Report 203

Report #203
Skillset: Tinkering Skill: BlastHorn
 Org: Spiritsingers Status: Rejected Jun 2009
Furies' Decision:
Rejected. BlastHorn is not supposed to be on par with the crash skill. It is
weaker by design to prevent anyone to help crash through walls and making crash
obsolete.
Problem: As it stands currently, the BlastHorn enchantment is nothing more than
a watered down version of Crashing with not only a lower chance for success, but
exists with a limited number of uses because of the probable repeated attempts
needed to use up the charges of the item. In hoping to address the non-existent
market for this enchantment (because of the glaring fact that the original skill
exists in the generally available skillset of Environment in a better form) and
the problem of the novice-level city ability for MageLocks to completely shut
out communes, a proposal is made for this ability.
Solution #1: Have the BlastHorn enchantment at the very least be able to
 forcefully remove MageLocks created on any type of door. Also,
 considering that Crashing is already in a general skillset
 (Environment), I'd like for the enchantment to altogether change
 instead from acting as it does now (which no one at all uses),
 into an effect akin to Athletics' door barging ability - for a
 chance to destroy wooden (not reinforced steel) doors as opposed
 to just keeping them open like the Elemental Spellcrafting
 equivalent.
Player Comments:
---[Krellan on 6/14 @ 18:41 writes]:
I feel that this is an unnecessary change as is. Doorblast is already the
counter to freeze door and doorblast is a publically available enchantment. In
my opinion, blasthorn should be able to destroy personal milestones and mushroom
circles as there are currently no counter to a personal milestone, and limited
counter to mushroom circles.
---[Viynain on 6/14 @ 19:27 writes]:
From what testing I've seen done, doorblast doesn't destroy magelocked doors -
whether they're wooden doors, reinforced, or otherwise.
---[Viynain on 6/14 @ 19:50 writes]:
Oh, and no thank you on the milestone/circle removal mechanism. Not unless folk
want to a) raise the cost of using the enchantment to equal the power cost for
using those skills and b) to remove the limitations placed on those two
skills...which would require more coding than this report is requesting for,
actually. Woo.
---[Nienla on 6/15 @ 15:21 writes]:
There is enough in terms of mechanics in place to prevent a personal milestone.
They cannot be placed in enemy territory for example, and that is pretty much
the only effect they could have. Doorblast getting rid of personal milestones
would just be used to grief, and I have to agree with Viynain on this one.
Countering Wiccans can also just faereturn mushrooms, and they have to be in
forested terrain to summon in the first place.
---[Ceren on 6/17 @ 07:46 writes]:
Doorblast doesn't destroy the doors, no, but it does open them. And once they
reach that level of damage, it only takes one doorblast to open it from that
point on. You can still close a broken door and re-magelock indefinitely, but as
I understand it you'd be able to do that with your proposed blasthorn change as
well. The only important difference I can identify is that blasthorn would work
on reinforced steel doors too.
---[Viynain on 6/17 @ 22:02 writes]:
Oh, I'm not hoping to destroy reinforced doors, no, just breaking open the
wooden doors (even if locked) like Athletics' barging. Reinforced doors will
stay closed, but the one stipulation I'm hoping to make is that BlastHorn would
'melt' or 'destroy' or what have you the magelocks on any type. The barging
effect would only apply to wooden doors.
---[Krellan on 6/18 @ 18:38 writes]:
Nienla and Xiel both disagree because you both use them frequently. But
whatever, as Ceren stated, there isn't really much point to this change. Mages
spamming freeze door can link the command with close door/freeze door or just
trigger the blasthorn message to do so before you're even able to recover
equilibrium to walk the group through. Not that there's nothing wrong with this
change. I just feel this change hardly solves your problem to make blasthorn a
desirable enchantment to have and something completely new would've been a
better approach.