Weekly Development Activities (June 25, 2007)

[Freeman]

Will the Attack boost stack with Fighter Attack boost?

Yes. However, since they are on the same timer, you can only use one at a time

[Gimpster]

I thought you had to be level 10 before you could even GO to Gianthold?

You must have a level 10 in your party.

[KristovK]

I can't find the relevent passage in the SRD but I do remember seeing it, probably in one of the actual books you have to buy, but it does discuss Illusions and emp/max not working. Has to do with Illusions being just that, illusions, so you can't increase the damage because meta's are physical changes to the spells and you can't increase the damage an illusion does with them.

And do you even play a caster Gimp? I've got 10 toolbars for my wiz, mostly taken up with spells, and if I had to add in MORE slots for metamagic'd spells, I'd need another 10 or so toolbars for the possible combinations and that's ONLY for Heighten, Extend, Empower and Maximize. Firewall...Heightened. FW...Extended. FW...Empowered. FW...Maximized. FW...Heightened+Extended. FW...Heightened+Empowered...and so on...get the picture now? 1 spell with over 10 possible selections with only 4 meta's, now add in Enlarge and Quicken and the selections increase a good bit more. Basic math, try it sometime. Now, how in the hells you get that doing this would use up LESS slots is totally beyond me. As a friend of mine would say...and just what color IS the sky in your world sparky?

[MysticTheurge]

I can't find the relevent passage in the SRD but I do remember seeing it, probably in one of the actual books you have to buy, but it does discuss Illusions and emp/max not working. Has to do with Illusions being just that, illusions, so you can't increase the damage because meta's are physical changes to the spells and you can't increase the damage an illusion does with them.

This would be the first I've ever heard of it.

And do you even play a caster Gimp? I've got 10 toolbars for my wiz, mostly taken up with spells, and if I had to add in MORE slots for metamagic'd spells, I'd need another 10 or so toolbars for the possible combinations and that's ONLY for Heighten, Extend, Empower and Maximize. Firewall...Heightened. FW...Extended. FW...Empowered. FW...Maximized. FW...Heightened+Extended. FW...Heightened+Empowered...and so on...get the picture now? 1 spell with over 10 possible selections with only 4 meta's, now add in Enlarge and Quicken and the selections increase a good bit more. Basic math, try it sometime. Now, how in the hells you get that doing this would use up LESS slots is totally beyond me. As a friend of mine would say...and just what color IS the sky in your world sparky?

Gimpster's point is that you usually wouldn't want all of those icons. You're generally going to have one version of the spell you cast with the appropriate metamagic feats applied. That would replace the current spell icon on your toolbar, and you wouldn't have to devote slots to the metamagic icons themselves.

[Knightrose]

Ugh... why must we wait till Mod5 to get bulk-buying at the vendors?

Why is this so annoyingly difficult to award?

I don't know about other melees out there but I go through 3-500 Repair Serious potions in a play session.

I'm gonna ask Turbine to buy me a new mouse.

[KristovK]

MT, if Gimp's suggestion is that you only put 1 meta'd version of a spell on your bar, then what do you do when you want to cast it with another meta, or mixture of meta's, or not meta'd at all? Open up the Character panel, flip to Spells, flip to the appropiate level and the appropiate meta and drag that to your toolbars? Uh...maybe it's just me, but that seems to be a LOT more of a pain then the current system. After all, if he's saying that having to just click an icon on the toolbar NOW is too much work(and he has), this sort of 'fix' would cause him to have a nervous breakdown! And you MT, playing a cleric, should know that you don't always cast any given spell with any given metamagic applied to it. Too many examples of why/why not to use meta's at any given time to even try to give any, and anyone who's played a caster, especially at higher levels, knows that you do NOT run around with meta's active, if they don't know it, they should go back to playing zergling tanks.

As for the Illusion and max/emp, I can't think of what book it was in, I don't have the 3.5 books, just the SRD, GM owns the actual books for 3.5, mine are a bit older..1st edition stuff. Figured I spent a small fortune 30 years ago on them, ain't doing it again when I can d/l the SRD and get the basics, especially if the GM wants to go spend HIS money on the books I'll see if I can find out the actual book/passages relevent...for all I know, it's an old 3.0 rule, never really bothered with it myself, PK isn't that useful in PnP, so I never really bothered with the spell, buddy plays a gnome illusionist and he was always wanting to meta PK with emp/max and that's what the GM read to us when he denied it. Made perfect sense to me as a player and GM myself, after all, Illusions are illusions, they don't DO anything to the target, the target does it to themselves, and metamagics alter the actual physical properties of spells(emp/max that is) and there aren't any physical properties to illusions to be altered. I know it worked the same way in NWN, couldn't emp/max PK but you could emp FoD(can't max FoD in PnP rules, level bump and all).

[Gimpster]

Uh...maybe it's just me, but that seems to be a LOT more of a pain then the current system.

No. What's pain is turning ON empower for Scorching Ray, then turning it OFF for Finger of Death, then back ON for more Scorch, etc. Or turning ON Extend for Haste, then OFF for Hold Monster, then ON for Displacement, then OFF for Fear etc. Or worst of all, turning ON Heighten for Soundburst, then OFF for Cure Serious Wounds, then ON for Hold Person, then OFF for Mass Cure Light Wounds.

Too many examples of why/why not to use meta's at any given time to even try to give any, and anyone who's played a caster, especially at higher levels, knows that you do NOT run around with meta's active, if they don't know it, they should go back to playing zergling tanks.

If you could assign individual metamagics to spell icons, the concept of "run around with metas active" would no longer have any meaning.

As for the Illusion and max/emp, I can't think of what book it was in, I don't have the 3.5 books, just the SRD

You can stop right there. If it's not in the SRD (and its not brand identity), it's optional and there's no reason to expect DDO to follow it.

[KristovK]

Are you refusing to see how what you are asking for increases the need for more and more toolbars Gimp or what? You'd want/need 3-8 icons for Scorching Ray alone...normal, emp'd, max'd, emp+max'd, enlarge, emp+enlarge, max+enlarge and emp+max+enlarge..provided you don't also have Quicken that is, which would again increase the number of slots by 4. So we go from having 4 slots used to having 8 slots used, or from having 5 to 12 with Quicken. And that's for a spell that Heighten and Extend aren't usable with, add that to another spell like FW and we add more and more slots.

If you don't understand that you do NOT cast spells with meta's applied all the time and that you DO mix and combine meta's on the fly then you just don't get it and have obviously never played a caster. You may start off with multiple meta's applied to a spell but as you keep casting, you run out of sp and you start disabling meta's to drop the cost and keep casting. Since DDO uses sp instead of spells/day/level and applying meta level bumps as PnP does, it's not a feasible system for the game and it WOULD increase the number of slots used for each spell combined with the various meta's that work with it. My wiz can cast X FWs with Heighten/Extend/Emp and Max applied, then I can cast Y with H/Ext/Emp and then Z with H/Ext/Emp and W with Ext/Emp and V with Ext and so on. I don't want to need to have 6+ slots for a single spell with various meta's applied or not when I currently have 5 slots to do the same thing and I DO NOT want to multiply that x6 for EACH spell I apply the same meta's to. I would literally need 20 or more toolbars for that setup and wouldn't be able to see the game screen through them all, and I'm only level 14, I have more spells coming as the game progresses and I gain 8th and 9th level spells and the commensurate spells/day as I level. I'd need 2 monitors to hold all the toolbars for all the spells and the possible combinations of meta's applied to them all.

I'm terribly sorry it's SUCH an inconvience for you to point an click Gimp, I know that it must waste just so much of your time that it drives you nuts. Maybe you should try LoTR:O or something, where you don't get options like this and it's all just a simple point/click and no thinking is involved. I did the closed beta, it's a fun game, absolutely beautiful looking, but I actually prefer thinking when I'm playing a RPG based game, if I want just twitch/point/click I play Battlefield2 or CS:S.

And Gimp, they are obviously using some of the non-SRD materials, since Eberron isn't in the SRD..can't find anything in the SRD about Warforged or Dragonmarks either.....

Seriously...sky..color...

[MysticTheurge]

You'd want/need 3-8 icons for Scorching Ray alone...normal, emp'd, max'd, emp+max'd, enlarge, emp+enlarge, max+enlarge and emp+max+enlarge..provided you don't also have Quicken that is, which would again increase the number of slots by 4.

Why?

How often do you cast each of those versions of the spell?

If you don't understand that you do NOT cast spells with meta's applied all the time and that you DO mix and combine meta's on the fly then you just don't get it and have obviously never played a caster. You may start off with multiple meta's applied to a spell but as you keep casting, you run out of sp and you start disabling meta's to drop the cost and keep casting.

A lot of people metamagic everything they can, right up until they run out of SPs. Those people would be entirely unaffected by the change (except that they'd save a bunch of SPs not Maximizing FOD or extending Greater Command or Heightening Cure Serious Wounds).

If you really switch from Metamagic'd spells to non-Metamagic'd spells halfway through your SP bar, then yeah, you'd have more icons. But most people wouldn't and would significantly benefit from a system such as the one being described.

[KristovK]

Sorry MT, but I know few casters who keep meta's going all the time and those casters don't get invited back to many groups outside of whatever guild they belong to...and even then their own guildy's often don't like running with them.

As for switching meta's on the fly, I do it constantly. I may start off with as many meta's to increase DC/damage as possible on a big mob or boss and cut off meta's as I use up sp. Reaver is a great example..I'll start with Ext and Heighten on, casting Disco and Mind Fog. Disco isn't affected by Heighten so it's not an issue leaving it active and it's increases the DC of the MF. If it's taking too long for the Reaver to activate the orbs, I'll drop Heighten since I'm going to be needing sp to try and control/banish the mobs when we get to the puzzle. If it happens that my wiz is one of the few left facing the Reaver while waiting on those orbs, I'll drop Extend and toss Burning Blood or Firewall at him to keep knocking down his hp, again keeping an eye on my sp total. Normally I always Extend both of those spells, but there are times like Reaver where I may or may not do that, depends totally upon the situation. If we've gotten the orbs lit and have the switch thrown quickly, I'll go ahead and emp/max/ext a firewall on the Reaver if I have enough sp to waste, it's fun to get that kill sometimes, or I'll do the same with a Burning Blood, or I'll run up and try to get the static charge to boost my sp while tossing off emp/max'd magic missiles, then emp mm, then just normal mm..then a wand of mm 9th until I do get the static charge/sp boost. Having done Reaver with 12/8/6 man groups, keeping an eye on my sp and careful control of which meta's I use is extremely important. And that's just ONE quest, I do the same meta/sp management on every single quest. Sometimes I want to extend all buffs, other times I don't, sometimes I want to emp/max all damage, sometimes I don't, it's entirely situational and having to have a slot for each spell for each possible meta and combo of meta's that I use...no thanks, I don't want that many toolbars, don't have enough monitors sitting around to put them on.

I guess I just don't run around with enough of the zergling casters who automatically have every possible meta on all the time. Oh..yeah..that's right, I tend to avoid bad players, that's why!

[gemmal_trueshaft]

Prison of the Planes

Cochitlehua has remembered that he has "Teleport Without Error" as an at-will spell-like ability.

this will only cause problems for avarge groups if

A ...Cochitlehua uses it ever 2-3 seconds or as soon as he is hit he vanishess to a new location.

B ... you use no team work.

im sorry to say this but PoP needs more twiking. it should be at least as hard to complete as madstone and crucible..

to quote my kids fav TV show (wonder pets) whats gona work team work.

[BlueLightBandit]

Prison of the Planes

im sorry to say this but PoP needs more twiking. it should be at least as hard to complete as madstone and crucible..

Why?

The Dev's have already stated that neither the level of a quest, nor the amount of favor given by a quest should be a factor in determining the actual difficulty of a quest.

It's just too difficult to determine the ability of the players to find a workaround (ala the dim door -exploit-) to a difficult obstacle.

They already have made some -improvements- to the difficulty of the quest, whether it was earth ele's to the air ele room, or the jariliths to the demon queen room.

I don't have a problem with the change they are making though. I just wish they would pay this much attention to other quests though. If other quests were tweaked in the same way they might actually be more fun, we would run the other quests and we wouldn't be running PoP all the time.

BTW, just because it's you think it's easy does NOT mean it should be changed. General rule of thumb: If you think it's too easy, or not enough of a challenge, then don't run the quest. Somehow instead of nerfing exploits, I wish they would nerf whining.

[MysticTheurge]

The Dev's have already stated that neither the level of a quest, nor the amount of favor given by a quest should be a factor in determining the actual difficulty of a quest.

Uh, when?

[legonares]

so when is searing heights going to come out...