Magic cap

[Falcon Avian]

When all the stats rose, so did people's attacks...Dramatically. People are hitting over 2,000's with weapons while magic is still only doing fairly low damage compared to these. Yes, we get range but when you're walking trying to evade a person who is running at you with axes that can easily cancel the spell before casted it's a bit of a problem. Not to mention bows have longer range than most spells while doing over 1,000 damage.

Could you please raise the caps of spells so they fit in more with the weapon damage increase please?

[Bonifarzia]

I am not convinced that spell caps need to be adjusted for the new trainable stats. I rather have the feeling they were designed for those ranges. The physical damage received greatly depends on the stances of both, attacker and target. The numbers you give look like either both stances are bloody, or the attackers weapon ranks are greatly superior to the targets armor ranks. At the moment, I think it is still the case that characters receive the same amount of raw damage when they are in a fully defensive stance or none (as when spellcasting,  just standing around or doing any non combat action). This is most probably not intended, but gives the heavily armored mage a tremendous advantage. The high chance to avoid significant damage makes it also quasi impossible to interrupt the casting of magic.

[Gen]

Agreed with Bonifarzia. If the caster also wears two shields, there is no way he can be hit. Would be nice to make a new fighting stance to be used while casting: defense like normal stance, but no attack. Would make sense, also considering that while casting, you should be too concentrated to be able to block every hit.

[Falcon Avian]

We are dropping giant meteors, ripping people to shreds with shadows, launching large rock fists, striking them with lightning, making a lava pit under them, I'm pretty sure those would hurt a lot more than a person with a wooden club. If defense is that much of an issue, could they make it so the strongest armor they can use is chainmail and no shields? The damage from spells now is terrible.

[Phantomboy86]

I agree with you Eso, 100%. And we must all ask ourselves if it would be realistic for a full blown mage (I consider realm 3+ to be stepping into professional mage-ing) to also be able to wear gigantic tank armor? Should someone who spends most of their time training their mind be able to do this? No, they should not.

Magic is traditionally a glass cannon, if you can fire off a shot prepare for devastation, but a rock will destroy you. So maybe its a good idea to raise the magic caps? Or maybe make magic  castable while running, but be wildly innacurate as anything done while running is. With the exception of course that higher levels would miss less (but never get to the point where they never miss at all. There must always be a weakness to power, no matter what HA would have us believe.)

Course none of this matters, most people gleefully disregard this fact and shout to the heavens how indestructible and powerful they are.

[Gen]

Is not ignoring, caps can be be raised a bit, some spells make very low damage. But as long as there are mages around, that players and mobs can't hit, raising caps would unbalance things terribly. Also, i personally don't mind to see an armor on a mage, but his defense should be compromised.

[Aramara Meibi]

there are other games in which wearing heavy armor impedes your ability to cast magic effectively.

[RlyDontKnow]

just raising the caps for the current spells isn't really the point of having high level magic.
what you're experiencing is the lack of high-realm spells as each spell has a power cap that'll you'll reach quite soon given the current caps, so the highest magic levels won't yield any gain.
however once those high-realm spells are added (realm 6+) it'll automatically balance itself.

problem with those high-realm spells however is that:
1) they still have to be balanced
2) most of the ideas for them lack engine features
3) there aren't enough people to work on it atm I think

in any case: rest assured that magic will become more useful and diverse at some point (just doing more damage is quite boring after all, isn't it?)
and anyway: just thinking of fist of the volcano I'm not sure mages really need more power (given it can do well over 500 damage and has the maximum practically useable range at the power cap)

(also note that unlike the damage of normal weapons the damage from spells isn't blockable at all atm )

[Bonifarzia]

Good points, Rly.

[...] given the current caps, so the highest magic levels won't yield any gain.

I guess even with low realm caps, players still gain quite a bit of damage per time unit. That is usually more relevant than per cast.

About limitations of synergies btw magic and armor skills... any consideration of restrictions or constraints in character progression and development go far beyond this topic. I think Falcon opened this discussion to make a point how to balance things with simple changes. Same goes with the automatic assignment of fulldev stance for non combatant characters under attack.

[RlyDontKnow]

[...] given the current caps, so the highest magic levels won't yield any gain.

I guess even with low realm caps, players still gain quite a bit of damage per time unit. That is usually more relevant than per cast.

what I aimed at was that there are caps after which a higher magic level or higher stats won't affect your cast time/spell outcome in any way (which is commonly referred to as power cap)
i.e. once you reached that maximum level the spell won't get better (which is sane of course) nor faster to cast.

as the power caps for pretty much all spells is significantly below level 200 and stat 400 (which is perfectly sane, too, given you learn the spells at max. level 80) the high magic levels won't yield any gain for those who get them with regards to their own damage output. (note that you may still have an advantage if your stats and skills are higher than the power caps of your spells as it may make "saving throws" more probable (i.e. it's more likely your enemy's spell will deal less damage to you (if the spell does have a "saving throw" probability)).

hence to actually get a real gain that perfectly justifies the amount of PP/Tria spent in the training for the really high magic levels requires higher realm spells which still have to be created (see my last post),