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Iridium
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Alrighty then, here's a short list of the lower level spells that could use it the most. I agree about the class not being really thiefy. Each blurb includes the level at which Nephandi already get the original spell, the name of the original spell, the suggested revision, a small helpfile, a failure/success message for the revision, and where appropriate, a "wearoff" for the ones that have spell effects. It's longish, you've been warned!
1> Cause Light (Grave Wind)
Yet to master the secrets entombed beneath the earth, a neophyte Nephandi may call upon the ever-present aura death that gravitates about the earth. The spell gives the aura corporeal form, slashing the victim with numerous wounds.
Success: "An aura of death radiates from <player's> hands, slashing <victim> viciously.
Fail: "The dead refuse to heed your call."
1> Cure Light (Siphon)
With this spell at their command, the Nephandi are able to lightly tap into the spirit world around themselves and use the spirits of the dead as a source of healing energy.
Success: "Spirits of the dead cry out in agony as you use them to cure <target's> wounds."
Fail: "The dead flee your grasping hands."
5> Faerie fire (Foxfire)
Illuminating their target with a ghostly aura, the Nephandi make their victim easier to hit in combat.
Success: "<Target> is illuminated in an eerie foxfire."
Fail: "The foxfire you attempted to call slips away between your fingers."
Wearoff: "The foxfire about you flickers and fades."
6> Create food (Sustenance)
This prayer to the dark moon grants the living the ability to sustain and nourish themselves by feeding upon the dead. Items: decaying matter, elven flesh, human flesh, halfling flesh, etc
Success: "The power of the dark moon grants you <item>"
Fail: "Your prayer for sustenance is ignored."
6> Elven Beauty (Fatal Attraction)
Calling on the demonic powers of the succubi and incubi, the caster uses their power to reshape his or her flesh for a short duration, increasing their attractiveness.
Success: "Your features shift and blur, making you more attractive."
Fail: "You retain your usual appearance."
Wearoff: "Like wax, your beauty melts away."
7> Cure Blind (Nightseer)
In answer to the blinding powers of the forces of light, Nephandi grant their followers the ability to break this curse by negating it with seersight.
Success: "You are once again able to see."
Fail: "Your blindness remains."
7> Detect Evil (Seek Kindred)
Nephandi seek their allies and kin through the use of this spell - those who live in darkness as they do are illuminated in glowing red.
Success: "You are now able to seek out kindred spirits."
Fail: "You fail to expand your awareness."
Wearoff: "Your ability to seek out kindred spirits fades away."
8> Bless (Profane)
A blasphemous prayer to the dark moon grants the Nephandi augmented power.
Success: "The power of the black moon encompasses you."
Fail: "The black moon refuses to embrace you with its power."
Wearoff: "The dark embrace of your moon fades away."
8> Refresh (Violation)
Ripping forth energy from the heart of the world itself, the Nephandi grants himself renewed energy.
Success: "<Target>'s energy is renewed by your violation of the earth."
Fail: "Nature resists, causing your effort to fail."
8> Detect Poison (Venomsight)
Close work with the dead and the creatures that arise from death require the Nephandi to be able to recognize toxicity on sight. This spell grants them the ability to detect venomous auras.
Success: "Things of poisonous nature are now revealed to you."
Fail: "The ability to smell out poison remains beyond you."
Wearoff: "You are no longer ability to determine toxicity by sight alone."
9> Cure Serious (Bleed)
With this spell at their command, the Nephandi are able to tap even more of spirit world around themselves and use the spirits of the dead as a source of healing energy.
Success: "Spirits of the dead whimper in agony as you use them to cure <target's> heavier wounds."
Fail: "The dead flee your grasping hands."
10> Divine Blessing (Dark Blessing)
This spell is available only to Nephandi, as it allows them to call on the dark moon to imbue them with greater power than the Profane prayer.
Success: "The power of the black moon seeps deeply into your bones."
Fail: "The black moon refuses to embrace you with its power."
Wearoff: "The dark embrace of your moon is released through your pores."
10> Aid (Awaken)
With this aid of sleep's demons, the Nephandi is able to bring a stunned ally back to conciousness by fear alone.
Success: "With a shriek of terror, <target> awakens."
Fail: "The demons of sleep refuse to aid you."
10> Protection (Coccoon)
The Nephandi is wrapped within the wispy embrace of shreds of spiritual energy, eventually enshrouded completely. This energy will absorb a limited amount of damage from creatures of light.
Success: "You become wrapped within a womb of protective energy."
Fail: "Tendrils of spiritual energy wrap around you momentarily... then fade away."
Wearoff: "The coccoon you've woven about yourself tears itself open violently as the spell fades."
14> Cure Crit (greater bleeding)
With this spell at their command, the Nephandi are able to heavily tap into the spirit world around themselves and use the spirits of the dead as a source of healing energy.
Success: "Spirits of the dead shriek in agony as you use them to cure <target's> heaviest wounds."
Fail: "The dead flee your grasping hands."
15> Cure Poison (Detoxify)
Where venomsight allows the studious Nephandi to identify creatures and things of a poisonous nature, the detoxification cantrip allows them to isolate the poisons and separate them from their hosts.
Success: "You isolate the poison in <target>'s body and remove it."
Fail: "Your target remains poisoned."
16> Life Force (Siphon)
With this spell at their command, the Nephandi are able to lightly tap into the spirit world around themselves and use the spirits of the dead as a source of healing energy.
Success: "Spirits of the dead wail in unending agony as you use them to heal <target>."
Fail: "The dead flee your grasping hands."
17> Create Spring (Flood)
Where a cleric might summon forth a spring of water from the ground with a gentle prayer, the Nephandi demands that the earth bleed water at his will, through a flood of limited scope. ~ creates A murky pool of water.
Success: "The earth twists in misery, but water springs forth at your demand."
Fail: "The world resists your demand."
Wearoff: "Scars in the earth fade away, and the pool disappears."
19> Enchant Weapon (Empower Weapon)
Some spells that a Nephandi wields only temporarily draw forth their might from the spirits of the dead. Empowering a weapon permanently bonds spirits to the weapon, granting it greater power.
Success: "<Weapon> gleams with ghostly energy."
Fail: "Your attempt at empowering <weapon> is unsuccessful."
20> Remove Curse (Scourge)
As the dead are already cursed with unlife, Nephandi see no loss in adding to the weight of their burden. With the Scourge cantrip, they are able to remove a spell-bonded curse from their bodies and inflict it upon the dead instead.
Success: "The curse bleeds away from your body."
Fail: "You are unable to transfer the curse in yourbody to the dead."
20> Enchant Armor (Empower Armor)
Like its weapon-based counterpart, this spell allows the Nephandi to bond the ghosts of the dead to a piece of armor, empowering it further.
Success: "<Armor> gleams with the light of the graveyard."
Fail: "Your attempt at empowering <armor> is unsuccessful."
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Posted Jan 25, 2008, 3:37 am |
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Iridium
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Joined: Jan 1, 2008
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This is an expansion of an idea I submitted earlier, in-game. By helpfile description, Nephandi looks like a pretty kewl necromantic class. On closer inspection, (slist 1 & 2), they look like a literal cleric/mage combo with a little thief thrown in for show. Not a bad thing, but it overshadows the whole "evil necromantic spellcasters of the black moon" that they are cast as.
The suggestion I'm going making is to give them a much darker look, but unlike the whole Legend Tier thing, it's primarily cosmetic in nature. Renaming spells, basically.
With other classes using those spells already, it means that you'd have to copy code (right?) and give the copy a different name and effects. Obviously, the two spells couldn't be stackable. Perhaps even a different effect here and there for good measure. No need to overhaul.
Examples of this?
Cure Light Spell - Renamed to Leech
Cure Blindness - Renamed to Nightseer
Create Food - Renamed to Sustenance, creates flesh of various races instead of mushrooms and such.
And so on.
If this idea is one you like, I'd be happy to create a master list of revisions (as well as spell-effects) and helpfiles for approval for you.
Thoughts?
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Posted Jan 24, 2008, 10:42 pm |
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Iridium
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Quote:Ok, so we're talking about, for each 'legend type', 5 specials (one for every 8-12 levels or so), one each: healing, attack, area effect (not attack?)
Sorry, that's an area attack, not an area effect. Le oops.
Quote:cosmetic (more RP than 'useful'), and transportation. Then for the between levels they get the combo spells/skills and basic spells/skills and so on (all hyped up a notch or two from their mortal version)
On the subject of "hyping a notch or two", I suggested a level-based modifier, and that would probably be a good way to tweak damage for these abilities.
Quote: and the levels beyond the last of these non-tacticals(?)
For clarity's sake, we can refer to the primary abilities as legendskills, the tacticals as already mentioned, extras for anything unmentioned, specials for Adam's stuff.
Quote: are for gaining the other special abilities that come with Adam's status thing idea.. and the 8-15 levels thing is if we give them 50 levels total, we space these ever 8 so the last 10 levels are for status and if we give them 100 levels then we space these every 15 levels so the last 25 levels are for status, and if we give them some total between those two numbers (50/100) then we space them out accordingly and leave the last remaining levels for status. (The terms status and tacticals and legend types or legendtypes are being used at this point solely for lack of other handy terms and to maintain a degree of consistancy for this discussion.)
Sums it up pretty much.
Quote:Duely noted, though 'insanely hard to hit' seems almost an undue/excessive advantage.
True enough. I used that comparison, and failed to point out that when I say "like that" I mean within the context of legendtypes. Brutes/Pillars/Fiends are the beastly hitters, Espers are the empowered healers, Shades the embodiment of speed in motion. And so on. I totally agree that making them nearly impossible to hit would be unbalancing, even if they do hit lighter than anyone except an Esper.
Quote:surely by now you've realized that we will without prompting.
Darn, I figured if I could find a way to assert enough authority, I would find an occasion to use this cool little smiley. 
Oh well!
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Posted Jan 19, 2008, 7:28 am |
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Iridium
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Quote:Good enough of a disclaimer?
Fine by me. I put it in there, because with all the material I've been churning out, I didn't want you to feel like I was expecting it all to be put in the game post-haste. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of stuff you're not interested in or don't like, and wanted to make sure it was clear that I understood this is all in the hypothetical stage. 
Quote:Ok, so each legend type would get a skill or spell to handle healing, attack, area effect, cosmetic (What do you mean by cosmetic, got an example handy?), and an "epic" group related skill and tacticals (again, care to explain/elaborate a wee bit for us about this last one?)
I'm thinking there should also be a transporation s/s in there, but to address your questions:
1. By cosmetic, I mean surface, mostly outside of the coding level, something of an rp'ish nature to give the legendtype its own aura of specialness. Perhaps an old skill with a new name or unique take on it or something. An example might be giving an Esper the ability to create magic objects or a Shade the ability to summon ethereal weapons.
2. Tacticals - I should have elaborated on it earlier, but it's a big enough subject by itself to warrant a separate thread. By tacticals i refer to any old spells/skills you or anyone else might think Legendtypes can't live without. We had an earlier discussion how they'd be beyond things like food creation or locate object, and 'tacticals' is a (probably the wrong word!) catch-all phrase to refer to the can't-live-withouts.
Quote:And that's all they should be getting for 100 levels worth of slist, or this is what they should be getting as legendary tiered characters above and beyond the normal spells/skills that they had at the previous tier and the combined spells/skills that were mentioned in the other thread?
My line of thinking is that there should be 50 levels of legendtype, not 100. This would keep the skills stretched out over a 10 level span up to 50 levels, giving players time to find their guildmasters for said skills.
The 100 level system might be slightly less difficult to balance, since you don't have to ensure that a Legendtype is more powerful than a multi-classed Avatar. In a 100 level system, you could do the same up to 70 and leave the final 30 for anything else they want to do. Like go out and use all that power! Also, if we incorporated something along the lines of Adam's thoughts on the ability to get more powerful, you could do a bit of a throwback to old-Diku by doing 100 levels and the ability for players to channel some of that into hitpoints, mana, moves and the like. Then add in other ways for them to acquire that as well, once those limits have been hit.
~ ~ ~ ~
You've pretty much nailed it on my descriptions. See the bit about tacticals above.
It should be noted on Shades that the defensive++ is a throwback to their rogue-like roots and their ghost-like nature. I've seen mobs (rogues and thieves in Cloudy Mountain zone) that are insanely hard to hit, and they should be like that, I'm thinking.
Any more questions, feel free to ask.
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Posted Jan 19, 2008, 6:10 am |
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Iridium
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Keeping in mind that Legendtypes (the race/class names) are simply cosmetic, and this isn't a commitment to those names. Simply the next step in fleshing out the Tier, in the area of skills and spells. The following is a suggestion on how to approach them.
s/s = spell and/or skill
I would suggest that each legendtype get a healing s/s, an attack s/s, an area s/s, a cosmetic s/s, an "epic" group related skill and tacticals. These s/s's, with the exception of the tacticals, will be unique to the legendtype. Strength of each will depend on the legendtype in question.
Note: "Moderate" and "light" should be at least somewhat above mortal tier standards. Not extreme, but upgraded.
Breakdown:
"Chromatic Wyrm" - moderate attack skill, strong area, light heals
"Platinum Wyrm" - Same as Chromatic
"Archon" - Moderate in all areas, evil in nature
"Paragon" - Same, good in nature
"Crux" - Same, neutral in nature
"Fae"/"Esper" - Strong healing, moderate area, light attack
"Fiend" - Strong++ attack, light area, light healing, evil
"Pillar" - Same, good
"Brute" - Same, neutral
"Shade" - Moderate in all, but defense strong ++
I'm running short on time and will breakdown the rest further if there's interest in expanding along these lines.
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Posted Jan 18, 2008, 6:53 pm |
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Iridium
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Quote:The other side of your question, though, was about RP combat.. the question there is, if it's strictly an RP'd combat, do they have a need to do 'real' combat too?
Ideally, and to an extent, realistically speaking, you don't HAVE to have the option. Ideally, because barring a pair of well-matched players, one is probably going to be more powerful than the other and they can work out the details themselves. Realistically, not so much. Best case scenario, this becomes a roleplay-centric game, and the munchkinism will be kept to a minimum. But even on the best of RP MUDs, there's always going to be the guys who want to roleplay demi-gods made human, or simply be the second coming of Superman. Code isn't a perfect solution to a scenario like that, but it's an option.
You don't HAVE to have it, but it's nice to have it as both an option for those that want it and a code backup to roleplay.
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Posted Jan 19, 2008, 7:15 am |
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Iridium
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Does a player have to be in "arena" mode in order to be able to fight safely, or is the code based on the room? If it's the room itself, you could add some special small-sized zonelets where people could meet up for RP combat. If not the room, perhaps you might get hold of a snippet for something along those lines?
The reason I suggest it, is that arena (in the hypothetical PK'less MUD) is somewhat limited to times when an immortal can open it up, and if someone's actually rp'ing a hostile scenario against another player, they have the ability to resolve it somewhere other than emotes.
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Posted Jan 19, 2008, 6:24 am |
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Iridium
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Joined: Jan 1, 2008
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On the topic of PK, since it doesn't seem to be that popular here...
I've noticed that LoL seems to have *some* kind of Arena system in place, but haven't had the opportunity to use it myself yet. If there's really so little interest in PK on LoL that only a couple people do it, you aren't going to draw a lot of PK oriented players anyway, not with games out there focussed around it (i.e. GenocideMUD, The Killing Fields, etc). Perhaps you could brush up the arena system and simply lose the PK?
Since I'm unfamiliar with LoL's system of Arena combat, I don't know whether it's system-based or room based. What I mean when I refer to room based is that two players can simply go into a room toggled Arena, duke it out, and a corpse is left that can't be looted. System based is more along the lines of gladiatorial combat where you have to sign up first and get into an event. With the latter, you could have people PK'ing when they want simply by agreeing to go to the same Arena-based area. Perhaps even put some kind of wager system in so that they can stake equipment, gold or something else as a "purse" to the winner.
This would allow you to cater a bit to the PK crowd while not going to the bother of having something that needs to be monitored, like a real pk system.
Just some more thoughts to ponder upon!
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Posted Jan 18, 2008, 6:06 pm |
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