next »

[Floozy]

imho

It seems that 1/3 grace is regenerated without praying: I have grace regen currently at 8.1 - with major healing costing 6 grace points and delay between casts at 1.5 seconds these abilities are totally unbalanced. This significantly reduces the benefit that I as a priestess may have. Once again I am seeing the gross bias towards mana-based combat

If wisdom-based players are to be granted any kind of significant substitute for the massive power of mages this puny attempt is laughable

sulk

[Floozy]

Slowing down that grace regen rate to a crawl does not help at all - all it does is reduce the possibility of me being able to regain enough to fire a second clw (cost 39 grace). Even less of a help to a priestess in other words

double sulk

[Cleo]

Unless you can provide any examples of this "bias" or suggestions to fix it (if there is in fact any bias at all), we cannot help, sorry.

The 1/3 grace regen was a long outstanding feature request (the fact that it was so fast in the first place was a bug with >8.0 grace regen, for which the fix propagated incorrectly [read: somehow I committed incorrect copy of the feature]).

[Floozy]

Dear Cleo   If you don't know what I mean, I'm not going to spend countless hours explaining!!!!  I am sure that you are more than intelligent enough to know precisely what I mean, though, and just avoid the issue !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But even when I complain I still find bugs for you Floozy rules OK

btw is there a link to the original feature request so I can shoot the requester?

[Floozy]

Okay - what I *really* mean is that a priestess should be able to fight a mage at exactly the same level (e.g. in the arena) and, on average, stand a 50% chance of defeating the mage.

In theory a "true" priestess should not have to resort to anything else other than grace-dependant spells, whereas the mage, of course, already has a large repertoire and should stick to that.

In the current Atrinik implementation I would almost certainly be defeated in the arena by any mage using skills at my Wisdom level - that means the game is heavily biased towards mages.

So - the solution is simple - weaken mages and increase the power of Grace.  If I were a fighter, by the way, I may even be complaining more - trying to level pure Ph against mages is even harder than using clw! Melee weapons miss far more frequently than a spell does

Finally imho it is really ridiculous that "reflect spells" fails against a storm spell - maybe the *proper* solution would be to make storm spells equivalent in damage to Ph when the opponent is reflecting spells, and either increase the chance-to-hit of everything to the same level as Mage-spells, or decrease them all (including mage spells, of course) to a lower level.

Please delete this post if I am getting too contentious - but you did ask for a comment

[ddhanna]

It has always been my thinking that clerics value life. they tend to me more defensive in nature. they can not stand undead or evil and use there gifts to remove them from the world. that is where their strength is.

The spell Holy Word for example only attacks undead and is about twice as powerful as firestorm on undead.

 I don't think the balance is perfect, but their have been adjustments to try to even things out. i believe that will continue.

 

[Floozy]

Hi David

Ok, I have done a test of what you say - I went into Moroch's temple and killed a few undead for you in order to check your statement.

First I don't seem to have learnt the firestorm spell. Is there a quest for it that I have missed? The only mage storm spells I have learn are meteor and asteroid.

I currently have Magic skill level 74 and Wisdom skill level 81 so in theory if the spells are equally powerful I should do about 10% more damage with priest(ess) spells. The mage spells have approximately (on average) the same mana cost as the grace cost for holy word, so they are "comparable".

Both the mage spells and holy word hit with up to 4 "elements", and it averaged 3 when I was testing.

Here are two examples of hitting the same mob with 3 "elements" of each storm spell.

meteor (cost 51 mana points)
you hit skeleton fighter for 93 (0) with fire
you hit skeleton fighter for 53 (0) with fire
you hit skeleton fighter for 53 (0) with fire
holy word (cost 59 grace points)
you hit skeleton fighter for 59 (0) with godpower
you hit skeleton fighter for 59 (0) with godpower
you hit skeleton fighter for 59 (0) with godpower

asteroid (cost 64 mana points)
you hit skeleton mage for 76 (0) with cold
you hit skeleton mage for 53 (0) with cold
you hit skeleton mage for 53 (0) with cold
holy word (cost 59 grace points)
you hit skeleton mage for 56 (0) with godpower
you hit skeleton mage for 56 (0) with godpower
you hit skeleton mage for 56 (0) with godpower

In each case the damage done by holy word was less than the total of the Mana-based spell. Please tell me how to make it twice as powerful as you say it should be!

If clerics are defensive by nature where are all our defensive spells? I would love a spell which reduces the power of a mage attack to a realistic level, for example.

In conclusion a priestess is significantly weaker than a mage even against the one group of opponents they are supposed to be better at killing.

Please help in redressing this balance so that your picture of a cleric's abilities is closer to actuality, rather than woefully inadequate.
 

[Cleo]

The trick is to help your abilities by using the proper equipment -- for example, a ring of the Paladin/Prelate, which boosts holy word damage. There is no such thing for mages -- ring of fire/cold does not boost meteor/asteroid damage, only slightly reduces the mana cost. Also, meteor and asteroid can rarely hit with more than 3 times, while holy word usually does 4 if the monster is standing next to you (clerics/paladins don't run from fights, right?).

Anyway, I do agree that priests have limited spell selection. What about a prayer that boosts all your elemental protections by +10, and a greater version of it, +20 to +25? That is the majority of mage attacks, and it would reduce the damage they do to you [as defensive priestess].

[Floozy]

Cleo! Its not my birthday until 29th April, but allowing clerics to learn protection spells like that would be a birthday present to the whole community:)  Maybe 75% protection at the highest level would be a perfect "balance", but I leave it to you and your experts to calculate the game-play implications. (75% is calculated to reduce 4 hits to the equivalent of 1 - my mage storm spells very often hit 4 times!).

It would also occupy your hard-working map developers to create new areas for quests to learn those spells - so I very much appreciate that it couldn't be "immediate".

Thank you for listening - and Gratz to Floozy for reaching numero uno !!!!!!!!!! (very sorry)!

[Cleo]

Do you mean the prayer increasing in power the higher level you are? Not sure, I was thinking maybe increasing in duration, but not in power (it's difficult to balance that, there always seems to be the case of either "too powerful at high level" and/or "too weak at lower level", which is why I thought of a fixed [maybe some +/- randomly/level-based] value).

There is also the consecrate prayer coming up soon  which allows you to consecrate altars in dungeons to your deity so you can regenerate grace back up pretty quickly (of course, not all dungeons would have such altars, and some would be more difficult to consecrate than others [higher level needed]).

[Ghost]

hm, mapmakers you say? well, i did have the island with the Tower of the High Priest mapset in mind. I suppose I could work on it since your asking.

[Floozy]

Hi

Well, again getting back to "balancing" the cleric vs mage. When I kill using whatever skill in Atrinik it "boils down" to how many "mobs per hour" of a certain level can be killed, which equates to "exp per hour".  When defending the calculation is similar - how much time is spent "hiding"; praying; or otherwise not engaged in murdering which affects the "exp per hour".

In Atrinik (the way the dungeons are designed) the mobs in high level dungeons often have enhanced powers.  I think that this effectively counter-balances the arguments that players with level-related skills are "too powerful at high level" - indeed, its a challenge to the map-maker to create this fine balance.  But overall the game is based on AD&D "rules" (and there are a set of the TSR manuals in this study) which have been tried and tested for decades - in those rules level is paramount.

"Too weak at low level" to me indicates a design fault - either simply raise the level requirement or "jig" the increment per level!

So in summary I suggest sticking to level-dependant effects.

btw I don't think I will be using the consecrate prayer until you tell me to!

Hoping this helps

(and be quick with that map Ghost)

Love Floozy

[Ghost]

Lol, I have the bottom floor out of four floors. shouldn't be long, i might have it tomorrow or next week, im not as quick as i used to be (mainly because I try now ) Post back if you want a pic of it so far... make a new topic please tho, this is entirely off topic (sorry )

[Floozy]

Hi again Cleo

I realise that I have misunderstood you! I didn't mean to suggest that there was a single spell which provided 75% protection when cast by a level 115!!!!!! Rather that there be more than one spell, with the "higher level" spell confering 75% protection.

As for how long the spell should last, I have dusted and looked through the TSR manuals, here is an extract of the relevant "rules" per the Player's Handbook 2nd edition.

AD&D priest spells providing elemental resistance:

Resist Fire/Resist Cold (2nd level)
Duration: 1 round/level

... +3 to saving throws against such attack forms and all damage sustained is reduced by 50%, therefore, if the saving throw is failed, the creature sustains one-half damage,and if the saving throw is successful, only one-quarter damage is sustained. Resistance lasts for one round for each experience level of the priest casting the spell.

Flame Walk (3rd level) (5th level required to cast spell)
Duration: 1 round +1/level

... +2 bonus to saving throws ... reduces damage from such (magical) fires by one-half, even if the saving throw fails ... not cumulative with resist fire.

Protection From Fire (3rd level) (when cast on caster)
Duration: until the spell has absorbed 12 points of heat or fire damage per level of the caster

... confers complete invulnerability (to fire)

Protection From Lighning (4th level) (when cast on caster)
Duration: until the spell has absorbed 10 points of electrical damage per level of the caster

... confers complete invulnerability to electrical attacks


So if you want to create equivalent spells for Atrinik, it looks as though you will either need to add a counter for the number of "hits" absorbed since a protection spell was cast, or (more simply) follow your suggestion about linking the duration to the the caster level - imho it should last for at least as long as it would take to kill a mob (magic user) at the minimum level, for example. It looks as though I inadvertantly guessed correctly at 75% - that appears to be about the average damage absorbed under AD&D rules!  My personal suggestion for the Atrinik equivalent would be to require level 40 (maximum 50) wisdom skill level for the 75% protection spell (which is about when mages can learn their storm spells) and, say, maximum level 30 wisdom skill level for a (maximum?) 50% protection spell (to allow a level 30 cleric to more easily pass that nasty mage in OOP!).

Love Floozy