Report 379

Report #379
Skillset: Phantasms Skill: Terrain
 Org: Blacktalon Status: Rejected May 2010
Furies' Decision:
We do not find this to be necessary
Problem: Terrain currently allows mages to effectively assist both mages and
druids by altering the existing terrain (even in truegrounded rooms) to any type
of the caster's choice. Druids, on the other hand, are unable to assist the
melding efforts of mages in any form, bound as they are to saplings and the idea
of finding them exclusively in forested terrain. This is especially limiting
when a mage is primary melder with a druid providing whatever little back-up
they can, unequipped to even reinforce the meld with an extra step one would
need to undertake to break the demesne.
Solution #1: Adjust terrain to only be castable in a mage's elemental
 environment (an Aquamancer can only cast it in a flooded room, a
 Geomancer only in a tainted room, etc) to any environment type of
 their choice.
Solution #2: Adjust terrain to be castable outside of the caster's elemental
 affiliation for a small power cost (the effort of masking foreign
 terrain not closely linked with the mage is greater than it would
 be within their natural territory)
Solution #3: Allow druids 'saplings' of types corresponding to the environment
 (for example, the twisted saplings in Muud for tainted terrain)
 to be castable where appropriate, acting as they presently do
 outside of naturally forested areas by withering away an hour
 after casting.
Player Comments:
---[Incabulos on 5/7 @ 21:04 writes]:
I really like the flavor of 3, and I think it's not unbalancing, given that
demesnes are a bit trickier to support nowadays given the semi-recent changes.
---[Lehki on 5/8 @ 03:26 writes]:
While solution 3 would be pretty awesome (love those muud saplings) that sounds
like quite a bit of work. Would the saplings only be able to be raised in mage
and druid terrains and not any others, would BT and Hartstone still have
different saplings in those types? Also aside from that, I don't actually think
this is all that necessary.
---[Narynth on 5/8 @ 04:49 writes]:
I'm fairly certain that separate sets of saplings outside our natural forested
environments aren't necessary for this to be effective, as the focus here is on
a druid's ability to support a mage, rather than vice versa. If they're raised
outside a meld (or in one) in supported terrain, they'd disappear just the same
as saplings presently do when not within natural forest.
---[Narynth on 5/8 @ 04:53 writes]:
To clarify, by 'supported' I mean that clearly you're not going to have an
'urban' sapling, unless there is a meld present within which the sapling would
correspond to the meld's elemental affiliation.
---[Talan on 5/11 @ 19:40 writes]:
I think solution 1 is better. At present there's a disparity where druid melds
can have two fortifications that must be stripped before the room can be broken,
whereas mages get only one - I think that's better solved by limiting everyone
to one.
---[Fillin on 5/18 @ 07:11 writes]:
There is a much simpler, more elegant solution to the given problem. Just make
it so saplings block the casting of terrain, and terrain blocks the casting of
saplings (the latter might already be the case, in which case, just make
saplings block terrain.)
---[Inagin on 5/31 @ 03:18 writes]:
I would also like to point out that there is an advantage to saplings over
terraining. You can meld over saplings but cannot meld over terrain. So with
these solutions, there would still be that disparity.
---[Xenthos on 5/31 @ 14:16 writes]:
I thought they removed that, Inagin? Made it so Hartstone can't break over a
Blacktalon sapling and vice versa. While a Blacktalon technically can still
meld over a Blacktalon's sapling... you can't break that room without dropping
the sapling in the first place, so the sapling would have to be gone.
---[Narynth on 5/31 @ 17:45 writes]:
That's correct. You must drop the sapling first.