Buff --AM

[bcadren]

I'd like to suggest changing the --AM start book. Specifically:

Drop Leda's Liquefaction and add Metabolic Englaciation in its place.

Add Yara's Violent Unraveling.

My reasoning is this: When Enslavement stopped being a spell, Enchanter got Tukima's Dance in it's place; --AM also lost access to enslavement and only got Gell's Gravitas to replace it. Yara's is a much more powerful and interesting spell to start with giving both a spell source of direct damage when low on MP and a decent debuff to help your ranged weapon pierce AC better. Metabolic is a significant upgrade from Leda's as well for the most part as it doesn't have the risk factor of making it harder to run away and it's a full-blown actual hex that ignores MR, debuffing a substantial grouping of monsters.

Right now --AM is one of the weaker starts; the spell changes are intended as a buff to it's late early/midgame play. (just having a ranged weapon and no spells is significantly powerful D:1).

[Leszczynek]

Portal Projectile, come on! Why does an Arcane (!) Marksman (!!) not start with Portal Projectile? Is focusing so much on Hexes in the starting AM book more important than this? Just replace Inner Flame with PProj, please.

Adding Yara's is a pretty cool idea though, having it guaranteed for Orc:2 and Elf could make people actually learn it sometimes, if they are willing to train Transmutations of course.

[bcadren]

Adding Yara's is a pretty cool idea though, having it guaranteed for Orc:2 and Elf could make people actually learn it sometimes, if they are willing to train Transmutations of course.

It's all dispelable effects, this includes your own hexes and I've used it that way before. Though yes, it is better against things that buff themselves to stop the buff.

[goodcoolguy]

Sounds bad to me. It goes from being a background about.... I don't know what... to a background about hexing things then using an auxiliary spell to damage to them. Yara's shouldn't even exist in the first place.

[jwoodward48ss]

Arcane Marksman isn't about the hexes (that sounds more like Enchanter). Arcane Marksman is sort of like a ranged Skald, which just so happens to be using Hexes. Yara's is pretty good for a hexer, but is AM the right background for it?