ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Skeleton's heal and shield should count as arcane powers, because they looks magic

jinsediaoying wrote:Skeleton's heal and shield should count as arcane powers, because they looks magic

As innately magical beings, I'd be inclined to agree. Not just because their abilities loom magic, but because they are.

The same goes for ghoul.

The primary impact of these changes would be that ghoul and skeleton bulwarks and the like couldn't wear arcane disrupting items, and ghoul/skeleton abilities would proc corrupted strength. I think that's a small enough change.

And they would be vulnerable to silence.
And possibly Aether Avatar would block their racials?

Parcae2 wrote:The same goes for ghoul.

The primary impact of these changes would be that ghoul and skeleton bulwarks and the like couldn't wear arcane disrupting items, and ghoul/skeleton abilities would proc corrupted strength. I think that's a small enough change.

I think Ghoul's abilities are more like a "body technique" rather than some magic stuff, but skeletons' are definately magic.

also I don't understand why skeleton shield is scale with dex.
scale with mag or talent level directly makes more sense

jinsediaoying wrote:Skeleton's heal and shield should count as arcane powers, because they looks magic

It would make it supremely easy to handle hordes of enemy undead just by using silence. Also "this looks like magic" isn't really an argument... They could be mental powers, for all we know. There is no visual distinction between the two.

jinsediaoying wrote:also I don't understand why skeleton shield is scale with dex.
scale with mag or talent level directly makes more sense

Why wouldn't it scale with dexterity? Skeletons get str and dex racial bonuses.

Skeletons and Ghouls have disproportional issues with silence even as it is(particularly Ghouls).

I don't really think making Silence more fatal for player undead is a good idea, especially as it's not easy to gear against.

There's no easy way to +1 a post, so here it is: +1 to that SageAcrin fellow! Quite quite.

Maybe the game could differentiate between spoken magic and innate magic? Spoken would be disrupted by silence but innate would ignore it.

Perhaps we could simply have a "silence-vunerable" flag that we throw on powers, some arcane, some otherwise - so that it would no longer be possible to kill people with war shouts while silenced. Maybe also throw in a boost to stealth when silenced, for grins and giggles.

Of course, that's if we want it to mean "silence" as in noise-dampening. Honestly, it seems more like "severed from magic" than anything having to do explicitly with noise, and perhaps could use a different name.

Does silence even belong in the game? It makes certain enemies outrageously deadly to certain classes while being a complete waste of monster actions against others and makes antimagic builds extremely powerful against certain enemies including the final bosses.

It is a little odd as a skill.

There's no talent that can potentially seal off all of your abilities, without warning, besides it.

I think the original theory was that mages are generally more powerful than physical classes and needed more balancer, but I don't think that's true enough to matter anymore.

Maybe the few silence skills that exist should be changed to arcane failure skills instead. A 50%, or even 75%, fail rate would be a lot less lethal than the current Silence.

I think silence is fine as is. On normal there are plenty of things that can wreck the final bosses, so silence doesn't really stand out. On Nightmare they have pretty high saves, and anti-magic is often considered less desirable. For players it's just something you have to be prepared for, like stun. Anything anti-magic is going to be disproportionately dangerous to mages, and it is supposed to be.

It would be less fine if skeleton racials were spells, since they already lack in condition countering, and they are already hit harder by silence due to using only runes.

SageAcrin wrote:It is a little odd as a skill.

There's no talent that can potentially seal off all of your abilities, without warning, besides it.

I think the original theory was that mages are generally more powerful than physical classes and needed more balancer, but I don't think that's true enough to matter anymore.

Maybe the few silence skills that exist should be changed to arcane failure skills instead. A 50%, or even 75%, fail rate would be a lot less lethal than the current Silence.

Casters in general have the advantage of not being in melee, that's true now as it was then.

Silence as it is, is a major problem for undead casters, but that's more of an undead problem with status. Otherwise it can be handled.

I don't think a 50% fail rate is much better than silence - the safe option is still to get out of the way (by psychoportation/amulet of teleport/movement infusion). Failing a teleport 3 times in a row (which would happen 1 in 8 with a 50% fail rate) would probably get you killed sooner rather than later. I suppose it's better in desperate circumstances.