Galefury wrote:I noticed I got it all backwards in my previous post. In actual play you wont be prepaying the buff cost, you will be postpaying it, and there is only a cost if you are not at full MP. Cast all the buffs you need, then rest to full MP. Now a recast event happens, buff duration is renewed, but you don't lose any MP. Instead your regen is penalized if you keep it on, which adds up to the total cost of recasting the spell in the time until the next recast, but only if you have non-full MP during that whole time.
Yay, one of my ideas was taken up. I feel brushed with greatness.
I think this is backwards. I think the plan is that as soon as you cast a buff (paying mana) the regen penalty starts. This it to pay for the recast, and it effectivly means that you will pay for that first buff twice (once up front and once again during the duration). While this does give you the "free" recast, what it means in practice is that if you are streching on your buffs it may take hundreds of turns to get your mana back to full, if ever. Yes I know you can channel to get back your mana, but you could always do that so it is no different.
Galefury wrote:This is what I was talking about in the first paragraph of my previous post, I just didn't see it then. This means that only if you never rest to full MP after enabling your permabuffs you will be prepaying the cost. Lost regen at full MP equals no cost at all. I don't see this being a huge advantage in actual play, but combined with the saved turns (some of which would be in combat) I think permabuffs would actually be stronger than manual casting. It's still probably best not to implement an added penalty at first to get people to use the new system, then introduce penalties if it turns out to be imbalanced.
Yes, I agree this is a buff for auto-recasting and said so on my first post. I also agree that the edge is not so much that nerfs need to be introduced to correct for it. I also agree with others who said that by the time you can reliably cast a buff, the mana cost is not significant.
Galefury wrote:I thought a bit about what the "correct" max MP penalty for permanent buffs would be in the regen penalty system. With correct I mean the penalty that most closely reproduces manual buffing. My solution: when mana regeneration is completely disabled due to permanent buffs the lost max MP should be half the mana cost of all permanent buffs.
If mana regen is completely disabled by your buffs then you will never regen back from the inital casting. This gives you a "penalty" to your max mana equal to the cost of the buffs. For a hybrid this is no big deal, until one of your autocasts fails and you have to dip yet again into your (now half) mana pool to restart it. A caster would find this penalty ranges from crippling to trival based on how many buffs they feel are necessary (again not a problem IMO).
Galefury wrote:A way to find out how many turns between the recast events of a buff if fixed durations are used: cast the permanent version of the buff, memorize turn count. Put on plate mail and a large shield. Wait until miscast/expiry. This is not possible with high spell/armor/shield skills, but this prediction would only be relevant at low success rates anyway. The regen penalty should of course be based on the average duration, but actual recast events should use random duration IMO.
I think you could use a random duration generation if you like (and the means are already there), but I don't think this is that relevent. I suppose the highly anal could track duration, but duration would vary for every spell, and even with each spell, duration depends on changing spell power. In practice, esp. if durations are tweaked a bit, then a serious buff user would find that there buffs would eventually be cycling at compeletly different times. This would make tweaking your gear for recasting sub-optimal since you would lose many turns waiting for the perfect window.
Galefury wrote:Further options for degenerate play: put on a staff of enchantment or robe of the archmagi and maybe some int rings while waiting for your MP to regenerate. This will increase the power of your buffs, raising average duration and increasing your MP regen. Wield your regular equipment for combat. This saves turns, which means food. Also it may be relevant for chars with many buffs and very slow MP regen. They may have to use an enhancer to regenerate any MP at all.
You can do this now with the buffs as they stand. In fact it is a reccomended strat for spells like necromutation. If the duration (and therefore mana rengen penalty) is set when you cast the spell, which is easiest, then you would have to be wearing those enhancers when you autocast. While this is an issue, I don't see how it would be any more of one with the new system then it is with the current one. Less of one really, since you don't really know when they are renewing.
I don't see how making those with slow mana regen or many buffs have to keep a mana enhancer on all the time is a problem at all.
Galefury wrote:Possible solution: MP regen only increases gradually when buff duration increases. Drops in MP regen should be instant of course. The problem with this is that it's not obvious, and making it transparent with a message would quickly get annoying because every skill levelup changes spellpower and switching between enhancer staves can happen quite a lot in normal play. Also delayed regen increase would just cause even more annoyance (and some extra food cost) for people with very low MP regen, it would not actually disable this behaviour, just penalize it. And you actually have to spend item slots on the otherwise possibly not that useful enhancers. So I don't think this is a big problem.
This seems finiky and does not add much utility.
Galefury wrote:I think you should not dismiss the need to let the player know about MP regen changes. A message upon reaching half the normal rate and upon going into negative regen would be good. Showing actual number of turns to regenerate full MP is not needed IMO.
This is not a bad idea.
The only think I would like to add is that I disagree with Gahler's idea of making buffs like forms. While I agree that you need to add a way to end the auto-recast of spells, I would like to have them play out their orginal duration.
There are several spells (regeneration, flight, see invis) where I can see wanting to cast only once and then have them run normal duration. The way it was originally suggested the first buff you have to pay for twice. This is not an issue if you would normally leave it up. However, if you are only wanting to use a certain spell for a finite duration the extra mana costs would add up.