Ever been confused playing a battlemage?

[virr]

Ever been confused playing a battlemage?

I have.

The first character I played about 20 years ago was a battlemage and that got me very humble coming from a very similar mud, thinking I was grand champion.

Then after coming back maaaaany years later, I tried to play once again and it was just as confusing?

So what is so confusing?

Well, that amout of spells you need playing it, is. There are (for me) six basic spells to have up att all time:

Detect magic
Detect invis
Armor
Shield
Stone skin
Air shield

Then when it's time to fight you "must" add:

Blur
Blades
Terra shield
Plumbum manus
Force field/Manalock or Reflective shield
Sanctuary
Fly
And at last a dancing blade.

You can, of course, store five in a sequencer for fast access, but the problem starts when you in a stressfull situation have these spells fall and you try to remember what spells that you need to renew. And I don't mean when you flee right away. Maybe you can do without them until this fight is finished, but you need to remember to renew them before going in the the next fight.

Certainly you can remember one, but it's often the case that more than one fall during a fight and add to that, someone starts talking too you. In this situation I don't remember what spells I need to renew at all.

So you press "af" and you get this list:

Detect magic affects xxx
Detect invis affects xxx
Armor affects xxx
Shield affects xxx
Stone skin affects xxx
Air shield affects xxx
Blur affects xxx
Control blades affects xxx
Terra shield affects xxx
Incresed gravity affects xxx
Force field affects xxx
Sanctuary affects xxx
Fly affects xxx
Eldricht weapon affects xxx

It's not easy to find out what spells are needed. And note how some of the spells have new names in my affected list.

Blades is Control blades
Plumbum manus is Incresed gravity
And Dancing blade is Eldricht weapon

I know of no other class I've ever played that has this and it sure didn't help my confusion.

But since I like the idea of the class, I thought I'd give it another go, but this time I would really pay attention.

Well, that didn't work at all, so I found a new idea, that I wanted to share - I made a script (or rather several) to have my Zmud keep track of the spells needed.

So I start with giving every (for battle needed) spell a variable:

armor - arm
shield - shi
stone skin - sto
air shield - air
terra field - ter
blur - blu
plumbum manus - plu
blades - bla
dancing blade - dan

And I have one variable that keeps track of which dancing weapon I use for the moment, have two to choose from currently. With a button for each I can cast the spell with the desired weapon and assign the variable with it's name in one push of that button.

which dancing weapon - wdw

Then when the spells fall I assign the value 0 to the spells variable:

The terra shield loses its sentience. - #VAR blu 0

And when the spell is successfully casted:

Your physical contours become distorted. - #VAR blu 1

Then I have a button that, when pressed, goes through all the variables to check if their value is 0 or 1 and if the value is 0 the spell is casted.

#IF (@arm < 1) {c armor;};
#IF (@shi < 1) {c shield;};
#IF (@sto < 1) {c stone;};
#IF (@air < 1) {c air;};
#IF (@ter < 1) {c terra;};
#IF (@blu < 1) {c blur;};
#IF (@plu < 1) {c plum;};
#IF (@bla < 1) {c blades;};
#IF (@dan < 1) {c 'dancing blade' @wdw;}

Voilà - this made Battlemage manageable for me at least. Although it does not consider the different shields (force/mana/reflective), fly or santuary, but those I can manage in my head.

Yes, I am quite pleased with myself..

[Kassieti]

I enjoy my battlemages.  They definitely teach you about spell rotation.

I'm not going to really comment too much on the rest of the post at the moment, but you may wish to know about this:

 

12 hours ago, virr said:

So you press "af" and you get this list:

Detect magic affects xxx
Detect invis affects xxx
Armor affects xxx
Shield affects xxx
Stone skin affects xxx
Air shield affects xxx
Blur affects xxx
Control blades affects xxx
Terra shield affects xxx
Incresed gravity affects xxx
Force field affects xxx
Sanctuary affects xxx
Fly affects xxx
Eldricht weapon affects xxx

It's not easy to find out what spells are needed. And note how some of the spells have new names in my affected list.

There's two little somethings you can use for your affects list as a BMG.  One is in client, the other in game.

The in client version is make yourself buttons that toggle, change color or otherwise let you know stuff falls.  This is the harder solution as you need to have your aliases and triggers toggle buttons as appropriate for spells being put up or falling.  Which you've started doing a little.

The second and by far easier way is use the custom affects list in game.

aff 1 BLA blades
aff 2 DAN dancing blade
aff 6 ARM armor
aff 7 SLD shield
...

Which will then show up like this:
af
Affects:
 0   -  24  24  43   6  15   -   7   0   2  23   -   -   -  
BLA DAN ARM SLD STN AIR TER HAS SLO ENL PbM BLU FF  MLK REF 
Spell: detect magic   : for 0 hours
Spell: detect invis   : for 0 hours
Spell: pass door      : for 4 hours

And to see the full affects:
affects list
Pos  Des  Affect Name
1.  BLA  blades
2.  DAN  dancing blade
6.  ARM  armor
7.  SLD  shield
8.  STN  stone skin
9.  AIR  air shield
10.  TER  terra-field
11.  HAS  haste
12.  SLO  slow
13.  ENL  enlarge
14.  PbM  plumbum manus
15.  BLU  blur
16.  FF force field
17.  MLK manalock
18.  REF reflective shield

As you can see, the numbers don't need to be consecutive, but they will be displayed in order. This is great for when you want to go back and put new spells in between.
In the example, There's a 3 spell gap between dancing blade and armor.  If I wanted to put sanctuary in there later for example, I could.

aff 4 SAN sanctuary

And now it keeps track of sanctuary, nestled nicely between dancing blade and armor.
You can add spacers if you want.  Just put the name of a spell that won't ever be on you, and designate it with whatever.

aff 3 *** gate
aff 5 === gate

The example will then show:

Affects:
 0   -   -   -   -  24  24  43   6  15   -   7   0   2  23   -   -   -  
BLA DAN *** SAN === ARM SLD STN AIR TER HAS SLO ENL PbM BLU FF  MLK REF 
Spell: detect magic   : for 0 hours
Spell: detect invis   : for 0 hours
Spell: pass door      : for 4 hours

 

And now you've got a relatively easy way to tell immediately what's active and what's not.
A note about spells, it needs to be entered the same way it shows in your affects list.  Which is why it's listed as terra-field, not terra shield.

Furthermore, if you use the command "affects full", it'll show you your affects list as if you didn't have a custom list.  In case you wanted to know how much AC air shield was giving you.  Or what you receive from bless.  And so on.

 

[virr]

Great!

I've seen this in PK-logs and I've been thinking it's a cabal thing.

Now I know how. Thank you!

[myrek]

Kass nailed it. 1 small addition... More a point of emphasis.

Don't just use it for conditions you want to remember/track. Use it to clean out the list so you only have to read unusual or variable conditions.

[Ulmusdorn]

On 12/2/2021 at 3:50 PM, Kassieti said:

Affects:
 0   -   -   -   -  24  24  43   6  15   -   7   0   2  23   -   -   -  
BLA DAN *** SAN === ARM SLD STN AIR TER HAS SLO ENL PbM BLU FF  MLK REF 
Spell: detect magic   : for 0 hours
Spell: detect invis   : for 0 hours
Spell: pass door      : for 4 hours

jeeze the order of these is terrible :')
 

Haha

[Kassieti]

4 hours ago, Ulmusdorn said:

jeeze the order of these is terrible :')
 

Haha

For you, sure.  There's a method to my madness here.