Magery idea

[Cadbury]

I'm pretty new to this shard, but from what I can tell, the magery skill is pretty weak in comparison to everything else (chiv, bushido, druid skills etc), which is kind of unfortunate. It seems that the "pure mage" is nearly dead, and that was something I really loved about UO back in the day, and I'm sure that I'm not alone.

Here's something I was thinking that would make it a bit more valuable and fun to play with:

What if we could make it so that casting from a scroll was an "insta-cast"? No need for the fancy dance associated with casting a spell. This would benefit mages as they would be more capable of handling large mobs without worrying about being over run and  having all their spells interrupted. It would make for a more run and gun kind of magery, which I think would be pretty exciting. Plus, an added bonus would be that scribing would become a more valuable and desirable skill, which would help stimulate the economy on the shard.

Now, to avoid druids from become more powerful, we could make this insta-cast ability negated by any of the druid skills, making it designed specifically for mages. It might breathe some life into a new class here. Based on various conversation with shard members, it seems that the mage has been relegated to a support role, and that there are currently 2 dominate classes (chiv/bushido tank and the druid tank), so this may be a welcome addition for those less interested in those other classes.

Related to scribing, I asked someone here the other day if there was a way to make blank scrolls. They weren't aware of a way. If this insta-cast magery idea is put into place, this would be a nice follow up. Perhaps logs could be turned into blank scrolls, requiring a relatively high lumberjacking skill. Or maybe hides, requiring a high tailoring skill. Again, this benefits the economy, as if makes those skills all the more important.

Finally, some of the mage skills are useless at the moment. "Strength" giving you +1 str for about 1 minute? That doesn't help at all. Or bless, giving +1 or 2 to all skills for a minute? Not helpful at all. What if these buff skills were calculated as a percentage of the casters maximum magery and evaluating intelligence, and the duration could be based on something like their resist skill? For example, someone with 120 magery and EI would get a +12 to a strength when casting Strength, 12 intelligence when casting Cunning (or is that dex?) and 12 dex when casting whatever spell corresponds to that. Bless could be stacked, giving a possible of +24 to each stat. This could benefit all users of magic. And the decay time would be 24 minutes if their resisting spells was 120, 20 minutes if it was 100, 16 minutes if it was 80 etc.

I was reading some other posts earlier in the week about camping being nearly useless: http://forum.sylvandreams.co.uk/index.php?topic=2996.0 . I think that the TC had a great idea here. If we could pair camping with an increased regeneration bonus to stats it would also become more valuable, especially to the mage.

I'd appreciate feedback on this idea, and would love to see it implemented at some point. Thanks for the consideration.

[Foray]

You can get a huge number of scrolls from the mage npc vendor in Mag, the lowest total quantity he as (before anyone as bought anything) is 640, once that stock as gone 15 minutes later it will be 999 on stock for that item for about half an hour then it will drop back down to 640, If you keep buying him out of the whole stock you can keep it restocking at 999 scrolls every 15 minutes for as long as you can afford or want. Because of that fact I'm not fond of the Logs for scrolls idea as allowing logs to be turned into scrolls adds to the competition for arrows (Considering you can't buy them anymore, you have to make them or find them).

Also I am not fond of the "Druid Restriction" being based on skills, simply because with the Druid skills being Animal Lore, Magery and Animal Taming your also sticking this restriction on non-druid tamers as well (As almost every tamer will have those 3 skills as well) base it on the book or staff not the skills.

[Cadbury]

In response to your scribing concern, I appreciate the feedback. I was unaware that it would interfere with arrow production, and seeing as there are a lot of blank scrolls to buy, it's a non-issue.

It seems that the restriction might be a tricky issue, but I like your suggestion. Perhaps a special mage staff, and each character can only own either a mage staff or a druid staff, so not everyone can take advantage of it.

[Aderyn]

In response to being able to buy scrolls from mages, I would guess that if they became something to be used in the way described that they would be removed from the npc vendors like anything else that can be crafted. I think I would kind of like to see this anyway, as I'd like to see at least a little demand for scrolls other than mark/gate/recall scrolls.

If this were ever implemented, I would vote on blank scrolls being crafted from leather rather than logs. Just seems a more likely material to be used. Or even cloth, something closer to canvas than paper.

I think the idea for using scrolls is pretty interesting and could make inscription a little more interesting too.

Attaching the druid spell restrictions to the staff would be difficult. I could be wrong since I don't know all of the inner-workings of the game code, but while I know there are account-bound items, and possibly even character-bound items that can't be transferred to another character, is there already something available in the game that would make the game say "This character already has the druid staff, so he can't have a mage staff".

Is the intent of the restriction to stop druids from being able to insta-cast druid spells, or to prevent druids from being able to use the insta-cast on mage spells in addition to being able to use druid spells with normal cast times? If it's just to keep them from insta-casting druid spells, it would just need to be applied to the druid spells specifically. Restricting the ability beyond that could get complicated. Then again, I don't know much about the inner-workings of the came or what the code allows.

[Cadbury]

I agree with you Aderyn - scrolls from leather seems like a good option for scroll construction. And yes, inscription would be more interesting! People might request spells like e-bolt, explosion, maybe even lightning!

The original intent I had on imposing restrictions on the druids was to avoid them being able to insta-cast mage spells, with the usual timer on druid spells (i.e. no insta-cast abilities all) but if that were too complicated, I suppose it could go for druid spells as well. I would prefer the former, however.

Thanks for your feedback. Keep it coming, I think that there are exciting possibilities out of this.

[Cpt_Starfox]

Strength and bless only give you +1 to your stats? Sounds like you don't have high enough eval int. Bless should give something like +19 to everything when you have 100 magery and 120 eval int.

In this way mages can be both very helpful and VERY dangerous. Also, it seems the damage of damaging spells may also be increased by eval int although they are still mostly not on par with druid spells.

As far as strengthening mages without letting those bonuses apply to magery for druids (not druid's druid spells but their magery spells), seems a bit unfair since druids are mages too and are in fact required to have magery just to be druid. Yes, druids are powerful, but thing is, you have to have to use up at the very least 300 skill points (and I'd say at least 400 to be able to effectively use pets at all and 480-600 if you want to be a great druid), and you must wield the druid staff and have the druid book of spells (or scrolls) to use any of the spells. So, there's plenty of requirements to be a good druid, they aren't powerful for no reason lol! (Also, druids are already somewhat restricted because neither eval int nor "spell damage increase" nor any other damage enhancing ability affects druid spells directly so far as I've ever known. There are perhaps still tricks to help your spells be more effective, like maybe discording your target or etc, but that does not directly enhance druid spell damage, it just weakens your target. Also, druid spells are not craft-able so far as I know so could not be "made" with any instant cast ability and so are limited in that way already.)

As far as I can tell, PURE mages (using only magery, eval int, inscription, focus, meditation, and healing stuffs) are mostly for support rolls as has been stated: for shooting spells from the back lines behind the safe protection of good tanks and for healing/rezzing others and casting other support spells. They can also be very useful partners in pvp.

Impure mages however are DEADLY in pvp (I'll leave the discovery of how so up to you hehe) and very versatile and useful in pvm as they can play a variety of rolls depending on their template. I don't think many really make super PURE mages. Most are probably impure at least to some limited extent even if it's just by adding hiding and stealth to their template. which gives me ideas LOL! Well, anyway... hehe

Also, a tip as far as spell interruption: use the protection spell and as far as instant cast, get enough FC and FCR and it should be close enough to instant hehe. Also, with augments to help your FC and FCR and with a max natural rate +3 FCR on jewelry, it shouldn't be too hard

However, all that being said, I don't think it'd hurt to improve magery a bit using instant cast scrolls. Also, as you stated, it might make inscription even a little better. Scribes can already make some AMAZING and very useful spell books (I love the mana-regen ones as well as the "spell damage increase" ones and the LMC ones lol). Still though, I'm probably in the minority as far as using spell books heh, so adding instant cast spells might possibly make it a tad more appealing to have inscription (for other than spell damage and casting bonuses and spell book making) and maybe also encourage people to be better (more pure mage skills like eval int and inscription in their template) mages.

-edit-
I *think* you maybe can still use camping to log out safely in the "wilderness" using a bedroll, but I'm not 100% sure. Anyone know? In that way, it might be a bit more useful for more than just stat gain and RP (like if you're in Fel with no moonstone). But even so, a regen rate might be neat/nice as Wuffy suggested.

[Abbadon]

You should check out Nasduirche's Mage I dunno if he still plays or not but he had a mage that could cast so fast it would lag the server hehe. I can also vouch for Link's Bless statement - my character had 110 eval int and it would give me 18 to all stats (120 would give you 19.5 but the decimal is ignored). Yes druids are powerful, but they were orginally SUPPOSED to be difficult to become one. Nowadays I know most new players have a druid within the first few days of playing due to getting told about the quest etc. And yes pure mages will probably never be as powerful as druids or tank fighters, one of the reasons being that the spell damage increase on this shard is broken (however we dont have a scriptor to fix it). From what I understand, only the GMs have that cap removed, so if we did get a scriptor, fixing that issue would probably be very easy. So if you want to solo Fel, its probably not the best idea not to use a mage. However, if you enjoy role-playing in a party, creating a mage isnt too bad.

Its important to note that this shard is nothing like the OSI shards - game dynamics here are different (e.g. tank fighters generally tend to do much better solo than anything else). However thats not to say you cannot change this. People told me back in the day having 400 hp on a character was crazy, but I believe just before I stopped, my character had hit something like 540+. So, I'd encourage you to try out new things that no-one else has tried before and change the game dynamics for yourself ^^

[Foray]

Pretty sure that it isn't entirely or even mostly a SDI issue, its mostly a mitigation/ resistance issue.

In the early days (on OSI) if you wanted to defend against spells you needed Resisting Spells skill, to defend against everything else it was better armor (Resistances as most here know them didn't exist yet). Later when AoS expansion came out Resisting Spells was altered and so was armor values (This is when the different armor resistances came in) at this point Resisting spells was no longer used to determine spell damage recieved but to determine durations and effectiveness on debuffs (like Curse, Blood Omen). Spell damage was now ran through armour based resistances like everything else. This is how it was on OSI for a while, eventually Resisting spells was modified again and given an extra perk of allowing you to have up to 45 in all armour based resistances even when wearing nothing (though it wouldn't stack with item based resistances). <---This is the point in which the RUN UO we use was based around. Which would be something like 2002 - 2003.

Oak was nostalgic about some of the things from the early days and spent a while on returning Resisting Spells back to what it originally was and for the most part did it. But he left in the resistances perk on Resisting Spells and also never got around to removing item based resistances effects on spells. Resisting spells on successfully resisting substantially lowers the spell damage recieved and then that lowered damage still as to go through armor based resistances. I have no Eval but if I was to FS myself it normally would do 22 - 26 damage going through resists of 70s if Resisting SPells was to randomly effect it then your looking at it lowering the damage even more to 2 - 7 damage from my own FS in that occasion.

What this means is that to realistically deal with this issue you'd need significantly higher Eval Int than any player is allowed (monster and staff don't have this issue as they can have their skill set to 600 in Eval Int and it would still count all or most of the way depending on the skill. This leaves one option for players and that is  "glass cannon" high SDI base gear and socketed entirely with SDI but given SDI is a direct/ true % based increased the difference  is not going to have as big an effect as hoped (because of the mitigation and resistance issue). If I did 25 damage and had 100% sdi you're looking at me only doing about 50 damage and if the resisting spells was to happen to work on that occasion you'd be back down to 15 or so damage.

Best choice for anyone wanting to actually fight with magery offensive spells is to go the Glass Cannon route and to get a full collection of Super Slayer spell books (Pref with more SDI on them as well), but be very very very careful when you go to any custom spawn your not familiar with as what looks like a Daemon might actually be a elemental, what looks like a spider might actually be a dragon and so forth (because of XML spawner modifications). One bonus out of this, at least the base regeneration rates aren't as low as when oak altered them that time lol so you wont have to wait for 15 minutes to regen :-P

[Cadbury]

I like the discussion going on here. Thank you all for contributing.

Since posting, I have increased by Eval Int and it has increased the amount of dex/str/int I gain with bless, however, it doesn't last very long. I also got a few Faster Cast and Faster Cast Recovery, and it does indeed help, but it's not instant. Still, I feel that the insta cast from a scroll would be awesome.

I have to ask another question though: What is SDI, and what is the "Glass Cannon" route? I haven't heard of either of these. Last time I played UO was just after T2A in 1999 or 2000.

Thanks!

[Foray]

SDI stands for "Spell Damage Increase" it is a item based property that is a true % increase to many spells damage (I think it might also effect Poison Strike in Necromancy, I can't remember). Glass Cannon is any template type (especially a ranged one) in which survivability and endurance is limited or ignored so it can hit harder by packing whatever it can for more and more damage. Put simply you can do a lot of damage (Canon) but if you get hit your going to probably die/ break (Glass)

For a mage this would generally equate to probably not having all 70s (as your gear will be ones with SDI on it regardless) when it comes to resistances and probably only having around 125hp. But having a large amount of SDI (which mages can do as SDI as different limitations than warriors DI) and the slayer books. Unfortunately because of the resistance/ mitigation issue I outlined this isn't going to be as effective as it probably should. The Archer version of a Glass cannon is still viable but that is because it's "cannon" side of things is not based around offensive spell casting but the same thing as any melee attack (just at range).

[Lukien]

to be honest negating the druidry ones would be a bad idea, considering the difficulty in getting druid spells since they arent craftable, and would make them much more valuable on the marked, and theres never any telling which druid scroll youll get while hunting...