Rules talk:Magic Power
A mage casts two spells which give him 200% MagPL durability and 100% MagPL flight speed. He then rams an opponent with his empowered flight. What strength would that be at? --Ice 02:48, 5 September 2007 (EDT)
- Historically, there has always been a separation in Alt between strength and speed -- thus why someone can punch for 30% damage at 100% speed. To hold to a truer real-world physics model, speed would have an impact on strength. By that precedent, the mage would cause zero damage. Alternately, damage rules similar to concussive force could be applied, and the opponent might suffer half the mage's speed in damage, or 50% MagPL. The trouble with that is that there is no explicit stamina cost for using speed, which would be nominally unacceptable for a damage-causing technique. Based on this analysis, I'd have to go with zero damage. It may not be entirely plausible, but it's consistent with our rules and suitably fair for game balance. Hroefn T 02:58, 5 September 2007 (EDT)
Okay, thought so. Next question, as contrived from a conflict in a Budoukai match: A mage is enchanted with a flight spell and a durability spell, same as the last question. A ki fighter approaches them and uses a Ki Aura Explosion for approximately 125% the mage's power in concussive damage. Both are flying. Lacking any sort of strength spell, to what extent is the mage allowed to resist the force, if at all?
By the way, I'm asking this stuff here rather than more privately just so it clears things up for the players, who may be asking similar questions. --Ice 03:04, 5 September 2007 (EDT)
- Concussive force is, in my mind, resisted by speed, not strength, as it is dependant on your ability to accelerate yourself in the opposite direction. Thus, the mage would have 100% speed at their disposal (assuming same numbers as before) to resist it. Since the KAE is 125% the mage's power, they would be knocked back significantly, though not game-breakingly so. For instance, in the Budoukai, since the arenas are fairly large, unless they were already at an edge, they could probably break sufficiently to prevent a ring-out, but since it's all rather vague on this point, it would be up to the muns to discuss precisely how effective it was, based on their conception of their own characters' reaction time and relative abilities. In the event of them not reaching a consensus, well, the Victim Calls Effects (or however we termed that) rule would take precedent.
- And yeah, I figured you were -- this is the whole reason we made a wiki! Discussion! Hroefn T 03:15, 5 September 2007 (EDT)
- I can see strength being used to resist concussive force as well, especially if the character being pushed is on the ground or otherwise able to anchor himself. This is actually how I tend to run my own resistance to concussive forces--my character will resist with strength, either losing stamina or losing possible damage output for that post. Tiryst 14:20, 5 September 2007 (EDT)
magic uh audit magic uh audit magic uh audit compliant to the discussion on rules talk artificial intelligences artificial intelligences i wanted to get the ball rolling on a closer look at magic as a power level have we done it before yes several times however that doesn't mean that it it's necessarily correctly designed i feel that it still deserves to be looked at again this time around i hope to offer some insight that we've skipped before that may unlock what if anything is truly wrong with the magic rules as they currently stand undoubtedly the point of contention in this power level is the doubled technique learning speed that mages receive for most of their endeavors magic was originally designed in an era where techniques were not terribly important players typically focused more on building character power levels even powerful techniques at the time were considered a slower way to go about things than to simply raise your power level however times have changed a great deal since those days power level is seen as very very different than it once was while it is still recognized as a deciding factor in many battles the power of a character is not so easily judged by a single simple number more often both the cunning and potency of the techniques a character possesses will determine that character character's effectiveness in battle against others witness the notoriously picked-on alothin; the man man's orderly spells are so wildly enabling that he has not only stood against characters with thousands of times greater power level than he but he has even stood living against an attack with a strength and speed equivalent to infinity this is not to come down on alothin at all or to debate the legality of his techniques however; this is to point out that ultimately techniques are significantly more important than any power level mages enjoy a profound advantage in this field over other power level types which themselves have no equally significant strong points this is not to say that ki and psi powers have no strengths but that those strengths are not even close to being as significant as the doubled tech days a mage receives in addition tech days are relatively effortless to achieve compared to building up one one's power level to get the maximum amount of tech days you can possibly get all you have to do is find an excellent bias minor race make a magic character of that race and then post three times with somebody in a simple social meeting once every two weeks to get the maximum amount of power you can possibly get you must inevitably spend many tech days to get heightened levels of enhanced gain and you must either spar fight with someone twice a day in a manner that challenges all involved participants which can frequently take 5 10 posts or get someone to do an adventure for you once every single day in order to understand this imbalance accurately we must look at how the room rules mechanics as a whole affect how characters are developed as the in-depth_technique_guide recent guide written by user snackycakes dev indicates characters in altdbz benefit greatest from a build that gives them a few really really powerful aspects rather than being well-rounded and diverse -- a powergaming practice known as min-maxing which we have come to quietly accept as valid due to how necessary it is to survive in the room this is due largely to how easy it is to overwhelm another character by heavily developing a single statistic let us compare for instance a character with base statistics and another character with a heavily developed speed attribute if the speedy character can manage to simply double his her base speed for ki users and mages that character doesn't just become more difficult to beat by any characters with undeveloped eyesight and speed it becomes downright impossible similarly with durability all one has to do is create enough durability that it is impossible for anyone at your power level to damage you enough to defeat you in a single fight and you become superior to everyone else at and below your power and usually many in higher powers as well in order to counter these massive developments other characters must also massively develop their own statistics leaning on them almost exclusively because there are few requirements of power in the room whereas combat effectiveness is far more valuable adventures and plots can be adjusted to a power level but it is far far harder to adjust to techniques especially as they have more or less no requirement of public record like power levels do magicpl contributes to this minmaxing by giving us an extreme benefit in a world where extremes decide battles we can argue all we want that ki and psi have gimmes where mages do not and that ki and psi have strong points as well the fact of the matter is ki and psi have nothing that even approaches how effective magic can be with techniques no matter how many disadvantages you give mages for the trouble which means they are inferior as power types there are only two reasons why mages aren't the only characters around right now in order to put that doubled tech rate to effect you have to be pretty cunning and mathematically minded or you have to read and understand dev dev's guide those of us with diminished mathematical and technical understanding find psi and especially ki to be more friendly power types as they are simpler to operate and seem robust and well-rounded compared to magic but what did i tell you about well-roundedness ki and psi are built to have fallbacks wherein they are typically not caught completely off guard by something new whereas a min-maxed mage may be caught with his pants around his ankles if a cunning opponent of any power level manages to figure a way past the ridiculous statistics if someone were to find a way around alothin alothin's seemingly endless durability for instance two things would happen 1 everyone would pick up that attribute and 2 alothin would have that little flaw fixed in 15 days max one classic example of this happened as mages used to rely on spherical barriers somebody figured out that if they could make themselves able to pass through solid matter all the durability in the world on that shield wouldn't save you from becoming a bloody smear what happened then we had a slew of phasing techniques either making the user or a projectile pass through barriers almost immediately people stopped relying on sphere barriers instead relying on skin-tight or armor-like barriers can't pass beneath that -- techniques are not allowed to manifest inside of a target of course then they figured out that with skin tight and armor barriers you can now directly interfere with a mage mage's spellcasting so then mages used a layered combination of spheres and armor barriers along with some nasty if you get anywhere near me you take serious damage spells turn this over what if a magic character found a critical flaw with ki characters the baneful tech would be researched almost instantly whereas a fix for the ki wielder would take much longer to fix in many cases in fact ki and psi are kept from fixing things due to the limitations of their realm in addition this fixing would take up valuable development time for the character an instance would be the revered super saiyan transformation multiplier transformations in general were supposed to be ki ki's answer to the ramped-up techniques of mages all it took though was for a mage to spend a relative speck of time to develop a spell that cancels super saiyan and other similar transformations when you get close to the mage and suddenly that legendary transformation became worthless it it's been a while since that happened so right now we're seeing sylon absolutely dominate the budoukai middleweights with ssj if enough people caught on to this however you can bet that the anti-transformation techniques would be revived as well by the mages another point of insight unless you start a character with ssj you have to do some seriously impressive writing to get it or otherwise suffer the wrath of a terribly terribly lenthy tech day process to get an equivalent meanwhile an anti-ssj tech doesn't cost much at all in tech days -- something mages can produce far more quickly ultimately the uncomfortable truth is this mages can do anything that actually matters much more quickly than ki users and psi users given the same amount of time not only will the mage do anything the ki or psi user does but his version will probably be 4 times better in this min-maxing role playing room of ours that makes mages king of everything except gaining power level and nobody cares about power level anyway -- user icebreed ice 16 32 15 november 2007 est
congrats on getting this can of worms rolling or whatever metaphors one feels like mixing in many cases in fact ki and psi are kept from fixing things due to the limitations of their realm - i'm not sure what you mean here ki and psi were at least originally supposed to be much more encompassing than was magic as far as concepts allowed magic was supposed to be elemental effects and 'traditional magic' concepts any sort of technique can be obtained through any power type except perhaps phys as danny would often exclaim followed by a page of detail about ki-style teleportation or something advanced versions of techniques are what are or should be restricted such as the psionic advanced teleport which is tagged as a signature ability for psipl perhaps actually enforcing limits on magpl ic concepts could help as well as expansion of signature abilities for ki and psi that are well past whatever a mage might be able to come up with then while mages might have more techs than ki fighters or psions they would not be able to put out some particularly ridiculous ki- or psi-only effects this of course does not help when mages can simply accumulate many lesser techniques and stack them perhaps then we must consider either a tech day cap as has been proposed before where characters can only ever have so many base tds worth of techs learned and must delete old moves pokemon-style to get new techs once they hit the cap; or we need to revisit the statistic enhancement limitations and specifically apply concepts such as barrier effects to statistics such as durability; finally we might simply disallow stacking in some fashion either through a limit on the number of active spells a mage can have going at a time or stricter enforcement of concentration rules or a new application of concentration rules that forces mages to count their own spells against their concentration threshold in some manner user tiryst tiryst 16 48 15 november 2007 est
woo rolling cans of worms d ahem i'm feeling a bit squished by the block-o-text there but i'd like to contribute a wee little thing one thing i've taken away from what icebreed is saying is that mages get lots of tech days and as a result they become better than everyone so what do do needs to be asked can i raise my hand and propose the elimination or retooling of mage doubling it it's good to have that extra bit of oomph when you start to cover your gimmies just enough to make you not a very squishy target after that do they really need to learn everything at such a faster rate there are some other interesting things being suggested but they'd be some pretty radical overall changes i also wonder if it it's not time to just give up rocks-fall-everyone-dies and make a new system from scratch user lampdevil lampdevil 17 02 15 november 2007 est
yeah you guys have the idea tech days are better than your mom and mages get way more tech days than anybody else as for a fix there there's quite a few ways to go about it some of the possibilities i've brainstormed follow make each pl type a specialist at something ki users can have halved tech days for particular stat enhancements and have higher ceilings for them magic users have halved tech days for purely offensive techniques psionic users have halved tech days for purely defensive techniques alternately get rid of all tech day halving and instead make pl types good at particular exploits ki users for instance might be almost impossible to run dry on stamina with for rapid regeneration reduced costs and or higher stamina ceiling thus making them excellent damage dealers one potential resolution for magic was to replace doubled days with a tech bias increase or maybe just a plus bias and x free tech days at starting maybe make a tech day cap for individual spells for magic but without removing tech day doubling forcing them to be versatile this might work well with the limited active spells thing you suggested make statistics less exploitable by lowering ceilings or making advances in statistics especially permanent passive ones much harder to come by -- this is a pretty major rules change but we've also had it coming for years anybody remember me talking about a theorized limitations on enhancements rules section have a public discussion on how techniques are generally priced and change anything that seems off -- but this would incur grandfathering and would also be a pain in the ass to implement and believe me pam i've had such considerations before d the same old snags keep tripping us up and are almost too entrenched in the rules to get rid of them but then my resentfulness towards how things work in alt goes a bit deeper than just the rules -- user icebreed ice 17 41 15 november 2007 est
i see the second proposal as the most feasible if you removed doubling entirely even from the application process magic would suffer quite a bit to the point where i think the power type would be at a disadvantage however giving them tools like extra techdays at start up a moderate bias increase or allowing them to keep doubling through the application process seems much more fair a tech day cap for individual spells would prevent things like fireballs that deal 30x the mage mage's pl in damage and help to prevent min-maxing but if you apply that to mages specifically i could still make a ki-wielder with a blast that dealt well 30x his pl in damage though for some reason we don't really see that kind of thing with other pl types the last two suggestions on your list are things that do need to be done but doing them in response to a tweek of the magic pl rules will just drag the focus away from the magic pl rules a simple straightforward solution is easier to impliment and adhere to and in my opinion a simple straightforward solution is to toss mage doubling in the same coffin as the casting bonus they used to have drive a few nails in and move on to the bigger issues once that that's been taken care of user snackycakes dev removing doubling while granting a bias increase isn't really as good of a solution as it might seem mage doubling in its current form only applies to active techniques not passive or item techniques taking it away and giving them a bias increase instead while it would reduce the discount they got on active techs would increase the discount on passive techs -- which would end up being more of a boon to a mage since their lack of gimmes is one of their primary faults making passive techs cheaper ends up offsetting that i think that a more productive limitation would be to leave them with mage doubling but instead use the idea of capping how many active spells can be used at any given time -- with a starting number possibly as low as two or three and being able to be upgraded via a ct to a point further increase the assessed multifunction penalty in cooperation with this to further penalize spells that have multiple functions to discourage people from just tossing everything into a single spell to evade the cap user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 02 51 16 november 2007 est
yeah i like the active spells limit idea either that or the concentration rule but that that's because i hate the fact that everyone ignores concentration but that that's more of an issue with concentration focus actions than anything haha user tiryst tiryst 02 56 16 november 2007 est
uh no this proposition completely misses the point ice was trying to make limiting someone to two or three active spells at a time does nothing to keep them from getting that same ct upon application and then you're back to square one with a mage who bought out the new 'disadvantage' and still has doubling going for him as well even if you were to ignore this much say hypothetically by saying you can't increase your active spell limit at start up there there's still the fact that a mage can be functional with two or three spells with mage doubling you get an attack spell that you can ramp up to ridiculous levels with dirt-cheap upgrades like you can now a movement spell and a durability spell that that's all you really need and considering that establishing a limit on active spells does nothing to change the advantages a mage will have what it would do is slam about 90 of approved and in-play mages because even if i'm not speaking for everyone else i think it it's safe to assume that none of the mages in the room have been built considering that they can only have two or three techniques active at once also consider the fact that even if a mage can only have a few spells active the multifunction penalty is negligible where active spells are concerned i can have a spell to grant movement durability and a self-generating attack and still have room for one or two active spells before my mage finds himself 'balanced' again i maintain that mage doubling has got to go oh yeah signed user snackycakes snackycakes ololol multifunction penalty is negligible sure that that's why part of what i was agreeing with was al al's mention of ramping up the multifunction penalty along with introducing active cap i also think clarifying and enforcing concentration threshold rules have casting a spell be a focus action without allowing the option to reduce it to anything less than that with possibly a single barrier exception and it won't matter how fast you learn spells when a single hit from most opponents will surpass the concentration threshold and destroy whatever spell you were working on that parenthetical of course relies upon people not being jerks about it and saying oh i get hit and then i start casting but if we could rely on that the rules would be the way they were when i first came here -- ignored in favor of agreement with your fellow rpers on what sounded cool at the time user tiryst tiryst 04 12 16 november 2007 est
hah that that's where things get tricky i guess mages are if you try to balance them the glass cannons people described them as being back in the day if a spell is a focus action you could poke a mage for tiny amounts of damage to surpass their concentration threshold constantly interrupting their ability to cast spells basing it off of concentration sounds fine from several angles but remember that maxed concentration is kind of plless; at level 3 it takes 75 of your pl in damage force to break it at level 4 it can't be broken unless you're knocked out or otherwise incapacitated stunned or something i guess perhaps dropping it from plless to 100 would make it easier to implement as a balancing mechanism for mages this was sort of the idea behind piran -- his attacks always count as double their real strength against the concentration threshold and his current tech allows him to actually hit concentration of everyone around him it it's meant icly to reflect his rage actually being so palpable as to destroy the careful machinations of the necromancers of the reaches by inducing fear into even them but it doesn't work when nobody cares about concentration haha i agree with the comment concerning level 4 though; i had forgotten about the incap step of it user tiryst tiryst 04 42 16 november 2007 est
enhanced concentration has been altered to rectify that oversight user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 22 47 16 november 2007 est
i was going to say something a bit more watered down from what dev said i'm also identifying a few core issues that may lie beyond magic though the pl still needs fixing i believe that stacked effects that accomplish the same purpose like layered durability for instance are pretty lame and minmaxy despite the fact that they're the current hip trend i also think there ought to be more adherent ceilings to upgrades especially for custom techs if a player does not provide a ceiling for an upgradeable stat or if the provided ceiling is too high the staffer ought to work it out with them at the very least techniques with obvious potential to be extremely powerful ought to be much more expensive if sylon had to pay some 810 base tech days to get galaxy ender before drain reduction upgrades et al why aren't other characters paying out the wazoo for their techs that reach as great or greater of course those discussions escape the scope of magpl but i wanted it said so it can be approached again at some point a character character's power level needs to be made more pivotal and indicative of potential even for mages for lack of this connection any unfriendly encounter for a character is a gamble and we are forced to rely on insider information using metagaming to try and get a feel for the capabilities of a character by watching them in other scenes it it's a very clumsy way to run a rules system mage doubling does have to go though in its current form let their starting spell tech costs be halved or give them a significantly smaller universal learning acceleration but doubling all spell tech learning forever is overcompensation i can't imagine a stack of disadvantages you could pile on magic that would make such a benefit palatable of course feel free to suggest some anyway in case you can think of something i can't -- user icebreed ice 03 58 16 november 2007 est
galaxy ender cost so much because it it's a ton of autocharges and charge caps going from 30 to 400 costs 788 base days using a 15 day cost for each of 37 autocharges and 15 5 cap increases this is because ki starts at 30 charges at 10 and caps at 70 a mage looking for a 400 blast on the other hand goes from 60 charges at 20 and caps at 140 resulting in 17 autocharges and 5 5 cap increases for a grand total of 338 days reduced to 169 thanks to doubling the issue here is the actual numbers of a mage i believe we originally conceived of mages as glass cannons -- they had high offensive potential but little durability if that was the case why can mages bust out 600 magpl barriers for a mere 210 base days 105 with the doubling perhaps we should narrow mage doubling to apply only to direct damage effects and return to the concept of the glassjaw mage user tiryst tiryst 04 28 16 november 2007 est
you just reminded me of something we discussed when i used my lj to get people talking about the magic pl last time which is the doubling mages get on upgrades doubling applies to non-permanent stuff sure like a fireball or a barrier the operating logic presently is that a spell spell's upgrades are impermanent because the spell itself is impermanent but that that's kind of misleading even if a fireball disappears as soon as it hits its target making it impermanent the increased damage it does as well as any speed boosters caps and so on is a permanent upgrade to that impermanent object one of the things easiest to exploit when you play a mage is the fact that basic upgrades which are already cheap become cheaper still 6 days for an autocharge or a cap expansion granted we should also consider that a million autocharges do you no good without the stamina to back it up but it it's still easy to see why mages can get such powerful attacks effects so easily do you think upgrades really count as non-permanent i do think upgrades are non-permanent but what if we changed the way spells may be upgraded if we use ic justification of actual spells and incantations being used any upgrade of a spell might necessitate the recreation of the entire spell that is to upgrade a spell would cost the mage not just the upgrade days but also the original spell spell's tech days we would also have to watch for single upgrades that actually augment several things at once possibly user tiryst tiryst 04 50 16 november 2007 est
i could see this working given two things; mages still had mage doubling which i'm still hell bent against but this is for argument argument's sake and the spell in question was fairly cheap to begin with a basic attack spell generally costs 45 days and even comes with a secondary effect icebolt icebolt's slow for example and is 34 with your typical bias and 17 real days to upgrade it with a single autocharge would mean paying that 17 days again and another 6 for the autocharge if you compared that to the autocharges sylon bought for his galaxy ender you'd pay that 17 days again like 15 times and then there there's the cost of the autocharge itself like i said this is fine for a spell with a cheap base cost but what if a mage makes something spendier even the jump from 45 days to 60 days base can affect the long-term cost of repeated upgrades significantly not that i'm shooting your suggestion down of course i just have mages with active spells that had a great enough base cost to make this pretty heavy for them and to continue spamming the talk page there there's one other thing i chatted with marcus about that has to do with upgrades; ct effects like nullifier and homing tracking don't incur the multifunction penalty i just got alida attach phasing for her basic blast with no cost above what the attack phasing cost her even though by all rights allowing her attack to phase through obstacles to reach the target is a completely new separate function of the spell why shouldn't it incur the penalty i could understand charging it once then not charging it anymore for repeats of the same add on like higher levels of attack phasing in this case but the initial application of something new and cool should get snagged by that same penalty imo i mean it it's not like it it's all that expensive user snackycakes snackycakes just to clarify a basic attack spell with secondary effects costs 60 base days now 15 for the attack 15 for the minor secondary effect a la litbolt firebolt and icebolt and 30 for the multifunction penalty user marcus marcus i knew somewhere in the back of my head i had a number wrong somewhere thanks user snackycakes snackycakes attack phasing doesn't suffer from the multifunction penalty because it it's not a separate function in the same way that a speed booster isn't a separate function it enhances the ability of the spell to achieve the function it already possesses compare that to the ct attacks which slow deal damage over time as opposed to instant damage and stun which are definitely separate end-functions i actually have been considering whether nullifier should suffer from the multifunction penalty but i've also been considering marking it as a signature ki effect and revoking it from everyone else who has it as for the discussion of upgrades it'd be unfair to make it only apply to the original effect and not to upgrades or to make a mage repay the entire original amount all that does is impair people who don't immediately put everything they want into a tech -- which ends up making the pl less accessible to newbies who are more likely to forget or miss things in their techs which they could otherwise repair via an upgrade user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 13 23 16 november 2007 est
i think stricter enforcing of signature abilities is something that would balance the system as a whole not necessarily the magic pl specifically but that that's more there than here as for penalizing upgrades for mages that'd require some whole new aspect of the pl which could get complicated quickly user snackycakes snackycakes alright guys sorry for the late jump in but i just got into this whole speal i didn't quite read everything but what i have seen is that everyone is taking into account only a mages strengths here no one is looking at what ki and psi has that can easily kill a mage think about it a ki based character only has to play by the same sneaky rules that people minmax mages by you talk about mages stacking templates for spells well ki based players can do this lets take into account one of my characters nicholas by stacking in a minor pl transformation along with his shunpo modifier he is able to outstep a spell from a mage about 1 75x his powerlevel now the mage has blown a ton of stamina and nicholas is unharmed by the attack now here is the other thing mages have a huge disadvantage that is not easily gotten around all charcters start with 400 stamina and a mage has 60 charge that means with no upgrades a mage can do 6 things barrier and movement spell means it can attack about 4times before added on stuff for like enflame and stuff yes stamina calls could be used but their limitedly useful as they really should only be able to be cast a few times also mages have alot more to worry about protecting against then ki based users do ki durability isn't subject to phasing nor that ability that does double damage to energy also stun and enlame and everything else as is any character but stun is usually pl based i don't see the problem here being magpl but just lacking in creativeness of other pl pl's i mean ki and psi can easily do anything magic can do and in some instances better although i do agree magpl does have strong advantages i wouldn't suggest killing the magpl but if you think its that unbalanced then give the other 3 pl pl's alittle bit more here is what i would recommend atleast on the mannor of phys and kipl stop making extra damage done by weapon profs rage focused offense and stuff like that take extra stamina this allows them to benifit from their lower stamina useage while mages still burn their stamina maybe even bump their base durability a tiny bit to 250 or 300 as far as psi i couldn't make suggestions as i have never played a psion i just know with well written techs all the pl pl's can be similarly powered curt aka nicholasdeleone this discussion mostly takes into account the mage mage's strengths because some people feel their weaknesses do little to balance them out no matter what conclusion staff comes to they will certainly not 'kill' the magic pl to take a closer look at the examples you use the problem does still remain; nicholas transformation likely only lasts for a limited time he could outstep mages for those posts it it's active but if he wasn't quick enough to dodge before he he's back to square one a mage mage's doubling doesn't grant benefits that last for limited posts like ki transformations; the bonuses from doubling specifically are a for-life kind of thing as well if the mage in question really bore a grudge slapping speed boosters on his spell would cost a measely 11 days a pop with good bias increasing the speed granted by nicholas transformation to compensate carries a much more expensive price tag as transformations are priced differently while the idea to make more physically-oriented things like weapon proficiencies and other damage-boosting techs less stamina-intensive does have some value that would require the character to actually use those things what if i make a ki-user like marcus lightning wielder who doesn't ever attack physically he wouldn't gain any bonuses from those solutions at all a small bump in durability also hardly changes the fact that whether you have 200 or 250 dura mages are still learning how to erase it twice as fast as other pls can learn to contend with their abilities the last thing you said is absolutely true; with well written techs all pl pl's are at least fairly balanced the point of the entire discussion though is that mages get twice as many techdays as other pl types for most things so they get a significant advantage over others when it comes to techniques and 'similarly powered' goes right out the window user snackycakes snackycakes it it's difficult to say this with surety for lack of available figures but while magic was originally designed to be pretty narrow on tech concepts that that's pretty much disappeared -- they could probably accomplish a ki user user's template for less than a year worth of base days excellent now 6x days and mage doubling we're now at 3x would make that take 324 pl out of a starting character from there a mage could pretty much accomplish anything a ki fighter could for far fewer days including zippy dodge moves and offensive maneuvers customized and minmaxed such that nicholas nicholas's zippy dodge would be moot keep in mind that while nicholas nicholas's dodging is limited by his eyesight there are few written boundaries for the speed of an independent technique a mage could theoretically summon a sentient sword that attacks for truly ridiculous amounts of speed and damage and it wouldn't take all that long to develop you spend six months 180 days developing such a spell and you have nearly two full years of research under your belt -- 600 base tech days for that i could develop a regular old attack that flies at 275 magpl and does 200 magpl damage and it'd only drain 100 magpl of my reserves and that that's just doing it with brute strength without any wily means of getting that damage and speed without paying very many tech days at all swapping durability from your defenses for it for instance on a starting character i could get that sort of technique for 540 pl -- user icebreed ice 01 54 17 november 2007 est
for purposes of this discussion bias is immaterial since any bias can be achieved by any pl type so it makes no real difference unlike mage doubling presuming excellent is just good for inflating an argument by making small numbers but if you do so for magpl you should for whatever other pl you're comparing it to also excellent is not yet 6x that that's on the pending changes page so if you do want it to be current you should comment so on that talk page with your reasons why user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 02 09 17 november 2007 est
i mostly brought excellent into the equation because nicholas nicholas's bias is fixed half of my position on magpl is based on how easy they are to abuse with other learning-accelerating factors like excellent everyone needs to get a blimp cause blimps are pretty pimp -- user icebreed ice ok then ice two things why would you let a mage research and take the ki template thats just asking for trouble 2 if one can take one template then how many days reasearch would it take a ki character to take doubled learning on any nonpermanant nonitem tech which is exactly how the mage doubling is is worded i mean whats good for the goose is good for the gander right then you would have all of the ki gimmies ontop of doubled learning curt regarding mages taking ki stuff nobody would actually dare to directly emulate ki with a mage both because that would get them hated pretty quick and because it it's just plain inefficient to do so however that hasn't stopped mages like deyna alkanet from becoming ridiculous melee ki-like powerhouses witness ishram who thrives on melu8c3a9e combat regarding your question of reversal you can't do that enlightenment is the only tech allowed to alter learning rate and i don't even think you are allowed to take it if you have excellent bias -- user icebreed ice okay i think it it's about time that i weighed in on this discussion allow me to preface this a bit i've been around on imc for about seven years besides ice dez pam and matt i'm the only other altdbz regular that can remember when the room was formed and why jobe split from the dbz main setting because of the rigid linear structure of that room and he gained a large following because of the amount of freedom that players in altdbz would have new set of rules new ways to gain power more freedom in how we could design our characters techniques; and the biggest selling point - not watching four people act out the plot of dragonball z for us time to make our own stories and have our characters make an impact on them the ruleset that jobe came up with was pretty fast-and-loose and it was open to a certain degree of abuse but because the rules were the way they were less emphasis was put on numbers and more was put on narrative skill and creativity clears throat okay enough history tangenting and on to the subject at hand the issues facing magpl first the definitions of magic in any fictional world magic needs to have a solidly defined sphere just bending reality to your whim with a few words and gestures is flat-out retarded and is wide open to all kinds of minmaxing and abuse i'd like to suggest one of two things either we set down a roomwide definition of what magic can and cannot accomplish or we mandate that every applied mage needs to set down his own defined sphere i'm in favor of the latter since that would shift a lot of work off the staff and put the onus on the players to make their characters believable second the much-contested issue of mage doubling yes this is an advantage that simply cannot be overcome by any other powertype regardless of the gimmes they get by default it tilts everything in favor of that powertype even moreso than excellent bias would and ridiculously so with that bias personally i am in favor of scrapping the doubling concept entirely and simply fronting the mage x techdays at creation to cover the lack of gimmes either that or we nerf the doubling to a 1 5 1 ratio and buff the other power types a little to help level the playing field thirdly the issues of active spells and spells with multiple functions now this is a little more complicated than the other two but traditionally in any fictional setting that incorporates magic castable spells are very narrow in their focus and often accomplish only a single effect adding new effects to the spell are often horribly complicated and require a retooling of the entire spell to mesh the new effect with it as far as multiple active spells i see no problem with that a mage can buff himself six ways from sunday but it'll take him six posts to do it without expensive upgrades my solution to the multiple effects dilemma is pretty simple enforce a limit of two total effects for any given spell - the base effect and the added effect beyond that the spellcraft just gets too complex the added effect would be priced normally with a reduced multifunction tax equal to a fraction of the tech tech's base effect cost future upgrades to either effect effect's values would incur a slightly increased cost to reflect the increased complexity of the spell attack phasing has also been brought up in this discussion and i'd like to make a few suggestions about that but i will post those to the ctech ctech's talk page user kamin kamin 20 34 17 november 2007 est
well said matt actually you beat me to the idea of making each mage specialize i had a couple ideas for this but seeings as i am at work i will add to this post later for number 2 i also had thought about a get 3days for every 2 this seems fair and alot more balanced for your third point i suggest enacting a more extreme multifunction penalty not actually limiting the abilty of the spells themselves maybe even make multifunction spells cost more stamina in a quicky user nicholasdeleone nicholasdeleone 10 39 18 november 2007 est
i'd just like to point out here that forcing a mage to specialize isn't going to fix problems 100 of the time look at alothin he specializes in order and because of that and a race template that couples excellent bias with doubling the character receives insane bonuses because he specializes what what's to prevent specialized mages from creating other such techniques to give themselves bonuses to that kind of thing for example kinsei kinsei's got a technique to grant a bias increase for spells under the realm of earth he he's specializing but when you look at things from that perspective he he's not necessarily being 'balanced' by his specialization in my opinion enforcing rules where a person has to specialize will simply change how they describe their techniques not how they write them functionally as for nerfing the doubling i disagree 1 5 is not far removed from 2 and even if they got one free day for every five days they invested into a spell they're still getting free days where other pl types get none it it's an unnecessary advantage and will remain an unnecessary advantage in any form which is why it should be killed with fire user snackycakes dev i have to agree that taking out the doubling will help but it doesn't help in the long run for certain race templates or ki phys psi users for instance in the series saiyans are the kings of ki and phys power but suck at psi and magic power in reality saiyans should have super strong bias for the ki phys templates and very crappy bias for the magic and psi templates i know that people like psi magic users more but there are those of us who are not as good at math or technically minded or even very good at the whole creating techniques thing so a lot of the common techs created are used by us players and those common techs are super hard to complete when we see a lot of human demi-human shen'ir and other races passing saiyans by on ki phys techs oh sure saiyans get a transformation but a really good post is needed to ascend or taking 180 days to just get it then there is the fact that there are techniques out there that overwhelm a saiyans natural durability furthermore the ki phys enhanced durability gives only 25 per upgrade while psi gets nearly 100 per upgrade and takes less time and magic gets 50 per upgrade and also takes less time what i am trying to get at is that even if the doubling is taken away the phys ki template is also getting shafted hard time and so is the saiyan template yes i can understand people wanting saiyans to have weaknesses that is a gimme and they do have them the weakness of not being able to learn mental techs very well or quickly magic is pretty much a no go but ki and phys should be given more thought for a saiyan or just a human for that matter those templates really got screwed and i really feel that they should be re-audited and given a bit more than just oh a saiyan has ssj so that automatically makes them crappy at learning techniques for ki and physical stuff when in reality they are the kings of ki and physical and the sucky at the psi and magical user sia sia if you think that saiyans are not balanced properly comment on the saiyan racial rules talk page if you feel that ki is not balanced properly comment on the kipl rules talk page as far as your comments on durability go remember that a ki wielder wielder's is always-on psions have to spend slots to activate their defences and mages have to spend technique actions to activate theirs as such ki durability should be the most expensive and magical durability the least with psionic durability falling inbetween that is the 'basic' durability there there's nothing to stop ki wielders or psions from picking up a barrier equivalent as well -- it it's not a signature tech user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 17 08 18 november 2007 est
the following are viable solutions i think impose a limit on how many active spells a given mage can have at any moment with a capped ct to increase it dramatically increase the multifunction penalty possibly to include a growth factor ie second function 30 third function 45 fourth function 60 etc instead of 30 for each function may also make the multifunction penalty greater for active spells than for passive item techs as active spells are cast in a far smaller increment of time remove from mages the ability to charge spells they may still use autocharges but they cannot perform in-battle spell power increases in that fashion this will require some tech audits no doubt increase the number of signature abilities of other pls attack phasing and nullifier perhaps to start i don't believe that requiring themes for mages will significantly limit them my mages are almost always themed and i don't find that limiting -- if anything i find it makes it easier to design techs as it gives me a jumping-off place to start from for my designs nor do i believe removing doubled learning will be an appropriate solution as that would leave mages significantly underpowered -- and despite people taking it for granted techs are not the be-all and end-all not since we've largely eliminated plless techniques they can still be quite powerful making characters competitive or at least challenging up to two or even three times their actual pl depending on their opponent opponent's own techniques but it it's not an instant-win button alothin for example could not really defeat jade he'd be able to take several shots from her given that a great mass of his development has gone into durability effects but he'd not really be able to strike back effectively -- and that that's just at her base pl without even taking into account her transformations or techniques user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 17 33 18 november 2007 est
can you explain to me how removing doubled learning will leave mages under-powered because i'm really not seeing it if removing doubled learning leaves mages underpowered then right there i can be inferred that ki and psi are underpowered without it citing it as a necessity because mages must use techniques is not striking me as a particularly effective argument a mage spends a post casting a barrier a post casting a flight spell assuming the spells are not one in the same then they are as able as any other power-wielder in the setting i can't think of a single instance in which i've seen these two necessary spells interrupted even when the mages in question were vastly out-powered user snackycakes snackycakes 17 49 18 november 2007 est
your inference is incorrect -- ki and psi are not otherwise identical to mages they have other capabilities that mages lack further if you read my proposed solutions i'm suggesting further alterations to the magical template as well as suggesting increases in the special strengths of the other powertypes via such routes as identifying functions as being signature abilities further your claim that mages are then as able as any other power wielder is also in error as they then lack 120 magpl stamina that the other power types would have at equal strength that means that they're now congenitally incapable of defeating a psion who simply blocks every attack they make with their passive defence it also means they've spent two full rounds simply preparing for battle when the other power types are busy actually being effective user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 17 56 18 november 2007 est
you're suggesting anything and everything that would modify the pl without them having to lose what 90 of the people who've voiced their opinions here think they shouldn't have period semantics can be argued all day long but the simple fact of the matter is that there is a problem and mage doubling is the core of that problem excluding the application process during which they can be given special consideration for their lack of gimmies mages are no more unable to participate in competitive play than any other power-level doubling removed if a ki-wielder puts an autocharge on a blast that blast is a technique and subject to the same restrictions that any other technique is if a mage puts an autocharge on a blast that is also a technique why should a mage get to pay half as many techdays when that autocharge is already adding twice as much damage as the ki-wielder would get at an identical pl because they can't throw a punch automatically like a ki-wielder can the scales don't balance out user snackycakes snackycakes 18 19 18 november 2007 est
yes out of the gate with even power levels and the most minimal of techs the mage will be out more stamina for relatively the same result but doubling doesn't just make a mage catch up for that difference far as i've seen it makes them surpass it it's too good a balance in their favor mages earn more core defense faster than other types even discounting doubling a mage should as i've always seen it start off sluggish but have the potential to be very good later wasn't that the original intent the other proposed ideas have merit but they're generally more radical and would require more hashing out and bickering around on the wiki taking generally longer to implement as well the quickest answer may not always be the best answer but i'd be all for trying to sum this up with a minimum of confusion and irritation for everyone user lampdevil lampdevil 18 02 18 november 2007 est
do you mean removing mage doubling and not giving mages anything in return because if so then removing mage doubling will make mages under-powered because they would then have uh nothing user tiryst tiryst 18 18 18 november 2007 est
agreed if you just take away mage doubling this is what they have a sixty percent base charge no durability and the ability to go hay a spell was cast somewhere so they have no way to make up for the fact that their normal techs are easily double damaged against halved damaged down phased through stamina drained what ever also this makes mages stamina problem suck more as well it would make the pl totally unplayable honestly an extra day isn't that big of a deal although i will concede that 1 extra day for every 2 is more balanced user nicholasdeleone nicholasdeleone 21 37 19 november 2007 est
like i said before removing mage doubling is a viable solution so long as something is put in its place i think my specific suggestions were allowing doubling to apply through the application process or simply fronting x td td's to cover gimmies and mages have plenty of ways to make up for their weaknesses my mage ryo has a barrier spell that that's both skintight which completely foils phasing and considered physical durability which completely negates nullifier damage as far as stamina goes while i hate naming the specifics of a technique we all know stamina call which many of the chatters in the room use myself included costs a mage 12 days with a good bias piling on 50 stamina a shot costs 8 days with good bias and can be ramped up to like 600 in short order anything mages have that can be considered a weakness can be patched easily blah blah blah we've heard it a hundred times by now i don't have anything new to say and i'd rather not repeat myself since that that's not really doing anything to move the discussion in a positive direction user snackycakes snackycakes 00 08 20 november 2007 est
actually that armour tech is not necessarily proof versus nullifier-esque damage although it it's proof versus the ct form i have two characters with modified nullifier effects both of which would be fully effective against that armour the only durability which is truly proof versus nullifier-esque damage is innate durability such as what ki wielders have and what physical characters tend to have user alothin hroefn user_talk alothin t 00 26 20 november 2007 est
okay we've had a rather thorough debate about this subject -- specifically whether or not magic needs to be adjusted the majority of people who have made their opinion known seem to agree that it does though it is not by any means a unanimous decision nor is the method of adjustment agreed upon by those who wish to see change in the spirit of moving things forward i would like to move on to a solution phase there seem to be two primary schools of thought here some who feel that change could and should disclude removal of doubled learning and some who feel that such a solution would not be appropriate under any circumstances thus i'm going to branch this discussion into two separate articles so that those adhering to one school of thought do not need to battle endlessly with those that unmovingly oppose them perhaps this will expedite things in our pursuit of an answer to this dilemma players do not need to exclusively subscribe to one discussion branch or the other but we will scrap any commentary that tries to drag the issue of whether doubled learning should go or not into the fray each discussion should be conducted as though the modifier should definitely stay or definitely go and is not to be questioned on those pages if you are unconvinced that any change needs to take place then you may continue to debate it here but until a lack of change can be compared to suggested debated changes your comments may be rather ineffective at doing anything more than stirring up unnecessary debate please keep it to a minimum -- this page is getting unwieldy finally i would like to remind our debaters and moderators that discussion of other power levels and common techniques may normally be fare for those rule pages discussion pages but since what we're discussing here is rather monumental in effecting the balance of power levels and cts some limited discussion of modifications may be had details ought to be discussed on the appropriate rule pages however if a discussion is about whether a particular ct is causing a misbalance or not that should be taken to the ct ct's discussion page the links are as follows rules talk magic power committee to preserve doubled learning rules talk magic power committee to replace doubled learning
So are we going to get back to the magic discussion? Tiryst 13:46, 4 February 2008 (PST)
