Shattered Kingdoms

Ha ha... in all seriousness though, sorry to derail your thread. I actually do like this idea for several reasons.

I kinda like the idea, but I feel it would be hard to come into play for the following ONE reason:

LAG..

I play with 1 sec lag minimum everytime I am on. And this only means that all of my counterspells would be too darn late.

It is an interesting idea, and perhaps it could be implemented with "ready action" For example:

c counterspell thuban
"You remain locked in concentration" (until Thuban tries to cast, dies, flees, or the battle ends.)

Yeah this would make you always hit counterspell on time, but if say, Thuban realizes that, she could keep you locked in there doing nothing. It's a double edged dagger.

Dunno how it sounds, it's a quick suggestion without taking into account variables around the mud for bug/abuse/etc.

Bottom line, you cannot rely on the timing. If i have to wait to see XXX start to concentrate to c 'counterspell' XXX with my lag, it would be 90% lose lose situation.

I can see things from your PoV there, my ping-time to the server is often quite considerable as well, me being an overseas player. But hey, this is my favorite excuse for being a sucky pk group leader and being slow [REDACTED] in general pk, so this would just make that excuse viable when playing support sorcs as well. Wewhew.

In all seriousness, I think it's a cool idea.

I like the idea myself, however I feel that the caster of the offensive spell should also lose some mana. That kinda hurts sorcs who use charmies etc. The mana drain would really hurt them, and something as expensive as holy word can drain a counter sorc's mana really fast and leave them defenseless where as the priest has no drawbacks other than their spell fizzling.

Look at the way counterstrike works. If a hellion cleaves a barbarian, they get wtfpwnd, granted it's a barbarian only skill. Counterspell Should work somewhat similar to that in the fact that they take some type of damage from the countered energies, if I'm making any sense.

like in your example.

Thuban starts to concentrate. (Holy word.)

Syper starts to concentrate (Counterspell.)

Thuban's Spell is countered!

Thuban reels in pain as his/hers arcane energies are sent back at him! (hit)

Or Thuban smirks as his/her arcane energies dissipiate. (miss.)

Basically the damage is proportional to say...1/3rd what the original spell would have done, that way it's not entirely over powered, but the sorc has some advantage to casting it other than just fizzling a spell from an oponent and taking a mana hit.

On other muds I have played, it has various ways of being used.

The first is that it costs a flat mana usage cost, then has a check to of willpower versus willpower (sanity stat in the game). If failed, mana lost by the cast and spell casting and combat continues. If successful, a percent chance the spell is thrown back at the target, for the target's own strength, or there is a random magical weirdness that happens for a few seconds before it dissipates. There used to be a rare, random chance of causing the energy to get so out of control it would instantly kill the victim of counterspell. It was taken out when people with high sanity could kill NPCs with this spell that required a full form to kill in 1-2 rounds.


The second is similar to the above situation, but the mana usage is based upon the victim's mana usage for the spell they are casting, plus extra on the part of the person casting counterspell. So if a spell cost 100 mana to cast, it would cost 150 mana for counterspell.

Wouldn't this spell be too easily twinkable with triggers?

While we're on the subject of Magic, I suggest we also come up with ways to redirect spells' targets.

It died a while ago for a good reason. It would suck to have it in the game.

If people used triggers to automate their casting of the spell that would be considered cheating.

It must cost two blue mana to cast.

@ Cannibal