Virilneus’ GS4 Idea Book

712 is a great spell, but is the only buff in the sorcerer base list so it takes on a lot of duties. One thing the sorcerer base list lacks is an AS buff, which puts us behind other professions in the bolt AS department. This does indeed matter. Unlike with CS/TD where every critter has a TD tuned specifically to each individual sphere, each critter has only 1 AS, so having a significantly lower AS than other pures does result in a much more difficult time using AS based spells

 True, we can always use scrolls and imbeddables, and for years I’ve been using 211, 215, and 513, on every hunt, but not every sorcerer has the resources I have, but having a small AS buff in our circle is strongly desired.

 Or… we could always add a buff component to curse.

As with Mana Disruption disintegrate is not modified by lores and this makes it lag behind out attack spells at higher levels, as well as go against what appears to be the design goal if GS4 in that all spells are modified by lore in one way or another.

I think, if anything, disintegrate should be modified by necromancy, it isn’t a perfect fit, but it is a fit. The other option would be to use mana controls (an aggregate sum).

Many do not remember slate wands, but they had really interesting messaging. They would shoot a laser-like dull grey beam at the target and vaporize off strips of flesh. The crit messaging was fantastic, but the damage was erratic.

Still, it very much seemed like an aimed attack, despite being CS based, and I always thought it could be resurrected as an AS based attack.

How to do this though without ruining the CS based attack? The new web, 118, gave the answer.

What if disintegrate cast from offensive stance became an AS based attack such as with web?

I would keep the laser-like messaging from the old slate wands for the AS based attack, and which would make one infer that the way to increase damage with the spell would not to be to shoot a wider beam, but rather to hold the beam on the target for longer. Every millisecond the beam is on the target would result in more damage.

So, I would change the CS version of the spell to be modified by necromancy or mana controls for an increase in power. The degree of which would be decided by GMs as per balance.

For the AS version I would park the initial damage factor akin to wizard’s airbolt or a little stronger. Then, I would not have the lore modify the damage at all, but rather have lore (or mana control) training result in a longer lasting beam, which for game purposes translates to multiple damage rolls of varying strengths.

I would still like for sorcerers to receive a stronger AS based attack spell in a higher spell slot, but I think changing 705 to be dual purpose would do a lot to provide for flexibility and diversity within the profession.

One problem with sorcery is that our core attack spells are not modified by lore or anything else, so that by higher levels they lag behind other casting professions severely in the damage department.

 However, as seen with recent changes to empath attack spells, apparently it is now an accepted practice to use mana controls, rather than lores, as spell damage modifiers, and mana controls fit our spells very very well.

 So I would suggest that a sorcerer’s total many control ranks (not averaged out) be used to modify the damage of 702 like lore modifies the damage of so many other attack spells (such as 1106 or 302) I would also be very willing to accept an optional additional mana cost in the form of an infusion (like 302) to justify increased power. I would like this to be optional and controllable so that lower level sorcerers are not forced into higher mana casts if they do not want to be.

Now, I am not sure how creatures work, but if creatures are branded with spheres in that a GM could say “This creature has elemental mana, that creature has spiritual mana” etc, then perhaps the mana control used in the formula could be based on the mana possessed by the target.  I’m not sure if it is possible to do that with the backend, only a GM could say for sure, but it would add more depth to the spell if it were possible.

 The degree to which the mana controls should increase damage would be fully up for discussion and ultimately end up at point which the GMs think is fair and balanced, the important thing is that the spell gets updated to use something to use some mangler skill to modify possible damage, like more or less every other attack spell in the game.

708 is a great and useful spell, but it has a rather abrupt upward limit. You target a creature with it and can break and amputate their limb, and then nothing. Roll a 150 or a 400, the affect is the same.

I would propose that for every 50 points of warding failure, starting at 200, another limb is blown off. So that, if you have a 300 endroll, all 4 limbs are blown off.  This is merely for fun, since it is unlikely that you’d ever get so high of an endroll while normally hunting.

There is a neighborhood in the landing with a swimming hole. After swimming in this hole a script attaches to players and for some time afterwards makes water drip down off their clothing.

Well, losing 4 limbs at once is quite bloody I’m sure. Wouldn’t it be sorcerish if all that blood covered everyone in the room and then spent some time dripping off their clothing? The color of the blood could of course change based on the creature that was limb disrupted, and those without blood wouldn’t result in this.

Then, of course, standard torso mechanics should come into being and the body should follow any possible down directions in the room.

Maelstrom really needs an update. The messaging in game is not at all accurate as per the description in the official docs.

In the game messaging indicates the storm is of an elemental nature, causing many sorcerers to ask that elemental lore increase the damage of the spell. However, if you read the official documentation, the maelstrom is not supposed to be elemental at all.

At the very least, the messaging needs to be looked at.

Now, I do not think we need any lore to be able to increase the potency of the spell, we can already do that, by repeatedly casting maelstrom at the same creature. However, I do think that it would be worthwhile to let mana control skills modify the mana cost for those repeatedly cast maelstroms.

Additionally, based on some magical skill, I like Evarin’s SHIFT idea. Whereby, once a target is dead, the maelstrom does not dissipate, it continues spinning and can be SHIFTed onto another target. This would not be a duration increase, merely it no longer ties duration to target life. If a player can cast a 2 minute maelstrom, let it last a whole 2 minutes, not only until the first target dies. If they kill one critter with it but it still has juice left, let them SHIFT it to another target. Have it require a skill check against spell aiming or something, and put in 5 seconds of RT, but let it happen.

Curse is a peculiar spell, unlike most other spells in game the affects of curse are controlled by stance, this is an artifact of coding practices that are over 10 years old, it is time to update curse to modern standards.

 You see, way back when, stance was the only way available to coders to differentiate spell types, and so curses became stance dependent, and the stance choices were mostly arbitrary. I know they were arbitrary because they were random. All sorcerers shared just 1 curse, the vulnerable TD lowering one, all others were randomly assigned to different stances.

GS4 changed that, it made the curses standardized based on stance, but what it should have done is gotten rid of the stance method altogether.

The better way to do this type of affect is through a verb. CURSE, like BESEECH for paladins or CURE for empaths, should be a spell verb allowing a sorcerer full access to their varying curses from any stance.

>curse seer vulnerable

>curse seer clumsy

>curse seer itchy

And so forth. The side benefit of doing this, is that no longer will the number of curses be limited by the number of stances, sorcerers could potentially have dozens of different curses if a GM wanted to code them. Not that I’m asking for that kind of coding resources, but the possibilities would be limitless.

What I would like to see is for Disease turned into a curse. Currently it is on the list of spells to be overhauled to make it more worthy of its spell slot. Considering what was done with 118, I’m optimistic about the possibility of gaining a nifty attack spell, however I think sorcery could gain a better attack spell if GMs were not limited by the concept of disease. So, I would like disease tucked nicely away into curse. Freeing up 716 for a new cool attack spell.

 Then we have options, such as we could move 713 to 716, thus freeing up 713, or move 713 to 716 and move 707 to 713, thus freeing up 707. So if you wanted a 7, 13, or 16 mana attack spell, the options are there. Finally 713 could also be folded into curse, thus freeing up 2 spell slots.

As they stand now 713 and 716 are more or less just novelties, like the different types of curses, I think they’d fit well merely as components of curse rather than their own standalone spells.

 As for what spells sorcerers could use. We’re the only pure profession without a native AS based attack spell. We’re also the only pure profession without an instant attack spell whose damage can be increased through native lore study. This makes our current attack spells weaker than those from other professions at high levels. Finally, a mass target CS based spell is often desired.  In the realm of non-attack spells, we also lag behind all other pure professions in the realm of AS boosters.

Animate dead is a great spell, but it has a high cost, and there are some nagging issues, bordering on bugs, that limit its intended usefulness.

 One major one is being worked on as we speak, and that one is how critter cast group spells interact with the sorcerer, this is being worked on so I will not mention it further.

 A major problem exists with magical or semi-magical animates. Namely their CS is balanced for hurting players, not other monsters, which overall makes their magical attacks relatively harmless and a waste of time. Some of advocated a CS bonus for animated creatures, I do not endorse this, rather, I merely ask for more control.

 Currently if you animate a magical or semi-magical creature they’ll attack in a random fashion, rarely doing what you want them to do. Physical animates on the other hand just swing, swing, swing, making them consistently reliable. For instance a magical animate might repeatedly cast a stun spell over and over at a target instead of finishing it off.

 What I would then propose is a simple toggle giving the sorcerer more control over their animate’s abilities.

tell animate attack <target> <physical|magical|special> (spell number)

So, one would tell their animate to attack a target using a physical attack, a magical attack (with optional spell number) or with a special attack. Special attacks being those that are not spells, but are not physical attacks (weird manuevers and/or arcane-list spells, etc).

Additionally, the other use of magical animates is spelling up, you can ask an animate to spell you up, but it does so dumbly and might repeatedly cast the same spell over and over and over again. So here as well I would request the ability to specify which spell number I would like an animate to cast on me.

 Another niggling bug/issue is the fact that you cannot reanimate a corpse that has been animated once. This is an extreme inconvenience to many sorcerers who do not hunt in an area with reliable animate-fodder. So they have to travel to another area to get an animate, then bring it back to their hunting area, and if the duration ends, tough luck, gotta go back and get a whole new creature.

 Furthermore this creates problems with player rescues. If a player is animated and is being rescued and logs out quickly then logs back in, the spell ends but now you cannot animate them because they were already animated once.

 I think a reasonable requirement is that for re-animation another gem is needed, or even another gem and more crystals. So the cost for reanimation would be the exact same cost as animation in the first place. I think that is very fair.

 Away from just weird bugs and annoyances, I think it would be nice if animates could learn while hunting. BCS critters are already coded so that if they kill a player, they can level up, I would like animates to be tweaked so that if they kill a critter (or x number of critters) they too can level up.

 I would also like to see a few more commands. I would like to be able to tell PC animates to pick up things (if not drop, since drop could be abused) and I would to be able to tell all animates to eat and drink things. The uses for this are obvious, you could feed alchemy potions to your critter animates and white flasks and herbs to your PC animates. I would also like to be able to tell critter animates to wear things, and to put things into a container. So I could command my animate to put on a backpack, then pick up a coffer and put that coffer in the backpack (assuming it is humanoid of course).