Hey guys -

I wrote up the DISCERN verb. Basically, it lets you do a few different things:

- Get the spell information, ala ASK.
- Get spell metadata, ala spellbooks. This includes a lot of useful information about the spell.
- Find out the mana range of the spell
- Find out your personal mana cap of the spell

These all rely on your Arcana in relation to the difficult of the spell to cast at minimum mana. To find your personal cap, your Arcana needs to be higher than the skill associated with that skill (for instance, TM is the skill associate with Fire Shards). If your Arcana is lower, it will give you an amount of mana that you can prep the spell at, but it may not be your personal cap. The messaging reflects this.

This ability uses Arcana, has roundtime, and grants a pittance of Arcana experience. It can only be used on spells that you can cast (which includes preview spells and scroll spells). Additionally, the experience is on a timer per-spell - the experience is explicitly not intended to be useful for locking the Arcana skill quickly - There are plenty of better ways to train it. The award is really just a small bonus to people who actively spend time reviewing their spellbooks and what their spells do (or the people that fit DISCERN into their scripts, I suppose).

Let me know what you think!

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

This is awesome.

>>Find out your personal mana cap of the spell

Is this more an average of your personal cap, when you can cast with 100% certainty, or what? I know that personal mana caps aren't a set yes or no thing in 3.0 - for example, sometimes I can cast MAF at 96, sometimes it slightly backfires.

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The teeth lands a solid (5/23) hit that pokes the teeth into Turul's rear end (more embarrassing than painful!).

sounds very neat. whats the syntax? is it live anywhere?


<plat>
discern
Please rephrase that command.



<<The real thing DR needs is to get out there to the kids who actually read books.>>

Its actually very handy. It looks like reading a spellbook page on the spell. The personal mana cap is.. well iffy. I could cast much higher than it told me and then got differing numbers. All with 500+ in Arcana, but thats trivial. Overall I definitely like it.

~Tezirite Renzar Lorrani

"Power is merely a stepping stone to more power."

>>Any chance this will/can do that?

It does, and it also makes note of what kind of contest spells are in the case of Debilitation spells; however this is still a work in progress as not all spells have the proper metadata in place to key off of. It's an on-going project, but a sexy one I might add :P

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

Does this take into account environmental factors for Rangers (wilderness/urban settings) and WMs (weather)?

GENT

I've got more Arcana than TM, but when I do discern on my TM spells, the number it gives me for my cap keeps shifting.

Pyre:

> You think you could weave at most 15 mana streams into this spell.

Pyre, two seconds later:

> You think you could weave at most 17 mana streams into this spell.

Abh:

> You think you could weave at most 34 mana streams into this spell.

Abh, two seconds later:

> You think you could weave at most 36 mana streams into this spell.

It was said it has a random factor to it. Seems like that would be it.

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Weapons for Sale:
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Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Combat Balance List:
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I ran through a "Discern" of all the Warrior Mage spells. What I found was that the scaling seems accurate for what you can and cannot discern, but I think it may be too difficult based on who would need what information and when.

Character Info:

Circle:	51
Strength:	30		Reflex:	30
Agility:	30		Charisma:	12
Discipline:	30		Wisdom:	30
Intelligence:	30		Stamina:	30

Elemental Magic:	250		Attunement:	260
Arcana:	240		Targeted Magic:	204
Augmentation:	225		Debilitation:	200
Utility:	187		Warding:	175
Summoning:	215

Here is the summary of the results, I would post the full chart as a .png if I could figure out how to post images. I classified all spells into one of 3 categories based on how much information I got from discerning. It seemd consistent across all spells from my testing that there were 3 distinct levels, but this could be wrong. For the purposes of my chart:

High information is a spell description, min and max preps, how to use the spell, difficulty information, prereqs, and finally your personal cap estimate.

Medium information contained min-max estimates, and your personal cap estimate.

Low information being only contained the min-max prep.

Difficulty	High	Med	Low
Introductory	6	0	0
Basic Totals	11	3	1
Advanced Totals	0	11	0
Esoteric Totals	0	0	9
Spellbook Totals	17	14	10

When results for a category were mixed, like basic, they seemed to correctly follow spell difficulty within the category based on min prep. I am able to cast all spells except Grounding Field, at least at min prep, even spells that yielded low information.

I am not certain if the verb is for players that have the spells, or for players that need information before choosing a spell. Either way I feel that if you are able to choose and cast a spell that a roughly at level Arcana rank should at least yield the medium information level, and that level should provide more information about the spell itself, even at the cost of not seeing your personal max prep estimate, as this would be more important information before choosing a spell.

I can provide the full table through email if anyone wants it.