Duration of PMW

[DavidW]

I've rather belatedly woken up to the nerfed duration of PMW. Can I flag that this is quite a serious reduction to the effectiveness of liches and vampire mages? (It reduces the number of attack spells they can cast by about 40%-50%, at a guess.)

[Demivrgvs]

50%? Considering a common denominator like 12 rounds SR's PfMW allows the wizard to cast 8 spells (and 4 PfMW), whereas vanilla's PfMW allowed 9 spells (and 3 PfMW). The difference is even thinner if any PfMW is cast via Contingency. What am I missing?

 

Speaking of PfMW in general, when the change was made ages ago I think we discussed it and you were concerned of the same thing but not too much, especially because we were also discussing Mantles and the possibility of improving them (in fact you made them work as per SR V2, though V3 ones are even better) and using them more often (which is great). Is something changed?

 

Edit: on second thought, I might guess I was missing you assume fights generally lasts much less than that. But to have a 50% reduction we'd have to assume the fight lasts only 4 rounds, which seems strange. Do liches really last so little?

[DavidW]

50%? Considering a common denominator like 12 rounds SR's PfMW allows the wizard to cast 8 spells (and 4 PfMW), whereas vanilla's PfMW allowed 9 spells (and 3 PfMW). The difference is even thinner if any PfMW is cast via Contingency. What am I missing?

 

Old system: in a given 4-round period, one round is used for PMW and somewhere between no and one rounds (let's say 0.5) are used renewing other magical defences, leaving 2.5 rounds to cast attack spells.

 

New system: in a given 3-round period, one round is used for PMW and (on the same assumptions) 0.5*3/4 rounds are used renewing other magical defences, leaving 1.625 rounds to cast attack spells.

 

(2.5-1.625)/2.5=0.35

 

i.e. a bit lower than my earlier guesstimate, which I think assumed slightly more defensive casting.

 

You're right about Contingency.

 

Speaking of PfMW in general, when the change was made ages ago I think we discussed it and you were concerned of the same thing but not too much, especially because we were also discussing Mantles and the possibility of improving them (in fact you made them work as per SR V2, though V3 ones are even better) and using them more often (which is great). Is something changed?

 

Probably not; I only vaguely recall the previous discussion. I think at the time I was concerned with whether the change would actually break AI (answer: it doesn't break SCS, though it does break Tactics). Here, I'm more thinking about balance.

[Jarno Mikkola]

50%? Considering a common denominator like 12 rounds SR's PfMW allows the wizard to cast 8 spells (and 4 PfMW), whereas vanilla's PfMW allowed 9 spells (and 3 PfMW). The difference is even thinner if any PfMW is cast via Contingency. What am I missing?

The twelve other kinds of defensive spells.

 

As the 4 round spell affords the mage to cast 3 other spells before it needs to be recasted, while the 3 round spell affords only 2, now if one of the other spells is a defensive one the rest are offensive, the reduction is 2:1, which is 50%. This of course doesn't take the Time Stops etc into account, but there's rarely that much of those to pass around.

[DavidW]

50%? Considering a common denominator like 12 rounds SR's PfMW allows the wizard to cast 8 spells (and 4 PfMW), whereas vanilla's PfMW allowed 9 spells (and 3 PfMW). The difference is even thinner if any PfMW is cast via Contingency. What am I missing?

The twelve other kinds of defensive spells.

 

As the 4 round spell affords the mage to cast 3 other spells before it needs to be recasted, while the 3 round spell affords only 2, now if one of the other spells is a defensive one the rest are offensive, the reduction is 2:1, which is 50%. This of course doesn't take the Time Stops etc into account, but there's rarely that much of those to pass around.

 

I assure you, I'm not daft enough to cast PMW in the early stages of Timestop, even if it has run out!

[Demivrgvs]

Ok I forgot to separate defensive and offensive spells, but even then assuming the defensive set of spells remain unchanged (do scripts automatically enforce 1 defensive spell after every PfMW?) we have:

* 4x PfMW

* 3x defensive spells

* 5x offensive spells

instead of:

* 3x PfMW

* 3x defensive spells

* 6x offensive spells

 

Anyway, even if many players consider vanilla's PfMW overpowered (I think I did too, but it's hard to tell because its OPness largely depends on whether or not you have a way to easily counter it, aka without a mage you're screwed) my main goal wasn't to nerf PfMW but to make Mantles and Absolute Immunity appealing (because in vanilla PfMW is way better than its higher lvl cousins, and that's something I can't tolerate within SR).

 

Long story short, you know I have a weakness for SCS, thus if you think I should really restore PfMW's former glory I can probably accept it, as long as I can keep its higher lvl versions better.

 

For Absolute Immunity it's easy imo, as for V4 I was going to suggest making it grant "absolute immunity", adding to it a ProEnergy effect, and perhaps even Free Action, Death Ward and Impregnable Mind (all of them are countered in the same way in theory, thus I hope it doesn't cause a mess with the AI, does it?)...effectively turning it into a sort of fast casting but breachable Time Stop (note that Abjurers don't have TS, and vice versa). What do you think?

 

It's quite hard instead to make Mantles more appealing than PfMW (and they don't have any PnP equivalent spell to help me), though their V3 versions are not bad imo. Would it be a stupid idea to make Mantle work as a PfNW+PfMW? I know it's quite a boost compared to vanilla, but PfMW already does it for players (afaik only aVENGER's AI currently work around PfMW equipping both normal and magical weapons), and both AI (especially within SCS) and players (e.g. via items, hell's trials reward) can often exploit it in conjuction with an innate immunity to non-magical weapons. Then, making Improved Mantle better than its 7th lvl version would be quite hard, though I can imagine a bunch of possibilities (e.g. small AoE? "cast on other" feature?).

[Ardanis]

I'd prefer to keep it 3 rounds long and use Mantles instead. For SR v4 I've suggested to assign a high AC boost to the latter - double (or even triple) of the current v3's +3/+4 bonus.