Sorcerer

[Enyuu]

So I played through into epic levels with the sorcerer class, and really enjoyed it. The spells were a lot of fun, and added a lot of options for different kinds of gameplay and strategies. I know the class is going to see a lot of work and balancing in the future, but its off to a great start. I used my 1st and 2nd level offensive spells the most, and tended to favor spells that didn’t have a save as mobs usually had an easy time beating it. Some of the higher level damage spells were great but the tradeoff was a lot of downtime meditating them back, and didn’t end up being worth it. I came across a few things that could be exploited, such as using “dominate’ on afk players and forcing them to do stuff, summoning/animating charmees and using them as a steady leveling source, and setting off high damage area spells in rooms with a lot of mobs to get huge exp boosts.

Pro: Fun class with a lot of options
Con: Lots of downtime

[Ornir Elunari]

Hi Enyuu, and thanks for the feedback!

Feedback like this is very helpful for us to see where we are lacking in the design of the classes.

We will most definitely check out the things you mentioned in the post, and I am really glad you found the class to be fun.

See you in the game.

– Ornir Elunari

[Enyuu]

So I tried mailing this out to everyone, but I’m not sure if it worked or how badly it formatted.
Im going to be going over the spells for sorc/wizard. Here my notes for first level spells.

STUFF

– Helpfiles for spells could include how much damage they do (some do, most don’t)

– A lot of spells like burning hands and fireball should affect more than 1 target

– I’d like to take a moment to thank all the unfortunate piglets in Mosswood, for this
spell review wouldn’t be possible without their charred, frozen, twisted, and all around
obliterated little corpses.

SPELLS

Burning hands – Hepfile could have more info on damage, change to target up to 3 targets?

Color spray – Works well, help file has typos

Protection evil/good – Super long duration. All mobs seem to be true neutral right now. Wouldn’t
affect anything at the moment.

grease – Can’t test this myself. Great for offensive mage chasing someone down.

Iron guts – Works at intended.

Ray of enfeeblement – Seems to work well. duration is probably way too long.

shield – works well. duration 20min.

charm person – Great spell. Can be horribly abused when used on another player character.

enchant weapon – give +1hit/+1dam, but doesnt add a point to “enchantment bonus”. This means
I can enchant a +1 weapon with an additional +1 hit/dam.

Sleep – works well. Very useful spell.

endure elements – 40min duration. Seems to work fine.

Horizikaul’s boom – Add how much damage it does to helpfile? Great flavor text. maybe add an
echo if deafen is successful?

mage armor- Gives +2 to armor instead of +4. Helpfile should suggest it gives better protection
than shield? 40min duration.

scare – works great. Can see it being a vital spell for player vs player stuff and certain builds.

summon creature – works well

chill touch. Seems to work. Very similar to ray of enfeeblement.

Magic missile – The absolute bomb-diggity. Maybe add a short lag to this? I can throw like 5
of these things out in 1.5 seconds.

Identify – Good

expeditious retreat – Seems to work. Helpfile suggests it makes it easier to retreat? Does it
add a bonus to acrobatics?

Ice dagger – Works well. Helpfile doesn’t say how much damage its supposed to do.

negative energy ray – Works fine. Helpfile doesn’t say how much damage it does.

Shelgarns blade – Works. Not a great charmee. Maybe compare it with dire badger and tweak?

True strike – Adds a massive +20 to hitroll. Probably should be more like +4.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Enyuu.

[Enyuu]

STUFF

Not sure what bonuses stack with what, or what defensive spells work together. Spells like
iron skin, displacement, mirror image, and all that make for one defensive son of a bitch.

Familiars are great, but they’re all the same size creature with the same height and weight.
The tiny mouse is 200lbs and 198cm lol.

Currently spells known and spells per day don’t increase after lvl 20. I’m sure epic spells/feats
will go in for spellcasters in the future, but spells per day/spells known could still increase
from 20+ for now.

SPELLS

Blindness – Works well, reasonable duration.

invisibility – Adds +4 to AC (useful when using improved invis?), and has a nice
long duration of 23min.

Blur – Unsure if it works correctly. Maybe add an echo if blur prevents an attack?

Darkness – works. Changed room from (none) to (darkened). Not sure how long this lasts

Acid arrow – Doesn’t say how much damage it’s supposed to do. Doesn’t give an echo to
indicate if the spell landed or not. Also, doesn’t actually do anything and doesn’t show
up on affects.

Touch of Idiocy – Works well, great spell. Duration is 9min. Maybe a tad long

Deafness – You’re still able to see SAY and TELL commands from other people. Duration
is fine. Maybe allow casting on self? Could be used as a last resort to counter bard
songs.

Resist Energy – Can’t really tell on this

Detect invis – Detects invis.

Shocking Grasp – Seems to be working fine. Helpfile doesn’t say how much damage it should do

Mirror image – No idea if this is working. Not seeing any sort of echos in combat.

Summon creature ii – yep

Daze monster – Seems to work fine

continual flame – Works well. Great for races without infravision.

False life – seems to work well. Adds +30 temp HP.

Energy sphere – damaging spell. Not sure if it does anything else.

Detect Magic – Works well. Not too useful as not all enchanted items are tagged “magic” right now.

Strength – +5 to strength. Everybody wants to group with mage!

Endurance – Like strength but for CON

Web – Awesome spell to immobilize opponent. Maybe drop the duration down from 8 minutes. Thats 8 minutes
of being unable to move from the room, flee from combat, cast some spells, etc.

Hideous laughter – Another great spell. Target to can literally nothing for a short time. Including fight back.

Scorching ray – Spell has no save which is great. Does a lot more damage than it should be. This and magic missile
are the bread and butter for offensive casters.

Grace – Another great buff spell, but this time for DEX. woop woop!

[Ornir Elunari]

Hi Enyuu –

This is some very helpful feedback, thank you so much for doing the research.

It would be interesting to see if the higher level spells are more useful in a raiding situation, since it may last longer, provide less opportunity for regen and have much more powerful targets. It seems to me like speed and ‘getting back to the game’ were both important aspects to your playing style. It would take an awful lot of scorching rays and magic missiles to take down some of the beefier bosses.

I am interested if you have any insights for how to better balance the spells that are implemented, since you are so familiar with them.

– O

[Enyuu]

Hey Ornir! Thanks for the reply! I’ll have a better idea of how things balance out once I’ve gone through everything.

STUFF!

Some helpfiles could be clearer about saving throws. Like saves for half, or save negates

debuff durations maybe should be cut down? Waiting out spell affects usually isn’t
much fun.

Spells!

Fireball – Good damaging spell, but should target whole room or at least 3 npcs

wall of fog – Great utility spell, obscures the room. Can still look at and interact
with objects/mobs in the room if you already know they’re there.

Stinking cloud – Hilarious way to troll all the noobs as the spell only affects characters
under level 10. The “nauseating” affect doesn’t actually do anything right now.

Deathly Heroism – Handy buff spell. Good duration.

Deep slumber – Great spell, the duration is 18 minutes which is a long time to be stuck
asleep. Maybe consider dropping it down to 4-5min? Helpfile says you wake when “attacked”,
which is true, but I can still debuff the hell out of someone when they’re asleep as long
as it doesn’t do any damage.

Clairvoyance – Pretty much forces a character to do a “look” command, and sends the info to you

Slow – 22+ minute duration, Haste’s evil twin.

Circle against good – N/A at the moment.

Charisma – Instant sexiness spell.

Lightning bolt – Good elemental damage spell

Water breathe – Finally explored that little bear cave out east of Mosswood woot woot!

Summon creature iii – yusssss

Vampiric touch – Steals some hp

Invisibility sphere – Group invis. Seems to work well.

nondetection – Pretty straightforward

Dispel magic – Seems to work. Dispels one affect at random?

Cunning – good buff

Fly – Gives neato echos while moving around. Uses less mvs to get around?

Phantom steed – Ive always enjoyed this spell, but its basically a summon monster i with 10hp. It
could use maybe just a basic HP boost for higher ranks. Mount stuff needs to be looked at anyways.

Hold person – Completely command denies someone. Its the bomb diggity.

Daylight – No helpfile! Seems to change room status to ( Lighted ), really short duration.

Haste – not 100% on how haste and slow work. “Help haste” sends you to the blinding speed helpfile,
which just says that it gives you a haste-like affect.

Circle against evil – N/A atm

wisdom – Good buff

[Enyuu]

Stuff

So this casting level has a lot of spells that fall under the “wont work on anyone under <insert
a level>”, and I thought maybe they’d be better off tweaked a bit so they can continue to be
useful at all levels.

Spells

Curse – Cursing items and players is working well. Cursed items can’t be dropped or removed
but they can still be sacrificed. 25min duration.

Animate dead – Working well, but the helpfile could be more clear as to what level you can get
giant skeletons and mummys.

Ice storm – One of the first good area spells for offensive casters right now. Extra sexy because
there is no saving throw.

Cold shield – Nothing in affects suggests it gives 50% resist to cold, but the damage when something
hits you is working.

Greater invis – Works well. The boost to AC is great. Not sure if it’s stackable with mage armor, or
anything else.

Minor Globe – Turn other mages into your whipping boy with this one. Seems to work well. Removes casting
time on spells it negates.

Poison – Great utility/debuffing spell. The duration is a a massive 50 min (may scale by level), which is
a long painful wait if you cant cure poison.

Infravision – Working

Wizard eye – Great for exploring areas. Not sure it it can be aggro’d by mobs.

Billowing cloud – Like farting in the elevator before you leave. Changes room status to (billowing) and
forces a fort save on everyone in the room every round or so. Nothing shows up in affects if you fail
the save. Not sure what this does.

Rainbow pattern – Another good stunning spell.

Enlarge self – Best used when feeling insecure in the lockeroom. Works as intended, but can be slightly
abused my resizing a weapon, wielding it while enlarged, then shrinking back to normal. A troll can wield
a Gargantuan weapon this way.

Remove curse – Works

Fire shield – Works well. Maybe add to helpfile that only 1 elemental shield can be up at one time.

Locate creature – Works with both PCs and NPCs. Shows them as if you’re seeing them on the where command.

Shrink person – Works.

[Enyuu]

Stuff

Would be a good addition to have “non damaging’ spells not initiate combat. Or at least
not initiate combat if the character is sleeping or stunned. This would encourage “debuff”
mages.

Spells

Ball of lightning – Great offensive spell

Wall of force – Duration is like .5 seconds, so I’m not sure if this spell is working

Waves of fatigue – Seems to work well. Targets whole room and starts combat. Probably more
useful as a single target spell.

Feeble mind – Helpfile says it decreases wisdom and INT to 3, but it also decreases charisma.

Faithful hound – He’s invisible when summoned. Otherwise works well.

telekinesis – Works well.

Acid sheath – Seems to work similar to the other elemental shields.

Cloudkill – Works great. Fun to wander around high population areas and pulse kill everything.

Symbol of pain – Its a room-wide offensive spell that (I assume) only works against people that
can see. The damage text has a typo.

Nightmare – Neato spell. Might add some flavor if the damage gets jacked up a bit, but the spell
can only be used on sleeping opponents.

Firebrand – Good basic single target damage spell.

Dismissal – Great spell for fighting other mages!

Interposing hand – Works as designed, but its probably the least useful spell for this spell level.
Could be improved somehow? Maybe have a 25% miss chance while under this spell?

Summon creature V – Yup

Dominate person – Hilarious spell for messing with other players. They can still do commands, but are also
forced to carry out any you command them to as well. Also, they can’t attack you. This spell has some limits
for NPCs, as higher level NPCs seem to always be immune to this.

Mind fog – -10 saves for will. See thoughts on stuff for

Cone of cold – Good elemental offensive spell.

[Enyuu]

Clone – Okay, so this spell is neat because you actually have to have ‘sacrificial entrails’ in your
inventory in order to cast this spell. Theres only 1 mob in the game that has it, and he’s in Sanctus.
This spell will only target yourself, and creates a level 1 medium dragon true neutral mob with your name.
Might be useful as a decoy or something? I don’t know.

Freezing sphere – Good elemental damage spell. Reflex save.

Transformation – Seems to work well. Gives same BAB and attacks per round as a fighter.

Greater heroism – Great buffing spell. +4 all around.

True seeing – See invis/hidden. Suck on that stealth classes!

Locate object – Valuable spell in so many ways. Finding gear, keys, and who stole your newbie rations!

Acid fog – Maybe one of my favorite spells for this level. The helpfile isnt very clear about the duration
but it’s long enough to cause some mayhem for sure. Pretty much makes a room inhabitable, unless you want
to melt into a bubbling little puddle.

eyebite – Causes the ‘disease’ affect, which prevents victim’s health from recovering over 60% of it’s
total. The duration is waaaaaay too long, and the echo it gives you goes off every 2 seconds or so which
is hella spammy. Lasts 33 hours lol.

Anti magic field – Works well. No magic!

Globe of invuln – Works as intended. Nukes spells from other casters up to 4th level spells.

Waterwalk – Should allow you to walk on water, and fight on it like you’re on solid ground. I couldn’t test
this one.

Summon creature vi – Yup

Mass haste – Works, great buff spell for melee types.

Greater mirror image – A better mirror image spell, taking a few of the blows for you. Unsure how much better
it is compared to regular mirror image.

Greater dispelling – Works great! Can’t target yourself, which should probably be changed.

[Author]

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