Jumping is a bad counter to root spells

Jumping is the only counter to being rooted that I know of. It requires strength, the more strength you have the better you are at breaking out of a root by jumping.

I think this is a bad counter for a number of reasons.

1. When you jump you can't also be attacking or defending. So the fraction of a second you get back from breaking out of the root spell you waste being up in the air and spamming the space bar.

2. Jumping is reactive. So unless you have passive defenses that prevent you from being rooted in the first place, you're always behind the curve by jumping. This places an unbalanced NEED to have the passive root defense innates from the Earth and Heavy Armor skill trees. It also makes strength needlessly more important.

I don't mind jumping being an option, but I think there should be a spell or skill that can be passively used to avoid being rooted at all. I think Dodge is a good candidate for a skill. The web or the vines come out of the ground and you dodge them.

Beyond that, I'd like to see a spell that would last 30 seconds or so that would just make you unrootable. Probably something in the Air School.

Having the ability to cut through the webs or vines with a blade (before the root took hold) would also be a nice addition.

 

If you could dodge or deflect (w/ shield) spider webs, sure. And cut through or burn them (fire!). Dodge for actual vines, sure; though I'm not sure how you're dodging them if you're in the spot where the vines are coming up. Maybe if they took a second to form and you could use combat rolls to get out of the way.

 

As of R26, did anyone notice jumping against spider web become much less effective? I could swear that on R25 I only need to jump only 2-3 to get out of it.

 

It's like the paralyse spell in UO. The only way out of it was to cast dispel. Of course, then we had power words that we could see and we could break line of sight with things like hiding (subterfuge, here, I suppose).