Another Cap proposal

I'm sorry but hm was the answer to people complaining that they spent lots of build to use it "once a year". I remember when it was 4 build each for a scholar and casting rituals was very very hard with primarys and secondarys with scroll specific sticks.
Ritual magic gives 3 benefits. I'm trying to think of another purchaseable skill that does that.

I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously, because the reality is that you're saying that the 32 Formals I have is somehow more powerful than the nearly 4 extra columns (just shy that last 9th level spell) I'd have, otherwise.
 
I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously, because the reality is that you're saying that the 32 Formals I have is somehow more powerful than the nearly 4 extra columns (just shy that last 9th level spell) I'd have, otherwise.

Let's compare:

Those formals give earth access to a full 30pt AA (for free, no useless "WEA" for you).

And access to:
Bane and Cloak - better than Reflect/Spell shield in some situations
Foresight
Formal Link
Magic Augmentation - being able to cast far more quickly and in more situations (silenced)
Ritual Manipulations (Spark/true empowerment, among others)
Spell crafting
15 more body
Healer's resolve (potentially more healing than you'd have with the extra column, depending on where you're at, though not chunks of healing as large)
Rebirth

Plus the ability to read ritual scrolls outside of a perma-celestial circle of power one is invested in

Plus just access to casting every earth/general aspect ritual - which casters are under no obligation to do for martial classes, I might add.

Now let's look at Profs/backstabs (since they are the closest thing to giving out "free" things for martial classes):
Profs give access to:
Disarm
Stun Limb
Shatter
Eviscerate
Slay
Parry
Riposte

Backstabs give:
Evade
Dodge
Stun Limb
Disarm
Shatter
Terminate
Assassinate

While the numbers are generally close in terms of what these give you, the martial abilities are all set-in-stone abilities, you can't really alter what they do. They just are.

The other side of things is:
Profs/Assassinates give you persistent damage

Having formals means you have at least 36 spells at your disposal (4 column) or 45 (I think?) with a tier drop as well. And Celestial even gets more benefit with Wand charges, wand damage (often as high or higher than fighters with burst pool plus wand rituals), and the ability to Spirit Store into golems.

Conclusion? *shrug*

None at this point...
 
Come on, now your gasping for anything here :).
Not really. The instances where that wasn't the case, it was typically because Plot decided to create local conditions that required someone else be The One® - an artifact sword that locked to someone, a series of fortunes that dictated specially Chosen Ones™ be the ones to complete the super-special ritual, a trio of players marked by some otherworldly being to act as their emmisary - and yes, those are excellent tools for fighting the natural inclination of the issue that occurs with level disparity, but I would propose to you that those components need not be so ham-handed to promote other players to the forefront if the issue didn't already exist.
 
I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously, because the reality is that you're saying that the 32 Formals I have is somehow more powerful than the nearly 4 extra columns (just shy that last 9th level spell) I'd have, otherwise.

yes formals are OP you get many benefits for taking ONE skill. Avaran listed most of them but to re-cap

You wear a 30AA
Magic Aug - purify- you are now get out of silence as a caster
Rebirth - only ability used while your dead

etc etc etc etc etc .....

Don't get me wrong, I use all of the above uses of HM, but it and magic items are your problem.... not high level characters.
 
I thought rituals were 4 build for a scholar - pretty sure they were 4 build last time I played my scholar. I think high magic was pretty new back then (at least to me).
I'm sorry but hm was the answer to people complaining that they spent lots of build to use it "once a year". I remember when it was 4 build each for a scholar and casting rituals was very very hard with primarys and secondarys with scroll specific sticks.
Ritual magic gives 3 benefits. I'm trying to think of another purchaseable skill that does that.

Now I go to dust off my scholar and I learn that 3 build gets me a cloak. 9 build gets me +1 wand damage plus a burst pool for when I run out of wand charges. Armor.

It's funny how we keep making it cost less build to gain more power (even going way back and making all profs mater profs, and making parry cost 4 build when it used to be 10 sort of) and then people complain about level disparity.
 
I only vaguely remember the complaints that Formal was considered to be a near-useless skill. I was preparing to be "celestial formal guy" already, so I had made peace with the fact that most of my build was going to be occupied with a skill that was extremely situationally useful and rarely used. So, I didn't pay attention to whatever discussion was taking place since anything more would just be bonus to my original character concept.

In hindsight, I think the problem should have been addressed differently. The thing is that Formal was the Production System Skill for creating magic items, but you couldn't make Magic Items out of thin air (i.e. throwing money at a person with Formal) like you could with other Production skills. Instead, you need these rare (comparatively) ingredients in the form of Ritual Scrolls and Reagents/Catalysts which bottle-necked the Magic Item creation system. Because these items were distributed at a different rate than normal treasure policy, and because magic item creation took place in-game, it didn't make sense having more than one character with significant formal, where-as with other crafting skills having more characters with production skills meant more and cheaper production of that type.

As a result, the system essentially discouraged anyone from getting formal if there was already easy access to a master formal caster, with the exception of getting enough for max Arcane Armor (but many people didn't think it was worth it even then).

Rather than do a comprehensive change to magic items and their production (which would have had to include the effects those magic items could have), The Powers That Be decided to create a sub-system to make Formal more broadly useful so there wasn't The One Formalist per school per chapter.

At least, I think that is how it happened.

Anywho, the power of Formal, and subsequently High Magic, is in the versatility and significantly augments a caster's repertoire of skill. I would argue that a column of spells is more powerful than 8 Formal (25 build vs. 24 build for a scholar), but the Formal gives more flexibility and augmentation. For instance, the Formal / High Magic can be used to grant a Magic Augmented Purify and a Rebirth (for an Earth Caster) or a Magic Augmented Dispel and a day Spirit Stored (for a Celestial Caster), both of which greatly enhance the survivability of the caster.

Personally, I am not convinced that High Magic in and of itself is overpowered. I do believe the Cloaks and Banes do exacerbate the Magic Item issue, though. And I also believe that High Magic is a complex system that is not similarly mimic'd for Fighters/Rogues (should there be a High Smithing for Blacksmith? Or High Trapping for Create Trap? Alchemy is fine), which, in my opinion, is not fair for those classes.

TL;DR: In my opinion, High Magic should either be duplicated for the other classes in some fashion (not my favorite and in fact I would discourage this because it would add more complex systems and increase power bloat), or High Magic should be removed and the Magic Item Creation system should be reworked to make it more similar to the other Production systems.
 
TL;DR: In my opinion, High Magic should either be duplicated for the other classes in some fashion (not my favorite and in fact I would discourage this because it would add more complex systems and increase power bloat), or High Magic should be removed and the Magic Item Creation system should be reworked to make it more similar to the other Production systems.
I could not agree with you more here. I would love to see a skill akin to High Magic for martial classes, call it "Martial Mastery", if you will. If I could spend build on the ability to, say, turn a parry into a spellparry 1/day, I would definitely spend build on that over MOAR PROFZ.

This is, however, extremely off-topic.
 
In thinking about it some more, in order for Melee skills to be 'on par' with High Magic, melee skills would have to do extra things at no additional cost...such as:

For every 1 Parry - Wielder may use 1 Spell Parry without using the required Parry skill
For every 2 Parry - User may Cloak a weapon carrier of user choice, chosen at logistics
For every 2 Riposte - Wielder may Bane a weapon carrier of user choice, chosen at logistics
For every 2 Slays - User may 1 damage to bow attacks (does not stack with 1.5x prof scaling)
For every Eviscerate - User may add 5 maximum armor points to their class max armor.
For every 3 Stun Limb - User may Parry a Waylay attack
For every 5 Disarms - User may "Spellstrike" a Pin spell.

Or other equally silly things.

Problem is, it is really difficult to come up with practical, easily represent-able (i.e. easily acted out/dealt with in combat with minimal imaginative effort), practical, and (most importantly) effective melee combat abilities that aren't binary in nature (i.e.: "take this swing and sit down/run, or negate it and keep going").

Or make a version of melee "high magic" and add more stuff that way. *shrug*
 
I think we are getting highly off-topic here. If someone else would like to start another thread, I'd be all over that.
 
Just to try and get this conversation back on track...the proposals for more upper end skills....I see this as counter productive to the level-cap impulse. Does anyone think these two ideas are compatible, or is this viewed as an alternative to level cap (essentially diluting the repeated purchase of repetitive skills by give a higher variety).

Joe S.
 
As long as the alternative places to put build are reasonably useful, having a second tier of branching options at the top would alleviate pressure on the bottom somewhat. We're talking serious re-write material here though.
 
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