Gnomish Magics

First topic message reminder :

INTRODUCTION:
When I think of the combat classes, I think of different mind sets: the meleer, a direct person who lets his actions do the talking. The ranger, a quick thinking fighter who gets out of harm’s way, not without letting a few shots loose first! Finally, the mage, a well planned individual who uses his strategy and conditions to his advantage. A Modern mage uses a combination of binding, curses, and combat spells to his advantage. An Ancient mage chooses his target well to cause as much devastation as possible. A Lunar mage figures out who needs his/her help the most and how to help that person (more on that later).

In “The Eyes of Glouphrie,” we see the sly Glouphrie create an illusion of an army to defeat the Goblin army during the 4th Age. In “Nomad’s Requiem,” Nomad uses mines to attack you. What if we could combine those kinds of spells? The ingenuity of the gnomes would really shine in this spellbook!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Key: Topic – (Page Number, Post Number - Page Number, Post Number)
Introduction and Table of Contents – (1, 1)
Gnomish Spellbook – (1, 2 – 2, 2)
“Justification for a 4th Spellbook” – (2, 3 – 2, 6)
FAQ – (2, 7)
Miscellaneous – (2, 8)

Remember that each trap only lasts for 60 seconds at the most. If each spell takes about 5 seconds to cast, you can only have about 12 traps out at once, 36 if you use Mines/Fences. Considering the difficulty of using this spellbook, I say only a few would use this. However, only a few of those few would spam this spellbook to hit as many people as possible, so it wouldn't be an imbalance in practice. Tha having been said, the best counter to a Gnomish Mage is to stand still, his spells will become a lot less effective.

The max hit of F2P with the boosted Modern Spellbook would be 200, overpowered?

Ah, in massive clan battles, this spellbook could be very effective, but not as effective as Ancients. 2x2 or 3x3?

Um...

Ancients does not make standing still lethal...

the basic principles of long range combat make standing still lethal when dealing with someone who you're attacking, the basics of all combat make it lethal when running away from someone...

Ancients just imposes standing still on you...Magic that doesn't make you stand still would be more effective to combine with traps

Ancients keeps you in place. Whether you want to move or not, you're frozen. If you're running against the Gnomish Mage, you're hurting yourself.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:I don't know, I've endured enough barrage piles to know that the best thing you can do is move the fuck away from the crowd before continuing on a target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZPUBg1K_jM
Watch the first minute or so and tell me how standing still is not lethal.

1) despite your clan/pker ego, not everything is completely dependent on how it would effect your goddamn clan matches.

2) I never said standing still wasn't lethal, go read my post again and then come back and read this: THE BASICS OF LONG RANGE COMBAT ARE WHAT MAKE IT LETHAL, NOT THE SPECIFIC SPELLBOOK. If I stand still while being shot at by a modern mage, and ancient mage, or an archer, I'm allowing them time to hit me, and not attacking them.

Yes, when an ancient mage uses multi-strike spells it is better to scatter than to stand clumped. But when you mention standing still and ancients I usually assume you're talking about ice, since using any other spell in multi-hit is asking for an angry horde of blade wielding savages to rip apart your innards through your meager wisps of enchanted cloth and feed them to the ravens.

Which reminds me, I need to finish my Alexandria thread. >.>

Ooh, Dark do you want to collaborate with me to make the quest for this spellbook?

How would this heavily interfere with combat? I've addressed most, if not all of your concerns in the FAQ.

The Gnomish spellbook couldn't be used in F2P, it's an P2P spellbook. The Modern Spellbook gets a damage increase so Fire Blast does 200 damage, unless you think this is overpowered.

In P2P, this spellbook requires much strategy to use effectively so few would use it. Furthermore, spamming this spellbook would be ineffective as you could only have about 36 traps out at once, and they're not guaranted hits nor will they stay there.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:But why the damage increase? Magic is already lethal as it is. It doesn't pack as much as a punch as it could if you stick solely to single and solely to magic only, but then you're
a) not utilizing pking potential and
b) is it the defensive capabilities that are at fault, as the offensives are already potent.

Magic is seen as underpowered because of it's low max hit among other things. The Modern Spellbook is the damage one as I have said. Boosting the Max Hit of Fire Blast to be in the same range as Ranged and Melee is fair. Furthermore, you just said it's weaker unless you hybrid.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:As for few would use it, that's bullshit and I hope you realise it. About each and every guy with a quest cape (which are how many? fifty thousand if not more?) would do the quest for the sake of keeping the cape alone. Furthermore, each clanner would start questing what they're missing to unlock the spell's potential to give them the advantage on the battlefield, because if they don't the opponent still will so they have to anyway. Pure clans might not, but you'd be kidding yourselves if you think the supposed toughness of the quest will deter higher level pkers.

Doing the quest doesn't mean using the spellbook. Although I was refering the few using it in single combat, yes, this spellbook would be devestating in clan combat, but not as much so as Ancients because the latter has a larger AoE. Which would be more effective, 5 Ancienters or 5 Gnomish Mages? I would say the former because of higher max hit, and more powerful status effects, which would be made even stronger as seen in the Justification section.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Last, how would 36 traps per person not be effective if you have, let's say, only five people out of fifty dedicated to spamming the (usually confined) battlefield with them? They'll be set off long before you reach your max amount of traps.

The thing is, these traps are friendly fire. Using them in bulk in a clan is like using a minefield, spamming is a recipe for disaster: you need a clan wide strategy. Then it's no longer spamming. Also, 36 is the most you can have out before the traps begin to disappear.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Again I'm not hating on your suggestion or anything at all, as I quite fashion the idea and concept. I'm just saying that the current way you have the details worked out have the potency to f*ck up PvP and you either need to come up with boundaries and limitations to limit this or you need to justify why PvP needs to be altered this drastically.

Not all PvP is clan based. I bet Ancients recieved similar arguements but it didn't alter PvP forever. Magic became more powerful in clans, and this spellbook is weaker than Ancients.

I'm willing to look at this spellbook for OP, but I currently don't see much other than potential for spamming, which I have proven would be ineffective.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Magic in F2p underpowered? Its quite devastating already, and the flaw lies within the armor; not within the offense. I said that in f2p single dm's you hybrid and that's because of the armor, not the offense. If people hybrid in multi they're bringing mage along with their primary style, not the other way around..

The damage of magic in F2p is much more consistent than of both ranged and melee already, and the opponents defense bonuses are usually negligible or non-existent.

Magic in P2P is underpowered, and, although the changes to existing spellbooks is to allow more spellbooks, the changes help ameliorate the problem. Accuracy isn't everything, I boosted Magic's max hit of 160 to 200 in the process of the Justification so it could be in the same league as Melee's 328 and Ranged's rapid 190s. This minor boost was for spellbook reasons, and frankly it's nothing to argue against.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Further, I did not actually claim it to be stronger than ancients. I stated that in conjunction with ancients it will prove to much to handle the balance, which is a whole different thing.
Proper strategy would be invented within days of using them, given my experience with previous unbalancing updates. Going along with your statement that ancients would continue to be stronger, I would opt that if clans can handle the ancient friendly fire, gnomish friendly fire can be handled too.

If Gnomish was stronger, then a concern for balance would be in order. However, it's only real strength lies in its use. For clans, I think, even with proper use, this spellbook would focus on preparation and combos (strings of traps); Ancients would work better in the 'war' strategy (everybody, FIGHT!!!). People would constantly interupt combos and the low attack power would make this spellbook more suitable for other situtations.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Magic in F2p underpowered? Its quite devastating already. The damage of magic in F2p is much more consistent than of both ranged and melee, and the opponents defense bonuses are usually negligible or non-existent. Because of this, a mage deals more damage than a ranger or a warrior on average in case it wasn't clear already. Sure the max hit may not be as high as that of melee and ranged gets in a lot more attacks, but a mage hits 12+ already for 90% of the time while melee and ranged hit a shitload of zeroes against everything but an unarmored target.

I said Magic in P2P is considered underpowered. A 40 damage boost to Magic won't kill the triangle.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Also, I'll just quote myself again: I did not actually claim it to be stronger than ancients. I stated that in conjunction with ancients it will prove to much to handle the balance, which is a whole different thing. You still didn't address this :$ Nor do I see how interrupting combo's means it's bad, as the entire point of those traps would be to get your opponent to step on them, would it not?

If Gnomish is not stronger than Ancients due to lower max hit, smaller AoE, and weaker status effects, but it's only clan advantage is the fact that the spells are delayed, how can it disrupt the balance? Will people step on the traps, yes, but the damage done wouldn't be as great or as focused?

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:I won't disagree with your assessment on p2p, but I mistook it for a spelling error as that part of the discussion was aimed at the f2p side of things. My apologies. Where magic is not underpowered and where a damage boost of four would have a tremendous and negative impact on the triangle.

Low Max, low speed, no KO. Magic may be accurate, but it doesn't outweigh the weaknesses. A damage boost to all Modern Spells, and one that doesn't make it dominate, doesn't destroy the triangle.

Gladzosaurus Rex wrote:Again, it would disrupt the balance because it would make many, many countermeasures against common tactics a death sentence, or at least harshly penalize them. It hurts mobility on a scale that neither ancients nor common magic can achieve.

Yes, but in a large clan, how often would you be hit by a more than one trap? With everyone there, this spellbook just becomes impractical as your attacks aren't focused. This is why many clans pile, as you know. One could use this spellbook for the same purpose, but with the lower max hit and weaker status effects, using Ancient or Modern would be a much better idea. Furthermore, tactics change. When a new idea comes, people come up with countermeasures quickly, as you said when I mentioned friendly fire.

To bring back one of your earlier points, you said this spellbook made moving lethal while Ancients made standing lethal. However, you could move into Ancients blast radius, just as you could move into trap after trap. The spells are seen in front of you, so if you're on your toes, you could just not blindly run into them. Ranged, the class that beats mages, can attack without moving making them the perfect opponent for the Gnomish Mage. Melee will suffer, but that's kind of the point.

So Ancients makes both lethal, as the spell WILL hit you, when a trap MAY.

Another point you made, you said 90% of the population is concerned with PvP. Firstly, no. Secondly, you have only talked about clan PvP which is completely different.

I just don't see the cause for concern. Will the unprepared suffer? Yes, but they are unprepared. The same goes for going against a mage with a SoL. Use Leech curses. Spammers? The damage would be far to scattered due to the number of combatants and the smaller AoE: Ancients would be better suited for that perpose.

I'd be happy to collaborate...let's see some notes, and how you want to proceed.

I suppose the best way to make this quest would be as a preparation for the ultimate confrontation with Glouphrie. A little Monkey Madness-esque recon in the Poison Waste, some puzzles involving spell creation, working with some gnomish mages such as Brimstail, and a high-speed boos fight where we can really use the spellbook.

Okay, so forgive whilst I ramble on:

1) Prereqs
a) quests: so it looks like we're looking at path of glouphrie as a prereq, that seems pretty reasonable, given that it would give us full disclosure with Brimstail and would allow us some freedom to work. We may also want to consider monkey madness as a prereq, because that would allow us to use Zooknock, his maze, and the rest of the atoll for practice. However we should be careful because that could be a bit of a hefty set of reqs.

b) skills: so looking at both of the previous spellbook quests, they appear to have pretty hefty skill reqs, I would be looking at a lot of the nature based skills (herb, farm, woodcut) (as well as hunter, agility, thieving) for this quest given it's theme.

2) Story: so we have a spellbook that is both "known" and "allied" which is different from what we've had before. So this quest is, as you seem to sense, going to be very training based. I could see us having to go to a variety of places for training (more on that later). We, as you've said, may be training to fight glouphrie. I guess I'd say we should choose a few "masters" of the two-three big sections of the spellbook (we can add a few new characters) who we work with, then we do holistic training somewhere else.

Masters:
Traps: Zooknock? Someone in Gnome Maze?
Conceals/Illusions: Brimstail? Someone in the 7th squad?
Other sections?: ???

3) Place:

Poison waste for finale, perhaps a clone spell gone horribly wrong, could be an untraditional boss given the very tactical nature of the spells.

We need to keep in mind the importance of maze vs stronghold, for example the maze seems like a good place to do some traps training, whilst the stronghold was filled with illusions (I know that also happened in the village, but it was far less widespread, and so that could be the way we go about dividing it)

Ape atoll could again be useful, the monkeys could offer some good ways to use the illusion spells to get around them, but I'm not sure how we would work traps in.

Perhaps we could do some training on the Khazard battlefield, although I'm not sure.

I bet most discoveries were made while rambling: I don't mind.

We could refer to Hazelmere (or notes left by him) on how one would use the Anima Mundi for the Anima spells.

Some illusion practice could come from exploring the Poison Waste as well.

The skill spells could come from a new character. As they mostly surround on survival (help craft, resist climate effects, feed pets) a member of the 7th Squad would be suitable.