Post:The State of Targeted Magic - 5/13/2009 - 4:16:56

Re: The State of Targeted Magic · on 5/13/2009 4:16:56 AM	2192
Sorry it's taken so long to respond to this issue. This is a rather lengthy post (for me), so beware! >>Will capped TM spells get a boost from what they are now fully targeted? If by 'boost' you mean increased beyond what they are now, then no. The values of the bonus due to targeting will not be changing. This is because they already enjoy a 'boost' similar to ranged weapons. >>Its already silly enough that if you put two people together with near the same skills, one has 300 TM, the other has 300 Long bow, No boosts, a Capped TM spell vs LB and capped arrows. The bow does significantly more in terms of getting through defenses >>And also how might this affect higher tier spells? The more difficult the spell is the more damage it causes but with a bigger accuracy penalty per tier I.E Lash, ballista, Lightning bolt making the 300 tm much less potent than 300 in a weapon. With the drawback that you can only get 1-3 good mana fully targeted shots(Considering your opponent or critter is just standing there staring into space as you gather the time to let the spell fully prep and target) before you have tapped your mana supply. Firstly, there is no 'standard accuracy penalty' to higher-tier spells. Lightning Bolt has an accuracy penalty because it bypasses shields. Aether Lash is, to put it mildly, overpowered in the extreme when comparing its cost-to-benefit-ratio. Its damage is more characteristic of what we would allow a 5th tier spell. Magnetic Ballista cannot be targeted and so suffers from a reduction of potentially 2/3 of the bonus from targeting. Higher-tier spells are more mana efficient and, in general, should be as accurate as lower-tier spells. What's unfortunate is that the current TM system was written with basic spells like Aether Lance in mind, and as a result we've had to shoehorn spells like Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Fire Shard, Fire Rain, Magnetic Ballista, Ball Lightning, and most of the rest of them into a system that just isn't the right size. When the rewrite is finished, the TM system will be able to handle any type of spell we throw at it. Non-damaging, no-miss, area effect, enchantes, multishot, parryable, delayed-effect, remote... it'll handle them all with consistent mechanics that won't have to be written from scratch each time. The system is being designed with the improbable and the ungainly in mind, and rewritten so that as we expand our idea of what a TM spell can do, it can grow with our concepts. Secondly, an anecdote. When I became a GM, I was fresh out of Warrior Magedom and rabidly pro-TM. I felt that TM spells were poor shadows of ranged weapons, and I was desperate that the existing crop of longtime GMs hear my plight. After all, I thought that maybe, just possibly, they had lost touch with what it was like to be a player? Maybe they couldn't see what I saw when I played every day? So I did a sensible, GMly thing. Over a period of time I pulled together a spreadsheet of pros and cons to ranged and TM, trying to prove objectively that TM was underpowered and needed to be tweaked to be more in line with ranged. I tallied up every conceivable concrete number related to each system, and then listed out all of the subjective issues I could think of from my playing days. The result? By the time I had counted everything up, cancelled out the subjectively similar benefits, costs, and drawbacks, and mentally weighed the remainder, I discovered that the two came out pretty much even. My argument remained unvoiced, and I took away a valuable lesson from the experience. - GM Wythor
This message was originally posted in Abilities, Skills and Magic \ Targeted Magic Feedback, by DR-WYTHOR on the play.net forums.