Prepared spells

[Dalvyn]

I'd like to get some input about the following question.

When you select the spells you are going to memorize/prepare, do you generally choose ...

a) to prepare a large variety of different spells, for example: 3 magic missile, 3 lightning bolt, 3 fireball, 1 disintegrate, 2 burning hands, 1 hold person; or

b) to prepare lots of copies of the same spells, for example: 20 magic missile rather than smaller quantities of different spells.

I'd really appreciate it if you could answer, and indicate why you choose one option or the other. Also, would that change if there was a limit on how often you can prepare spells (imagine for example that you can prepare spells - or, equivalently - change the spells you have in memory - only once every 4 or 5 in-game hours?

[Hviti]

Currently, I'd choose answer b- since spells can be changed easily, I'd have a bunch of a good attack spell (or the one I'm training currently), then a couple of recall/teleport and invis spells, plus a fly spell, stone skin, water breathing-whatever I need to so that I can survive dispel magic/spells running out.

If memorize time were implemented, then I'd have to go for answer a, but I think that this would make wizards less versatile as a class, and IMO they seem to have already lost enough with the meditate lag.

I would not want to have spells take 4-5 in game hours to prepare, as that lessens a wizard's value for other classes, and therefore how much they will be called on for money-making opportunities/coin. For instance, a wizard may not want to spend memorize space on a magic mirror spell when they could have attacking spells, but then be called on by a non-wiz for a checkup on an enemy. If they can't fulfill this need immediately, the wizard will loose the chance to help their friend-and the coin they gain by the spell. Wizards will have to either choose to fill their memorize slots with lots of stat bonus spells so they can help their groups or earn coin by commissioned spells or fill their slots with attack spells so they can kill monsters when adventuring. Either way they loose one way of making money and either make themselves weaker or unable to defend themselves. I'm fairly sure no current wizards can memorize enough spells to spellup a group AND cast enough attack spells to help that group in combat. Therefore, if wizards cannot prepare their spells without about a 20 min rl wait, almost no one will want to wait around for wizards to spell them up and then go adventuring. Also, wizards who spell groups up/wait would have to use persistent spell so the spells would not run out while waiting-and last I heard that kind of spell was discouraged for lasting beyond most adventures and allowing the non-wiz classes with a 2 hr. rl spell to go off on their own with the wizard effects still on them.

Ack. I hope that made sense. To sum up, I think that wizards would loose on opportunities to sell spells and combat aid to earn coin if they had to choose which spells to have memorized at any time, and they already have enough problems making money as it is.

[Lerytha]

It really depends where I am going. When I was "younger" (weaker) I generally went in with magic missiles, and little else. Now, I go in with a majority magic missile and a few more powerful spells. So neither of the two extremes as mentioned above, but a combination of both.

I'm not sure what effect memorising spells every 4-5 hours would have on which spells I would memorise. I would probably go for memorising a lot of magic missiles, because they are economically sound, being "cheap" where slots are concerned yet also useful in battle.

That's all I can think of, at the moment. I might add more later.

[Dalvyn]

Now, I go in with a majority magic missile and a few more powerful spells.

Can you give an example, number-wise? Maybe only the offensive spells.

Actually, what I am also interested in knowing is ... as far as offensive spells go, do you generally prepare a unique spell several times (or mostly) or do you use several spells prepared in equal/similar quantities?

A unique spell several times would be for example: 30 magic missiles, 2 fireball, 2 lightning bolt.

Several spells prepared in equal/similar quantities would be: 10 magic missile, 10 fireball, 10 lightning bolt, 10 acid arrow.

Also, another - related - question, during a combat, do you tend to cast the same spell again and again (possibly with auto), or different spells?

[Nerre]

Considering that I have never seen a spell gain skill on my end, and I am a low-level Wizard with only two damage spells, I memorize several of the more damaging spell that I have, because that's simply the best way for me to defeat creatures.

Now, once I obtain more spells, I plan on having more of my strongest spell memorized for paranoia occasions, followed by several weaker spells to use in everyday combat.

So, I prepare a unique spell several times.

[Ellian]

When you select the spells you are going to memorize/prepare, do you generally choose ...

a) to prepare a large variety of different spells, for example: 3 magic missile, 3 lightning bolt, 3 fireball, 1 disintegrate, 2 burning hands, 1 hold person; or

b) to prepare lots of copies of the same spells, for example: 20 magic missile rather than smaller quantities of different spells.

I generally prepare a large variety of spells, for example: 10 magic missile, 4 flame arrow, 2 fireball, 10 color spray, 2 blazebane, 2 curse, 2 fumble, 4 invis, 2 teleport, 2 word of recall, 2 hold person.

But I might prepare lots of copies of the same spells if in a situation that doesn't call for diversity, i.e. memorizing 30 illusory juicemaker spells when I need to make orange juice.

Also, would that change if there was a limit on how often you can prepare spells (imagine for example that you can prepare spells - or, equivalently - change the spells you have in memory - only once every 4 or 5 in-game hours?

Hm, that's a tough one. I'm going to have a hard time answering this, because obviously I'm biased, having a wizard character. I see many things happening as a result of a change like this.

I'll start with positive(imho) first. A change like this would make wizards in Forgotten Kingdoms a lot more like wizards as described in Forgotten Realms DnD. DnD wizards can be by far the most powerful, or the weakest class, depending on whether they are properly prepared or not. This adds a certain degree of skill and planning to playing a wizard. And having to think a little before going in and blowing things up is always a change for the better, I think.

Now the negative. I hear a lot of talk about game balance on these forums. And a change like this could definitely have an impact on game balance. Not necessarily on PvP game balance, because memorization can't/shouldn't be used during any PvP situations anyways, but in player vs. mob situations and in training. A fighter or theif will still be able to put a skill into their auto command and trounce a field of ogres and cute bunnies. But a wizard will only be able to make a dent in the ogre population once every four game hours.

Next, on the subject of casting beneficial spells as a means for earning coin. If you've just memorized a bunch of illusory juicemaker spells and your neighbor comes over wanting banana bread and oatmeal with their juice, well it'll already be lunch time when you can finally prepare your illusory oven and stove-top spells. This is the way it is in DnD table-top, and there's nothing wrong with it - shame on the juice wizard for not thinking ahead and preparing for his visitor's appetite - but is it what we want on this mud?

Will it be more enjoyable for everyone?

Jayson

[Kregor]

a change like this could definitely have an impact on game balance. Not necessarily on PvP game balance, because memorization can't/shouldn't be used during any PvP situations anyways, but in player vs. mob situations and in training. A fighter or theif will still be able to put a skill into their auto command and trounce a field of ogres and cute bunnies. But a wizard will only be able to make a dent in the ogre population once every four game hours.

The converse side of this could be: If the fighters and thieves weren't able to just sit down and regenerate like a troll, or gain back all their stamina by sitting around for a couple minutes, then it would also balance. What balances spell memorization/preparation in tabletop is that rest to regain health, etc. is the combatants' equivalent that takes time. If you force the fighters to rest/heal/etc. as well, then nobody's holding anybody else back. I personally think there's something a little off balance that a combtant *can* trounce a field of ogres... and fire giants, rest a couple minutes, rinse and repeat by the time the repop message comes around.

I think there can be a balance, as always, somewhere in the middle. While tabletop does require an 8 hour rest period for casters to get back their spells, feats like meditation could (and should) reduce that significantly. Likewise, a combatant should have a realistic rest period that reflects the casters'. Likewise, critical injuries should take longer than a couple RL minutes to heal. Clerics would be much more valuable on a trip if their curing spells were needed to heal serious and worse injuries (which brings up the another IMHO point that all priest guilds should have heal and regenerate, along with the 3E ability to dismiss a given spell for an equal or lesser level curing spell, were a spell preparation system in place)

Quicktime spell restoration, healing, stamina, etc. should still be had in the training temples, where many things are already at an accellerated pace, so that the initial learning/practice/levelling needed before a char moves out into the "real" world can go without additional hampering. Being stuck in a temple does not conduce RP.

With feats, healing and etc. The total resting time for stamina, HP, and spells for a party could end up in the range of 2 game hours. That's 10 RL minutes, maybe 20-30 lines worth of dialog and smoting in RP. I wouldn't see anything wrong with an opportunity for good, real RP between battles, IMO. It would be enjoyable for me

[Ellian]

The converse side of this could be: If the fighters and thieves weren't able to just sit down and regenerate like a troll, or gain back all their stamina by sitting around for a couple minutes, then it would also balance. What balances spell memorization/preparation in tabletop is that rest to regain health, etc. is the combatants' equivalent that takes time. If you force the fighters to rest/heal/etc. as well, then nobody's holding anybody else back. I personally think there's something a little off balance that a combtant *can* trounce a field of ogres... and fire giants, rest a couple minutes, rinse and repeat by the time the repop message comes around.

While I agree that the balance should be maintained between classes, I feel that a balance between 'fun' and 'realistic' should also be maintained, and that the latter takes precedence over the former in most cases. I don't think people will enjoy roleplaying resting - i.e. idling - for four hours in order to spend a short time killing some mobs.

I think there can be a balance, as always, somewhere in the middle. While tabletop does require an 8 hour rest period for casters to get back their spells, feats like meditation could (and should) reduce that significantly. Likewise, a combatant should have a realistic rest period that reflects the casters'. Likewise, critical injuries should take longer than a couple RL minutes to heal.

With the proper equipment and skills, many fighters can handle a field of ogres or the equivalent without receiving any damage, thus not having to worry about their longer recovery times. While this is going on, the wizard next to them will need to either, a) drop out after running out of memorized spells against the first few mobs, or b) continue on dealing melee damage.. occasionally. Additionally, as you said, a warrior can make use of a priest's healing and again bypass this rest period, while our hypothetical wizard is still waiting for his next meditative period.

With feats, healing and etc. The total resting time for stamina, HP, and spells for a party could end up in the range of 2 game hours. That's 10 RL minutes, maybe 20-30 lines worth of dialog and smoting in RP. I wouldn't see anything wrong with an opportunity for good, real RP between battles, IMO. It would be enjoyable for me Smile

I agree that more down time while adventuring with friends is always fun. But why ask that something be coded, when you could decide your character should be tired after taking down five ogres and three bunnies and call for a short break? Additionally, my above points still apply here. The fighter can fully recover, with the help of a priest, in thirty seconds. The wizard is still stuck with ten minutes. Will everyone still want to adventure with wizards if they are forced to take ten minute breaks for the wizards to be of any use to the party?

Jayson

[Ellian]

I thought of another reason in favor of this change.

Wizards have an additional ability unique to them: they can scribe scrolls and craft wands. But I don't see many wizards using these powerful tools as much as a DnD wizard might. If you don't know whether your neighbour would prefer banana bread or blueberry muffins, but can only memorize the spell to make one or the other, you can always cover all your bases by memorizing one and scribing the other.


Jayson
(Oh, if anyone is wondering why I'm referencing baked goods so much, it's because I'm spending all my money on college tuition and as a result living off of ramen and peanut butter & jelly. Care packages are welcome! )

[Glim]

Hmm...as to Dalvyn's question, I would say it would be depending on what I was doing for the day. If I wa training, I would usually memorise all attack spells and usually just one attack spell many times. If I was planning on being in a RP or some such, many varied spells would be memorised.

Honestly, I dont think that wizards do enough damage currently to offset the changes that you are proposing. Just in my opinion. While a warrior can train on mobs all day, taking little to no damage (even with the no natural healing), the wizard can take out at the most ide say 4-5 mobs before they have to rest and rememorise. Spells, currently do very little damage compared to their D&D counterparts, which means that they are getting still less overall power from this. It may be making it closer to 3rd edition, yes, but while the amount of spells in the game or the amount of damage the spells do is still so little, I am not sure if this would be a good thing.

Also, since the amount of spells you have memorised are roughly equal to your amount of mana, this would also practically remove the usefulness of the meditation skill and mana. Since they would run out of spells around the same time their mana ran out, by the time they are empty of mana they would have few spells left and no reason to meditate. If this is going to happen, I dont really see why meditation or mana is needed in the first place.

[Glim]

Hmm...Jayson sparked an idea.

I do like how this would make wands and staved more useful. When a wizard runs out of spells and has to wait to rememorizing them, if he is put in a life threatening situation he would whip out both wands and let em fly.

Though...hmm...I do seem to remember buying a wand of firebolts and having to use the whole thing to kill a goblin...so maybe that needs to be looked at first. O.o

Edit:

*COUGH* No Diablo here *innocent*

A wand of fireballs, I mean.

[Ellian]

Firebolts? Are you perhaps thinking of Diablo, Nick?

The only problem I see with using wands and scrolls is this: in DnD, you can take your time and use your round to 1. move away from your opponent, 2. grab a scroll, and 3. recite that scroll. On the mud, your average fight against a mob (which is primarily what we are discussing here) doesn't allow much time to fumble with different scrolls and wands. If you're lucky you might be able to type up 'rem scroll' and 'get scroll pack' and 'wear scroll' and 'recite weaken angryfootballfan' maybe once or twice before the battle is over, and if this is the source of all your damage, chance are the battle will end with you being trampled.

So, I would propose a similar setup for scrolls in scroll cases as the setup we have for arrows in quivers. So you can speedily use that scroll with one simple command.

Input on that is more than welcome - I'm sure it could use a lot of constructive criticism.

Jayson

[Hviti]

Maybe a scroll case on a belt could act like a spellpouch? (except with something different than cast, maybe scrollcast ___ or scast ___ spell) Gondites would of course have scroll/wand cases with mini escalators to bring each scroll/wand up to the proper position for reading/grabbing/zapping.

[Kregor]

I think as far as meditation goes, in such a system, it would have to be repurposed, to reduce the amount of resting time needed between preparations.

And agreed, as far as damage on spells goes, there's a discrepancy in power. What makes it more lopsided, is that, because spells are treated like skills, their affects are determined by their skill level, rather than the level of the caster. Because of this, a magic missle spell is, in practice, probably more useful and damaging at lvl40 than a spell you just get to learn and start to train up at lvl40. I personally think the spell effects should be char level based, rather than skill based. It would 1) Make sure that your 9th level spell actually is more potent than your 1st level spell, and 2) Making the range, damage dice, etc. whatever is the variable, determined by class level would keep you from having a spell that was essentially useless until you cast it over and over and over and.....

Of note also, is that there will be more high level, and cool spells coming in for the casters, maybe once they are in and ready, it will help balance out the spell sheet and give a better, fuller selection.

[Lerytha]

I tend to memorise 30 magic missile, 2 flame arrow, 2 lightning bolt, etc.

In combat, I might cast all my magic missiles, or for variety's sake I might cast a lightning bolt. Whatever mood I am in, really.

[Argentia]

With my wizzie I almost always have a variety of spells memorized, for example...

5 hold person, 3 weaken, 1 trollish vigor, 1 friends, 1 slink, 1 bulls strength, 1 levitate, 1 invis, ect.

Because you never know what's going to happen. But if I know a battle's a-comin I'll opt to get rid of the booster spells(troll, bulls, slink, ect.) and have something like

20 magic missile, 5 hold person, 3 weaken, ect.

As for the idea of having wizard down-time of four or five in game hours... I do not like this idea. Sure, it might make it more like a tabletop game, but this isn't tabletop... In tabletop you have a set party, everyone is always there on every adventure, if your wizard needs to rest, YOU REST. But in the mud there are many different people playing at any given time and you never adventure with the same party all the time. So with this new down-time I could see fighter Bob come up to wizard Jim and say "Myself and my friends are setting out on a perilious quest to save the world from a shortage of muffins, but we need your spell of fire to bake the batter!" and Jim has already used all his spells for this set of time and his reply is "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm spent for the day. All that bread baking earlier took it out of me, I can't help you." To which Bob says "Oh, it's alright, we'll find someone else." And so poor Jim the wizard baker is excluded in favour of another wizard who hasn't spent all his spells yet, furthering the treatment of wizards on a "use only when needed" basis. Or worse, the party would just set off without a wizard(And get blown to pieces by the Cherry Tart Lord, but hey, it's all fun) since Jim couldn't go. ... Darn you Jayson, I want something to eat now.><

So really I don't see this idea adding to any RP, only detracting from it. =\

[Ellian]

"Myself and my friends are setting out on a perilious quest to save the world from a shortage of muffins, but we need your spell of fire to bake the batter!" and Jim has already used all his spells for this set of time and his reply is "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm spent for the day. All that bread baking earlier took it out of me, I can't help you." To which Bob says "Oh, it's alright, we'll find someone else." And so poor Jim the wizard baker is excluded in favour of another wizard who hasn't spent all his spells yet, furthering the treatment of wizards on a "use only when needed" basis. Or worse, the party would just set off without a wizard(And get blown to pieces by the Cherry Tart Lord, but hey, it's all fun) since Jim couldn't go. ... Darn you Jayson, I want something to eat now.><

I love you.

Jayson

[Isolrem]

Considering newbies tend to be especially tempted to make a wizard first, it might be harmful to make memorization more taxing for the sake of roleplay.

[Elenthis]

Eh...Mine's easy. Well...its used to be.

2 Teleport. (RP)
10 Magic missile. (combat)
1 invis. (RP/escape)
3 produce flame. (RP)
5 flame arrow (combat)
1 fly (RP)
1 trollish vigor (Helpful to others)
1 Bull's strength (same)
1 Mnemonic Enhancer (same)

So...I used to memorise a good solid mix.
...yay!