Shamans and Potions

[Nicademus]

I think I suggested this idea a few years ago, but thought I would give it another whirl.

Under the concept that a shaman is a medicine man type of class, it seems that it would be consistent with the class to give it a skill/spell to identify potions. I was thinking of something like a skill called taste where a shaman can test the potion to determine only its effects and not its level. Obviously you could work in some degree of error which would result in inaccurate information and or triggering the potion's use and effecting the shaman with the spell in the potion and wasting the potion. Alternatively, shamans could just get a reg id type spell that only works on potions.

I think this would be a nice addition to game play and relieve some burden on mages who are already the iding workhorses. I know after doing 20 ids for someone, the last thing you want to see is someone pulling out another 20 potions for iding.

[Tiunara]

I think I suggested this idea a few years ago, but thought I would give it another whirl.

Under the concept that a shaman is a medicine man type of class, it seems that it would be consistent with the class to give it a skill/spell to identify potions. I was thinking of something like a skill called taste where a shaman can test the potion to determine only its effects and not its level. Obviously you could work in some degree of error which would result in inaccurate information and or triggering the potion's use and effecting the shaman with the spell in the potion and wasting the potion. Alternatively, shamans could just get a reg id type spell that only works on potions.

I think this would be a nice addition to game play and relieve some burden on mages who are already the iding workhorses. I know after doing 20 ids for someone, the last thing you want to see is someone pulling out another 20 potions for iding.

Or maybe a shaman should be able to make potions.

[Jashon]

I like both of these ideas. For being a magical class, it has always been my opinion that shamen are quite blind to magic.

I have also always thought that attunement should also show if a room is safe or not.

Perhaps, a peacefull feeling that can be felt. (though it is not hard to find out if a room is safe--for many novice players it can be challenging.)

[Gregar]

I like the idea of shamans being abe to make potions (mostly because I am one of the worst potion hoarders around and admit to being a bit selfish) though I'm not sure of how it would affect gameplay on the mud.

The idea of being able to sample a potion seems like something that could be balanced easier, perhaps since you're just taking a smal sample it automatically incurs the spells/affects of the potion but only at 1/4 of the real spell level, plus if you fail on the spell/taste you accidentally take everything & ruin the potion. I think I could deal with an ability like that.

As for the attunement idea, go for it, anything that makes attnement more useful would be great since it's a spell I pretty much never use. Right now if Attunement got pulled as an available spell I really wouldn't even notice. Having it let you know where a safe room is would be an OK start, but any player should know where the safe rooms are in a zone before they go (you're a fool if you don't). Perhaps a better utility to add to it would be to give a better idea of the spells affecting the room (maybe it's already been done and I don't know it since I've been gone so long)

[Nicademus]

We could probably open an entire thread regarding making shaman skills and spells more useful....

[Tynian]

I was thinking of something like a skill called taste where a shaman can test the potion to determine only its effects and not its level.

Interesting idea.

[Tynian]

Or maybe a shaman should be able to make potions.

I am not necessarily opposed to something like this, but I'd need to have a lot better idea on what you have in mind and how it would work.

[Elladan]

Because I've been playing Oblivion non-stop for the past 2 months, I like the idea of creating potions. Add new items, ingredients, random on mobs, or placed around 'wilderness' areas, or add mobs that leave ingredients behind (similar to stalks), and give Shapeople the ability to combine them to make potions of varying strength, based on the Shaperson's 'Brew' level. You could add prerequisite items/tools such as mortar and pestle, or a retort (yes, shamelessly stolen from aforementioned Oblivion, but it works).
You could limit the types of potions to single effect, or, if you want to make things really complicated, multi-effect based on the number and type of ingredients.
On the negative side, this will add just one more item to hoard and Locate to the list, especially for the rarer ingredients. A way around that, possibly, is to make a generic item, called ingredient, and allow only Shapeople to identify its properties, similar to a Bard's score.

[Nicademus]

To be honest I was really luke warm on the entire mixing potion concept and really only in favor of the iding type skill. However this idea has a lot of merit. Shamans are very difficult to play, especially xp, as they get hit hard, rift takes forever to be effective and cloak is boarderline useless (should be doubled in str - that is another thread). Aside from that Shamans have a series of spells and skills that are little to no benefit (ie weave, harvest, attune, soulsense, give move, etc. (not including spells such as fear that would be great if they could land)). Anyway, if shamans could mix armor, shield, stoneskin, sanct, heal, cure crit, or any other number of spells as potions it would really add to the class viability and I think greatly impact the gaming experience.

If you (Tynian) are interested in improving shamans, I think this is a good idea and I have more if we want to entertain them....

-Nic

[Tynian]

If something inspires me, I'll consider coding it.

[Natilena]

If you want to go the crafting route rather than the "sniff and id" idea.... This is what I would envision more for shamans. It will seem sort of random as an idea but some of us are working today and I'm running out of time to form clear thoughts. :P

Get off the potion idea, that would make them too much like an alchemist/magey type. Go for having them make an edible tincture, Pill type I guess but "pill" doesn't sound right. I see it as a handful of herbs or something, maybe a tea? *ponder*

I liked the idea of having it add to the fullness though.

A shaman medicine man idea described in the thread would be much more meaningfull like this - not potions. Dude sitting there with a mortar grinding up the herbs.

Recipies for creating these, need a pinch of this a touch of that would really bring in people searching out the limits of the abilities. I think tasks like this are immensely popular.. try this try that until you have found all the possible variations. So to that end make it expandable.

It would be the pain of creating the relationships of ingredient to final that would be harder than the coding for this.

Handful of berries > crushed in mortar > becomes berry mush

Fungus > crushed in mortar > becomes fungus dust

Mix mush with fungus in mortar > becomes specific tincture

Can be eaten for X effect

But those are specific items already, that would almost require going through entire area files that would be bad.

So maybe the ingredients need to be created from a shaman spell cast on an object. Finally create a use for seeds too :P Or expand harvest to get something from almost every item type. Even from metal armor you could possibly get some metal shavings. Everyone wants metal shavings in their tea

[Nicademus]

I still think that being able to id or test potions makes a lot of sense. Again, it will reduce the burden on mages and make shamans more viable. The creation of potions does have the concern you raise (ie that they are not alchemists), but being able to test the magical properties of a potion seems very consistent with shamans.

[Gregar]

So maybe the ingredients need to be created from a shaman spell cast on an object. Finally create a use for seeds too :P Or expand harvest to get something from almost every item type. Even from metal armor you could possibly get some metal shavings. Everyone wants metal shavings in their tea

I like your idea but think we could put a twist that would make it easier to code & relatively useful. Right now fetishes can be ok but I don't see many shamans using them. I also agree with the problems with harvest. How about we make both of them more useful. A spell called transferral (or the likes) that lets you transfer a spell from a fetish into a seed. The transferral would take one or two charges (two if balanced play is a problem, can be justified that there's always some loss when transferring energy, even magical energy) from the fetish, and put them into the seed which is now a pill that has the spell of the same spell level from the fetish.

As a side efect, if the shaman looses concentration or such, he would have the magical energy feed back into him smilar to what happens if a shaman were to try using a wand. This feedback would also risk destroying the magic item.

In this manner, a shaman could then create seeds for any spell in the game, but they would have to do some randoming to get the fetishes they need, and some work to gather enough seeds. (I just hope this last entry isn't so late tynian doesn't get the chance to read it)

[Anathema]

Sounds like a great idea. Im for it!