New Class: Psionist (Spell Caster)

[Valentine]

I'm thinking more along the lines that room location, etc, would be information the psionicist could gleen (-en or -an? hm) from NPCs. That's such a small part of the class though, I'm not sure it warrants miles of discussion.

But...I'm more in the mood to yell than talk about this.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

And DC....enroll. Um, yeah.

[DeathCow]

Oh yeah..enroll..can't I sleep for a few hours...good night..no new posts till I have my classes picked..I need a drink.

[Bong]

Skipped over a few posts, but having played a d&d (2^nd ed) psionicist before, I thought I'd post some stuff about it.

Now, there were other routes I could take, but I went the way of enchancements. I could increase my ac, strength, stats...heal myself, do minor damage to people (though I hadn't gotten into this much, yet). I was an elven warrior/psi dual class, so this played very well for me. Of course, while still low-level I triggered an event that took me to the elemental plane of earth, and was transformed into a stone golem....with some limited psionic abilities still in place (punching stuff while using psionics = tons of fun), but that's a whole other story.

Now, I see some major hurdles to putting this class into the game. Namely, the wide range of choices one can make in the D&D version. If you try to make it similar, how are you going to determine something like combat? A character that specializes in spell/mental damage dosen't need to be combat 3 or 4, but one who goes with combat enhancements does. If it'd be possible to make this class barebones, and have spells that could add combat or magical ability...you know, ones with an infinite amount of rounds, and could only be canceled by casting a conflicting one....but this seems sorely out of place. However, with your branching class quests and what not you may be able to figure somehting out.

If you want to bury yourself in more info about this class, scroll down to the letter "P" on the following link:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

[Spit]

It's not too abusable when you consider that it would take many levels to gain access to some of the "better" abilities, and even at that point, you'd have the requisite chance of the "spell" failing, unlike an actual sysop command, which has the requisite chance of failing for completely different reasons. Just think, though, it'd be a new class with abilities nearly everyone would be familiar with already, yet it would be something completely new. Not to mention that it's something you'd never see in Majormud, with all the boards out there already granting limited sys powers.

It would definitely need to be reconfigured from the current MMUD setup, though. Scrying for an item location and getting "Map XX, Room XXX" means little in actual game terms. Perhaps somehow just getting a general location name or room description could be done?

This would open the door for a lot of new playable abilities, like teleporting.

I like this idea.  It does away with the sys powers that many characters receive under Majormud.  Perhaps a Psionist could teleport parties like sys goto worked under Majormud?  Or maybe you could have a spell that marks a teleportation location anywhere in the realm that allows the Psionist to teleport themselves to that location. 

I'm still leaning towards this being a spell caster.  Their spells could be limited to mental damage/mind powers only.  Some char enhancement spells like armor, healing...

[DeathCow]

If i was gonna give a scrying ability like that I'd make it so you see the room description rather than the room number.  Making various combat enchaning abilities wouldn't be an issue, combat 4 can is just a fast swings and more acc...which is something that can easily be don't with the speed and acc abilities.

[aukey]

I was messing with a psyonic class, and there are many new types of spells you can create, you just have to be open to play with spells a little.

One example is I made a mental attack spell 1-30 and only the max goes up each level.  Now under the message I took out %s is attacking %s for %s damage, and put something like

%s is being attacked by a mental spell.

And for the room message

%s is attacking %s with a mental attack.

So anyone is the room can see who is attacking who with the spell, but not the person being attacked because of the mental block.

And in all three lines I didn't put the damage code, so that with the spell's large range, people really have to watch their hp.

I think the thing that can make this class different from other spell casters is that you can play with messages to make invisable attacks, mind control, or even a confusion spell that the person/monster doesn't know they are confused. You can turn monsters to attack a particular person in the party, eg. the tank... Just because the class type doesn't fit your "niche", doesn't mean you can't fix it with cool spells.

-Aukey

[The Crazy Animal]

Aukey, you might be intrested in helping out in the Circle of Magic idea on our wiki. There is a Circle of mind for psyonic type spells. See page: http://www.greatermud.com/wiki/index.php/Idea:Circle_of_Mind

[Thergin]

I see this class more like a mystic, using the will of the mind to increase there physical attack and defence, one cool spell I thought rather then hold person, or entangle, you can push a monster out of a room instead. So go into a boss fight and cast push, or telekinesis. Maybe they can teleport out of the room, you cant see which direction they went when they leave the room (not sure if that is balanced).

I was thinking that there buffs/spells/powers use up there max mana and stay on permantly. It requires constant concentration. They can buff there attack or defensive abilitys not both at the same time.

Robes, Staves

To be honest maybe just incorporating these ideas into one class enchanter is a better option.