems a little overblown.

It's mostly about the defensive skills and things like two handed, sap/backstab, archery. And it's not "slightly lower," it's an enormous drop. It's the equivalent of two tiers on the class hierarchy. A heavy-combat class with an aspect subclass will pretty much have the combat potential of a miscreant. And that's the best that any aspect character can be. It's even worse if they pick a light-combat class.

[Kavrick]

Isn't 30% of max around high advanced, not low journeyman? Also I am familiar with only a couple of defensive magicks, and I would certainly say that they are worth having advanced parry over master parry. Also if this makes T1 combat classes like T2 combat classes, I don't really see the issue. T2 and even T3 classes can be formidable opponents without magic. I have to say bluntly, this feels like a hyperfixation of powergaming in pvp, which doesn't feel like something that should be a major concern? Like the average player isn't going to be powergaming like this.

[Roon]

A 30% drop generally takes you from the highest possible skill level (i.e. what enforcer/raider/fighter have in their combat skills) to the very bottom of advanced (where miscreant/stalker/laborer are at). Essentially two tiers down in the class hierarchy. Stealth skills lose about one tier, but that's also a huge deal due to the way scan works and the fact that a third of the classes and a bunch of subclasses now have master scan.

It's a little wonky mathematically because the master level is "smaller" than the previous levels, but the last points are also more impactful due to the way stuff's calculated. Suffice to say that nobody is scared of a miscreant's fighting prowess, and that's about as good as any character with an elemental aspect can ever become. And their stealth will be limited to that of, say, the thief/rogue-type subclasses at best.

I have to say bluntly, this feels like a hyperfixation of powergaming in pvp, which doesn't feel like something that should be a major concern?

It's not a "hyperfixation." It's discussing a topic that naturally pertains to PvP because that's what this change is relevant to. Would you walk into a discussion about backstab or poisons and scold people for caring too much about PvP? Nobody has much reason to care about whether or not poisons are balanced for use against NPCs because that's unimportant. Same goes for magick and, to some extent, combat skills altogether.

Talking about things that pertain to PvP does not automatically equate to "hyperfixation on powergaming." That's kind of a strange perspective, and one that doesn't do anyone any good.

[ABoredLion]

It's not about powergaming for PvP, it's about the fact that PvP exists, and that roleplay exists, and in this world, the roleplay toward any non-gemmed mage is in its inherent nature negative and oppressive, and exceedingly dangerous. Defensive capabilities being measured only on the grounds of "I walk around looking like a damn Super Saiyan!" removes a massive part of the whole idea of being a character, which is that all magickers shouldn't be just their magick and literally nothing else codedly. There should be options that aren't that, and still capable.

It's 30%, it's around 1/3rd, because that's math, and there are typically points 'into' mastery for skills. If we imagine 90 as a maximum skill, losing 27 points is a very big deal. So no, it's not a tiny change. It's a huge one. It will affect your quality of life playing that character, massively given we're talking specifically about combatants.

To me this is about survivability, and not needing to resort to Super Saiyan status to walk outside the gates if you're in general danger potentially, or to exist as a character without seeming odd or out of place in the environments I would generally play these kinds of roles in. Especially for what these subguilds give up in the process. The idea that mages are not just mages even codedly is important to me at least. The reality is that due to how Arm's wildlife, general NPC enemies, and player classes are balanced (at least before this shutdown) these changes would make anything short of nuclear not just a risk, but an extreme one.

I am for mages blending in. I know you're against it and see it as an issue they remedied; your post made that clear. I prefer at least some mages within a specific niche having that option while maintaining upward competency in combat. I like the full mages coming back. I wanted it very, very badly, but I think the niche of subguilds that can just be anyone is important too. I also don't want that niche to be nonexistent because fear of some powergaming unkillable machine which doesn't really exist in Armageddon. Sorcerers with the best coded powergamey advantages get killed despite those advantages. Everyone always says they're unkillable, and then one day they get ran over by 53 inixes or something and that's that.

It will affect you fighting humanoids which are not players. It will affect you fighting raptors which may be players. It will affect you risking going out to find a drink and that surprise tarantula pops up. It will affect much more, and for the group that has the MOST to lose with just a few words or one secret that can potentially turn the world against them, and put them in a position of facing (potentially) constant attack for being a magicker, these skills are important.

[Halaster]

There were a few reasons why we did this:

1.  We (staff) believed, based on observations over the past few years, that subguild mages when paired with heavy combat, which was what we saw most of the time, was simply OP.  It's true you didn't get all the spells, but you got ones that were good enough to be just as effective.  And you took away any weakness that mages had to offset that.  I've heard it described as mundane++.  Or that there's no reason not to take one because of how much stronger and effective the characters were.

2.  As a result of the above, mages became far more common that we were comfortable with.  Sure, there were recurring threads by some folks about how the game has too much magick, and others agreeing.  But the silent majority showed otherwise and kept playing them, and there were just "too many" mages in the game.

3.  We tested it with sorcerers and got feedback from a few of them:  the changes were definitely noticeable, but it didn't gimp the character, or make them unplayable, or even wimpy. Having a high journeyman kick vs a master kick didn't make them useless.  It just made it a bit more difficult, and made them need their magick to make up for it.  The feedback was mostly positive as I recall.



So we took a two-prong approach to changing them (nerfing them as some folks say).  We made them special app only to cut down their numbers.  And we gave them the combat/weapon/stealth penalties to cut down their over-powered nature a bit.  Obviously as you can see from the wildly varying opinions in this thread, it's a heavily disputed topic, and I get that.  This is the direction we've chosen for Season One.  We're always open to improving and changing things if something doesn't work out.  Though it's no secret, we're sometimes slow to make big changes like that.  We want to "let things play out" for a while.

The concept of subguild mages is fun, though, which is why we left Touched alone.

[Lizzie]

So as I'm understanding it:

A sub-krathi who has a mundane combat main class -

Normally the mundane combat main class's piercing skill maxes out at 100. But playing a sub-krathi, it will max out at 70.
HOWEVER - the sub-krathi gets Melt-Face, which mundane characters don't get at all. I'd say that balances out just fine.

[Roon]

So as I'm understanding it:

A sub-krathi who has a mundane combat main class -

Normally the mundane combat main class's piercing skill maxes out at 100. But playing a sub-krathi, it will max out at 70.
HOWEVER - the sub-krathi gets Melt-Face, which mundane characters don't get at all. I'd say that balances out just fine.

It's not as simple as that. It's much more nuanced than "piercing skill still good? then everything's fine!"

But to stick with a similarly simple analogy, it's more like: you could also have picked Krathi/Swordsman and got roughly the same combat skills as Raider/Sub-Krathi, but then in addition to Melt-Face, you also get Cook-Perfect-Steak, Detect-Betrayal, Make-the-Sun-Spin and Conjure-Wyvern which the aspect subclass won't have. And the superior option requires less karma.

Ultimately, it's good that we won't have obscenely powerful hybrid characters running around wielding the best of both worlds. However, it isn't actually balanced. It's decidedly unbalanced. It's not necessarily a problem that it's unbalanced, but it definitely is unbalanced. And for all the same reasons that there were too many subclass mages before, I think there will now be few or none. I don't personally mind that, but I definitely think it's an overcorrection that moves the needle just as far in the opposite direction as it was before--just with a less pernicious consequence, since the only ones who suffer from this are the ones who are disappointed in their own characters' weakness, as opposed to the ones who previously had to deal with other players' overpowered sub-mages.

Halaster points out that the problem was really with the heavy-combat classes paired with aspects. As @ABoredLion suggested, it would probably have been enough to nerf that particular combination instead of everything. If we get right down to it, the real issue was combining mastery in skills like parry and shield use with certain spells that make you incredibly hard to kill on their own and virtually immortal when layered on top of master defenses. This change was a rather heavy-handed way to handle that. It caught everything else in the crossfire.

If this had happened before full elementalists returned, and before mundane subclasses were made much better, it would have made somewhat more sense. Since that's now a thing, though, I think it would have been more reasonable to go with something like: aspect subclasses limit your combat skills to 70 (to stick with your example). That takes care of the problem of mundane++ combat characters without hitting the classes below the heavy-combat tier so hard. The way it is now, if a mage-sub brings a raider from 100 to 70 handwavy combat power numbers, it brings a stalker to like 35. That's basically the same as not having combat skills at all. And then you also drop down to advanced stealth? Sheesh.

[zealus]

Implying that subguilds get simular skills to main guilds is just untrue.

Apart from that:
When was the last time you maxed out offense and defense? I personally never even came an inkling of close.

[Patuk]

The people who insist that it's about the roleplay, that the coded skills aren't the point, that magick is interesting, are going to be entirely unaffected. They are free and un-nerfed in playing artisan or adventurer mages without even a shred of a nerf to what they are good at.

Go! Show us your karma's worth! Make those mercantile mage subclass PCs and dazzle us all!