What if demesne effects worked like tekura skills, or wardancers skills.... instead of forest(geo/aqua)cast it would be foresttouch and the higher you reached in druidry/aqua/geo the more 'touches' you could do. But you can only 'touch' in your own environements. So you would still have to forest/flood/taint to use them.

it be something like....

Foresttouch spiders
Foresttouch swarm
Foresttouch murder

Cool attack message as Narsrim gets hit with three afflictions. Nyla runs away from Patchou

Of course things like sap wouldnt be able to be comboed...


hope it makes sense

Just to note.. I love the way demesnes are right now cept for the whole getting jumped and my only means of defending myself is hope I can eye peck faster than they can pounce my faeling constitution

I'd love to see demesnes go. It's not only annoying for people who fight against demesnes, they're annoying for people who use them. If I get jumped, the best I can do is forest, wait, meld, wait, regrowth, and start a fight 3 rounds late and with 2 power. If I try to start a fight, I first need a decent size demesne, or you can move a room or two and negate my whole main skillset.

I'd LOVE to see more active abilities in Druidry/*mancy.

- Mages are too reliant on demesnes.

This one, I don't know... I still like the idea that a mage relies on setting up his magical sanctuary and therein being quite dangerous.

- A crappy fighter can kick ass with a demesne.

If you want to limit demesne to, while not fighter prowess, perhaps at least level, there could be a small cost per room of a demesne to upkeep it, paid in mana. 3 mana per whatever the tick would be per room, say. For a novice, keeping that up would then be more difficult, and the larger demesnes limited to the more powerful mages. If their mana falls or they die, it begins to decay until they re-establish a link by going to it with enough mana available to pay the upkeep. The weaker the mage, the easier it is to escape their demesne or go in after them.

- Demesnes during influencing are a pain in the ass.
A number of people have suggested a demesne decaying when the people revolt, or it being more limited during influencing, they may already be looking into it.

- Demesnes in general can be classed as overpowered, like 200 room vibes in a way.

But still, that was the intent, when a mage has the power and time to build up a demesne, it's then they're really dangerous, which is why they're reliant on them. The trade is reliance in exchange for power when they actually get them... that's overpowered? Besides the fact that a 200 room demesne will not be in a single area... ever... right? Ie, no truly effect upheld demesne of that size can any longer exist.

I'd also like the demesne concept revisited.

I like demesnes as they are (no big surprise there as it was my design). It's unique (I think) in having a large area be controlled by a mage or druid. It's much weaker than vibes/groves in other games which is how it was meant to be. There will be absolutely no way I would allow for a demesne to follow someone around (as someone somewhere suggested) nor would I want it confined like vibes.

We also aren't going to "revisit" or "rethink" or "rework" the entire concept of demesnes or mages. As I said, I like the design concept and we'll stick to our guns. I'm open to suggestions to improve on the design we have, however.

I hate liking most of the skills, and the guild itself, but hating most of my main skill.

Diminishing returns/affects would be a nice addition, me thinks. The more people the Demesne has to attack, the less it actually affects each individual.

How do you feel about adding elemental skills to the respective skillsets that works almost like Liquidform, but has other combat options?

If they would just weaken the demesne effects a bit, by either taking some out or, even better, only allowing a certain amount to be active at any given time, to be replaced by active effects, that would be nice.

On top of that, it would be great if there were more active attacks that don't require you be in your demesne. I'm not sure about any of the *ancers, but I believe that in druidry, cudgel is the only attack that doesn't require you be in your demesne. It seems odd to me.

I like Kaervas' ideas while at the same time thinking that the concept of Demesne could still remain.

Enabling the mage/druid to maintain a large demesne, an area they "control" through watch/sense but not covered in large passive affects. Increase the ability to locate people in a demesne, and upgrade a mage/druids personal combat/defensive ability. This make it so they are not reliant on a demesne, however they can still watch over an area and control it with their own skill, not the skill of passive affects.

It is great to stick to your guns, but when those guns are backfiring you may want to consider buying better ones.

I'm sorry Estarra, but a demense is not less powerful than a grove. Just because you think its an original neat concept doesn't mean its a good idea. You've stuck to your guns long enough, through several rounds of complaining, and right now appear to just be pushing a vastly unpopular concept.

If you want to improve your design, you need to limit it. The area control idea isn't working.

While on the topic of demesnes, one suggestion I have is to decrease the time a demesne lasts in enemy territory (or if it covers some enemy territory), because that is extremely annoying, just as much as a demesne in a village revolt is. (I'm talking about 100+ room demesnes that are looped into cities making them literally unremovable by other means).

If nothing else, demesnes should be at MOST 100 rooms. That's about one village. Not one village, and then ends in your city. Or the entire highway system, with ends in your city. Or anything else entirely insane. One area is fine, entire areas more than that is just too big.

I like this idea.

I see alot of suggestions for downgrading demesnes, but no ideas, other than Kaervas', to balance out the weakened demesne. Think less on nerfing a skill and more on things that could replace them.

Hmm, what about changing most of the passive effects of demesnes to benefit the mage and his allies, rather than all hindering. So, in the demesne of your ally you might be occasionally healed of health/mana/ego, or occasionally cured, or occasionally stat-boosted, or occasionally have attacks deflected, or maybe the mage himself becomes the uber-mage-form everyone has been hinting at since Lusternia opened while in (or near) his demesne, but nowhere else. (Obviously not all of these things at once). Along with watch and city-summon, this would mean demesnes are still important, but not all-powerful. There are still embedded motes/runes, of course.

Then more active offensive abilities can be placed in the hands of the mage, and I'm sure there are no shortage of possibilities here.

Okay, here's my completely uneducated opinion on how demesnes should work. Some of this already is implemented, I'm just outlining how I think they should work.

Demesnes should cost practically nothing to set up. I'm not sure if it already works like this or not, but flood et. al shouldn't require any power to use, and only forceflood and such should.

A demesne should have a sustainable size limit of 50 rooms. If more rooms than that are melded, the demesne would gradually, though at a rate fast enough to be noticeable, shrink towards the center until this constraint was reached. The mage champion artifact would increase this limit.

Casting demesne effects should require a small amount of power. Maintaining effects should require a constant willpower drain.

The area of effect for demesne effects should be limited to a radius around a mage OR his target. This radius is determined by your skill in Aquamancy/Druidry/Geomancy, and can be temporarily extended through the use of a costly skill. At maximum, the radius should be 30 rooms, at least, 5 rooms.

The center of demesne effects will be the mage by default, but they can AQUACAST (or geocast or whatever) FOCUS to center effects on the target. While focusing, the mage can see every action in the target's room, but is unable to do anything without breaking the effect.

Infused motes/runes outside the radius will continue to be infused until the room is unmelded.

Mages should be able to passively detect when and where someone enters their demesne as well as actively determine the location of anyone in their demesne with very little or no equilibrium loss.

More to come if I think of more.

You know, from all the whining we do, i'm surprised none of the gods have just come along, and posted like in largest red font, F you! I mean seriously, demesne's are not going to go, the only thing that needs to be done is make the passive effects go in maybe 10 rooms radius or as someone said before, depends on your skill how far, shorten the room limit to maybe 100 or so, -and- have a passive mana/willpower drain per effect that you have going, more than the Viscanti regen in Taint obviously. Also have the effects like conglutation? Having a less chance to hit the next person and such. Or have it, if they're at the maximum reach of your powers, say trans is 20 rooms, they have a 10% chance to be hit, 19 is 15% 18 20% and so forth till same room 100%, sort of like a ripple, it's strongest in the center and gets weaker as it goes out

How exactly is nerfing demesnes going to solve anything? We're trying to figure out a way to balance mages so we don't rely on demesnes so much, not nerf them into oblivion.

Exactly. You can do all you want, but mages/druids are either going to godly, or you'll nerf them enough to be worthless. I can't see any middle ground here without an overhaul of the system.