Okay, more wide-ranging review since I can't sleep
. Yay 3 AM! I appreciate some of these changes are pretty broad - I'm just spitballing here without thought of application.
Firstly, I'd suggest we re-categorise. Types of enchants available currently.
- Castable spells (Battle, OOB, anywhere) Charges or Slots.
- Permanent spell-like effects (Battle, OOB)
- Ship enchants
- Stat enchants
- ATK/DEF enchants
- Focus enchants
I'm gonna come back to castables and spell-likes, glossing over for now.
Ships, stats, focus I think are all pretty good. Ships I wouldn't know much about but they seem to do their thing pretty well, stats work nicely - but I think I'd rephrase them into being either permanent, or, triggerable, in which case they need to be Charge based - I think the current refreshing/non refreshing system works pretty well there.
ATK is in a decent place - works nicely, adds to base attack roll, rather than damage which we can address later on.
DEF I'd suggest reworking. Currently :
Defense enchant:
Casting method: none
Defending method: none
Description: Can be placed upon: Weapons, Armor, Jewelry
Cost: 100 if placed upon a weapon, 125 otherwise
Defensive enchants add +1 to a players defensive rolls against magical or physical attacks. Each item can only hold up to +5 Def. There is a hard cap of +15 to the total amount of defense enchants a character can hold. (Note: Defence enchantments on weapons will only count against close physical attacks.)
I'm aware this is a big change here, but I'd suggest scrapping the way DEF works currently. Instead, let any item which has a physical Armour Rating get enhanced with +DEF up to the value of that armour rating. So Vambraces could go to +1, RoTAM to +5, full plate to +13, and so forth. This would go some way towards addressing the off topic points raised by others re physical/magical balance.
Focus enchants I'm fairly happy with except for the wording.
Focus:
Focus enchantments can be very useful to casters. Focus enchantments reduce the stamina cost of a spell already known, not enchantments, to a maximum of 7. Focus does not cover the stamina up keep for spells, only the initial casting cost. It can be enchanted on weapons, armor, jewelry, tattoo's, and any MISC item that can hold 2 or more enchantments.
The cost of Focus enchantments is 100 Mhl for the first slot, and 200 Mhl for each slot up to 7.
I'd suggest that the bold bit needs to be "
By a maximum of 7". I'm assuming -1 stam cost per slot of focus.
Circling back around to spell enchants. Based on
this thread, only magical classes can use spell enchants, whether charge based or straight slots, for battle stuff. OOB and soft enchants are ok. I can't remember where, but I've also seen comments indicating that people who can't use specific spells (Fire Mages, water spells etc) shouldn't be using a wand or similar to get round this.
So, with that in mind, why have enchantable slots at all? The only people who could use them would be mages who could literally just learn the same spells themselves and cast them with the same stamina requirements and restrictions. We could keep the Charges spell slots if people want them, because they have a clear benefit - zero stamina cost, but otherwise, it's just unnecesary complication.
So new suggested category - castable battle spells. Can ONLY be cast with charges. From the current sphere, I think that's :
- Chill Touch
- Colour Spray
- Energy Bolt
- Fire Bolt
- Ice Shards
- Damage Shield
- Magical Armour
- Physical Armour
- Shocking Grasp
I'd suggest adding in Burning Fingers and Stun Bolt to this list. Obviously non-magical types can only use these.
Then, I suggest for castable OOB spells, we amend the page and simply say that any Common sphere spell can be enchanted onto an item on a Charge basis under the current rules, and then just keep the unique-to-items on the Enchant page, which by my count are :
- Cold and Hot
- Dissolve
- Ignite
- Instrument
- Morph
- General Soft Enchants
- Visual Effects
Finally, we have spell like effects. Currently we treat these as the "make permanent" version of the elemental spells above. I'd suggest we separate them out. I see these being either temporary using the Charge system or permanent as per current system. I would also suggest (HC likely have an opinion here) that these are far enough from spells that we could let physical classes use them. It's closer to a barbarian shouting the trigger word to have his sword catch fire for a fight than the same barbarian using the sword to throw fireballs. Alternatively, we could scrap the temporary forms of the elemental enchants and only have permanent ones in play?
- ATK
- DEF (per notes above)
- Stat Boost
- Fire
- Ice
- Lightning
Obviously nicer fluff versions of the elements go here. Maybe also something for Earth? Stat wise they all currently do +1 damage per 5 slots, (damage not ATK) which while OK seems like it might be irrelevant at higher levels - maybe +10% per 5 slots instead? To my mind Focus belongs in with this category too.
I would also suggest here that we could add Magical and Physical armour to this list, depending on how far HC want to let the whole "magic for non magic people" thing go.
So tl;dr, summary stuff.
- Re-categorise. For most OOB, simply note that Common Sphere applies, include Ship and unique item enchants on Enchant page.
- Change how DEF works - cap by armour value of item enchanted.
- Scrap enchanting "spell slots" that take stamina onto items entirely - make it all either charges or permanent.
- Split out categories - castable battle spells (charges only) and "spell like effects" - charges and permanent.
- Let non-magic people use spell like effects but not the battle spells - I think this captures HC intentions, open to corrections.
Hopefully not totally incoherent. This was also supposed to be a general review - next thing I'm gonna try and think about is potential additions
.
JJ
Since I can't figure out how to change display name...player of Catiline, Umber and Saphamira! Often around on IRC GMT evenings and weekends.