Idea: Group spells

[Monkeys eat peanuts]

Wouldn\'t it be kewl if you could cast a spell as a group? I mean this would stimulate the social aspects of the game and if the spells are done right it would add a number of sweet spells too. Group spells would be unique spells or normal spells with an increase of power.

Few examples I came up with:

Group armor:

You cast an armor together and as long as playes stay within a certain distance of each other they have protection (would have a higher armor value than a normal shield)

Various group attacking spells:

These would do about the same damage (maybe a lil less more depends how armor/resistance/damage will work) as the added damage of persons attacking individually but because it is dealt in one blow the armor value is only substracted once thus increasing the damage done.

so if normally you\'d attack for 80 damage and the targets armor is 50, instead of 3 * (80-50) =90 damage
you would do 3 * 80 - 50 = 210 damage
maybe increased casting time or something because the difference in damage here is pretty high

Summoning:

With a rather large group you could summon more powerfull beings (if there will be summoning) or maybe make this the only way to summon *shrugs*

Morphing:

Now this would be really sweet the ability to morph into another being/form. This could bring various bonusses for each form. Eg you morph into some kind of bird and you can travel faster and fly. Into a giant or the likes (increased damage and armor in about the same way as the group spells mentioned above)
Or maybe a shadoow form/gas form (damage received is reduced and visability but you cant attack) the possabilities are endless.

Mana transfer:

A spell which transfers mana to the target. But some of it will be used for the transfer so for every 100 mana points given the target would only receive 50. This way you could support a more skilled/powerfull player if the enemy is too powerfull for you.

Just some ideas but the basic idea would be to gain a little extra when you unite. Would be some difficulties to work out tho with eg. morphing who would get control (Controlled by 1 player or will commands given by all players be executed) but still it would be pretty neat.

Sry for making the post so long

[Jessyn]

certainly a cool idea,

Avatar
a group temporarily embues one person with some of their strength/health/dex, the group shares any experience gained by the avatar, until the spell ends.  good for UberBaddies.

Shards requires 6 mages to cast.  each mage gets one school of magic, and can only use that school, but they temporarily get the combined levels of all the mages, in that school.  Eg, the mage who got Crystal, would get all the casters Crystal skills, combined with his own, but would temporarily \"give away\" all his other spell levels.

Jessyn

[Aduin]

Group spells is an interesting idea, however, I don\'t think it would work. For these kind of things to be effective, you would need a whole group of spell casters. This then takes away the need of fighters and other classes, producing more magic using charecters. All in all it isn\'t too bad an idea, but game balance must be thought about. Also, how would the server know you were going to cast a group spell? Anyone else got thoughts about this?

[Kendaro]

Originally posted by Aduin
Group spells is an interesting idea, however, I don\'t think it would work. For these kind of things to be effective, you would need a whole group of spell casters. This then takes away the need of fighters and other classes, producing more magic using charecters. All in all it isn\'t too bad an idea, but game balance must be thought about. Also, how would the server know you were going to cast a group spell? Anyone else got thoughts about this?

Group spells are a large part of most all MMORPGs. They are nothing of an unballance and Bards are kings... and queens.... of group enhancing abilities. Something like AVATAR would never work. Giving a single person the power of a group, too overpowering and actually not neccesary. Group spells work like this, instead of a single caster having to cast one buff on every group member, they use a group form of that buff and it is cast on all members. It saves time and is better on mana consumption.

As for causing a problem between the classes of characters, you have to remember there are \"NO\" classes. This game is based on skills NOT classes.

[Vengeance]

I like the Avatar spell actually, and I can think of lots of tactics for group spells instead of individual spells.

I hope we do this.

- Vengeance

[Kendaro]

I don\'t know. Setting up a single player to have that one player work for the entire group? That just seems a bit odd to me.  That one person does all the work while the entire rest of the group just sits back and reaps the benefits. Just doesn\'t seem right to me. If something like that was to go in, there would have to be some way to keep that from being allowed when a duel is declared. The one person would have the powers of an entire group while the other would just be solo. A bit unbalanced spell.

[Princess Aelya]

this one might be a little on the crazy goofy side but here goes:

MERGE: This spell requires 2-6 mages. When cast, all mages in the party or group merge into a single being, combining all their powers. Each mage would control a different body part which is decided by the group who will form what part. The appearance of the merged mages will depend on whoever began to first cast the spell. Or if you want to get really complex, it could be a mix of all the mages put together.

on another note, I like the idea of group spells. How about merging spells together? several people could cast the same spell or a combination of different spells to increase the power of the spell dependinmg on how many of the spells are being merged or combined.

[Vengeance]

Kendaro,

That is what essentially happens in high level EQ raids anyway.  The tank does all the damage, the clerics chain heal, the casters nuke and mez, etc.  This is just a way of doing all those things up front, and seems like it would make a way to have more imbalanced groups.

Right now on EQ, you basically need a tank for damage, a wizard for nuking, a cleric for healing, a druid for evac and dmg assist, and a necro or something for crowd control.

If we had \"team\" spells, you might be able to have 3 necros in one group, for example--something that would have never happened with solely individual spells.

It would take some thought and balancing, obviously, but it seems like a much better than average idea to me.

- V

[Monkeys eat peanuts]

It wouldnt have to make persons with other skill types useless or less frequent but it will require some fine tuning and balancing.

First of all these spells or abilities wouldnt have to be limited to mage types. Fighters and such could have abilities that would be very much alike but based more on their tactical or courageous abilities.

A few examples:

Tactical strike:
The group members with this ability all strike the target at once having a much greater chance of hitting the target. Because unless the monster has 4 arms it would be extremely difficult to block four enemy\'s at once.

Morphing rings:
When these rings are used you morph into one being with a change or increase of abilities.
(Like the morphing spell)

Hearths of courage:
When iniated bonusses to damage/defence and such are gained for a short time. (This might drain extra stamina if that is going to be in game)

But I might have depicted the gains of group abilities/spells a bit too powerfull. The basic idea is that a group of mages or fighters would also have a certain advantage just like a traditional group(figther/mage/cleric/bard etc.) maybe it should even be a bit less power gain.

But there are always downsides that can be added to these spells. So eg. the morphing into a powerfull giant would require constant effort (mana drain) and thus only last long enough to take out one or two enemies (especially with this spell because if it would last too long there would be conflict over who gets to control it)
And the hearths of courage thing could backfire if one of the participants is killed (reversed effect).

These spells and abilities would stimulate people to form tradional skill specific guilds (a mage guild and such)

[Aduin]

Kendaro, I realise that one person casting a spell on a whole group is common, and even beneficial. What I was criticizing, however, was having multiple casters cast the same thing for a heightened effect. I admit that the multiple strike idea for fighters would be a good way to balance this, but I still fail to see how such a system could work. All the charecters would have to hit the same attack, at the same time, and the server would have to see the players doing that, and calculate accordingly. I just don\'t think it would be that easy to pull off. Also, what about non-casters and non-fighters? What could some of the other types of charecters get? Rogues doing a combined sneak attack doesn\'t seem logical. Archers doing simultaneous shots might work though. And what about non-combat type charecters? Would several smiths be able to combine efforts and create better armor than one person alone? Now that I think about it, this could lead to guilds forming out of common profession, rather than just for power. All this sounds cool, but some method needs to be put in to synchronize the abillities/effects.

[Vengeance]

I think both of those posts are good, Aduin and MEP.  I hope the Rules team really gets excited about this because it seems like it could really lead to:

a) more diverse groups
b) more diverse combat tactics
c) more player interdependence
d) more usefulness for unpopular classes (if we structure some cross-class group spells or whatever also)

Anything that achieves these 4 things is great in my book...

- Venge

[Holy_spike]

All this seems good and fine, but shouldn\'t we be talking about this after, not before the game even has combat?  If combat, itself, is highly time consuming.  Then this idea might not come to be for quite a while.  However, these ideas are great, some other MMORPGs I know don\'t really put emphasis skill based parties.  Most of the time, people join together go kill some creatures, disband and never speak again.  Unless you personally know the person. Guilds that are really \"guilds\" are a very interesting concept.

[Vengeance]

Most of the time it is advisable to figure all this out ahead of time because the group capabilities we do may affect the balance in the single player capabilities.

Also, group and single player combat would probably both be implemented at the same time.

- Venge

[Monkeys eat peanuts]

Never realized it could lead to profession based guilds, sounds good really good ideas aduin..