Making "Time stop" more game friendly

[Dranso]

This is just a suggestion that I wanted to see what other people thought on the subject. Right now the spell Timestop is described as this:

"Time Stop

Transmutation [Mind-affecting]
Range: Area
Target: Ignored
Syntax: c timestop

This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact,
you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they
are actually still moving at their normal speeds. You are free to act for
the duration of the spell. While the time stop is in effect, other creatures
are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures
with any attack or spell.

The spell affects all the creatures except those grouped up with the caster.

NOTE: A timestop spell only allows you to cast spells upon yourself.
It should not be used to attack mobs or players. It was coded to give a
wizard the chance to quaff a potion, summon additional help, re-cast
defensive spells, etc., NOT to let them singlehandedly kill many foes."

So essentially, since one person cannot really ever be that fast the mechanics of the game make it to were you have to have to cast the spell on others and then have them react icly that they were really not affected by anything and that you were just going super fast.

My suggestion is that you make timestop available only for use in battle and that instead of casting it on other characters it allows you to cast two defensive spells or quaff two potions or quaff a potion and cast a defensive spell, all in one round. That way it would seem like you were going extra fast because you are getting these tasks that would normally take two extra rounds done in one round and it would no longer affect any other character but yourself. I think this would make the spell flow into the game better.

Example: cast "timestop" 'quaff' 'quaff'/ cast "timestop" 'quaff' 'stone skin'/ cast "timestop" 'stone skin' 'shield'

[Isolrem]

I don't see this working out in practice. You'd have to be an amazingly fast and accurate typer or set up aliases for all the conceivable scenarios you'd want to use this spell, which limits its effectiveness. Not to mention it'd certainly be nontrivial to implement.

Timestop is gimped enough as it is (you are not allowed to do anything offensive until the spell expires, but you don't get an echo when it does, so you lose the initiative every time in combat)

[Birk]

I don't see this working out in practice. You'd have to be an amazingly fast and accurate typer or set up aliases for all the conceivable scenarios you'd want to use this spell, which limits its effectiveness. Not to mention it'd certainly be nontrivial to implement.

Timestop is gimped enough as it is (you are not allowed to do anything offensive until the spell expires, but you don't get an echo when it does, so you lose the initiative every time in combat)

But wouldn't this suggestion fix just that? The way it's proposed, the entire timestop could just take place during the wizard's combat round, giving him an extra action, in effect, without breaking the flow of combat at all.

Further, with a good client, it should be simple enough to make a single alias that lets you cast any combination of timestop options you might desire.

e: I have no idea how easy it would be to implement this, though.

[Isolrem]

Yes this would fix that. But I am saying it would make timestop even worse by limiting what you can do.

I would like to see what kind of scripting your client offers. But even if timestop is only used to cast spells, you'd need abbreviations for every spell you could conceivably cast after the timestop command, a solid chunk of extraneous code that one must have along with a particular client in order to effectively use an ingame spell. And timestop also allows you to flee the room and change your equipment, among other things. I do not know how it could be captured in one command.

And another thing, FK has added expertise to skills and spells in addition to their DnD standard effects. To my understanding for timestop you get more time to do things at higher level. It would not just be two spells with sufficient mastery.

[Birk]

I'm using mudlet. The alias would look something like this:

Code: Select all

Alias: Timestop

^ts (\w+) (\w+)(?: (\w+))?(?: (\w+))?$

local replace = {
ss = "stoneskin",
qp = "quaff",
sh = "shield"
}

if matches[5] then
	echo("cast \"timestop\" '" .. replace[matches[2]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[3]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[4]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[5]])
elseif matches[4] then
	echo("cast \"timestop\" '" .. replace[matches[2]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[3]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[4]])
else
	echo("cast \"timestop\" '" .. replace[matches[2]] .. "' '" .. replace[matches[3]])
end

There we go, just add abbreviations to the replace table for any spell you want. You're right, of course, that it's extra clientside effort to use an ingame spell, but it's hardly an insurmountable effort to add an abbreviation for any spell you might want to cast using timestop. If I was making an alias system for a wizard char, actually, I think I'd just use a proper table with abbreviations for all my spells anyway, to make casting easier in all situations.

Either way, you're also right, that timestop allows other actions beyond casting and quaffing. But it's not supposed to allow ALL actions. I'm really not arguing one way or another here, just saying that the method outlined in the OP should be very much workable if imms decide that a one-command spell would be better than the current setup.