ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Since the divination tree has been changed, I think the Cunning/Survival tree should be opened up to archmages at level 1. Without Sense, it's only fair that detect traps should be available as a option for new mages.

...because archmages don't have enough toys?

There are people who don't have either Cunning/Survival *or* divination as starting trees.

Three category points gives archmages enough to pick up all three of the trees they start out without access too.

I think it starting off unlearned is fine.

Plus... they're supposed to be book worms which is why they don't even start off with basic fighting sense (the combat tree). Starting them off with survival goes against the grain.

I actually think that in a few ways Arcane Eye is more valuable than sense was. You can compensate for the loss of sense with scrolls but you can put an eye on the other side of vault walls and find out exactly what is waiting for you. it definitely saved my butt in the Vor Armory.

Some way of trap detection for mages would be really nice though...

Vee wrote:Some way of trap detection for mages would be really nice though...

Maybe it already does that but..what if the Arcane Eye had the Trap Detection talent(I'm assuming it's a monster that you summon and share LOS with)?
That'd be better than nothing...

As far as I can understand the code (I'm not really good with LUA) and my experience with svn 1815++ playing mages show that the eye ONLY shows actors. No terrain, no traps, no walls, no doors...
Vision shows the lay of the land, but again: no traps.
Keen Senses counteracts invisibility and similar effects, but no traps.

Possible solution would be to have Keen Senses work similar to the Trap detection Skill in addition to counteracting invisibility.

Vee

But why ?
Archmages have enough toys to be really neat, they can invest a bit in cunning to get trap detection.
It will even improve their spell crits to do so

another solution is to just make a new (common) scroll, trap detection.

darkgod wrote:But why ?
Archmages have enough toys to be really neat, they can invest a bit in cunning to get trap detection.
It will even improve their spell crits to do so

I'm always in favor of more spell crits!

I was just thinking that since they're physically fragile, it would be nice if they could choose at the start to invest in some cunning rather than magic or willpower to avoid traps. There are some traps that you'll reach prior to level 10 that hit quite hard. It becomes the choice of the player to exchange some magical ability for "worldly" knowledge. It's not the end of the world to wait til level 10 or 20 to open up that tree though.

I'm not opposed to the changes to the divination tree at all, and I'm not asking for keen senses or arcane eye to gain trap detection. I think it's a good thing that mages have to sacrifice some amount of magical development to learn the other skills.

Voila

Also remember that the basic human race satrts with a category point at birth

Perhaps there's room to shift a bit of the emphasis towards choice, by locking the 1 or 2 relevant categories and handing out a category point at level 5 or 5 & 15. Then it would be in the player's hands whether they felt entertainment value was badly hurt by walking into traps all the time (so they unlock at first chance) or whether to take them on the chin (so benefit from a bump to some other category). I don't like abundant traps anyway, but it would e.g. bring an interesting decision about how to tackle the-vaults-with-the-loot-at-the-back - the class with the least hitpoints would be the one needing to invite an initial torrent of attack or be splashed on, fried, frozen, gassed, ring alarm bells ...

Hum with the last archamges I played (using the new divination tree), I did not learn trap detection, I did not invest in constitution and yet traps were never a problem

Traps in general are a LOT less deadly than in T2. Same for poison. In T2 it was almost always deadly if you didn't have a pot of cure poison. Even with a rouge I don't really put points into disarming them. just avoid them when possible... (Although in the maze thats a bit difficult. Good loot for rouges though.)