ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

What if..

Anti-magic was changed as follows:
- you can still wear and use arcane items. (Runes are still off-limits though)
- every arcane item equipped increases your Equilibrium by x (like a sustain would)
- using an activated ability of an arcane item increases your Equilibrium by y (a lot)

EDIT: Another, seperate suggestion fitting the same title:
- gain an innate ability after gaining Anti-magic: Destroy item.
Destroy item destroys an arcane item, reducing Equilibrium in the process. Equilibrium reduction scales with item value.

martinuzz wrote:Anti-magic was changed as follows:
- you can still wear and use arcane items. (Runes are still off-limits though)
- every arcane item equipped increases your Equilibrium by x (like a sustain would)
- using an activated ability of an arcane item increases your Equilibrium by y (a lot)

+1, if this was implemented, I would want cooldown increases for the activated skills and power reductions for the sustained ones (or all of them?) so that Stamina classes don't get a free ride.

martinuzz wrote:- gain an innate ability after gaining Anti-magic: Destroy item.
Destroy item destroys an arcane item, reducing Equilibrium in the process. Equilibrium reduction scales with item value.

-1, I really don't like destroying items in this game, whether it was from Cursed Sentry, Matter is Energy, or any other talent.

I agree with lukep's evaluation. You'd have to be careful that Antimagic wasn't a no-brainer for the relevant classes. Resistance penalties when wearing magical items might be another good way to balance the skill.

I love anti-magic how it is.

On characters that can afford a willpower investment and have either a stamina or equilibrium bar (or both) the benefits of anti-magic far outweigh the drawbacks. Resolve is an amazing passive, Silence probably needs its power check looked at but aside from that, an 11 (!!) radius silence for 5 turns on a 10 turn cooldown is a giant middle finger to casters even outside of your LOS, Anti-magic shield is more situational but it shuts down diseases and other dots crazy good (and was instrumental in my Wyrmic winner not being killed by Curse of Death in the final fight), and Mana Clash, what can I say about Mana Clash... funny things happen to all those nice sustains when you start draining resource pools... good bye bone shield Mr. Corruptor.

All of that said, I would like Arcane-Disrupting items to be retooled a bit so we could in good conscience put more on the drop tables. Right now every time I think of one I imagine it will be useless to most characters which makes it junk in 95% or more of playthroughs. If they disrupted spell casting rather then being unequipable without the Anti-Magic talent tree I think we could add more such items to the game and thus make Anti-Magic players not feel like they're losing so much. If we want to keep them as an added bonus for Anti-Magic then we could change some of the cooler effects over to look for the anti-magic tree (Witch Bane for instance should only proc mana-clash for Anti-Magic characters) and use this as the design philosophy for new Arcane-Disrupting items.

New idea for Arcane Disrupting (or Arcane on AM). Have each Arcane Disrupting item drain spellpower by 5 (?), and give a (multiplicatively stacking) 10% chance to make each cast of a spell fail, as with Silence. For Arcane with AM, it would be -mindpower and +10% equilibrium fail chance.

This still needs something to punish arcane-wielding AM Stamina classes though. (or, it could just be for Arcane disrupting items)

I'd make it much more punishing than that. I like the idea of antimagic items preventing all spell/rune casts. It opens up the door for antimagic egos (antimagic inscriptions!?!) and it would be a good way of introducing antimagic's effects to new players. I think special antimagic procs should still work; the artifacts should be distinguished by having +antimagic mastery.

As far as simultaneously equipping antimagic and arcane items - I'm tempted to just leave it be. Any logical course of action would be hard to communicate with the current item UI; players have no reason to expect items to interact in that way, apart from set items. The restriction on rune use without the benefit of the antimagic tree seems like punishment enough.

Yeah, my thought was just to add a flag to arcane disrupting items and have all talents check for that flag and have equipping check for that flag.

So one anti-magic item would drop all your spell based sustains, prevent all spell casting as though you're silenced, and prevent rune usage (they count as spells FYI so this wouldn't be anything extra beyond what silence does).

As to special properties for anti-magic classes, I would want to really open the door to anti-magic egos. So stacking mastery off every anti-magic item could get out of hand really quick. Also not every item would need an anti-magic only effect. Witch bane is a great example an item that's perfectly suited for a check for the anti-magic tree for it's mana clash proc, Guidance is probably fine as it is though the saves could be split in half (so +6 for everyone, +6 more if you have the anti-magic tree).

I hadn't thought about applying on a per-case basis, like the racial artifacts. That'd work great.

In favor of having AM items work like this - would be interesting to be able to use them even if you do not have the antimagic tree but ended up with a good amount of non arcane items and infusions.

Also, something else to consider.
Undead are magical in origin - at least, ghouls and skeletons, the playable ones.

Should their activable talents be counted as spells then, like Shalore?
I can see why, but I can also see why not - while they were created though magic, they might be self-sustaining. Perhaps a Ghoul does not actually use arcane forces everytime they Retch.

On the other hand, Liches. I'm pretty sure their unlife is meant to be actively sustained by arcane energies. Hence equipping an AM item should really not be something you'd consider doing.
Because this isn't (for example)Nethack, just prevent it rather than instakilling the player, though.
edit:that'd also apply to golems now that I think about it.

Skeleton talents feel like spells to me.

Ghoul talents do not.

I'm fairly certain golem talents already count as spells.

edge2054 wrote:Skeleton talents feel like spells to me.

Ghoul talents do not.

Interesting distinction...and in fact, one I can agree with. Ghouls still have flesh, muscles, and likely 'eat' flesh.
If skeleton talents(except the first passive)end up being spells while ghoul ones don't, it should be mentioned somewhere in game, though.

I'm fairly certain golem talents already count as spells.

I'm talking about the golem itself. It's a magical being.
If I'm an Alchemist, I find a nice antimagic weapon - can I give it to my golem? Wouldn't it just deactivate itself(until I take the weapon back)? Basically, it's the same issue I mentioned with Liches.