Report 627

Report #627
Skillset: Paradigmatics Skill: Reality
 Org: Spiritsingers Status: Rejected Jun 2011
Furies' Decision:
We do not believe Reality should be affected by distort. We understand Reality's
small chance of throwing others out may seem as though it should be confined
like other spells that move people, but we believe Reality is the exception and
do not find it unbalancing.
Problem: Reality currently has the ability to fling allies/enemies to random
rooms all over the area cast as well as possibly to the Astral Plane. The
problem with this in its current form is that it isn't affected by distort and
also has the ability to fling the victim into smobs and also I'm assuming nexii.
Solution #1: Make Reality effected by distort, and prevent it from throwing
 the victim into a smob or nexii.
Player Comments:
---[Iytha on 5/24 @ 05:21 writes]:
The fact that reality flings people onto smobs/nexii should be considered an
outstanding bug and should not be used to assess the balance of the skill.
Further, the various drawbacks of reality; the significant power cost, the fact
that it can only be used off-prime, the fact that it can only be used
meaningfully once per room per fight and that it cannot discriminate against
enemies and allies, all work to balance the admittedly powerful crowd dispersal
effect it gives. I recommend that the smob/nexii issue be resolved and that no
further changes be made.
---[Asmodea on 5/25 @ 00:20 writes]:
Agreed that the allies/enemies drawback is annoying but with teleport, orgbix
and other transportation abilities it is not hard for people to quickly return
even if cast to Astral. The other costs mentioned are a pittance for the
powerful nature of this ability. 5p is nothing in a group battle which is where
this ability would be used and the fact that the spell remains in the room once
cast makes it laughably cheap and imo should be higher, there is a rare to zero
percent chance that a battle will erupt on Prime, because lets face it we all
know that fighting near always happens off-prime anyway. The ability can be used
meaningfully more than once per fight and could indeed be rather powerful if
cast in several rooms which is possible. Distort, unless one has the construct
comes with a heavy enough power cost to be able to negate this effect like it
does to near all other magical movement abilities.
---[Asmodea on 5/25 @ 00:23 writes]:
P.S Distort also would not effect this spell when used on home ground, so it
would still be castable on Fire/Vortex to disperse group raiders.
---[Iytha on 5/25 @ 22:28 writes]:
Reality can only be used once per room. As long as you remain in the room, you
will only be effected by the initial casting. If you leave the room, you'll only
be effected twice, once for entrance and once for the exiting. Repeated exposure
only comes into play if you make the terrible tactical descision of repeatedly
walking in and out of reality-shifted rooms. Further, the claims that combat
doesn't occur on prime ignores village revolts, world events such as the
ascension trials and the not infreqent raids on prime Gaudiguch by Munsia,
Nathuel, Morshoth, Daedalion, Malarious, Hyde and numerous other combatants.
Finally, you understanding of the interaction between distort and magical
movement abilities is flawed; if distort is effected by reality, than it will
block the movement of everyone effected by distort will be unaffected by
reality. During defenses of Gaudiguch's territory, only allies will be scattered
by reality, while during raids by Gaudiguch only enemies will be scattered.
Making reality be effected by distort would make it into a skill that does the
opposite of what the caster would like it to do while retaining all of the
numerous downsides added to the skill to make it balanced for bypassing distort.
---[Iytha on 5/25 @ 22:34 writes]:
I seem to have misphrased the explaination of how distort and reality interact.
It should read "if reality is effected by distort, than everyone effected by
distort will be uneffected by reality." ie. Anyone barred from using their
cubix, tesseracting etc. from the plane would also be prevented from being moved
by the same mechanics. People allied to the plane in question are flung, but
enemies to the plane being attacked aren't moved at all.
---[Akyaevin on 5/26 @ 23:56 writes]:
Frankly, distort not affecting reality makes it an incomparable and OP tool for
countering large raids (such as fleshpot raids). For fleshpots you need a large
group of people, need to maintain this large group of people, and have to move
at least seven rooms between fleshpots. Dropping reality in any of the
intervening rooms (or multiple intervening rooms) will scatter the enemy group
which will not be able to easily regroup due to distort preventing teleport,
allowing them to be picked off by a much smaller defensive group (which, if
scattered by reality, -can- regroup easily barring shrine distort). Other group-
splitting moves which are not blocked by distort? Scissorkick, which is 5p for a
once-off resistable attack against enemies in your room and moves them at most
one room, and is blocked by walls.
---[Annick on 6/17 @ 16:09 writes]:
It has been proven numerous times that it is still possible to raid successfully
even with multiple people able to reality. There is not a 100% chance that
someone will be flung by reality and the chance to be moved is equal for both
allies and enemies(Unlike scissorflip which only hits enemies).
---[Morbo on 6/26 @ 06:05 writes]:
I support the proposed solution