josan motierre

No offence Hassat Hunter, but you described one of the most boring mechanics possible for someone who enjoys to use summoning. I've stated my case a few times though so I'm not going to drag it all up again (at least, not that much). Seems there's a lot of people that don't really understand, enjoy or use summoning spells but still want to design them for other people to use. It's like having fashion experts designing combat equipment for the army - in other words, no fun for the poor sods that have to use the garbage. You can cut all the complexity out of something and it'll be balanced, but it'll be boring as hell. It won't effect you of course - you won't use them anyway. It'll just effect those who want to use summoning spells as a primary weapon, only to find out they've once again been given squeaky play mallets while everyone else is using a weapon. I've recently played a bit of Age of Conan. Of course I went straight for the Necromancer and experienced a new kind of summoning which worked quite well. I can't say that it's my favourite kind of summoning but it's simple enough in mechanics that it'll keep people happy and gives enough of an illusion of summoning that it's not that bad. Summons are weak in HP and plentiful but draw no aggro - the enemies ignore them and go straight for the summoner. In this way, they're a bit like a whole heap of Damage Over Time spells that are very fancily and cleverly disguised as summons. You can have a satisfying amount of them (8 or 10 from what I recall) and you can cause one of them to temporarily become a tank by using a spell with a rather hefty cooldown. It bolsters the damage and health of one of the minions for 10 seconds or so and causes that minion to draw all aggro. Due to the incredibly low health of the minion, it's guaranteed to die in the process. So how's that, people? DoTs are balanced, aren't they? Why not have 8 of them and make them look like they're doing something as they run around. It'll make you happy because the tactical advantage of a summon is completely gone. No more tanking. No more complexity. It's just a nice, simple, glorified Damage Over Time spell. This way the summoner can be pretty much exactly like a wizard, except for his cleverly disguised DoTs.

I can't believe I actually read this entire thread. What a marathon. Although some of the most heinous crimes may make you really think that someone should die, upon reaching that conclusion, you have forfeited reason and begun to think emotionally. This is the entire problem with the death penalty. The death penalty in modern society will always be wrong. Humans are infallible and while ever there is a chance of error (which there ALWAYS is, even with "clear cut" evidence) then the death penalty is simply wrong because it is irreversible. The chance of wrongly convicting someone is simply too high - especially because of police corruption and other factors. There have been cases of people who have been imprisoned for decades because of an engineered case by corrupt police, or simply because of a mistake. If you took the lives of these people, then the justice system has failed. It serves to PROTECT, not to PUNISH. That is why the whole vengeance side of things needs to be left out. You just have to remove the criminal from society by locking them up to keep the rest of society safe. You might say "Oh but what about the guy who was caught red handed drinking the blood of an innocent child!" but my stance does not change. Even if there is no chance that this person isn't guilty, the law should not discriminate. It should treat the suspect as it should any suspect because it fundamentally MUST be applied EQUALLY to EVERYONE. Thus the death penalty still inappropriate. The death penalty is an emotional punishment full of vengeance. It is reckless because it is final and cannot be reversed. It is fundamentally wrong because the law is supposed to protect, and if it executes the wrong person then it has failed. It is simply a relic from the days when things were more brutal, because no one had resources to spare to do things right. --- As for those pictures of the Norwegian prisons, I find them absolutely disgusting. A prison shouldn't be a palace.

I came here to support Project Eternity. I stay here because I genuinely believe that the people on this forum are very intelligent and the discussions here are very entertaining. Compared to most forums, especially the Blizzard forums *shudders*, this place is heaven.

I don't think that simply being grateful is enough. I've always been polite and genuinely take care that all of my dealings with people cause them no more discomfort than is necessary. I show them all the respect gratitude that I would give myself had they performed the same service to me, which is often more than most would give, but I'm often unhappy regardless. I'd say that perhaps being grateful is important to happiness. After all, if one is truly ungrateful for everything then nothing holds any value to him. But clearly it is more complicated than that.

It could never be real. That is because it would always be a simulation of reality. However, it could fool a lot of people. You'd need one hell of a RAM chip to store all the variables and one hell of a CPU to dynamically check everything. Honestly, I can't think of any hardware or software EVER being able to do it. Even if you could get hardware that could store such an immense amount of data and retrieve it fast enough, no human could complete the necessary code. It'd take thousands of lifetimes. If it were to be done, humans would start it but then probably use a very powerful computer and genetic algorithms to code everything. This would complete it faster than humans ever could. I think you'd find that to approach such a project you would need to use an Object Orientated paradigm, and I shudder just thinking of one of the most basic of classes: an atom. There'd be more variables just inside this one class than I can think of. I am a programmer, but not a scientist. It'd require collaboration and cooperation between every specialist upon the world to work upon it. Off the top of my head, you'd require at least the coordinates for the atom in 3D space, its mass, how much radiation it emits and how many protons and neutrons are circulating around it. Every other piece of matter in this simulation would be a class made up of thousands of atoms all aligned in a certain way to create an object. Think about it that every time a force acted upon an object, that the positions of billions and trillions of atoms would all have to be updated in relation to each other. It almost blows the mind. Furthermore, imagine that you get all the physics right. That is probably the easiest part. The complex stuff would then be simulating humans and creating the AI for them. We still can't make properly intelligent AI now when we focus on just that. However, i wonder if when all the physics were right if the AI problem would solve itself... copy a brain in a perfect representation and you'd have an artificial intelligence. We still wouldn't understand how it works, though. However, if you think too hard about these things... is anything really even real? Everything that we see is simply light. Everything that we experience is filtered through our limited senses... and not immediately, either. There is a delay while our brain processes everything. Our present is just a recent past. I mean, we can't even see things like gravity or time. Only the effects of these things. Of everything that happens in the universe, we can only perceive a miniscule fraction of it, and comprehend even less. I have long been of the opinion that since we evolved on earth, to comprehend just earth, it may be beyond humans to ever naturally comprehend the entire universe. However, artifically... perhaps. We are really very, very small and insignificant things compared to the universe. Oh I find that really so comforting, that everything that could ever happen here on earth is so, so SO insignificant compared to some of the other things out there. A roaming black hole could swallow us whole before we even noticed. And even if we did notice, the world's governments are so unprepared that we'd all just enjoy spaghettification.

Russian have big ****. Russian need no weak NATO tin can. Need only put **** in forefront and charge into battle. Many angles, no problem. **** can launch payload at any angle.

Creedance Clearwater Revival - Green River! Awwwwww yeaaaahhh! I can hear the bullfrog callin' me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JacHyPaEwDc Yeah sorry. I don't know how to embed a youtube video in a forum post.

While ever you're thinking of summons purely within the D&D system there will never be an effective enough method of implementing them. It's like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. In order to make it fit, you have to shrink the summon to a tiny enough size that it'll fit inside, and even then it's not a proper fit which is why everyone then complains about how broken it is or how out of place it feels. What you've suggested isn't really a summon. It's just a different kind of fireball. It's a fireball that unleashes its payload in small bursts rather than all at once, but it's still a fireball. It's like a Damage Over Time spell from WoW except it can change who it hurts on the fly. What you have done is taken the idea of a summon, thought about it within the D&D context and realised it can't work, then changed the summon into a spell so it can work. To make it seem more like a summon, you've called it a Spirit of Flame and allowed it to move around a bit. But I have a question... why would anyone use it? In most situations I can think of it'd be better to deal all the damage the spell can do in one shot (using a Fireball), than patiently waiting for damage to be dealt by its Spirit of Flame counterpart. It'd only pay off if it dealt significantly more damage over time than a Fireball could deal in one blast. Even then, it would only be useful for a one specific scenario: Efficiently killing weak creatures - If there are 12 goblins in an area, but your fireball spell won't reach all of them, the Spirit of Flame could slowly and more efficiently kill them. Otherwise you'd be better off not wasting time and blowing the enemy away with a fireball. You're also forgetting that since a summon can't deal all of its potential damage in one blow, like a fireball, it needs time to serve as a distraction just to justify its existence. If a summon isn't providing a distraction, then the enemy is still hitting you AND the spell hasn't paid for itself. You could well die just waiting for the Spirit of Flame to deal half the damage a conventional fireball could. With all that said, I like your idea so long as not all summons were to become like this.

Here's a fantastic solution. Good to see some people donned the thinking cap. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24022866

I think the police did the right thing there. Little kids should be shown right and wrong. It's a shame the police have to step in and be parents as well.

I hope they wait for the report to come back simply because it's the right thing to do. If the shoe was on the other foot, the US would be telling whoever else to wait for the report. I agree with Walsingham in that it isn't right that just because the US made a mistake once that they never act again, although I wish it to be far more cautious this time. They need to make sure everything is sound and the facts are in place before they start anything. That includes waiting for the UN report.

There are many brilliant possibilities for non-combat summons. In D&D, there are spells like Unseen Servant (an invisible and very weak creature that can perform tasks for you, but cannot fight) and Prying Eyes (floating eyes to scout for you). Anyone who played Warcraft 2 would remember that an Ogre Magi could summon an Eye of Kilrog. This was a floating eye that didn't last very long and would die to a few arrows but could fly at incredible speed. It was used for scouting. In Diablo 2 the druid could summon spirits that floated alongside the druid and gave him defence bonuses or damage bonuses. He could also summon forth a plant that would devour the corpses of enemies to replentish the druids mana. Another sort could be summoned that devoured corpses to replentish health. I'm sure the brilliant minds here can come up with even better ideas for P:E.

If you mean the genocide, no. I was 3 years old then. The UN hasn't even given its report yet, as far as I'm aware. The world should at least wait for that before launching any strikes.

Well, that would be jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence - which is precisely our problem with immediately condemning Assad with doing something that would severely risk foreign intervention... which would be his downfall. But if you're perfectly ok with jumping to conclusions that fit your bias, irrespective of the truth, then you're a rather scary person. As for the killing, that will continue anyway regardless.

Adopt a Syrian family? Good idea. He can give them food and shelter, and they can give him the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad!

Why not? There are countries in the world that choose not to enter conflicts. For example, France in the Iraq War.

If there's an intervention, it won't be done right. It needs to be done Roman Style. A proper occupation for a few centuries to make sure every last troublemaker is rooted out and so that later generations can't remember anything differently. Then Democracy can work, and there's enough time for proper human rights to grow and the separation of religion and state enforced. Part of me is being silly, but part of me also isn't. I think such a thing would also have worked in Afghanistan. Or maybe it'll all escalate into WW3. Stranger things have happened. We already have big players (Russia, China, other middle eastern countries) behind Assad, and other big players behind the rebels (USA, France, UK, ...). Whatever happens, thanks to Russia's anti air support and Assad's chemical stockpile, troops are going to have to be deployed on the ground. At any rate, my opinion is the same: Best just to sit this one out.

I'm just not sure about it, Bruce. An intervention might end the civil war, but it won't fix the rest of the problems. At least under Assad the extremists were kept in check... democracy in Egypt put the extremists in power. The extremists are worse than any regime. Since the rebels are also these extremists, by supporting them, you're assuring that people like the Muslim Brotherhood will try to drag the country back into the dark ages.

The more I hear of the Syrian Civil War the more clear it becomes to me that the Assad Regime is simply the lesser of two evils. The Rebels are far too splintered to warrant backing. Even though there are some good rebels they are far too few. You'll end up with another Egypt if the Assad Regime falls - if you're lucky. Intervention doesn't win 'the west' any allies. Even if you carry a drowning country out of the water, it'll still be your fault later that they have to dry themselves or that you didn't leave them a big enough towel to do it with. Let the Middle East deal with it. I don't think any of them helped bail out Greece. These countries aren't even ready for democracy. They lack the human rights framework underneath to support it properly. Don't agree? Egypt is proof. Tunisia is proof. I think some of these countries need to find their own way without outside help.

For a spell of that nature, it could work a bit like a durability system. The creature is damaged by being used. This could be reflected by a decrease of his total hitpoints by a set amount every time it is killed in combat, based upon the biggest attack it received in the previous fight. eg. Imp has 500hp. *Summons imp for the fight* During the fight, the most damaging attack dealt to the imp was 75 damage. *Unsummons imp. Imp now has 425hp* *Summons for the next fight* Biggest hit was 52 damage. *Unsummons imp. Imp now has 373hp* The trend continues until the imp is more or less worthless. I think this'd have to go with the unique contract related summons I mentioned before though, which are unique/one of a kind summons granted from a quest/plot thing.

That summons are simply disposable, temporary muscle pushes summoning to a very boring sideline. A very traditional sideline. It ensures that summoning will always be a bonus on the side and never a primary means of fighting. As far as I'm concerned, the answer has already been found. The rest is just brainstorming for our enjoyment. Here is the answer: Simply give a summoner a few core, reliable summons and treat them like his weapons and allow them to grow with him. Treat a stronger summon like a sword in a virtual hand, of which only one type can be summoned (1 strong golem, demon, beast, undead, etc). Treat a group of weaker summons like the finger knives of his offhand (5 weaker summons such as skeletons, dogs, large beetles, whatever). Finally and most importantly, make the summoner weak, helpless and basically useless. Give all the fighting prowess to his summons. That's the outline of the solution. Instead of a Fighter or Wizard who has 100% of his power in himself, the Summoner should have 45% of his power in his primary summon, 45% of his power in his secondary weaker summons (9% each), and 10% of his power to himself in minor abilities that enhance his summons (such as perhaps a heal, or a curse that weakens enemies so that his summons are more effective). Imagine a NWN2 Wizard with an empty spellbook except for a row of level 1 spells. The best he can do individually is maybe cast something like Entanglement or Oil Slick so that his victims can't escape his minions. This is how weak he should be. The powers of all the other spells should all go into his minions. I don't see what's wrong with this at all. With this implementation, a non summoner can still have the traditional summons if he wishes. It just means that should a player want serious summons he can have them in a fair and balanced way. Dismissing this entire thread as a "tempest in a teapot" would mean that it summoning is a small event, and our ideas are blown way out of proportion. That is perhaps to an extent true... we don't want a summon to be a small event, we want it to be a primary means of combat. As for the "answer in search of a question", we don't like the way our summoning has been in previous games... so we are questioning it. If you want to be a pure summoner, then the implementation of summoning used in NWN style games is a BAD ANSWER. Like you said "Disposable, temporary muscle" that is a bad answer our vision of summoning, hence why we question it.

I like Vatican spellcasting and Mana style spellcasting, but both have their problems. The Vatican problem is that you run out of low level spells and have to rely on wands and things, as discussed in this thread. One of mana's biggest problems has always been spamming the same powerful spell over and over. This led to cooldowns which is a terrible, and terribly widespread, mechanic. For powerful spells the Vatican system is ideal, because you only get limited uses of this spell each 'day'. What I propose is simply use the Mana system for low level spells so they can be used and used and used, until the mana is depleted. Then it can recharge, or be restored with a potion. Then there's no need for wands and scrolls. For the most powerful spells, use the Vatican system. That ensures they must be saved and used at the right moment. For the weaker spells, use Mana. I honestly don't know why game designers haven't done this yet. If you did it to NWN, you'd have it so that all spells below level 5 use Mana. All spells after, and including, level 5 use the Vatican system. Both systems compensate each other so well it boggles my mind that it hasn't been done yet.

I apologise for not reading most of the responses in this thread. I'll give my thoughts - hopefully they have not been said before me. In response to the OP: In a lot of games you find a potion similar to this potion I've just invented: Potion of the Berserker. For 20 seconds, your player deals 10% more damage with 2H weapons. Now that's just completely useless to me. A lot of things can happen in a fight, and 20 seconds of 10% more damage is pretty much irrelevant. You can pop the potion, and find that you've just missed twice with your sword. There goes 5 seconds. Oops, I need to retreat a bit. There goes another 7 seconds. For the remaining 8 seconds, I might manage to deal an extra 20 damage to an enemy. BIG WHOOP. I'd rather sell that for 50gp, or just dump it and carry something more useful. That doesn't even take into account spell casting potentially taking up even more of the 20 seconds. Even potions such as Potions of Invisibility are largely useless. A player that would want/require invisibility already has a stronger type of invisibility in the form of a spell. A player that doesn't have the spell for invisibility in most situations doesn't need invisibility - they have other methods that they rely upon for the 90% of the time they don't have potions. Instead, I propose that this type of potion is ditched completely. Instead, I believe a potion should be much rarer... and much more useful. Elixir of Intelligence. Once consumed, grants a permanent +1 to Intelligence. Potion of Swordsmanship. Once consumed, grants a permanent +1 to Sword Skill. These are the types of potions that I propose. Significantly, but not extremely, rare and very expensive if purchased. An Elixir of Strength... Now THAT is a useful potion. It grants a permanent attribute or skill increase.

As Lephys has just said, the outright and permanent death of a minion begs for reload... but I think there is a potential solution. What if the death didn't bring about the loss of a summon, but its change? The change could still be somewhat disadvantageous, but perhaps welcome or endurable enough to not reload. What if the death of the Great Demon Globrubu resulted in the next time you summoned him, he was the Great Undead Demon Globrubu. This Undead Globrubu might have the disadvantage of being vulnerable to holy damage and maybe an inability to be healed, but perhaps the immunity to disease and plague cloud that follows him is worth the trade. Perhaps the demonic contract for the Great Demon Globrubu is so powerful that it extends to his kin. Thus if the defeat of a very challenging boss was so challenging that it was not worth a reload, despite losing the Great Demon Globrubu, the player would be satisfied because he can still summon Globrubu II - a slightly weaker or different kind of Globrubu. Perhaps he deals less damage and has less health, but is faster. I'm not sure if this idea is good or not, but I'm just throwing it out there. It would mean that if such a creature died, it wouldn't be the players first reaction to reload. Instead the player might be inclined to play further and test the new minion, maybe far enough that reloading wouldn't be worth the lost time just to restore a slightly stronger type of summon - especially if it was well spent on a very difficult boss fight.

That is a most intriguing and cool idea. It'd lend itself very nicely to a bunch of possibly summoner specific quests that somehow involve a pact with a demon which obligates it to assist you. Or perhaps even better, some quests have a summoner-specific outcome. Although the summoner would have to be careful to dismiss it or protect it somehow, for should it die in combat this unique summon would be lost. I can't think of a good story line for such a quest at the moment... but I think it'd have to involve tricking the entity somehow, or defeating it so utterly that it submits to your contract or faces destruction. I can't think of too many creatures that would be willing to give someone the ability to summon them at will and force them to fight to their deaths. Perhaps a quest could go something like this: trange and terrible rumours have come from Wicking - a relatively minor and unknown land, with a relatively unknown lord called Benedict. Benedict has always been kind and fair to his people, and the atrocities supposedly committed in his lands run contrary to his good reputation. Upon investigation, the player discovers that this lord has been assassinated by a demon who has been impersonating him and doing unspeakable things with the lord's power. Upon defeating this demon in combat, the demon is left to the players mercy. The player can: A) Kill the demon (as any good paladin would do) B) Banish the demon back to its home realm, but with a condition. It must sign a pact with the player which means that the player can summon it forth at will to fight and to die. C) Some other equally brilliant quest resolution that I can't think of at the moment Should the player choose B, this would grant the player a unique spell of summoning. As Osvir describes, this contract is specific to the demon and is invalid once the demon dies and no longer exists. I think it's good because it explains the contract in lore and makes it believable, gives players a new way to solve a quest of this kind, and gives summoners a nifty spell. What do you think?