Shattered Kingdoms

I agree with JvJ. Backstabbing, dirt kicking, taunting, these are all negated by mirror image. And even dirt kicking won't work against a sorc who had the smarts to train DEX instead of wanting to hoard and train STR. Third row dirt kick is very unlikely against high dex.

But answer me this question, and then I'd like to know whether the spell is overpowered. Is there any veteran player who would rather have any scribed spell besides charm? Moreover, is there any veteran player who would take any class spell over charm? If your only answer is animate dead, then you're reinforcing my point.

scribed FoD doesn't kill outright, unless you're an elf with poor enchants (In my experience).
scribed sleep/feeblemind may work, but are also will saves and doesn't guarantee death like charm person does.
Scribed petrification might be nice comparatively, but it does allow your opponent to get away when depetrified.
Scribed dispel/blind/weaken/curse/poison/deafen/slow/etc etc don't hold a candle, for reasons below.

Every other offensive spell in the game besides Charm person and Petrification either does damage, or applies some sort of debuff to the target. But why would anyone choose feeblemind/dispel/blind/deafness/weaken/curse/poison/slow/ anything over charm? Why just weaken your opponent when you could have an equal shot of instantly winning your fight? I personally would like to see these spells make a comeback in SK, but as it stands, there's no reason to scribe these to anything when charm scrolls are accessible.

When skills and spells are first changed in a game, it takes a measure of time for the overpowered ones to stand out. At first, everyone uses everything about the same because of their lack of knowledge of what is best, but over time people start finding the OP skills and utilizing them solely. It's the same reason that everyone runs around with lions/destriers, and why everyone started picking up the yaris from Kuniyoshi when they were first implemented. Now, everyone runs around (If they can) with charm scrolls. Why? Because it's overly powerful compared to any other scribed or cast offensive spell. The only other scribed/cast offensive spells worth having next to it are A) Fear, as its group effect and messes things up, and B) A select few IC scrolls that deal some good damage.

You can't really know if I am playing SK anymore, can you JvJ? And you can't really know if our characters have interacted, can you? No! *snickers among the pretentiously jaded voice*

I'd rather kill someone than charm them, IMO.

I've had several people that are charmed summoned away from me and me losing my chance to rp and/or kill them.

Remove all, drop all takes about two seconds. After that if they get summoned away it really doesn't matter.

Then you can just eject them from the group and order them to splatter themselves on the nearest NPC.

You forgot junk all.

P.S. I play a GM sorc with max art and mastered charm. I haven't been pked in months, and I've killed plenty of people by using charm. I'm not crying any rivers. I'm pointing out a flaw in the game.

And any sorc worth his salt has MI up, making dirt kick a low-percentage tactic. Not to mention most sorcs would have SS, and if they know they're going against a swashie, they'll be modded out of the intelligence penalty from taunt, to deal with the off chance that it lands.

Stone skin doesn't stop dirt, it just looks like it does if someone fails the dirt kick, because stone skin also has a damage counterpart that is negated by stone skin. But your point still stands.

Not to mention high dex + haste will make you virtually impossible to dirt kick on the back row. Crap, people missed dirt kicks on my 4 dex centaur warlock on the third row half the time.

Every time I've had SS up, and someone has tried to dirt kick me, their attack has been deflected by SS. I cannot accept that this is because every time someone dirt kicks me, they get the near-miss dirt kick that does damage but doesn't blind you. Until I see a log of someone with SS getting blinded by dirt kick, I won't believe it.

http://sk.[REDACTED].com/show_log.php?fe ... ml_parse=0

In particular...

The thing is that every dirt kick does damage, it's just than any MP at all on your gear will completely negate that damage.
If the dirt kick lands on someone with SS, they get the normal dirt kick message.
If a dirt kick misses someone with SS, then whether or not they would have taken damage from the dirt kick, the SS loses a charge and blocks the dirt damage.

At least, that's my interpretation. Given I can't see the code this is obviously conjecture.

Anyways, charm person is still overpowered.

haha. i stand corrected. warlocks suck even more than I thought.