Shattered Kingdoms

Read the help file. It helps against saves.



Therefore more art, means hard to save against the spell

Sorry, Fepel's right about this one. To the people with 40+ enchants, art doesn't matter very much. To the people with 14 enchants, you might as well not have them.

To those that have summoned before art. Does art help against those without any enchants?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Of course, GM spells against no enchants nearly always hit anyways.

I was hoping someone would mention the "glory days" of gate kills. There was a time when gates were used plenty in PK. Way more of a crap shoot than summonings. Always exciting. My vote goes like this:

* Make summons way less likely to succeed. Keep the proximity factor, but scaled way back.

* Make gates way more likely to succeed. Keep the proximity factor, but scaled way up.

* Have BOTH gate and summon give a glimpse of a name on a failed attempt. Fun.

I'd also suggest this:

* Create separate no_gate and no_summon room flags for builders. (I remember them being combined into one flag, though I may be misremembering.)

* Have a skilled IMM nerfhound (anyone fit this description?) go through popular non-quest-type areas and reevaluate all no_gate/summon flags with an eye toward limiting their availability.

Keep in mind that I can't recall ever having summoned or been summoned for PK, ever. My dwarf, however, was an occasional gate target.

Peace,
Bux

Halerion was pre-art and although he didn't do much PK he did some.

Also, even though the help file says it that way, I'm 99.9% sure that I am correct unless otherwise told wrong by D/other coder.

I think summon is fine as-is.

It is very easily possible to attain enough enchantments so that spells are still nearly impossible to land. It should be this way. Just use the 'enchant armor' spell tactically and it will go a long way.


As for making gate easier to land...it has the same "easy" chance to land as summon. There's no need to make it easier to land, because no one uses it. Put it to use, and if things need be done after testing, changes might be prudent and be made at that time.

I could, however, get behind the idea of seeing who tries to summon you.

It's been suggested having the summon spell reveal only a description of the summoner and his room. Considering that summoners have polymorph available, and can summon from non-distinct wilderness rooms, that's not likely to reduce summon-kills.

On the other hand, several proposals would make it much more difficult to summon NPCs. That would be a substantial blow to mages without cause. What's needed is to make summoning PCs more risky, and PCs only. I see three ways to do this:

1) As Dulrik originally suggested, giving PCs immunity, or near-immunity, from summon. I don't like this, but it's clear this might happen without a better solution.

2) Adding risk by providing the target information which PCs can act on. I think the name of the caster is a minimum. (For an IC explanation, say the summoner must use his true name in the ritual, and the victim overhears.)

3) Allowing PCs to use a prep that makes it unwise to summon them. Say there's a priest/shaman counterspell, so it can be made a potion. Attempting to summon a warded character may result in the summoner poofing in front of his intended victim, or summoning an angry NPC, or some such. Summoning remains a useful tactic, but spamming summon becomes ridiculously dangerous.

A combination of 2) and 3) might allow for a weaker or more difficult-to-obtain counterspell.

Hey, that's an interesting idea. When summon fails, let there be a chance that it summons the wrong person... or toothy beast. Sounds fun.

Peace,
Bux

As far as gate goes, it's currently primarily used as a fast transport spell rather than a PK tool BECAUSE of just this reason. If it were easier to land gate, you'd see it get used more as a PK tool. As the mud stands now, however, summon is the more tactically wise spell to use for any number of reasons, not the least being that you get the target alone and out from behind whatever friend/pet they tend to hide behind.