The Mana World Forums

I had a quick idea for a new spell.

I'm not sure what the invocation should be, but the result would be something that has a very low chance of instantly killing the target. If the spell does not cause instant-death, it would do 1 damage. I think the cooldown time should be low so the spell can be cast extremely frequently, but only have perhaps a 1 time per 2 hours chance of instant-death if cast constantly after the cooldown (ie, cooldown is 1 second, so it would have a .013% chance of instant death, which is once in two hours if cast every 1 second).

This would add a new strategy for boss fights; instead of using a traditional RPG healer/tank/DPS group for attacking bosses, a group of entirely mages could be used to heal each other and to cast the insta-death spell to try and kill the boss in one hit (4 casters could statistically insta-kill Valia in about a half hour with the given example). It could add an interesting element to PVP where a low level player could insta-kill a level 99 with a bit of luck.

Implementation should be pretty easy; there would be a random roll where one result deals one damage, and the other result either kills the target, or deals such a large amount of damage that any target would die (probably some sort of max value for the storage type of the damage number).

Thoughts?

Only if the quest(line) to obtain the spell is extremely hard and secret, so that not all mages will easily have the spell. Maybe even certain stats and equipment requirements to cast the spell. Or, why not, a chance for the spell to backfire and instantly kill the caster.

WARNING: Do not mix the suggestions above together as it may cause collateral effects such as: total inability to obtain the spell, stress, death.

.:WildX:. wrote:Only if the quest(line) to obtain the spell is extremely hard and secret, so that not all mages will easily have the spell. Maybe even certain stats and equipment requirements to cast the spell. Or, why not, a chance for the spell to backfire and instantly kill the caster.

WARNING: Do not mix the suggestions above together as it may cause collateral effects such as: total inability to obtain the spell, stress, death.

I agree it should be fairly difficult to obtain. Instead of stat and equipment requirements, I think we could do a more natural sort of limit, such as a minimum magic attack where the caster would need a strong combination of stats and equipment, but leave the player free to decide how to meet the limit.

I hadn't considered side effects to the caster. I think killing the caster might be fun, but I wonder if we could heal the target instead (negative damage?)

I also forgot about items consumed by the spell. Even if the items were extremely cheap (acorn, maggot slime, etc.) you'd statistically need 7200 to have one effective cast. Again, I don't know if it's technically possible, but maybe one rather expensive item could be consumed both randomly (ie, 1% chance to consume the item and not insta-kill) and on a successful cast.

GARRETTtheGREAT wrote:I also forgot about items consumed by the spell. Even if the items were extremely cheap (acorn, maggot slime, etc.) you'd statistically need 7200 to have one effective cast. Again, I don't know if it's technically possible, but maybe one rather expensive item could be consumed both randomly (ie, 1% chance to consume the item and not insta-kill) and on a successful cast.

An expensive catalyst that gets consumed if the spell backfires would be doable.

Jaxad0127 wrote:An expensive catalyst that gets consumed if the spell backfires would be doable.

Excellent.

Any ideas for an invocation, quest, etc?

Jaxad0127 wrote:An expensive catalyst that gets consumed if the spell backfires would be doable.

when scripting this be aware that the command CATALYST doesn't work in the spell language. you have to use a workaround.

tux9th wrote:

Jaxad0127 wrote:An expensive catalyst that gets consumed if the spell backfires would be doable.

when scripting this be aware that the command CATALYST doesn't work in the spell language. you have to use a workaround.

Er, it should work just fine.

last time I tried it didn't and all the scripts using a catalyst use a workaround.

The dark petal item that allowed players to warp to Easter Island is such a catalyst, and seemed to function fine for the most part.

mistergrey wrote:The dark petal item that allowed players to warp to Easter Island is such a catalyst, and seemed to function fine for the most part.

And I indeed encountered the problem with CATALYST when writing that. Fortunately, it's possible to write a completely equivalent clause using REQUIRE, as in (REQUIRE count_item(caster, "DarkPetal")). I am not sure whether the actual CATALYST construct is still problematic.


---Freeyorp