ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Both of these inscriptions suck:

Uncontrolled Phase Door has a tendency to put you in a just-as-bad situation; they have little utility as mobility or escape actions. Making them instant would allow you to at least get a chance at better positioning without the very likely consequence of putting you on the opposite side of whatever you were trying to escape.

Healing infusions are unappealing compared to regeneration. They take a turn to use; they are only efficient when you are already in dire straits, they can't be used while frozen, and if you are in a situation where you need a huge, instant heal, you are already taking more damage in a round than the infusion is going to recover. Shielding is already instant and arguably a much more useful effect.

I think a better solution for phase door would be making it 'semi-controlled'. It generates a targeting icon with a short range, starting from where you'd end up. So a rune might be 'phase door rune (9 squares, radius 3)'. It would let you move you somewhere within 9 squares and then let you choose where within a 3 square radius from that you end up.

Phase door DEFINETELY needs a min range > 1. Don't you hate it when you phase..to an adjacent square? Make it 2 or, even better, 3.

Re: Phase doors: Check here for an older discussion. What I'd personally like to see done to PD runes is make them instant cast and let them be cast immediately after landing once or twice, just in case the RNG decides to completely screw you over. This would turn them from the absolute worst inscription in the game to... one that's not quite as bad as it currently is.

Re: Healing infusions: I think you're drastically underestimating how useful they are. Nine times out of ten, you're actually better off with with a healing infusion -- it gives all its healing in a single act, making it much more valuable than regen for saving you from powerful high CD talents (Vaporize, etc.), unexpected crits, etc, than regen. Yes, it's less efficient when you're not badly damaged, but so are regen infusions. Both it and regen take a turn, so that's not an issue. The freeze thing is a point, but I'd rather see freeze changed to affect regen infusions as well than heal buffed. The last bit, regen infusion wouldn't save you either Heal also triggers that third tier aegis talent, which is a pretty big deal in two cases, heh.

Frumple wrote:Re: Phase doors: Check here for an older discussion. What I'd personally like to see done to PD runes is make them instant cast and let them be cast immediately after landing once or twice, just in case the RNG decides to completely screw you over. This would turn them from the absolute worst inscription in the game to... one that's not quite as bad as it currently is.

I was actually planning to bump that topic originally, but couldn't find it ( ) and also happened upon the idea for healing infusions.

Frumple wrote: Re: Healing infusions: I think you're drastically underestimating how useful they are. Nine times out of ten, you're actually better off with with a healing infusion -- it gives all its healing in a single act, making it much more valuable than regen for saving you from powerful high CD talents (Vaporize, etc.), unexpected crits, etc, than regen. Yes, it's less efficient when you're not badly damaged, but so are regen infusions. Both it and regen take a turn, so that's not an issue. The freeze thing is a point, but I'd rather see freeze changed to affect regen infusions as well than heal buffed. The last bit, regen infusion wouldn't save you either Heal also triggers that third tier aegis talent, which is a pretty big deal in two cases, heh.

I'd still be willing to contest this point. Unexpected damage is dangerous because it's unexpected; neither regen nor healing will protect you from that. If the damage is constantly disproportionally high, you are screwed regardless. Regen can be cast with only small amounts of damage taken, so it is indeed much more efficient (unless you are finding regen infusions that heal for far, far more health that you take as damage in a turn). Regen also gets higher base healing and better stat mod, so assuming you have some means of surviving a few turns, you will, on average, always be better off with regen.

Frumple wrote:The freeze thing is a point, but I'd rather see freeze changed to affect regen infusions as well than heal buffed.

Or make it affect neither. Does freeze really need a buff?

Maybe all inscriptions should be instant? It would kind of make sense...

If we make all inscriptions instant, then I don't think we should allow stacking of instant effects in a turn any longer. If we were to let it function as is now, then I can seriously come up with some combos that would flat out be unfair.

Final Master wrote:If we make all inscriptions instant, then I don't think we should allow stacking of instant effects in a turn any longer. If we were to let it function as is now, then I can seriously come up with some combos that would flat out be unfair.

I don't like this, though you're probably right. Some classes and races and such, I think, are supposed to be able to drop a lot of instant stuff in a single turn.

Perhaps there could be a new speed, 'quick', of which only one can be used per turn without using your turn up... though that could be unintuitive.

Final Master wrote:If we make all inscriptions instant, then I don't think we should allow stacking of instant effects in a turn any longer. If we were to let it function as is now, then I can seriously come up with some combos that would flat out be unfair.

3E D&D added a 'swift action' to deal with this problem - it takes no time but you can only do it once in a turn (in contrast to its 'free action', which works like our 'instant'). If we used this it would probably make balancing a lot easier - some things could still be really instant but most stuff wouldn't be.

You could also forgo having two kinds of 'instant' abilities and add a category for abilities called 'quick' abilities (or something). These are actions that take half a turn instead of a full turn. You could also have items with 'quick' activation. And it could be applied to some existing abilities, I would think, as well as opening up new possibilities for talents down the road.

From the standpoint of FUTURE flexibility, I think it's a good idea.

Silvermoon wrote:You could also forgo having two kinds of 'instant' abilities and add a category for abilities called 'quick' abilities (or something). These are actions that take half a turn instead of a full turn. You could also have items with 'quick' activation. And it could be applied to some existing abilities, I would think, as well as opening up new possibilities for talents down the road.

From the standpoint of FUTURE flexibility, I think it's a good idea.

The problem is that some abilities are genuinely meant to take no time, and intended to be something you can activate in a big string of instant activations. Mindslayers and Anorithil are meant to be able to change their sustains without taking any time -- making it so they can't do that and also activate a Wild infusion without wasting a turn would be a significant nerf (especially to races that have other instant-activation talents of their own), and I can't particularly see why we would want to nerf those -- they're not overpowered.

I really, really don't think that a Mindslayer should have to waste their 'quick action' (and therefore be unable to activate a Wild Infusion or emergency instant racial talent) just to change their shield type. They're balanced around that taking no time, not around it having an opportunity cost that precludes using other instant talents alongside it.

I could live with two kinds of instant abilities, but if we're only going to have one, I strongly feel that it should work the way it does now, and allow unlimited instant activations.

Dunno, I think Silvermoon's idea has some merit. Quick vs. instant skills: a quick skill is instant, but gives you a debuff that causes the next quick skill to take a turn to use. Instant skills are always instant. It's basically what has already been done with attack runes. The system could be applied exclusively to inscriptions, since that's what we are really concerned about.

However, I'm not sure I see room for much abuse with stacking instant-cast inscriptions. You already can't stack buffs (regen, shielding, wild, etc.) and the saturation effects will start to reach such tremendous levels that you won't be able to keep up that level of damage reduction for more than one round.

Aquillion wrote:

Silvermoon wrote:You could also forgo having two kinds of 'instant' abilities and add a category for abilities called 'quick' abilities (or something). These are actions that take half a turn instead of a full turn. You could also have items with 'quick' activation. And it could be applied to some existing abilities, I would think, as well as opening up new possibilities for talents down the road.

From the standpoint of FUTURE flexibility, I think it's a good idea.

The problem is that some abilities are genuinely meant to take no time, and intended to be something you can activate in a big string of instant activations. Mindslayers and Anorithil are meant to be able to change their sustains without taking any time -- making it so they can't do that and also activate a Wild infusion without wasting a turn would be a significant nerf (especially to races that have other instant-activation talents of their own), and I can't particularly see why we would want to nerf those -- they're not overpowered.

I really, really don't think that a Mindslayer should have to waste their 'quick action' (and therefore be unable to activate a Wild Infusion or emergency instant racial talent) just to change their shield type. They're balanced around that taking no time, not around it having an opportunity cost that precludes using other instant talents alongside it.

I could live with two kinds of instant abilities, but if we're only going to have one, I strongly feel that it should work the way it does now, and allow unlimited instant activations.

If you read my post closely, you'll realize that I am not advocating removal of instant abilities in any way. I'm suggesting a new category. "You could also forgo having two kinds of 'instant' abilities" sounds like I'm saying get rid of instants, but 'quick' abilities, as I described them, are not instant -- you would have three kinds: Instant, quick, and normal. 4 of you include sustains -- which, unless they are implemented by a spell-like effect (where one has to make an incantation), should ALWAYS be instants, but for some reason are not.

Minimum range of 2 is the way to go for phase door runes, in fact give them a random minimum range of 1-4 so the player can choose whatever he likes most.

Aquillion wrote:Or make it affect neither. Does freeze really need a buff?

Yes clearly the best solution here, allow both healing and regeneration infusion while frozen. Otherwise you might just as well prevent all skills from being used (shielding rune etc.).

eronarn wrote:3E D&D added a 'swift action' to deal with this problem - it takes no time but you can only do it once in a turn (in contrast to its 'free action', which works like our 'instant'). If we used this it would probably make balancing a lot easier - some things could still be really instant but most stuff wouldn't be.

OMG yes, you sir are brilliant! Yes, yes, we need this now . No question about it.

Then make phase door a swift action (only the rune, not the spell).

Silvermoon wrote:You could also forgo having two kinds of 'instant' abilities and add a category for abilities called 'quick' abilities (or something). These are actions that take half a turn instead of a full turn. You could also have items with 'quick' activation. And it could be applied to some existing abilities, I would think, as well as opening up new possibilities for talents down the road.

From the standpoint of FUTURE flexibility, I think it's a good idea.

Yes wel, just add an option to put energy=0.5 (or whatever you want) in the talents.
This allows you to decide the use speed of any talent.

So that gives us 3 types of talents based on their activation speeds. Brilliant.
1) instant cast (no energy=true) (change this to energy=0 in the future)
2) swift (only 1 each turn, no energy=true) (change this to energy=-1 in the future)
3) normal (energy > 0) (defaults to energy=1)