> > (btw, a spelling correction: one staff, two staves).
>
> Not so, This is taken from the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide 3rd
> Edition page 207:
> Stave: Staves are about 5-6 feet long and as thick as a young
> sapling - About an inch and half at the base, tapering to an inch at the
> top. [....]
> Staves, like wands and rods, are powered by charges.
> They are not the same as a staff.
*rofl* want a magically charged barrel stave, musical stave???
magically stave in someone's head?
> > In answer to your question: It's a feature ;-)
> > And quite a useful one at that ;-)
>
> And a bug, you don't know the number of muds that still have the
> serpentine staff in the game (the invis one in the desert). You can be
> first level (though the higher the better), buy a quadzillion puppies
> (lets face it, its not that hard to beg a ridiculous amount of money from
> higher ups), and start earthquaking huge mobs. One earthquake for every
> puppy, starts to add up.
> #include <Ryan.G>
I've said it once, and I'll say it again. People who correct other
peoples' corrections without checking the facts themselves only show
themselves up as prats.
Comment 1: Just because something is spelt a certain way in D&D, EVEN
AD&D 3rd ed, doesn't mean it's correct.
Comment 2: I prefer looking something up in the dictionary to looking it
up in a fantasy role-playing game rule book to find out its correct
spelling.
There is no such thing as a stave in this context (as something you write
music on, yes. As part of a barrel, yes. As something you use for walking
and/or channeling large amount of magical energy, no, as a verb (stave in
someone's head), yes).
In D&D, despite what you're reading into it, staves IS the plural of
staff. Unless they've ceased using english spelling conventions as part
of 3rd edition, which I concede is not entirely unlikely.
Ok, now an OBcircle:
I dispute that the above feature is a bug. Just because it's possible to
have extremely high hitpoints on a mob, without the mud checking the
size, doesn't mean that's it's a bug that builders can have mobs with
negative hitpoints by forgetting the maximum size of int.
Builders can do a huge number of things that unbalance or crash the mud,
but as an implementor I feel I can trust my builders not to do anything
like that intentionally, and most of the unintentional bugs get caught
during testing. (For example writing an extra description but omitting the
keyword list, omitting the short and long descs on a mob, etc).
Likewise, just because an area or group effect spell is horrendously
powerful when cast from a staff doesn't mean it's a bug. Anyone who knows
how a staff works in this context can predict what will happen if an area
affect spell is used. It's probably useful to mention the effect to your
builders, or even check all their staves if you don't fully trust them.
Or even, I dare say, "fix" the staff code to disallow group and area
affects. *shrug*
Second OBcircle: Multiclassing
The way I've implemented it is to have an array of 15 ints in the
playerfile (15 classes on my mud).
Whenever a player earns enough exp to level, they gain a credit. They can
save up these credits, and spend them on getting levels in other classes
for varying costs. For example, an evil warrior wanting a good priest
level would have to pay 5 credits for it, while a good warrior might need
only 2 or 3.
To try and balance the power of multiclassing, when you advance in other
classes your hp, mana, pracs etc do NOT increase.
This puts warriors at somewhat of a disadvantage, having fewer pracs free
to get spells from out of class, but then warriors gain more from getting
other levels than many other classes do.
This involves changes to the spell code, guildmaster procs etc (you can
now bribe your way past guildguards to prac spells from other classes).
For the spell code, you know have to allow casting spells from outside
your class. I handled this by having the cost constant but high (based on
maximum manacost).
Skills are a little harder to give disadvantages for in such a sweeping
way, though there are few enough of them to put checks in each
individually if you're so inclined.
Works fairly well, though it needs more tuning before it's fully balanced.
Chris
_____________________________________________________
"A double-edged sword lets you cut down
your enemies with the backswing as well."
-- Gerrard of the Weatherlight
-----------------------------------------------------
Check out Dominia Mud, on snafu.net.au 3333
Or my homepage: http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~cjp
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