Conversation with Chris on skills

And I would say that it makes no more sense for the Warrior to have to put down his shield to cast as it does for him to cast the magick through the shield itself. Or ON the shield itself. Magick IS make believe, and there is no real world model for us to follow. The previous make believe worlds that had magick have wildly conflicting rules on how it works.

I want to play a character capable of using a limited selection of spells, armor, and shields, and if I get told that I cannot cast because I have a shield, that will blow. It will also spoil my concept. Who's to say that magick MUST be cast from otherwise empty hands?

 

It doesn't have to be, it could work any way the game devs want. But putting some type of constraints on how its cast, whatever they are, just makes sense.. especially when you have a reagent system and not some innate magic on the caster. But in general, the lack of constraints are going to create just really bland, uninteresting builds, imo.

 

I'm firmly in the "no stats on gear" camp. So I don't care if mages go barehanded. I was just stating the reason other games use weapons.

The suggestion I've made before is that there could be some "concentration pool" which got diminished by things like wearing armor, wielding weapons, having certain passive buffs in effect, and having an active pet out. As this pool got chewed up if would be difficult or even impossible to cast more difficult spells. In might also affect your ability to have the best / get the most out of a pet. It might also affect your ability to actively avoid (e.g. dodge) in combat.

 

In combat, having to remove your shield or main hand weapon to cast a spell will be a disadvantage, as well as a time sink. This will make it disadvantageous to combine any magick that requires such an action with weapons and armor. And THAT creates a separation between magick and melee. At which point, call it what you will, we suddenly have two classes. Mage and non-mage. Because I can spec into ALL of archery with fewer points than are needed for magick, still have points left over, and get my long distance damage that way. Forcing inefficiency on the player population will create a divide in how they spec, and it will destroy the fluid, classless system that SotA was supposed to have. We might as well declare that PvP players cannot use bows, or that players who use Sun magick cannot also use Earth magick.

There is NO good reason to demand any particular thing of a system of MAGICK in a VIDEO GAME. I'm really sorry that your sensibilities demand empty hands for spellcasting, mine don't. We're just going to have to agree to disagree. I think that forcing the game balance between various specs and strategems dance to the tune of "cause I think it looks wrong" is bad medicine.

 

Using bows will require two hands though, so its less of an inefficiency than using a bow, as a mage would be able to have both a weapon and his magic, while an archer won't have anything but his bow. I just think you're exaggerating the inefficiency. Its "I think it works wrong" as much as "I think it looks wrong" too.

 

Why not take magic out and replace it with cheerleading then? Why not make everyone pink with bunny ears and instead of fireballs lets use ears of corn? People can get corn on the cobbed to death. Sure, let's not care about how things look at all.

 

We have the handstand emote

 

I shoot you with my bow, then stick it back in the quiver and draw my sword and shield, I fight at close range till my foes retreat, then resheath the sword and shield, redraw the bow, and resume sniping. It's a time sink. Depending on how much time is put into changing weapons, it might only barely be that.

Forcing people to unequip their weapons is the issue. Whether you are unequipping to free your hands for a bow, a spell, or a pair of specially bred juggling salmon, matters not.

 

I said forcing GAME BALANCE to bow to appearance is bad. I didn't say anything about discarding ALL interest in appearance. Then again, I'd be PERFECTLY happy beating people down with cardboard boxes, throwing kittens, and bursts of corncobs. That's just me, though.

 

Sure, but all I'm saying is its the same difference. Unequipping your bow to ready a sword and shield, or, unequipping your shield so you can use magic. Its a handicap, but not something that we won't see anywhere else in the game, and not a unique punishment against magic use.

 

It's a bar to using magick at melee range.

 

Yeah, exactly that's just you. But there's a fairly large following of people that like their genre of fantasy roleplaying to include things that they understand, like, and to some degree expect. That's why you don't say that Knights have pointy wizard hats, and goblins look like the tooth fairy. Or an archer uses a mace or a mage uses weapons and plate armor.

If the game just ignores 100's of years of story telling that has built the fantasy genre to where it is today just because it can...I'm not sure that's very smart.

 

It's also another great excuse for unarmed combat

As long as the casting process is explained and makes some sense, I'm ok with it. I mean, you could cast with word and reagent and maybe a lightning bolt strikes them from the sky, not from your hand. Or maybe it shoots from your eyes. The best system would be one that takes into account different casting methods, so some spells (or some versions) or spells might have hand gestures involved, or words, or reagents, or a focus, or something else.

Also, it occurs to me that this could change with skill progression. So when you first get that lightning bolt, you need free hands, but once you've put a bunch of points in you unlock hands-free casting- this could be automatic or be a hidden skill that pops into the tree as an option when you have progressed far enough. Silent casting would be a great high level mastery. Likewise, if casting doesn't take speaking, how will silence work? Maybe you have to cast something on their hands instead of their mouth!

 

Nor did I say that any of these images were appropriate. You really are blowing this out of proportion, do you understand the terms being used? I said that GAME BALANCE should not play second fiddle to APPEARANCES. I don't get what your problem with that statement is.

 

What about spell books as spellcaster "weapons", like in UO?

 

Regs and Hands;

I am for reg-less magic and with such a system, then it becomes like "using the force", manna or ether that is inside you.
Regs I believe need to be strictly for the alchemist ways of mixing potions. I also believe that those potions need to be in exclusive use of the alchemist trained player.
But, I also believe that our characters can carry far too much with them into combat. however much you are carrying, should encumber your character.

But, I believe that in a magic world where Regs are required, that the magic user needs to have both of their hands free to be able to grab all the Regs to cast the spell.

I point back at UO and am reminded that Regs became the exclusive rights of the NPC to sell or provide the player. Where did they get them all? Who knows where?... because there wasn't that much that spawned anywhere except for getting them from monsters... and where did they get them all?

Being encumbered should have a consequence in the regards of everything!
~Time Lord~

 

Players made a market for selling regs. They would run around and buy out all the shops as fast as they could and then sold in quantity to other players. Trying to buy regs from NPCs was always a pain because there were always people running up and buying everything as it spawned.. Then the really annoyed bit would be they would immediately recall literally across the street to buy out the next vendor.

In either case.. I'm rather more of a fan of how spells were pre-prepped in earlier Ultimas. It's not that you had to grab each of your regs. They just did away with the pre-prep. Rather than grabbing 3 different reagents you used your premade mix. I always imagined (if I ever bothered to think of it at all) that premixing your reagents would still be necessary. It was only done away with for convenience.

It's one of those areas where you have to chuck realism out the window because it just doesn't play well. The player must accept that their character has grabbed their reagents.. or mix or what have you and just not think too much about it. Much in the same way as we don't think that at some point during the day your character has someone managed to stop somewhere and relieve themselves in the bushes without you noticing.. or how our concept of time doesn't quite jive with what's going on on screen.

 

My problem that I strongly disagree with you. There are two core elements of this game that are equally important, PVP Balance and Roleplaying. You can't dilute either or you will suffer fiercely. RG and Darkstarr have said that there are really 3 legs in the game, I believe the other is crafting, and while I think that is important I do not hold it as sacred as PVP Balance and Roleplaying.

 

Sir Bowen Bloodgood,

You bring up a very good memory point there about the prefab of spells.

When we combine magic with the need for Regs, then the cards loose a bit of their value if the players Regs run out.

The alchemy skills need Regs and the farmer needs to be able to grow Regs and I think that's a healthy situation because they are all expendable items. If the farmer is growing grains or edible product for food, then they have only the NPC to sell them to or we must make all the other players more hungry. Yet the gold the farmer/alchemist makes, needs to have more controls via a system of expenses needed to grow, make and produce such things. Expenditures could come in many ways for fixing the plow and such.... but that's all another subject.

But I do agree that the pure mage needs less encumbrance and the pure Knight needs to have a bonus for being encumbered by armor.

But also, the encumbrance of what any player is carrying in their backpack needs to mean something. I am again reminded of UO, where we never would think of such a thing because we could hunt all day and then carry enough gold to fill Fort Knox Kentucky.
"Have you ever picked up a gold bar"? ....... "It's 27+1/2 pounds! 12.4 Kg!"..... That's heavy! Especially when you are carrying so much other stuff. Anything over 60-70 lbs is too much.... yet 60-70 lbs is still too much to fight with it on you...... combat fighting weight that you are carrying should make a difference or in other words, "a consequence".
~Time Lord~

 

That could work if they threw out the stupid card system because the whole point of the cards is you don't control what you can use and prepreparing reagents is the exact opposite, its you having to sit down and work out EXACTLY which spells you want to cast and in what number