Report 1042

Special Report #1042
Skillset: Wildewood Skill: Wildecall
 Org: Hartstone Status: Completed Dec 2007
Furies' Decision:
All the trans abilities should have cost power. They all now will. The powe cost
will be set (or reduced to) 5 power. We will also allow solution 2 with a 1
power cost.
Problem: For a trans skill, this ability has a suite of issues that hold it
back. 1st) It is too random. The animal called is random (of 6) and each given
animal only has a low chance of responding (10% for most). 2nd) The animals are
weak. Fireflies are redundant, and the others give only a very weak effect, such
as a 10% chance to retaliate on damage causing afflictions (only) with one
random poison affliction (of 24), shrugging included. 3rd) There are long
stretches of non-predictable time during which the skill does nothing. Once an
animal has used up its pool of uses, it wanders off to be replaced by a random
other animal. The random nature of their firing makes this time unpredictable.
Then, it will take another animal anywhere from 30 to 150 seconds to appear (in
brackets), depending on how long the defence has been raised. 4th) All of the
effects only work on a retaliatory basis (possibly excluding fawn), which means
that the user has no way to count on them, and little way to captilize on them.
5th) It is too costly. Even outside of the above problems, this skill costs too
much. It is a ten power defense that must be re-raised every hour of use, unlike
all other ten power defenses. This report seeks to solve problems 1,3,and 5. 2
and 4 will be addressed separatly as needed.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Remove the power cost on Wildecall, to bring it in
 line with Static and Novamist.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Introduce a WILDEWOOD WILDECALL <animal> syntax.
 Using this when an animal is already present will
 dismiss it and call the specified animal.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #3: Reduce the delay time on an animal arriving to 15
 seconds.
Player Comments:
---[Ushaara on 2/11 @ 23:19 writes]:
Supported.
---[Xenthos on 2/11 @ 23:24 writes]:
Making the skill more reliable seems a decent starting place- it's easier to
tweak strength when it's known how often the things will be there. That said,
being able to call specific animals at will is going to make buffing them harder
imo. What about being able to activate the defense but "pause" the timer (so
you can put it up at login, then during a fight turn on the wildecall to start
the beasts coming)? Offload the power cost for the first use before a fight.
---[Enyalida on 2/11 @ 23:29 writes]:
The other 'chemantics' abilities do not require power to use. Instead of making
this a permanent defense, I've updated solution 1 to remove the power cost to
bring this into line with those abilities. @Xenthos: How do you mean "making it
reliable". Should the percentage chance to fire be increased on each attack
(it's currently 10% for most) go up? Being able to influence what animal you get
when you take the eq time to call one in specific makes getting a relevant
animal more reliable, and reducing the time it takes for them to arrive makes
having any animal at all a more reliable fact.
---[Xenthos on 2/11 @ 23:32 writes]:
I say 'reliable' as 'more likely to have an animal in the room'- ie, reducing
the delay before a new animal arrives.
---[Shuyin on 2/12 @ 00:20 writes]:
This is fine. This trans skill is not even close to being as reliable as the
others
---[Enyalida on 2/15 @ 20:30 writes]:
I've modified solution 1, as the other trans abilities similar to this cost no
power. As a note, with solution 2, once an animal is used up, a new random one
would arrive unless you spend eq to pick one specifically.
---[Vadi on 2/15 @ 22:18 writes]:
Supported solution 2,3. Not 1, you've got to spend the power somewhere.
---[Enyalida on 2/17 @ 19:41 writes]:
Why, Aeromancers and Aquachemancers do not have to spend power for their
parallel, 1 hour, countdown type abilities - anywhere! The cost of 40 reagents
(a total of 8 essence, if you want to count that as power, I do not) was deemed
appropriate for those abilities, the effects of which are comprable or exceed
the effect of Wildecall.