ROCKS FOR CASTERS

Sunnfire said:
Its still limited use, and they have to hit.

The biggest PC celestial caster I know of is close to an 8 block.

If you get 3-5 high level celestial casters together and they lay down a blanket of destruction, I say go them, its no different than a pocket of fighters mowing through baddies. They are still incanting, and throwing every single packet. They are throwing them in a size relatively close to what a equal level fighter could swing, but they will run out, and a fighter wont.

I know of at least 2 that are much higher......damn now I want to go C caster
 
Gilwing said:
Duke Frost said:
You are implying teamwork.

With every rule and change you have to take into account how would a team work with this...or as I and NJ liked to call it "is it BF proof"

I was being sarcastic to Jesse H, because he deserves it.

My original point was that when using a wand you can't have anything else in your hands and have no chance of blocking. With rocks you can still block and throw rocks. Rocks were also devaluing archery immensely, as throwing rocks had no production cost and little build cost. Fighters are certainly not underpowered. If you liked rocks so much, go buy ten throwing daggers. Nothing has changed except the need for some purple tags. The other alternative was to tag rocks, which just seemed kind of silly.

A lot of wand shots are going to miss because the caster can't run up to the creature and block at the same time. It's a staple of many casters and more templars. But to use a wand, you have to put away all your other weapons.

As for the pyramid vs column thing, the skill needs to be relatively balanced for low, mid and high level characters. At 10th level or so you can have a 4 column and throw 5s 36 times a day. At mid 20s, you can have a 9 column and throw 10s 81 times a day. That seems like a good amount to me for either level. Most monsters take double damage from one element or another, so if you are smart you can pretty much be throwing 10s a decent percent of the time. Strategy can be fun. Tenth level is at most 2 years at almost any campaign of pretty regular play. It may seem like a long time, but it's really not.

As for pyramid vs column, I personally can't see giving up a prison spell for a bunch of lower level spells. But everyone's character is their own to build as they wish.

Scott
 
Gilwing said:
quote]

With every rule and change you have to take into account how would a team work with this...or as I and NJ liked to call it "is it BF proof"

What ever do you mean, we haven't thought about you guys in a long time! ;) :eek:
 
paythin said:
Gilwing said:
quote]

With every rule and change you have to take into account how would a team work with this...or as I and NJ liked to call it "is it BF proof"

What ever do you mean, we haven't thought about you guys in a long time! ;) :eek:

Yea I know....I never got a plot response either ;) :eek:
 
Duke Frost said:
Gilwing said:
Duke Frost said:
You are implying teamwork.

With every rule and change you have to take into account how would a team work with this...or as I and NJ liked to call it "is it BF proof"

I was being sarcastic to Jesse H, because he deserves it.

My original point was that when using a wand you can't have anything else in your hands and have no chance of blocking. With rocks you can still block and throw rocks. Rocks were also devaluing archery immensely, as throwing rocks had no production cost and little build cost. Fighters are certainly not underpowered. If you liked rocks so much, go buy ten throwing daggers. Nothing has changed except the need for some purple tags. The other alternative was to tag rocks, which just seemed kind of silly.

A lot of wand shots are going to miss because the caster can't run up to the creature and block at the same time. It's a staple of many casters and more templars. But to use a wand, you have to put away all your other weapons.

As for the pyramid vs column thing, the skill needs to be relatively balanced for low, mid and high level characters. At 10th level or so you can have a 4 column and throw 5s 36 times a day. At mid 20s, you can have a 9 column and throw 10s 81 times a day. That seems like a good amount to me for either level. Most monsters take double damage from one element or another, so if you are smart you can pretty much be throwing 10s a decent percent of the time. Strategy can be fun. Tenth level is at most 2 years at almost any campaign of pretty regular play. It may seem like a long time, but it's really not.

As for pyramid vs column, I personally can't see giving up a prison spell for a bunch of lower level spells. But everyone's character is their own to build as they wish.

Scott


I like the Rp value of Archery but not happy with all the rules that make it less effective
having to produce them at .5 per PP and tangled 1ft ribbons and limits to number you can carry
not going to get into the damage per BP ratio when compared to spells
ooo got an idea to put in rules section :)
 
Archery still sort of remains a secondary skill. It's a blocker for casters and generally a "toy" for fighter types. If you have suggestions on how to make it better, submit them to your local owner.

As for tangled ribbons, I use the plastic like ribbon for tying presents. Its cheap and they tend to not tangle very much and just kind of pull through when lumped together.

Vorps help out a lot too and weapon coating, but you end up throwing a lot of gold.

Scott
 
Frank Wiccan said:
I like the Rp value of Archery but not happy with all the rules that make it less effective
having to produce them at .5 per PP and tangled 1ft ribbons and limits to number you can carry
not going to get into the damage per BP ratio when compared to spells
ooo got an idea to put in rules section :)

I bought Archery when I first started as a Scholar for the blocking and a sustainable form of damage. Now, with wands, you can bet that I will rarely, if ever, pick up my bow again.

Partly because of the hassle, and partly because I have to rebuild my bow after nearly every event because of the punishment it would endure. (I have a huge bow that I often lean on during non-combat. That degrades the foam on one end which makes the core easy to feel, therefore not safe anymore)
 
Add in the fact that you no longer need to carry two types of packets for spells and arrow, and it makes for a tasty damage alternative.

I know I saw that wands will not be usable as weapons or blockers, and will be shatterable/destroyable/blowupable, but will they be able to be enchanted through rituals? As in, could i make a twenty rit wand or just Render that sucker if i wanted to?
 
Maxondaerth said:
Add in the fact that you no longer need to carry two types of packets for spells and arrow, and it makes for a tasty damage alternative.

I know I saw that wands will not be usable as weapons or blockers, and will be shatterable/destroyable/blowupable, but will they be able to be enchanted through rituals? As in, could i make a twenty rit wand or just Render that sucker if i wanted to?

Yes.
 
Maxondaerth said:
Add in the fact that you no longer need to carry two types of packets for spells and arrow, and it makes for a tasty damage alternative.

You no longer need to distinguish between arrow packets and spell packets? Or is this just in reference that if you ONLY carried a ward and had spells... then you wouldn't need to different type of packets--just one which would work for a ward and spell?
 
Aven said:
Maxondaerth said:
Add in the fact that you no longer need to carry two types of packets for spells and arrow, and it makes for a tasty damage alternative.

You no longer need to distinguish between arrow packets and spell packets? Or is this just in reference that if you ONLY carried a ward and had spells... then you wouldn't need to different type of packets--just one which would work for a ward and spell?

I think he was pointing out a perk of using a wand instead of a bow.
 
Aven said:
You no longer need to distinguish between arrow packets and spell packets? Or is this just in reference that if you ONLY carried a ward and had spells... then you wouldn't need to different type of packets--just one which would work for a ward and spell?

With a wand instead of a bow you would only need to carry spell packets and no longer need a different container for those pesky arrow packets
 
As to the balance of the new want system. Although I agree it is balanced for 4 columns and up once you hit about 10th level what about bellow that? Honestly I don't think it is for lower levels. Thats why I suggested the "per build point spent on spell slots" damage increase. Even if it was 1 point of damage increase per 25 bp spent on spell slots this would be EXACTLY the same as the "per 9th level spell slot" and yet not de-value pyramid style build and it would mean that I might consider a want at 3rd or 6th level to deal 2's or 3's respectively. As it stands I wouldn't get a want until I pretty much had a 4 column or close to it.

Thats all. =) Yes I agree that the rocks thing was silly and a good call to nix.
 
you seem to be thinking on too small a scale here. wands are two silver, so with two ninths (a paltry 78 bp, about eighth level), and two gold, you can chuck just under a 1,000 points of unblockable, elemental flavoured damage - and, since many creatures have allergies to elemental damage, you could have a max output of just under 2,000. 1-2k worth of damage for 2 gold is OBSCENE, ask any alchemist or scroll caster
 
Mobius said:
you seem to be thinking on too small a scale here. wands are two silver, so with two ninths (a paltry 78 bp, about eighth level), and two gold, you can chuck just under a 1,000 points of unblockable, elemental flavoured damage - and, since many creatures have allergies to elemental damage, you could have a max output of just under 2,000. 1-2k worth of damage for 2 gold is OBSCENE, ask any alchemist or scroll caster

I think you have this wrong, you DO NOT get a set of tags per wand, you get a set number of tags based on your spell column/pyramid and must then choose which wand you want to use and channel that element from that wand taking away from the total number of elemental packets you can throw. You would need around a 20 column to even come close to doing 2000k worth of over all wand damage.

Justin H-
ARC and NJ GM
 
Mobius said:
you seem to be thinking on too small a scale here. wands are two silver, so with two ninths (a paltry 78 bp, about eighth level), and two gold, you can chuck just under a 1,000 points of unblockable, elemental flavoured damage - and, since many creatures have allergies to elemental damage, you could have a max output of just under 2,000. 1-2k worth of damage for 2 gold is OBSCENE, ask any alchemist or scroll caster

With 2 ninth, you can throw 33 wand packets for 3 points of damage each per logistical period, total damage = 99. Not sure how you got to 1K but I just wanted to clarify before people started getting wild ideas here.
 
Actually a 20 column would net you around 8400k point of elemental damage, I think a 9 block would get you 810 points of elemental damage.

I knew my math was wrong the first time! ;o
 
oh, well that's bugger all. i thought it was packets PER wand, not nearly as cool
 
If you wanna get picky (and I do apparently) a Celestial caster with a nine block could do 2,430 pts of elemental damage per logistics period with wand if you include spells, and that's not counting ninth level spells, which could either add a definite 405 points in Elemental Blasts or a variable amount of magic damage from nine storms. Thought it was at least marginally relevent since there's a big ol' to do about caster effectiveness and how much damage a celestial caster can actually do per day and all that.
 
Thats about on par what a similar Fighter with equal build, ignore weapon skills/prereqs, a fighter would have 15 Profs, thats base 17 with a short sword...not counting protectives (parries) or eviserates etc. The scholar is capped and weaker on the defence, but his shots are easier to land. The fighter has no total damage cap for the day and better defence, but takes a bit more skill to land those blows.
 
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