Valriel makeover/spellskill switch

[Janus]

Okay, I propose here a massive makeover for Valriel.

Pretty much, he grants all special prayers except summoning, as well as a few non-special ones, he gives some badass resistances, but as a price for being overpowered in praying, there are some major drawbacks: NO MAGIC, denied_path summoning, and resist_godpower -100.

Also, as for the spellskill switches... Lightning should be moved to evoker, and races with pyromancy as a racial skill should have, as opposed to pyromancy, "firebreathing", which does the same thing as pyro, except it is NOT affected by Valriel's NO MAGIC. This is because, with fireborns and Qs, it's not really "magic", it's just built-in buttkickage.

Pyromancy spells can be learned with the skill firebreathing, 'cuz at that point it will merely affect power and shape of the fire, which isn't learned naturally by firebreathing races.

Also, as a different penalty for fumbled spells (in firebreathing/breathweapon skills), instead of just a few MP going away, in the event that the character does not have +100 fire resist, they get severe pain. What I'm seeing here is, instead of the spell outright failing due to large equipment, it hits the equipment and explodes in their face. The force of the blast may cause them to drop any non-locked items, which in the face of a violent storm of fire, will not last long.

One last thing... Dragons oughta get "breathweapon" 'stead of evoker as a natural skill, as there are no fire spells in evoker and dragons always start out as fire-focused. Breathweapon pretty much allows the dragon to use any special skills learned from elemental focus.

So whadda y'all think? Is it readable?

[Mith]

i think you should edit your post and insert some newlines. It's almost unreadable as is.

Besides, i think it is not wise to mess with Valriel, better add a new god.

Evocation and lightning is an ongoing debate. I don't think lightning sould be pyromancy but it shouldn't be evocation as well (but that is an other discussion).

I like the firebreathing idea, but as far as i am aware there is no way (at least not now) how a dragon/fireborn/Q can be denied fire.

[Aaron]

spells blowing up during failures is good, prayers is not.

but dropping stuff is EVIL and a NO NO.

and lightning does need to be moved to an evocation like skill.

[Rednaxela]

and lightning does need to be moved to an evocation like skill.

In terms of what would balance the different skills, moving lightning to evocation would be a step in the right direction
In terms of what the lightning does to objects, it should be in pyro.

Either way, I think ball lightning and the other lightnings should all be in the same catagory no matter which one that is.

[Mith]

i think lighting should be a category itself, together with other 'weather'effects (windstorm, snowstorm, icestorm)

i think the whole magic system should be shifted and shuffled

(almost) all pyromancy, evocation and sorcery spells should become one skill: magical arts
summoning should remain a skill itself

This skill magics contains a few subskills: fire, weather (environment), mind, magic

fire: fire spells
weather: icestorm, snowstorm, (ball) lightning, poison cloud
hypnosis: confusion, slow, paralyse, ... (?)
magic: steambolt, spark shower, color spray, mana spells
location: dimension door, town portal
mind: probe, detect magic,
self: stat spells, protection spells (these might be prayers as well, not sure)

spells i did not mention should be located in one of these categories (unless i forgot a category, of course)

one gains experience in fire/weather/magic by killing mobs with spells from these categories.
experience in mind is gained by killing mobs while they are under the spell effect. so burning a paralysed titan gives no fire exp but mind exp. Maybe paralyse should give 100% exp for mind, slow only 50%, confusion just 25%
One doesnt gain experience in the location discipline, but your location lvl is half the average of the other disciplines, hence a lvl 100 pyro and no exp in other disciplines is lvl 12 location (so, no town portal yet)

this requires one to train all - or most of - the magic arts

Maybe i could rephrase this: make spell paths more effective by (re)grouping paths into skills

[Rednaxela]

i think lighting should be a category itself, together with other 'weather'effects (windstorm, snowstorm, icestorm)

Great idea I like it.

Maybe i could rephrase this: make spell paths more effective by (re)grouping paths into skills

I see several problems with you're proposed implimentation of this:
1. Many spells could be quite lonely in their catagories. Such as create bomb,
2. Self and Location spells still don't have a way to gain exp with the model you've said for exp.
3. How would existing characters be migrated, if at all.

(I believe you forgot a catagory for summoning. Also, under this model, I think charm monster would fit perfectly under mind rather than summoning)

Might also be interesting to look at some of the classicaly know -mancies in various types of divination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination
What might be good for weather is Aeromancy...

[cavesomething]

hmm, the last point strikes me here.... the spell paths could simply be turned into skills, it would require rather extensive archetype changes.

This would give an interesting way to remove attunement from the game (it is a bit of a hack anyway, implemented with several +/- 2's in the magic code.).

If each spell path were a seperate skill, then attunement would change into skill specialisation.

here comes the nice bit....

this ties in with altering all the starting characters with skill specialisations of their own. (this is something I have wanted to look into before anyway) So, a northman would start attuned to one hand weapons and two handed weapons, repelled inscription.

orcs would be repelled singing and so on....

This would also open up the way for lots of skill helping items.... (chef's hat, smith's hammer, poet's quill etc....)

if attunement were made a stat then, it would also make some potentially powerful items with really evil penalties.... (think wdsm: attune: fire_magic -100, attune: cold_magic +10)

the last bit you have then is skill overlap, when exp is gained in one skill, it should benefit other related ones slightly. something like

new_secondary_skill_exp=new_primary_skill_exp*conversion_factor*(primary_skill_exp/secondary_skill_exp)

where conversion_factor would be a measure of their relatedness. (a number from 0 to 1)

This would mean that the lower value skills would get boosted more, and the high exp ones would be scarely effected at all...

This would also fix issues with some skills being hard to level, so training oratory would help raise bargaining, one handed weapons would help two handed weapons, the id skills would all help each other, literacy would help inscription, etc.

such crossover exp should probably stop around level 20-ish (at which point you are looking at highly specialist knowledge to get better)

obviously the spell paths would be quite closly interrelated then except for the ones that oppose each other (maybe conversion_factor could be negative for some of them, making it harder to level fire & cold or death & restoration at the same time?)

[Mith]

I see several problems with you're proposed implimentation of this:
1. Many spells could be quite lonely in their catagories. Such as create bomb,
2. Self and Location spells still don't have a way to gain exp with the model you've said for exp.
3. How would existing characters be migrated, if at all.

(I believe you forgot a catagory for summoning. Also, under this model, I think charm monster would fit perfectly under mind rather than summoning)

summoning was a skill on its own, not a subskill in magical arts. Summoning is not very magical, but rather knowledge of outerworld dimensions

1) it is not: every path its own skill, but rather a regrouping of spell paths into several (sub)skills
2) no exp, but you do grow in lvl. When you're strong in several magical disciplines, you are able to master spells from the mind/self path
3) _THAT_ is a good question....

[Janus]

Okay, yeah... I'll edit my post moments after this one, but...

The point in changing some skills around for exotic races is this: They're natural skills, not "magic" in the sense that Valriel would deny. Also, my whole thing with modifying Valriel is just to make him more like the god he's modeled after. Omnipotent and all that stuff.

But, as mentioned, it also allows for game balance by denying magical arts and all forms of summonry (prayer-based included. No avatars or holy servants).

Also, perhaps his weapon-blessing might be enhanced a bit, plus-wise. It gives a real crappy attacktype, and although the slaying is good, it's useless when weapon-blessings are most wanted or needed.

Readable, no?

[cavesomething]

Also, my whole thing with modifying Valriel is just to make him more like the god he's modeled after. Omnipotent and all that stuff.

I've always considered valriel to be most similar to Odin in norse mythology, I don't think he was omnipotent though.