Cures

[Kinni]

I'd like to see in the help files for certain affects ways that they can be cured. For example, I had original considered "insanity" a curse. Also, insanity does not show up in the affects area of a character and therefore I had no idea why I was speaking in tongues and hallucinating. Anyway, attempts to cure or remove this curse, were ineffective. Apparently a "heal" spell is required to remove insanity. For affects such as insanity, waved of grief, and similar situations, I think it would be helpful to have the proper cures listed in the help files.

[Alitar]

I like seeing people figure these out ICly myself. As for your 'insanity', I'm 90% certain that's actually the effects of malnutrition. If you go too long without food or water you'll start to get some interesting echoes.

[Tyeslan]

It's from the spell Heal generally gets rid of it!!

I wouldn't mind having a note in the helpfiles. With the amount of new people around, there might not always be someone that knows, and the amount of coin spent at a priest could be a make or break at times. A quick note in the helpfile could help!

[Kinni]

I was made insane by a lodestone. Today I was struck by the "wave of grief" spell. I spent lots of coin at a MOB healer attempting various cures, heals, and remove curse. Attempted these also from a PC, and found they had no effect. Turns out you need dispel magic, despite my original impression that this was a curse. I feel that a help file is certainly beneficial to avoid confusion.

[Anguin]

If you can cast the spell (say, Insanity), you should know what is required to remove it. Or, if you can make a successful spellcraft check, you should be able to identify the spell and know how it is countered. Just because you are affected by something doesn't mean you should know what it is and how to remove it.

However, the limits of the game probably prevent spellcraft checks to identify what affects you are under, or making spellcraft checks to see what spells are affecting someone else. And I don't think there's a way to reveal only part of a help file, depending on your character (though I like the idea). So, I would support adding those details into the help files (as opposed to making me look them up in the SRD).

[Tamryn]

There's no point trying to hide things which are in the SRD. It's unfair to people who might not know about it, and if people want to do or know un-IC things, they're going to do it anyway.

Personally, if I'm asking a PC for a heal, I won't say "I need you to cure my disease", but rather something like "I have XYZ symptom, help!", and let them figure out how to fix it. But if I'm fighting a mob on my own, and get diseased/cursed/whatever and go to an NPC priest to fix it... yeah, I'm going to look up what I need to cure to get rid of it. Because a) "can you tell me what sort of heal I need" is not interesting RP, and b) ICly, the NPC priest would be able to tell me that anyway.

I tend to feel the same way about restricting help file access by character. People can just log on their other character and read the help file, or else they'll already know it (or look it up in SRD). Game mechanics which are public knowledge (which is most things) should be known to everyone. It's up to the player to RP things in a suitable IC manner, you can't try to force it.

[Raona]

So the general suggestion here would be to make sure that
1) The affect keyword is linked to the helpfile for the spell that causes it
and
2) The helpfile for the spell makes it clear how/if it can be countered

Sound right?

On a separate note, mental state no longer shows up in SCORE (I think?) and there's no other flag for the insanity spell, so all you have to go on are the echoes. I'm almost of the opinion that's OK for this particular spell?

[Nylo]

If you know what the spell is, you can tell pretty quickly when you're affected by it. Newbies might not have a clue what it is, and thus no idea what's causing the problems. But the only mobs I've seen cast it aren't ones that newbies can accidentally wander into, anyways.

[Raona]

If you know what the spell is, you can tell pretty quickly when you're affected by it. Newbies might not have a clue what it is, and thus no idea what's causing the problems. But the only mobs I've seen cast it aren't ones that newbies can accidentally wander into, anyways.

Hrrrm. Maybe that's the root of the problem...unless that is by design? I don't know the details here, but I'd much rather see this spell keep its mystery for until someone thinks themselves "tough" rather than hitting them with it when their biggest concern is saving up for some leather armour, or maybe just their next meal.

[Hrosskell]

Transparency with game mechanics is important to enjoyment of that aspect of the game; I can't tell you a way to spin not knowing what's wrong with your character that makes it fun. The responsibility of roleplaying well is on players, and I don't even see it as a must--it's something someone does because they enjoy it/want to share it, and they get their fun from that. When it comes down to suffering these afflictions, where the meat of the action/reaction is, a good roleplayer WILL play it; there's no reason to try and enforce it with mystery and opaque rules.

In short, I'd also like to see the aforementioned spells fleshed out in the helpfiles with their cures.

[Kinni]

Transparency with game mechanics is important to enjoyment of that aspect of the game; I can't tell you a way to spin not knowing what's wrong with your character that makes it fun. The responsibility of roleplaying well is on players, and I don't even see it as a must--it's something someone does because they enjoy it/want to share it, and they get their fun from that. When it comes down to suffering these afflictions, where the meat of the action/reaction is, a good roleplayer WILL play it; there's no reason to try and enforce it with mystery and opaque rules.

In short, I'd also like to see the aforementioned spells fleshed out in the helpfiles with their cures.

I couldn't agree more or put it better myself.

[Rhangalas]

Transparency with game mechanics is important to enjoyment of that aspect of the game; I can't tell you a way to spin not knowing what's wrong with your character that makes it fun.

Agreed. Also, slightly off-topic, but still in the vein of affects/mechanics: It would be a lot more useful (to newbies especially) if the duration of affects weren't adjectives and instead showed a RL timer. Most people aren't going to say, "Yeah, got an hour and twenty three minutes left on raise dead." They'll RP it as if it were still an adjective - at least from what I've seen.