Antimagic for save throws?

[Bonifarzia]

As far as I understood, the concept of an antimagic skill was discarded from the roadmap when magic resistances were introduced based on gem enchanting and armor decorations.

However, I have the impression that there has always been some broad interest in the player base to develop characters based on such a skill. For example, see this, this or this topic.

Now I do wonder, as the number of spells that include the concept of save throws keeps growing, would it make sense to have antimagic work based on this and not on resistances at all? Adding more resistances on top of those from gems sounds like a balance issue. As far as I understand, save throws mostly reduce spell effects by half or negate the effect, and their chances to trigger are based on the targets skill rank of the corresponding way. I somehow like the idea that an antimagic skill could be used for this rule instead of any other way skill (i.e. the higher rank of the two). As a trade-off, the antimagic skill hinders the users ability to cast spells either by an additive penalty to the chance to fumble or by a multiplicative penalty to the casting time, both being proportional to the antimagic skill rank. As practice from PvP interaction is being considered and mobs are now able to cast spells, there should be no problem to train antimagic.

What are your thoughts?

[Eonwind]

Personally I don't like a single skill or ability to resist all kind of magic. I think it would be too powerful, both from a RP and a PvP point of view.
Actually there are two ways to resist magic: the first is magic resistance (each resistance specific for a single way) the second is saving throws. For the latter the way knowledge of caster and victim are compared but there is always the chance to be affected even with greater a knowledge.
Magic resistance can shrug off all damage but it's almost impossible (and always will) for a single character to resist every single way 100%.
And last but not least: physical stats and HP are a good way to "resist" (stay alive) enough to swing a good blow against a mage. The body development skill was introduced for that same reason to give an extra edge (and Hit Points) to fighters now that some more spell options have been enabled.

[Bonifarzia]

Personally I don't like a single skill or ability to resist all kind of magic.

Just to be clear, the suggestion is not to interfere with resistances, but only to provide an alternate route to save throws, at the cost of a heavy penalty to ones own magic. I can imagine that rank 200 antimagic could mean +100% to all chances to fumble or maybe +600% to all casting times.

EDIT: And yeah, body development is appreciated, and its usefulness against magic was a good reason for me to get the first hundred lessons early. *hickup* *kikiriiiii* *hickup*

[LigH]

That's why I hate this community so much.

While I am still looking for enough time to complete level 1 (with the training I have since version 0.3.x), others are already beyond level 100. And when I get told which exploit could be used, it gets fixed.

[Taya]

But if that would then stack with all the other ways to resist spells..? There are already a lot.

Previously magic was much too powerful compared to combat skills due to the fact that armour cancelled out the damage of almost any weapon. But that's been fixed now. First there was enchanted armour. Now armour doesn't protect anywhere near as much as before. For example, someone with quite low sword skill compared to my armour (less than half my level) was able to deal reasonable damage on me. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone with Boni's damage output will be back to being able to one or two hit kill just about any of the other people who have entered the cup in recent months, so those of us who prefer magic attacks could just as easily argue more resistance to weapon based attacks is needed again. A weapon user can already inflict much more in one blow than a spellcaster can due to the upper damage limit on spells as well. (A separate issue, but it's all connected really).

Maybe instead of trying to add in magic resistance now we should see how the current setup affects things?  The mages vs. weapon users field just got leveled a lot anyway, so maybe give this a bit of a chance before looking to reduce magic users' attack potential right as weapons users got a big boost to their own.

[Bonifarzia]

My thoughts here are not related to any reasoning about balance changes - this is really only to share opinions about the concept of antimagic and whether people are still interested in that at all. I am fine with the decision to remove the skill which was taken long ago. And honestly, I don't have a clue about the current state of magic vs combat balance. (One advantage of close combat is that you can benefit from extremely rare items, while a red mage does not get all that much from three ruby encrusted items of talads arm - but now I am getting off topic.)

Concerning stacking with other ways to resist spells: No changes there, you could either train a magic skill or antimagic to get save throws, but the effect would be the same - with the notable difference that antimagic ruins your career as a mage.

LigH: I am not aware of any fixes or abuses, but as a side note, training body development is one of the exceptions where the low skill ranks can really help you, not the high ones.

[Phantomboy86]

Really the odds are only ever stacked against a 'pure' (as it would be called in other MMORPG's) when it comes to skills. Absolutely nothing stops someone having maxed out in every other magic to get the large resistance boosts, and then maxing out swords and using two Q300 platsteels to take advantage of the huge amount of damage melee does especially against an unarmored opponent.

Frankly, I like Boni's idea a lot, finally something that PENALIZES something else.  Maybe its a bit late for it due to Anti-Magic being mostly cancelled as a skill, but were it not I would vote for it 100%. Sure, give the melee people something to protect themselves from magic. Then punish their ability to do magic with it. Then turn around and do the same thing to magic users with something else, like perhaps Body Development!

[LigH]

Sorry, I forgot a <SARC™> in my post above.

If I would need grinding or exploiting, I tend to ignore a skill and roleplay instead (most skills never exceeded 20, only few barely hit 50). It is interesting to see the development, but real life is already annoying enough; what I can't master mechanically, I start pretending if required, but I learned from the best, so I learned to stay imperfect.

[Denes]

My two cents:
   First: healing pots are prone to abuse. (Taya pointed that out) My suggestion would be to change healing (and mana) potions to something similar to buffs so they have their effect over time. Say lesser ones in 1 second, normal 2 secs, greater 5 secs in 1 sec steps and unstackable by category. (With respect to the already feverish, poisoned, deafened newbs in the sewers)
    After that I’d be more than happy to help out testing things since we only have the “black box” approach. That is by collecting data, drawing conclusions and maybe even suggest changes to devs. We could short-term benefit from it too by having fun and leveling body devel in the process.
Denes volunteers ICly and/or OOCly.
   My opinion is: Ideally I’d expect a pure fighter to win 2 times of 5 against a pure mage. The two being the cases if mage fails to dodge (run Forest! but be unpredictable) or magic fails twice a row, assuming same levels in ways/combat and armors. (chars without even light armor are extremity or caught by surprise IMO)

[Bonifarzia]

My suggestion would be to change healing (and mana) potions to something similar to buffs so they have their effect over time.

*nods* I suggested exactly this about three years ago. And no, I won't complain about relaxing sleep now that the mechanics to block movement are in place 
And one small thing on topic: If antimagic is considered as described above, it certainly needs "save" throws against healing spells and buffs, such that they are mostly useless on a strongly antimagical character.

[LigH]

As a kind of debuff for a higher probability to fail casting spells?

[Bonifarzia]

As a kind of debuff for a higher probability to fail casting spells?

For clarity, "save" throw: Chance to have lowered or negated spell effects based on the casters and targets skill rank. You can recognize that by a different system message, usually something like "but they resist taking only ... damage". That does not make sense atm for healing and buffs, but antimagic should negate these in exactly the same way.

[Wolferz]

I realise that Boni is speaking about how saving throw is gained and not about melee vs magic balance, but another factor is the google summer of code weapon skills that I assume are comming eventualy. They will give the warrior special skills to put them on the level with mages(warrior can choose his attacks and is not stuck with basic "white damage"). The skill could boost the character's resistance or saving throw and deffence similar to magic buffs. This would give a pure warrior another option for magic deffence. Since the skills are already developed (to my knowledge) the big question is....did they give warriors any buffs like this?

[Eonwind]

I realise that Boni is speaking about how saving throw is gained and not about melee vs magic balance, but another factor is the google summer of code weapon skills that I assume are comming eventualy. They will give the warrior special skills to put them on the level with mages(warrior can choose his attacks and is not stuck with basic "white damage"). The skill could boost the character's resistance or saving throw and deffence similar to magic buffs. This would give a pure warrior another option for magic deffence. Since the skills are already developed (to my knowledge) the big question is....did they give warriors any buffs like this?

the GSoC combat system was developed but never merged into the main PS branch this will give an hard time to any developer to actually do the merge, beside that the system should be a blank infrastructure only which will need rules to be added on top of it.

[Bonifarzia]

Good point, Wolferz. I assume the big difficulty with the combat enhancements is that there are so many different options that setting up rules and testing is a big effort. EDIT: Ah, I just see Eonwinds simultaneous post. So this is really a difficult thing to handle.

Also, I just realized during some testing that I could get some save throws even against ways I have not trained at all (rank 0), so this entire topic here may not be quite useful after all.