Shattered Kingdoms

It is my understanding that Thuban worked with you to test this yesterday and those results did not match your original numbers. We thought you were going to post again here with the corrected numbers...?

I adjusted the original post. I believe the numbers were somewhere along the lines of 8-10 casts per spell, the initial one taking 16.

That was adjusting for failed casts.

I still think 10 casts for one spell to stick is really high, eight is still kind of ridiculous, and this wasn't a dragon demon or high end NPC.


at 3-4% per cast this means I am spending 24-40% of my mana for ONE spell.

When I try and land all three then I am spending upwards of 75% or more. This NPC used to take me 25% or less.

I think 1-2 casts for normal NPCs should be the standard, I wouldn't go over 5 casts for any NPC. I understand some spells wreck havock with things, but that is kind of the point of those spells. Making it so they don't work the way they are supposed to hamstrings the class they belong to.

Don't forget a lot of boss NPCs can cure themselves of maledictions. So if you do manage to get one on them, it won't be for long.

1-2 almost certainly is standard for normal NPCs right now, barring NPCs with specific resistances or equipment that helps them. So, changes probably aren't in order there. You shouldn't really think about this in terms of the maximum number of attempts it takes to work, but the average number of attempts it takes. You could always get lucky and have your spell succeed on the first try, or get very unlucky and have it take much longer than is typical. Are you suggesting 5 tries would be an appropriate average, or are you making the case it should be lower, like 3-4 attempts instead of the 1-2 attempts for normal NPCs?

I'm also assuming we're talking about casters who have trained their art up a decent amount. For those who haven't, they're obviously going to encounter difficulties landing spells on the tougher monsters.

Is it really a lot? I can't think of many that do that, and even the ones that do aren't always perfect or even very good at doing it.

I can live with a 3-4 average, but much more than that the class is pretty worthless. I mean you have to take into account how much damage I am eating, how much damage the group is eating, I tried casting a spell on a normal dragon, I got my first cast off, failed, then in the middle of the second cast died. This was a dragon I could take out by myself before these changes went in. Being able to land these spells is a big part of the strategy when dealing with harder NPCs, if I don't nail the first or second cast, I am dead plain and simple.


I also think you should look at no magic areas and what can be done to make all classes of some use, I sent up and idea logging my thoughts.

NPC damage output did recently go down, though. You will certainly take less damage in four attempted castings than you would have previously. Regardless, you and I agree that the average number of attempts is too high now when it comes to landing a spell on a tough monster. Whatever the "right" number is, it's lower than it is now.



It's not accurate to say that the classes become useless because of the presence of no-magic areas. Suppose there is a boss with a nice suit of loot behind some no-magic rooms. Wouldn't you rather have a sorcerer with you to enchant that loot on the spot after you get it?

The same isn't entirely true of necromancers and warlocks. Lots of stuff is immune to their spells, and lots of their value comes from the undead and elementals they can bring, which they can both now do in no-magic rooms. We didn't remove no-magic rooms on account of necromancers, but, instead, gave them a little more value in no-magic rooms so they aren't completely undone by them. We could theoretically do that for other caster classes if it is really necessary. I would personally rather do that than go around ripping up the no-magic rooms that builders put into their zones by design.

If you can convince D to fix the resistances and then give individual casters a way to be useful while traveling through those no magic zones, I would have a LOT less to complain about.

Warlocks are great at pve. It's necromancers, hellions, and shamans - the debuggers - you should look at.

So after GMing and testing, normal NPCs aren't so much the issue, anything that isn't a normal NPC though is still ridiculous to try and land spells on.