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Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max power

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 21:25
by Tiktacy
Currently, I am unaware of any good reason to increase spellpower on transmutation. So how about making max power transmutations permanent until you dispel them manually via af command? This way, the player would have an incentive to increase their transmutation skill beyond the bare minimum. Beyond that, perhaps higher transmutation skill could also reduce the penalty to casting for the transmutations that have such an effect.

(spell power on certain transmutations may need to be implemented to make maxing the spell power worth while)

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 21:43
by Sar
The only transmutation I can see people wanting to be permanent is Necromutation (not to say it's a good idea!), and you probably won't realistically reach max spellpower for a level 8 two schools spell.
Oh right, there's also Slow Form I guess.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:00
by Tiktacy
Sar wrote:The only transmutation I can see people wanting to be permanent is Necromutation (not to say it's a good idea!), and you probably won't realistically reach max spellpower for a level 8 two schools spell.
Oh right, there's also Slow Form I guess.


Why wouldn't someone want to be able to hold semi-permanent spider form? Losing your speed bonus at a crucial moment can potentially mean death, so being able to hold that form by default might be convenient depending on what species you are playing as. Also, adjusting the max spell power on certain spells would come along with implementation(ill put that on the op).

Keep in mind, it is not permanent, its semi-permanent. In other words, you could leave the form at any time by clicking a and f.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:03
by Sar
Because by the time you can realistically reach max spellpower on it you it's probably not as good as alternatives? Though yeah, movespeed is nice.
I still don't like the proposal. I don't like tying a thing like that to max spellpower and I am not convinced something like that should even exist.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:05
by nago
Because I don want to go around with a form with awful ac (at least after d:5 or so) and rpois-. And it's not like you don't have a warning that the form is expiring - and if you die because you lost a single turn to recast a spell you've done some very bad bad strategic choice earlier and what you really need is to learn to positioning in the battlefield better


Plus, I'd still rather spend the experience needed to reach max spell power (which btw requires insane int + skill investment) in other places (let's say UC and fighting) and suffer the hassle to recast bh every time I need it

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:06
by and into
Of course, alternatively, if devs feel it is necessary to make spell power matter more for forms spells, you could just more closely tie spell power to the bonuses that the various forms give you.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:15
by JARG
Alternatively, why not just speed up the process? The ability to change/transmute quickly can be quite valuable(especially for things like passwall). It would make sense to me that someone very skilled in transmutations could flow through changes. Aside from the actual casting of the spell(ie, boosting the bonus of the spell, or something AT the point of casting) I can't think of much that spell power could do for transmutations, it already extends the duration of many of the spells.

Although I see how semi-permanence could be very convenient, if your delay is lower the critical-nature of combat casting is minimized. Additionally, that could scale rather than having a hard threshold. If it goes all the way to a 0 aut cost... you've effectively transformed instantaneously. Even though I this find more valuable than semi-permanence I'm not sure it'd be enough to change my mind about experience allocation(I agree with nago, UC getting maxed has a much more salient effect).

//good points made before me, well played ninjas. *edited for grammer*

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 22:16
by Tiktacy
Hmm, fair enough. As for and into's idea, that sounds much more promising to me. I just think that transmutations dont have much of an incentive to go beyond a certain point while other spell schools can always benefit from it(well, some more than others).

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Wednesday, 16th April 2014, 23:38
by duvessa
IMO ice/statue form should have their AC based on spell power instead of skill levels. I suspect most unspoiled players don't even know they can get more AC at all, let alone that it's based on these specific skills.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 00:00
by Tiktacy
duvessa wrote:IMO ice/statue form should have their AC based on spell power instead of skill levels. I suspect most unspoiled players don't even know they can get more AC at all, let alone that it's based on these specific skills.


Thats a good idea, I support this completely. :D

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 00:13
by Bloax
Ozo's icy armour could also use a change like this, since this would actually make rings of ice improve it in its entirety - not just its duration.
same thing could happen to stoneskin

And while this is a bit hurtful to low int characters, it's still a good and transparent improvement.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 00:53
by duvessa
Until those two spells are made permanent like rmsl, or preferably, removed entirely, I don't see much point in changing them in any other way.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 02:53
by RBrandon
When I read the thread title I took "semi-permanent" as "gaining a passive component" which sounded cool and unique for a spell school. Like you could keep dragon breath outside of dragon form. But that also sounds like, "weird interactions in a can"

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 12:42
by Lasty
Bloax wrote:Ozo's icy armour could also use a change like this, since this would actually make rings of ice improve it in its entirety - not just its duration.


Actually, this might be the only argument against the change. I would hate to have putting on 2x ring of ice before casting Ozo's and then swapping them out be optimal behavior. I suppose the AC bonus could change dynamically with current spellpower, but that would be different from how the game handles other spells AFAIK.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Thursday, 17th April 2014, 14:15
by johlstei
FR: Spells cast "out of combat" are done with the assumption that you wore whatever enhancers are in your inventory.

Frankly there's a lot of things that would be nice to automate out of combat, like recasting [rd]msl if necessary

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Friday, 18th April 2014, 07:15
by vulsuck
Lasty wrote:
Bloax wrote:Ozo's icy armour could also use a change like this, since this would actually make rings of ice improve it in its entirety - not just its duration.


Actually, this might be the only argument against the change. I would hate to have putting on 2x ring of ice before casting Ozo's and then swapping them out be optimal behavior. I suppose the AC bonus could change dynamically with current spellpower, but that would be different from how the game handles other spells AFAIK.


I see this come up a lot, but do people actually do this? If you're wearing light armour and have the ice skill to make Ozo's significant, wouldn't you be wearing a ring of ice almost all the time to improve the power of your offensive ice spells?

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Friday, 18th April 2014, 08:14
by DracheReborn
I'd actually rather go the other way with Transmutations, and simply make each form permanent until ended. Each form has an associated drawback after all, so there's reason enough for the player to want to end transformation occasionally.

This does make spell power and even success rate matter even less, which as OP points out is already an issue for Tm spells.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Friday, 18th April 2014, 12:37
by Lasty
vulsuck wrote:
Lasty wrote:
Bloax wrote:Ozo's icy armour could also use a change like this, since this would actually make rings of ice improve it in its entirety - not just its duration.


Actually, this might be the only argument against the change. I would hate to have putting on 2x ring of ice before casting Ozo's and then swapping them out be optimal behavior. I suppose the AC bonus could change dynamically with current spellpower, but that would be different from how the game handles other spells AFAIK.


I see this come up a lot, but do people actually do this? If you're wearing light armour and have the ice skill to make Ozo's significant, wouldn't you be wearing a ring of ice almost all the time to improve the power of your offensive ice spells?


Ring of ice comes with a significant drawback that makes wearing it all the time risky unless you have a source of rF+ equipped as well. Also, longer-lasting Ozo's Armour is usually not a good enough reason to use up a ring slot.

Re: Proposal: Make Transmutations semi-permanent at max powe

PostPosted: Friday, 18th April 2014, 14:00
by Lasty
Also, for what it's worth, I support the idea that permanently-on buffs like Repel Missiles should check your current success rate each time they do whatever they do. I think the ideal way to make this work is to have casting all (most?) buff spells toggle the spell on/off, and then each time the effect triggers:

1: Check current spell power to see if it triggers.
2: (optional) check mana if each trigger of the spell drains mana
3: Effect happens
4: Any additional consequences (e.g. contam) are applied.
5: Check current spell success to see if spell falls apart.

If you fail your spell success roll, the effect ends until you spend a turn and mana to cast the spell again.

NB: Under this scheme, your success on the initial casting guarantees that the effect applies at least once, allowing a small benefit to pre-loading all your spells. Arguably we could avoid the pre-loading problem even more by not checking spell success on casting, and instead checking it as step 0 in the above progression.

NB continued: In this version of the proposal, you could even remove the spell falls off -> recast step by skipping it completely and just having a failed success roll mean the effect doesn't trigger that turn and perhaps also adding a penalty (e.g. lose a few AUT to auto-reestablish the spell, or lose mana, or gain contam, or even check for full miscast).

Under this scheme, both spell success and spell power would be very important for Charms (and other buffs), which would do a lot of reign in the current problems with the school, and tedious pre-fight casting would largely be eliminated.