Combat vs Magic

[Secret]

Magic attacks suck because if you run outta mana you're dead, it's resistable, mana regen is really slow, and you don't get near as many attempts compared to combat. Granted dmg potential / hit  goes up and spell circles can minimize resistance BUT making it dodgeable seems too much. It's like being a mage and getting dragonfire just to find out everyone resists it. Or like deathtouch where it's almost always resisted unless you have significant levels over the monster / npc.  From a logical standpoint, some spells could be seen as dodgeable but they really shouldn't be.

How about we forget about dodging spells (resistance is good enough) and allow me to cast spells from one room into the  next????

[The Crazy Animal]

heh well if dodging spells went in the ability to resist spells would probably need to be reevaluated to balance it out. Your right you wouldn't want to make it to hard to cast spells however adding ways to avoid damage increases the varience in combat which is good for keeping people intrested in how their characters develop.

We did talked about doing room to room combat with ranged weapons but we haven't talked about it for spells yet. I like the idea though.

[Krusty]

Don't like this dodging spell idea.  So if they dodge spells, but have more multiple-hit spells like mete/magm or fury or word, how do they keep up with the fighters' crits?  Hell one upper-end crit does the same as most one-shot spells - and they've also got 4 more swings vs. the caster's none.  Comet's cool as sh!t, but any other 1-h class can match that dmg/rnd.

[Secret]

Varying combat sounds nice. I just want to be sure that magic gets reworked before you add spell dodge. Are there any attack spells besides room spells that wouldn't be dodgeable?

[The Crazy Animal]

To start out I?d really like to get away from the idea of completely non-dodge-able with the exceptions of room spells. If the mechanics of it are able to work as I picture it, it would be a variable difficulty based on the coding of each spell. For example fire ball and boulder might carry the same difficulty to dodge based on the assumed mental image of the characteristics of the attack. However a lightning bold and a necromantic beam however might be nearly impossible to dodge because of the speed of the attack. Each spell should have characteristics that make it valuable for different situations and scenarios in the game. Such as is dodging 100 small rocks harder then 1 large one. At the same time though the game is very risk oriented so the more ways there are to ovoid damage then the greater the damage can be when it finally hits.

Keeping up with the damage has to do with balancing dmg rounds for spells in comparison to combat. Single round spells need to do as much avg damage as an avg round of combat and then a small amount over do to the risk involved in less swings. In the case of multi hit spells damage needs to be equal to avg dmg per amount of swings a weapon would get of equivalent power. As far as addition dmg given by crits really has to do with how resists work in the game no player or mob character should be invulnerable to all types of magical attacks. In addition to that crit damage and combat all going to be reworked as well. High level crits are just too high right now across the board. There?s a lot of other illogical combat mechanics in the game that really need to be reworked as well. The same goes for some of the mechanics within magic however they at the moment aren?t as interconnected with stats and dynamically coded.

One of the other things I?d really like to play around with is improving the defensive abilities of magic. Why can?t a magic user block a combat strike with magic or erect a shield to fend off arrows. Magic in mmud was looked at almost entirely offensively with the exception of a few stat manipulations like ac/dr which is very bad, something like a fire shield shouldn?t just provide a shockshield effect but should also provide a way of warding off damage as well. Magic vs combat, combat vs combat, and magic vs magic all need to work together well enough that it becomes almost like a dance, if you can dodge a weapon you should be able to dodge a spell; If you can block a swing then you should be able to block a spell. The reverse is also true if you can do these things physically then you should be able to do these things magically.

I really like multi hit spells as well but I think they need to develop more along the lines of the way a character does when picking up a slower weapon. I can?t think of a single other reason why getting a new spell should instantly grant you 5 hits chances unless it?s a less difficult spell then the level of the caster could master. It would be much more pleasing in terms of a player?s character development if there were assignable stats that determined the speed of new hit chances when dealing with this type of spell. Having it work in this method it would also make it more closely be able to mirror the dmg capabilities of weapon combat. Not every spell should work this way but I?m sure you can see the how and why of what makes this a better method when in comparison to the growth in power that weaponized combat achieves.

As far as matching the extra damage of crits this really has to do more with the ability to create a learnable system of how resistance affects characters. Then when a magic user figures out what a character is weak to spells that work with that weakness should amplify the damage and allow an average advantage based on that, which should match fairly close the extra damage give by crits. For example you have physical and metaphysical spells, if you hurl a bolder at something that has good physical defenses it should do less damage. However if you find that they are weak to say fire then fire would do more damage. Or another strategy might be to weaken those physical defenses first prior to hurling the bolder. Every character should have some weakness that they develop that is exploitable to a degree and works to balance out the smaller inconsistencies that ultimately develop within the type of game this is.

One of the other things that I think this type of change will accomplish is to really start to make more spells viable for use across a larger span of levels. I look at this as one of the big problems mmud had when dealing with magic as most players in mmud end up only utilizing a couple of spells because magic yields very base line results in the game. At which point all spells ended up looking like just more powerful versions of prior spells simply because they only able to generate a couple types effects mainly being a damage increase. So how they do their damage needs to be just as important as the damage they are able to do if you get what I'm saying. Also when you get a new spell in MMUD the first time you cast it you know for the most part what it is able to do and that's very bad for keeping people at keys. When you learn a new spell in greatermud I'd really like encourage players to wander around learning what and how it affects things in the game. This is the type of thing that even if it?s just for a little bit each day might get people back at their keys each time a new spell is found as well as each time they travel into a new area.

Hope that answers all of those questions though I'm sure it will probably bring up a handful of others.