[CF-Devel] Non-cumulative spells

[Andreas Vogl]

Pertti Karppinen wrote:

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      Non cumulative spells (can only be casted once, or atleast has effect
     
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      only on first cast) are ok and needed for protection type spells.
     
     
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      BUT: strength and armour spells allowed a big wizard to get his strength
     
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      up to 30 and advance his/her phys skill. It seems this is no longer
     
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      possible (atleats on MiDS server).
     
     
This is no longer possible indeed, and for good reason IMHO:
Pushing Str to 30 and armour to 99% doesn't seem acceptible to me,
especially not for wizards.

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      As wizards have low strength by nature, lot of
     
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      areas become unsolveable to wizards, or really really really hard to
     
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      solve, if you cannot pump up your strength.
     
     
You can still pump your strenght via equipment: like rings, enchanted
weapons etc.. - temporarily, when you need it. Do you think that wearing
all those wizard rings/amulets/robes PLUS boosting Str 30/ armour 99% is
fair?
I think that isn't being a wizard, that is being a wizard and a babarian
all at once.

Wizards are supposed to rely on spellcraft rather than physical power,
at least for lower levels. Lateron, a character can easily advance in
any skill.
A babarian doesn't have the ability to boost his Wis/Pow either,
although he could make good use of that.

>
     
      And as people tend to play crossfire unparty-like, there's often no help
     
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      from barbarians available.
     
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      As there's no such area as "no phys area" as there is "no spells area"
     
     magic
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      casters are have a huge disadvantage with this modification.
     
     
It is true that most people play unparty-like. That is the reason why we
try not to put any restrictions on character development.

Still, after all, there is a point where I agree with you: For a long
time (this is unrelated to PR) I always had the feeling that melee-style
characters have a little bit of an easier time than spellcasters. But the
question is: How can we help the wizard without helping fighters at the
same time? Non-cumulative strenght/armour spells don't look like a good
solution to me. Most fighters use protection/stats spells as well, at lower
magic levels of course - but usually that doesn't even make much difference.

We could, for example, make those spell-effects more level-dependant.
But then again we would not help the low-level wizards although they
would need it most.

On the other hand, due to PR, there *are* situations in the game where
wizards are better off than fighters (though maybe more rare than
vice versa). Killing with spellcraft from distance comes in very handy
when you lack the resistances for melee. For example: At overall lvl 50
I did not manage to kill a hoard of anchient blue dragons (elec) by other
means than fire spells.


Andreas V.