Armifer and I have been discussing it lately and we're pondering if teleologic sorcery couldn't use some minor buffing.

How do people feel about the current state of it? In general we want it to be a temptation, but it's going to remain somewhat specialized and niche and it's not intended that everyone use it.

Do you find a use for the existing spells? Does this out weigh the cost in corruption? What could be better about them?

Some other minor buffs I'd be willing to consider would include a decrease in the penalty to prediction power (from obscene to massive) or introduction of an align-like ability that requires certain levels of corruption, though I'm not sure what it would do.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Found the post I was thinking about.

In post #12 (1194 in legacy) you ask about the teleo spells and what would make them better. My response is still pretty much the same as it was then.
http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Moon%20Mages/Complaints%20-%20Moon%20Mages/thread/1727364?get_newest=true

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Elanthipedia - https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
Epedia Admins - https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Elanthipedia:Administrators

As an ardent sorceror but not a teleologic sorceror I'm not tempted by the teleo suite. It's handy for reversing curses but my perception (accurate or not) is that TS is 4 spells that stun moon mages, fill pools and reverse a curse. Even if I wasn't CC it's not different enough from our vanilla skills to seduce me and convince me to throw sect rp out the window.

I see Tangled Fate and Tezirah's Veil get used in tandem with an empath to quickly lock astro while generating lots of wounds for the empath to heal. I wish instead of nerve damage it would result in greater teleologic corruption in the caster. I'd like to see any other drawback to casting TS other than repetitively self induced nerve damage.

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I'd be curious as to how many people for use it for an IG purpose other than moving experience. I'm not sure it isn't, for most people, the magical equivalent of braiding grass.

I've never used TS or even found one of the scrolls, so bear in mind what I know about the spells is mainly drawn from epedia.

I love the concept of TS, of lunar magic having its dark and secret mysteries. It has the hint of the arcane, of the forbidden, of the hidden laboratory in a shadowy tower. All of that attracts me as a Moon Mage very much.

The truth is that nothing I read on epedia about TS spells gave me any kind of OMG moment. The spells were interesting to be sure and cleverly written but nothing I thought I would ever need or use.

By contrast, the astral plane is a fabulous concept and well conceived, plus it's surpassingly useful. Even when one can climb past the gondola and swim all the rivers on the mainland, the astral plane is needed for Muspar'i and definitely for trans-oceanic travel. Due to fast travel options open to more players now, the astral plane has lost much of its specialness, but it's still useful in the right situation. It's also not necessary for a Moon Mage to use, but it accomplishes something nothing else can. This is also true of prediction.

Honestly, you could remove all the TS penalties and I probably still wouldn't use it. The problem is that nothing about the spells grabs me, and that's a shame because I love the sorcery concept and really want to be grabbed just like I am with the astral plane or prediction. It's not the push-away that stops me but rather the lack of a pull-toward.

It's not something I've thought much about, so I don't really have any answers right now except the vague sense that all of TS, including scrolls, could probably be incorporated into a darker branch of prediction, which would make that a more multi-layered and depthy system.

I have all four of the teleologic spells memorized, mostly because I love the concept/flavor. I'm sad to say I get little use out of them though other than shock value and social outrage. None of them seem very useful/powerful - which is strange considering all the drawbacks and the difficulty acquiring them.

Tangled Fate: since predictions last like 30 seconds with high levels of teleologic corruption, I rarely have active predictions to tangle. It seems counter-intuitive that it is less useful to actual sorcerers than people who never cast it. I really only use this spell to train Sorcery.

Tezirah's Veil: As a debilitation spell, have not noticed real tangible effects casting this on monsters/players. Seems mostly to be flavor. Sometimes use this to train sorcery or fill astrology pools, but the nerve damage is extreme and you have to have two dedicated Empaths to really benefit from it.

Sovereign Destiny: Not sure how powerful the stat debuff is on this one, Elanthipedia lists it as "minor." Which is a shame because I think it's the only Moon Mage spell that applies a stat debuff since the loss of the old Tezirah's Veil... The secondary effects that only apply when specifically PVPing Moon Mages make it feel niche and silly though.

Sever Thread: I like the way this spell worked, being able to cast it and trigger it on demand- the immobilization is good, but maybe not enough. I have no idea how the informational aspect of the spell is supposed to be of benefit. It's even less useful than the messaging from Seer's Sense.

You look inside yourself, surrendering your mind to the Sever Thread spell.
You see an indistinct, shadowy vision of a creature bound in irons.
You see a cougar standing behind you, ready to strike.
You see lightning strike a man out of a clear sky.
You see a murder of crows descending on a bloody battlefield.
You see nothing else.
Roundtime: 3 sec.

I also am not a fan of how you have to wait until the "taint" of some of these spells expires before you can even cast them again, which makes them feel even more underpowered compared to the regular spells. Would love to have that revisited as well. Or at least maybe some warning when I prep them that I won't be able to cast them... But I guess the same could be said for all those wasted casts of Burn/Dazzle with no celestial light available.

In my opinion the biggest problem is that the book, as a whole, works best when fighting a moon mage in PvP. In other situations its' utility drops off markedly.

TF - as a dabbler I find this spell to be incredibly useful. I had no idea that the buffs dropped off rapidly with higher corruption, but it doesn't make sense for the effects of a TS spell to become worse with higher corruption. On the other hand, if the spell reduced stronger predictions to a very weak 3 minute duration I would drop it (and probably teleologic sorcery) in a heartbeat. What is the point of a short lived spell that basically does nothing?

Perhaps the effect on the predictions strength should decrease with higher corruption (since the prediction would be weaker anyway) even to the point of TF boosting the power of a very weak prediction on a fully corrupt mage. This does create the problem of a non-sorcerer predicting on a sorcerer and creating a mega-buff. Perhaps the buff strength would need to be tied, at least in part, to the casters Astrology skill (i.e. the increase or decrease in potency would need to be tied to the strength of the prediction, the strength of the spell, the casters corruption and the astrology skill of the caster)

TV - I think it is a great spell. I know it because it is our only skill debuff. It is also a decent anti-moon mage spells. If I ever swim out of the shallow end of the pool this will probably be my primary debilitation and sorcery trainer.

SOD - This spell has its' uses but I just don't find it compelling enough at the moment (it was previously on my list of spells to get once I gain a few slots). If it could be self cast it would look a lot better on paper. It is our only stat debuff, BUT it is very limited in this regard by the fact that it debuffs the same stats that you needed to beat to use it in the first place. If I solidly trounce my target I get a big debuff that I didn't need. If I beat my target slightly the debuff is very mild and doesn't help much. It is primarily an anti-Moon Mage spell BUT TF and TV both fill that role as well. Perhaps the most interesting effect it has is preventing a Moon Mage from teleporting or opening a Moon Gate. Sadly, I don't PvP.

SET - I really have trouble seeing a use for this spell except maybe in PVP. Maybe if I think of it as something like Dragon's Breath I can wrap my head around it. It does have a significant overlap with Seer's Sense so maybe when you look into the clairvoyance aspect of that spell you might be able to make similar changes to SET? Although it seems to have the right slot cost (compare Soul Sickness), I just can't see spending three slots on an immobilize when we have so many spells that do substantially the same things, some of which are basically mandatory (Calm/Hypnotize and Mental blast specifically)




Overall, I would like to use TS more. The biggest problem I have is that I not longer learn debilitation at level due to very high mentals and the only way to spam TS is to cast on others. Furthermore, I am not sure that the anti-moon mage focus of the spells is really compelling enough to give up astrology. Of course, now that I have discovered how weak TF is with full corruption and it was the primary reason to get into TS to begin with, I may stick to being a dabbler.

<<I also am not a fan of how you have to wait until the "taint" of some of these spells expires before you can even cast them again, which makes them feel even more underpowered compared to the regular spells. Would love to have that revisited as well. Or at least maybe some warning when I prep them that I won't be able to cast them... But I guess the same could be said for all those wasted casts of Burn/Dazzle with no celestial light available.

Yeah, this is a pain particularly with Tangled Fate which actually has a long-ish duration despite it being short compared to other buff spells and prediction. If Tangled Fate gets looked at in terms of balancing out the effects for sorcerers vs. sorcery-dabblers then this will get even more skewed as the prediction itself would last a lot longer.

I would suggest instead of having a blanket "You can't cast teleology if you have another teleologic spell in effect" that it operates on an individual spell basis. E.g. you can still only cast Tangled Fate once but you can cast Tezirah's Veil to debuff your enemies while under its effects.

One additional suggestion I would have for this is base this on corruption levels. So a dabbler might only be able to cast one teleologic spell at a time, a middling level corruption sorcerer might be able to cast one or two additional unique teleologic effects, and a sorcerer with capped corruption can cast one of every teleologic effect.

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Buffs and debuffs are symmetrical, yes.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

How high are you casting? I haven't had my hands blow off in months from casting holy, life and elemental sorcery.

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>Pretty sure prep amount does not increase sorcerous backlash chance.

If you're casting over your cap you'll see more severity when you do backlash. Casting Sever Thread/Sovereign Destiny is much riskier than casting Tangled Fate/Tezirah's Veil.

If you've got more than ~500 (not a hard number) sorcery ranks and knowledge of the sorcerous patterns magical feat, major limb damage should be a very rare event.

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