Balancing fixes --------------- This plan attempts to fix three things: - Address open game bugs (Section 1) - Reduce relative power of magic users by handing out skills to non-magic users (Section 2) - Add a temporary (!) set of spells to Compensate magic users (Section 3) 1. Open game bugs ------------------ The following game bugs on my list need addressing: - Summoned helper monsters make it too easy to lower the defence of monsters they attack. Summoned monsters should reduce the defence by less than 5. - Monsters should be able to attack summoned monsters and gain experience for doing so, then grow stronger/heal if they manage to defeat the summoned monster (make sure that this cannot be abused for gaining lots of extra XP by levelling up a weak monster to increase its XP value!) - Monsters sometimes don't attack players who have just respawned, even if they should. 2. Initial skill sets and making magic users angry --------------------------------------------------- The initial skill system works as follows: Players of level 50+ can talk to Luca to learn a new skill called `Skill Focus' (internally, it's called Skill_Pool). This skill determines how big their skill pool is, i.e., how many skills they can have active at any given time. They can then learn skills elsewhere. 2.1. Skill usage ----------------- The initial set of skills is passive: players only need to /activate/ the skill to get its benefits. To activate (or deactivate) a skill, talk to Luca. Note that you can only have as many skills active at a given time as you have `Skill Focus' skill level; for plan-0, this is limited to one. Skill effectiveness comes from two sources: skill ranking (initially 1, may increase up to 9... or was it 10?) and the `skill stat'. Each skill is based on one of the six base abilities: str, vit, int, dex, luk, agi. For maximum effectiveness, both skill ranking and that ability need to be maximised. 2.2. Skill acquisition ----------------------- Players must learn skills from NPCs. Luca teaches the first skill: Brawling. Other NPCs can adopt this scheme. The following skills are available or planned: - Brawling[AGI]: improves unarmed fighting - Speed[AGI]: increases movement speed - Poison resistance[VIT]: decreases the likelihood of getting poisoned - Astral Soul[INT]: increases magic power, back to its current levels (see below) - Hawk's Eye[DEX]: increase range and to-hit chance for ranged weapons - Lucky Counter[LUK]: chance of turning a monster's failed critical hit into a critical counter-attack All of these, except for Lucky Counter, are already implemented in tmw-athena. However, outside of Brawling, none of the skills are getting handed out quite yet. The original plan was to hand them out as follows: - Speed: A new NPC, Miriam (graphics already committed, I believe; she's the one wearing the ninja outfit). She is intended to be at maps/021-1.tmx, coordinates: 95, 85 Quest: Miriam is looking for skilled runners to train them (this could be the lead-up to some delivery quests). She asks the player to run up to Pachua to see if they are fast enough. Pachua will then send her a smoke signal. If they do so within 150s (142s is my personal record) then upon returning to her she will teach the skill. NOTE: this requires extending tmw-athena with some features to measure the time. A simple idea would be to add a feature that sets a global variable that counts how long ago it was since you last talked to an NPC, and that NPC's name. - Poison resistance: The nurse in hurnscald has a new drug to test on the player. - Astral soul: when players complain to Auldsbel that their magical powers have been drained (see below), he teaches them Astral Soul. - Hawk's Eye: taught by a new NPC (Gwendolyn) near the abandoned house/target practice area south of Dimond's Cove. Gwendolyn is the granddaughter of the famous archer who lived in that house with her husband, a bow-maker, and she is starting up an archery school. The quest for this one is unclear, though it includes having a forest bow /custom-made for the player/ (i.e., completing the bow quest in Hurnscald first.) Vink suggested having the player hunt down bouncing apples, whereas my earlier idea was to have the player shoot a couple of arrows at the target from particular locations, with Gwendolyn commenting on (a) how the wind had changed after each shot (suggesting whether the player should move left or right for the next shot) and (b) whether the shot was too high (move further away) or too low (move closer). - Lucky Counter: taught by a new gambler NPC in the casino (Lou Rette). You have to win a couple of times first to impress him. 2.3. Improving skills ---------------------- Once you have skills, the game will automatically award you skill points. Raising a skill from level n to level n+1 requires n points (or was it n+1?) Note that this maxes out eventually, IIRC at 9. However, increasing this by one more is safe: the idea here is that each skill can have a `mastery quest': Once you have the skill at 9, you can complete an extra quest to raise it to 10. None of these have bee planned so far. 2.4. Making skills work ------------------------ Most of the skill changes are already implemented. Below are the relevant entries for the skill_db.txt: 339 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, none, 0, no, none, Skill_Pool //TMW_SKILLPOOL 350, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, weapon, 0, passive,agi, Brawling //TMW_BRAWLING 351, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, weapon, 0, passive,luk, Lucky_Counter //TMW_LUCKY_COUNTER 352, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, none, 0, passive,agi, Speed //TMW_SPEED 353, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, none, 0, passive,vit, Poison_Resistance //TMW_POISON_RESISTANCE 354, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, magic, 0, passive,int, Astral_Soul //TMW_ASTRAL_SOUL 45, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9, 10, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, weapon, 0, passive,dex, Hawk's_Eye //AC_OWL All of these, except for `lucky counter,' work. Also, all of them are passive, meaning that no extra packets need to be sent to the server (some of the skills discussed in plan-1 are active and would need server extensions.) Luca's implementation is finished, too (see `luca.txt') 2.4.1. Astral Soul and magic -------------------------- To make Astral Soul work, recompile the server with `USE_ASTRAL_SOUL_SKILL' enabled. This will decrease magic effectiveness for a power level beyond 150 (or so), unless players have the `astral soul' skill. 3. Appeasing magic users through new, TEMPORARY, spells -------------------------------------------------------- Below are some ideas for temporary spells for magic users that would be available for magic users with a sufficiently high level, to appease them wrt the astral soul change (min level in brackets): - [50] heal (stronger version of lesser-heal with faster regenerate) - [55] mass-enchant lifestone (lots of components for a slightly better deal on lifestones) - [60] armour (fake armour for mages that doesn't stack with regular armour) - [40] electric-hands (electric version of the D&D `burning hands' spell), - [70] shadow-strike (suggestions for a better name?) (ranged, only available for people who are following the desert spirit, partly powered by HP, replaces lightning-strike as premier offensive spell), - [75] solar-scyte (melee, only available for people who follow Sagatha) These last three spells would only drain mana (and HP, for shadow-strike), but be designed to be competitive with what warriors around that level can deal as damage. (Hence, they are less effective than warriors around that level, since (a) mages can't wear as much armour-- offensive power should deteriorate if they wear armour after casting the spell-- and (b) the number of attacks is limited by mana).