Balance: Knights vs Mages

[Geras]

Mages don't attack people because they don't really have the tools to do so, wimple.

Kinky - Might be partly because of how much time people have invested in their characters. People are more willing to take risks earlier in the game. I also think it might be part of the relative balance of magic and combat systems, and the balance within the combat system. I feel the dynamics of the game change when a few people have maxed combat skills, maxed equipment, etc. I think the changes to the combat system helped bring more parity and put more importance on strength in numbers, but still.

If you wrote that list for the last 9 months, what would the breakdown be?

[Kinaed]

I don't see how mages can -not- have the tools to attack people if the knights and other people do have the tools to do so. There's nothing to stop either group from picking up a weapon. If anything, mages have more tools because they have access to magic (which may not be directly combative, but is still a leg up on practical "things they can do").

On the list for the last nine months, I'm not sure because I'm not familiar with all the names there. It is more weighted towards bad guys dying more often though, yes. This being said, I think it has to do with more salient factors like OOC fear than IC reality. People only began really testing out what combat can and can't do, from what I gather, around the time of the Tournament.

[wimple]

Most of my examples were thief/baddie examples and not mage examples, Geras, because I'm not familiar with the mage system. The remark about mages not attacking people had to do with IC politics (the mantra of several Mage leaders has been no harm to civvies) being against such things, not that mages were lazy for not doing it..

That said, the spells/tools I do know about for mages leave open lots of options for intimidation and spying/blackmail. Possibly (if working with others) kidnaps, as well. I just haven't really seen them used that way lately.

[Another]

My experiences playing mages thus far.

Arvin was a pacifist, born of a time in my life when I was experimenting with a kind of existential spirituality. Being my first character, I honestly had very little grasp on the setting, and I thank those involved for seeing that and letting it slide to the degree that they did. While never very powerful due to the XP limits on younger characters, Arvin probably would have lived longer had he actually fought back, but I wasn't about to change his nature just to prolong the character. He went out as peacefully as I could have hoped for.

Leto was decidedly the opposite. Cold, calculating, incognito. Had a lust for power and cruelty. An introverted loner by nature, but had a head for what to do to get what she wanted and the ability to put up a good front. Took only the avenues she thought were safest and would hide her in plain sight while still offering her opportunities to exert authority and flex her muscle from time to time. I was building her skills and biding my time until I thought she'd make a viable combatant, then was going to reveal her as a terrible, wicked witch and see how big of a rampage she could go on. Circumstances cut her short, though, so I can't honestly say how viable that would have been. I know I would not have felt comfortable putting her into an actual fight, nor even starting any real trouble with her, despite the fact that she was a very powerful mage by the time she died.


The bottom line is that every character, if they're looking to get into trouble, needs to have solid combat skills because that is what code supports. I argue that it mostly doesn't matter what else you do, even as far as magic and thievery skills go. They're only icing on the cake. This becomes especially true when you consider the kind of powerhouses that are now firmly situated on the order/reeve/knight side of the scale. That's not to say that the "good" side deserves to be punished for some reason; I'm sure it is only through hard work and good effort on their parts that things are as they stand right now, and I commend them for having such a solid grasp on things. But, playing Devil's Advocate, that does leave the "bad" side with decidedly little wiggle room. From my experience, I'm left trying to play catchup, and any given slip-up could make the whole house of cards come crashing down, amounting to nothing.

[Eris]

Then this is a matter for the magic revamp thread. I've never played a mage on any incarnation, so I can't really comment on the current spell limitations. But resurrection isn't the answer.

I'm not willing to budge that some of this isn't due to a combination of lazy RP AND a combination of current IC politics (mages not attacking people, etc). The laziness is both on the part of lawfulls who brush off any dealings with mages/thieves/south side to baddies not being more... outrightly bad (assaulting and/or kidnapping first responder type characters or randoms, blackmailing characters, thieving from houses/rooms/pickpockets).

Maybe I'm naive because I don't know how the magic system works, but I'm hesitant to believe there aren't options there.

Edit: While sky burning and weather changes don't seem really flashy, ICly that should be really terrifying - it could ICly bring on an economic depression or famine. People should react to such things accordingly.

I agree with Wimple and Kinky: I don't think that resurrection is the answer to this problem, and nor do I think that mages lack the ability to attack.

When I first started on TI:L, the general pbase was ICly terrified of mages: we had them breath-binding people in mass and kidnapping/attacking/killing. We also had Amethyst Beadle terrorising the population. Not only was there a bunch of RP going around, but it made people genuinely interested in what was going on.

I don't know much about magic, either, but from what I've heard, there are spells for sending people evil dreams/whispering in people's ears/breath binding/general harassment and connivery. Why aren't these being used?

I agree with wimple that the effort must come from both sides on this: people must be reacting appropriately ICly. But I think it's also a case of 'thinking outside the box' on generating fear ICly. I think that telling stories in pubs, casting more spells, holding masses and events etc. are great ways of generating interest.

[Takta]

I would actually agree with Geras, but I'd like to qualify this.

Mages have the tools to HARASS people. To sow strife, fear and discord. (Particularly one specific kind of mages: others have far less.)

They have a lot less access to the tools needed to ATTACK people - to kidnap and/or kill.

And the problem with telling them to just get combat skills is threefold:
1) Time. It takes a LOT of time to train a mage up powerfully. It takes almost as much time to train up a good combatant. It's going to be a long time before your mage has the chops to fight well enough to target anyone they'd want to target.
2) XP. Same as above, really.
3) Learn master slots. This, to me, is the kicker. Use three learn master slots on your magic (not an unusual number) You -really- want four for combat, even if you can get by with less. That leaves you probably all filled up, with no room for your cover identity's skills.

Actually building a mage who can fight is an affair that takes the kind of time and investment that's not likely, what with the speed they get caught - look at Leto's experience, after all.

Now, does this mean mages SHOULD be more dangerous? I'm torn on that. I think it would be nice if mages could fight without having to max out combat skills, at least to some extent.

But I do think it's an undeniable point that building a mage + combatant isn't an easy answer, and a mage alone is not easily able to execute pkills. One reason this might have changed since the earlier game is that you can't just purchase skills way high in chargen anymore - time is needed to build a powerhouse.

[Empheba]

I admit my ignorance when it comes to magery code, but if the main problem for mages is getting a little "physical oomph" in a combat situation, isn't it realistic to imagine mages over a certain skill or position in their ranks have access to accolytes (or wannabe-mages without magic skill)?
Those would be idealistic cannon fodder that might not stand a chance against a combat PC, but which are literally willing to sacrifice themselves to buy their master/mistress some time to get away ...?
.
Empheba

[Kinaed]

Mages are not intrinsically combative nor are they designed to be. If a mage wants to be combative, they can. I'm sorry, but not having time or xp is not the case, it's more a matter of having the wherewithal to make a choice to improve combat skills because they're important and slow learning of mage skills - just like a crafter would have to choose to improve craft skills before combat or whatever it is that players want to split between.

Remi was a mage. He stood toe to toe with Tobin at the tournament and was a known ass kicker.

It's true that after magic, mages don't have a lot of room for other stuff, but they do have room. In my eyes, mages don't need to be fighters anymore than my countess had to - but they sure can be if their player wants that. People can't have their cake and eat it too, nor should they. Mages do have, as stated and acknowledged, the ability to harass, scare, spy, intimidate, hamper, frame, and generally be a major nuisance - without ever lifting a weapon. Given all of that, adding combat ability does more than make them scary, it makes them unbalanced and impossible to deal with.

I remember how people felt when Amethyst was out there. It was fun for awhile, but after the PKs started stacking up, people just couldn't take it anymore - and no one actually even engaged her, they just assumed that it was physically not possible to take her in because she beat up Rafael and Paere. If we make mages combative, that general malaise will exist amongst the knights as a whole and the conflict will die as they all piss off. Why? Because mages aren't hampered combatively. They can do every thing a knight can do + magic. At least the knights have the knowledge that, generally speaking, if they catch a mage, something can be done - and they were even willing to engage Remi, despite how powerful of a fighter he was, because psychologically, it seemed like an even playing field with combat. And it was. Remi would have taken out most of the lower ranking knights without breaking a sweat or slinging a spell.

This argument is as old as TI's been alive. To me, it's similar to the arguments that you see on H&S games where people get up in arms about whether or not the various races and classes in their game are balanced - the cleric dies to the fighter and there's a whole bunch of 'cleric's aren't balanced!' It's not possible to know b/c we're not comparing apples to apples. Good guys and bad guys perform different game functions and characters aren't just about skills, but attitudes and personality. The knights are bad ass because they are willing to kill, practice it reasonably often, and actually are elite OOCly in knowing the combat system because they use it often, meaning they are comfortable with it. Mages and the laity don't generally get that opportunity or confidence unless they go out of their way to seek it, but if they don't, then it's not because they deserve everything the knights have worked for. But if they did, there is -nothing- stopping them from doing that any more than doing crafting or music or whatever other skills they want to pick up. It's just a choice to do so, and it's the same choice they exercise when deciding to pick up crafting beside their magic skills, or music, or stealth. Any player can master two spheres in game and do okay with the third. Pick two, accept you won't master the third, and be okay with it. For mages, it can be magic + combat as easily as magic + crafting or magic + stealth.

I don't get the whole argument about mages taking more time or XP to advance than anyone else, because, provided a full learn master list, they're capped just like everyone else at the same max XP spend and same max number of skills to get up before they've used all their slots. The comment I'm hearing is that mages need more to make players happy that they're well-rounded... but everyone has to make a choice and give on some skills they'd like to pick up. Without learn master slots to limit things, characters quickly become grandmaster at everything, making grandmaster the commonplace max skill and anything beneath that not worthwhile - which is ridiculous because it should mean something when someone is a grandmaster at something. It's like being an elite professional versus where everyone should naturally sit on the totem pole with every skill they have time to work on.

[Kinaed]

The bottom line is that every character, if they're looking to get into trouble, needs to have solid combat skills because that is what code supports. I argue that it mostly doesn't matter what else you do, even as far as magic and thievery skills go. They're only icing on the cake. This becomes especially true when you consider the kind of powerhouses that are now firmly situated on the order/reeve/knight side of the scale. That's not to say that the "good" side deserves to be punished for some reason; I'm sure it is only through hard work and good effort on their parts that things are as they stand right now, and I commend them for having such a solid grasp on things. But, playing Devil's Advocate, that does leave the "bad" side with decidedly little wiggle room. From my experience, I'm left trying to play catchup, and any given slip-up could make the whole house of cards come crashing down, amounting to nothing.

This is pretty succinctly the case. When developing my uber-combat mage, I made her a combatant first, and a mage second. Sometimes, I used magic so rarely at all that I even questioned why I bothered making her a mage.

This being said, I'm not sure the issue is about mages then, as much as entrenched, older characters versus newer's ability to catch up in a timely fashion. Is it really so hard though? Older players are capped. Newer characters getting to older character status doesn't strike me as impossible or even taking years and years - maybe six months?

[Jei]

No, it isn't hard at all to catch up. In fact, it's kind of alarming to me how quickly people can catch up, especially if we start waiving death xp for baddies. (Nevermind skill caps, how about the fact that they'll probably be using that xp to uber-bolt their stats?) Eh.. oh well.