A simple suggestions - show the spell (aff/mal/mental) level of a character in his score sheet.
I've never understood why spell level was such a taboo subject. A melee can easily access his hit/dam stats. A mage on the other hand can neither access the spell level he casts at, nor see the average damage of his spells.
Showing the type of different spells in their help files was a big step in the right direction, let us continue it.
Makes sense to me. Dunno if it's that big a deal though - the things that adjust spell level you can count on one hand, so you can pretty much figure it out.
From a new player stand point it would be interesting to see the differences between some classes. I think I read somewhere that classes can naturally be different. Maybe not.
I think I read somewhere that classes can naturally be different. Maybe not.
Like a shaman casting maledictive spells, yes. Level 50 shamans cast at L50 while all others cast at L47, or something like that.
Some issues I have:
How easy are these numbers to see?
If we're talking score sheet, we need to make room for afflictive, maledictive, mental, curative, protective and 'other', or some abbreviations there of. This of course, is a minor issue.
What exactly will this bring to the table?
You'll know what level you cast your spells at. Great. For most people, those numbers are going to remain static for most of the characters life. Additionally, to get the most benefit from this, you'll need to play nearly every caster/communer class in the game. If you did that though, you'll already see that a shaman's plague is much more potent than a DK's. By proxy, you'll also know that to cure a shaman's plague is going to be harder for some classes/items. But now you've got an ambiguous number attached to it. You picked up a +spell level item? Great! It's now in the back of your head that your spell level is +1 anyway, reinforcing that your shaman now casts an even more lethal and harder to cure plague.
You get to know your approximate damage due to spell level shifting?
Nope. Don't like it. You'll need to know the range of the spell in the first place.
How about knowing just the average damage?
.... Maybe. Completely on the fence with this one. Sounds interesting, but do we really need to know? Like timers on class-made items.
But ... know your spell levels!
Yes yes. Having them on your score sheet does little to nothing for everyone. Doing that means you'll need to hit all classes, blah blah already argued that. However, taking a page from the spell type in the help file does lend a bit of a solution to my argument.
help ray
'RAY OF TRUTH'
syntax: commune 'ray of truth'
Blah blah blah
help shaman
SHAMAN SHAMANS
Blah blah blah
Caster level at 50:
Afflictive: 50, Maledictive: 60, Mental: 50, Curative: 55, Protective: 45
In summary:
[insert applicable summary here.]
My suggestion was only about the general spell level and aff/mal/mental. Just like it is with saves.
I can also give examples of how this can be useful, but I doubt it's really needed.
General spell level is completely ambiguous. At level 50, you're expected to cast at L50 or there about. There's your general spell level. But there's several subsets as you point out. Afflictive, maledictive, mental. But there's curative, protective and other. You're asking for spell levels shown for half the spells. I'll agree that some perhaps don't need to be shown, like 'other' as that's usually for recall, portal, charmies and the like. But certainly the other two.
Healers cast curatives higher. Shamans do maledictives higher. You can't just limit it to aff/mal/mental when some classes can cure plague/poison higher than the chump who did the casting unless it's a blanket +/- level mod across the board. A BMG's Reflective Shield is considered protective. It dictates how hard it would be to dispel (mental), so why have one and not the other?
So yes, your suggestion was only about the general and yadda yadda, but this is what makes this venue great. We can point out ways to give constructive criticism about said ideas. Perhaps improve on the original idea. Or express why they can't/shouldn't work.
Rhetorical questions time to make point:
Can a shaman cast all maledictives at L50 while everyone else casts all maledictives at L47? If yes, that makes your proposal quite easy. It's broad strokes, after all.
Can a healer cast all curatives at L50? Let's say no. There's now a kink. Esuna let's say is cast at L51. That's fine, it's a curative cast higher. But what about cure serious? Let's say that's not cast at a higher level. How would you address that?
There's not enough room on the score sheet for all that.
An option would be to put them in the help files. If it's just broad strokes, then in with the class is fine. But if it's not, one would have to place it with spells.
help plague
PLAGUE
stuff
Level adjust:
Sha: 0, DKN/Cle: -3
help cure light
CURE LIGHT
stuff
Level adjust:
DKn: -3, Cle: 0, Hea: +2, Sha: -1
If it's broad strokes, putting something in the score sheet akin to "spell: -1" or "mal: +1" should be fine.
If it's not ...
At what level does a human invoker cast his general/mental/mal/aff spells, if the invoker is:
Affected by temporal storm
Wearing sphere of annihilation
Wearing mask of ultimate evil
Having a fully charged staff
Has a mysticism tattoo
What about a human DKN (Torpol) in temporum (without the charged staff)
The problem with your suggestion is that:
You don't know the base level (some people don't know that certain professions cast at different levels)
You don't know how certain items/skills/tattoos affect spell level.
You don't know if there is anything capped
I like the idea of putting the spell level withing the help file though (not sure if it's possible, code-wise thought). Just make it show the whole level (not just the modifications).
Yes, I know the reason why you're suggesting this.
The problem with your suggestion is that:
- You don't know the base level (some people don't know that certain professions cast at different levels)
- You don't know how certain items/skills/tattoos affect spell level.
- You don't know if there is anything capped I like the idea of putting the spell level withing the help file though (not sure if it's possible, code-wise thought). Just make it show the whole level (not just the modifications).
Thought it would be clearly obvious that the base level would be current level, and the +/- mods would reflect profession bonuses. After all, a shaman/DK casts plague at 30 that's weaker than the same shaman (or DKN) casting at 50. The mod however, will still be the same. DK would cast a level 27 plague at 30.
For items, it's only an identify away. Privileged spells (such as mana charge and malform weapon), cabal skills and tattoos, I think should be kept completely ambiguous. Maybe. Valid discussion point, though. Perhaps not in help files, but in score sheets in these instances. Maybe. Don't know. Do we have a better or compromising potential solution?
I'm happy with keeping this that way. The only thing that's immediately identifiable as being capped are racial stats. (Before you scream about skill proficiency, I said immediately. To everyone. As low as single digit character levels.) Do we want to add spell levels to that? With this, I'm not saying they shouldn't see +spell level. Just not see the cap. If they want to believe that they're casting a L67 fireball, then by all means let them.
For showing the whole level, do you mean as the character levels, too? Help files being dynamic as you gain level and change gear and enter cabals and everything else? I agree that I'm not sure if it's possible. Thought help files were basically just .txt files.
Edit: Before replying again, I'm going to wait for other views of the suggestion.
Î think F0xx raises an very pertinent issue.
One that I agree with.
Having your score sheet display your spell level is an very easy thing to code, since there is already code to do this. I think IMM's can view this about characters with one of their imm only commands.
IF there is no space in the Score sheet, perhaps a new command that could bring a new sheet, although this would eat more of Morlhach no doubt limited coding time.
A command like akin to the "report" one.
It should show four spell levels: Afflictive , Maledictive, Mental and Generic.
For example AFFlictive would show your base plues any bonus from AFFspell leve and spell-level all added up so not mistakes could be made.
Perhaps it could also show Hit/Mana/Movegain levels, since this is not shown also in score and good for all.
If this could happen it would be great.
A more informative thing would be to have a new command to check your spell.
This command would check the spell you chose and it would return the level at it was being casted.
For example: "check Hellstream" ---> Reports: You cast hellstream at level 666.
This would be great for some specials classes....
This would probably required having a new line of code in every spell we have to return the "level" variable, so I'm only mentioning it as an Idea.
While we are up at ideas, I thought of Meeles.
It would be interesting for them to have a real average of the damage they can output, with damroll tweeks and all. But this is probably to much complicated to do.
But a report command that rolls full damage through the melee damage functions would be nice and reports a possible dam value.
For example: "checkdamage" ---> Reports: Your strike would deal 666 damage.
Again this is only an idea. Since you can get a guess of your damage from the damage verbs.
The reason you 'probably' dont see these additional spell levels is because it starts taking away from the roleplay aspect and turning
it into a numbers game, if thats the case though they should get rid of [hit/dam spell lvl ect ect] and show them more like how the 'report'
command was changed instead of walking both lines.
Example of prof me weapon:
Your skill with a bastard sword (sword) is MODERATE
Your accuracy is DISMAL, you should be able to LACERATE your enemies.
Same with prof me hellstream:
Your skill with hellstream (afflictive) is MODERATE
Your concentration is AVERAGE, you should be able to DISINTIGRATE your enemies.
All thats needed is a simple code table to match your current stats to the appropreate words, then display the words instead of the numbers. The
time consuming and annoying part for the coder would be developing new 'score and skill sheet layouts'.
UC