Life Vs Death - Earth caster opinions

[mikestrauss]

Honestly every time I have used Corrupt in a mod it has changed the tide of the encounter, this emergency utility probably adds greatly to the power of memorizing life spells as well, but if the intention is to make things balance against our current system, I believe we will see all of those immune to Gifts become immune to Life/Corrupt.

-Tony

If you look through the monster database (which admittedly, you might not have access to), almost every single creature that is immune to Gift under the current rules is also immune to healing/chaos. Thus, by putting Life/Corrupt in healing/chaos, most monsters will require one fewer line of text in the immunities box while still keeping identical functionality.

Off the top of my head I simply can't think of any monster that is immune to gift but isn't immune to healing/chaos. I'm sure at least one exists, but they are rare enough that I simply can't name one right now. If nothing else, this rule offers that benefit.

-MS

 

[Gilwing]

undead?

 

[mikestrauss]

Fair point. I was thinking that undead are immune, when in actuality they are reversed.

However, because of the "turns to dust at 0" effect, immunity to Life/Corrupt is not a necessary line on the monster card. I suspect Life spells will now destroy undead in 2.0 (though the secondary effects of Corrupt won't happen because the "turns to dust" will trump the "raise dead" part), but I am not sure.

-MS

 

[Gilwing]

I think it will be a "No effect to Life/Corrupt" or "Life spell destroys, Corrupt heals to full". I must say though I really wouldn't want to see a heal to full.

 

[mikestrauss]

Except you don't need to include any of that functionality, because it already exists in the very definition of how healing/chaos affects undead.

A Corrupt spell affects an undead like a Life spell, ie. it does nothing.

A Life spell affects an undead like a Corrupt spell, ie. it kills the target (which incidentally reduces the target to 0 body points) and then tries to raise the target as an undead. However, because the target is a pile of dust at that point, the second part of the spell fails to activate (in a similar way to how a carrier effect wouldn't activate if the blow that hit an undead reduced it to 0 body).

Adding extra language for immunity or altered effects is unnecessary when the effect is clear based on the basic effect and the healing/chaos inversion that is built into the rules for undead. However, I do agree, that for player ease, it would help new players adapt more quickly if the rules for Life specified that it killed undead, but did not then raise them as an undead.

-MS

 

[mythic]

I think we are getting a bit off topic. Theorycrafting how your PLOT team will handle these spells is beyond the scope of the question or the playtest. Speak with your local PLOT folks and just ask them. Even if they do not have an answer now, it will get them thinking about it.

 

[Draven]

I think we are getting a bit off topic. Theorycrafting how your PLOT team will handle these spells is beyond the scope of the question or the playtest. Speak with your local PLOT folks and just ask them. Even if they do not have an answer now, it will get them thinking about it.

Mike's assumption that Life spells (being moved to Healing, instead of Gift) isn't theorycrafting; it's reflective of how Undead are affected by the Healing subset. Life spells destroying undead 1) makes sense under how Healing works, and 2) further devalues Death spells, whether or not Death affects undead.

Ergo, I think it's on topic to discuss whether Life spells would affect Undead in the 2.0 monster database, as part of the overall discussion is how Death spells would affect previously immune creatures, in the 2.0 database.

 

[Durnic]

I wish I could see the results of this poll without having to vote. I do not play a caster. :-/

 

[Gilwing]

I think we are getting a bit off topic. Theorycrafting how your PLOT team will handle these spells is beyond the scope of the question or the playtest. Speak with your local PLOT folks and just ask them. Even if they do not have an answer now, it will get them thinking about it.

I think its right on topic: Life Vs Death - Earth caster opinions Based on if it does effect undead might make me pick all life spells as well if Corrupt heals them. Its not how PLOT will handle the spells, that's RULES that handles it. LCO effects are just that LCO and not a national rule. And as well if is was PLOT I would respond with FOIG

 

[Gilwing]

I wish I could see the results of this poll without having to vote. I do not play a caster. :-/

As it stand as of 5:20PM EST 10/27/2016

• Life Exclusively
  11 vote(s)
  50.0%

• 
  Death Exclusively
  0 vote(s)
  0.0%

• 
  50/50
  1 vote(s)
  4.5%

• 
  Both, but mostly Life
  7 vote(s)
  31.8%

• 
  Both, but mostly Death
  0 vote(s)
  0.0%

• 
  EDIT: Change Over Time
  1 vote(s)
  4.5%

• 
  EDIT2: I have no preference one way or the other.
  2 vote(s)
  9.1%

 

[Draven]

I find the 0% Death Exclusively/Death primarily about where I'd expect them.

 

[norman b]

I think that's primarily because people don't see their role in combat as Killing Machine (tm). And since this game is about teamwork, I think Earth casters shouldn't be focused on Killing, there's 3-6 others for that. Earth is going to be the only one with life now. That seems much more important to prep then Death IMO. A few, sure. But not entirely... unless it's a NPC.

 

[Deadlands of Old]

I think that's primarily because people don't see their role in combat as Killing Machine (tm). And since this game is about teamwork, I think Earth casters shouldn't be focused on Killing, there's 3-6 others for that. Earth is going to be the only one with life now. That seems much more important to prep then Death IMO. A few, sure. But not entirely... unless it's a NPC.

I think it's more a reflection of folks thinking death will be relatively useless compared to other spells of the same level. That's my reasoning for neglecting to choose it at least.

 

[mikestrauss]

I think it is a consequence of the fact that Life is an effect that can't be duplicated in any other way in the game. There are plenty of ways to heal someone or harm someone or disable someone. There are even multiple ways to remove debuffs or add similar buffs. But there is basically only one way in the game to prevent a resurrection after 1 minute of bleeding out / a death effect. Because of that, basically every single 9th level spell pales in comparison to Life.

I can think of a solution to this, but it requires a major rewrite to the dying rules. Instead of having 5 minutes of death (where you can be Lifed), the rules would need to be changed so that when you were reduced to -1, you were dying and that any spell that healed body (except for Life) simply stabilized you to 0 body. Life would then become a strong healing spell (50 body sounds like a nice round number) that had the added benefit of working on a person that was at -1 body. Obviously Death would have wording changed so that it reduced the target to -1 body (similar to Eviscerate).

That is all theorycrafting (and thus immaterial), but that is something that would, in my opinion, still make Life worthy of a 9th level spell without making it unquestionably superior to basically any other choice.

-MS

 

[Durnic]

It is our intention that Death will be able to affect far far more creature types by default than they do now*. Death will be very good and will affect Undead.

The point, I think, of this thread was originally meant to be a culture question. It is the culture of the game that our Earth casters are seen as "healbots". This has the possibility to (and will likely) increase a lot with 2.0 because only people who can cast Earth spells will have access to Life with the Expanded Enchant ritual being axed. I believe that @Draven was attempting to bring this to light. Allow me to rephrase his question slightly:

With the added value placed on that 9th circle spell slot due to the reduction of Life spells in the game, does it seem worth it to you to memorize Death in a couple of those slots and risk the ire of the people you play with?

*This is all, of course, barring any Plot-chosen LCO changes to monster cards.

 

[Deadlands of Old]

With the added value placed on that 9th circle spell slot due to the reduction of Life spells in the game, does it seem worth it to you to memorize Death in a couple of those slots and risk the ire of the people you play with?

Not likely. It's your own character's life in jeopardy as well. Fighter gets deathed, mage goes down, healer follows (rogue already bolted). You think "if only I didn't memorise that stupid death spell..."

 

[Draven]

I think it is a consequence of the fact that Life is an effect that can't be duplicated in any other way in the game.
-MS

Nail on head.

It's not -just- the unique aspect of the spell; it's that in conjunction with the importance of preventing Resurrection. Spell Shield is more important than Web because Survival. Purify is more important than Paralysis because Survival. MA > Pin. Why are Golemns considered OP? Because of So Much Survival. Most valuable rituals? CSS and Regen. Cloaks are fairly up there, too.

Life is the only spell that takes you out of your Death count. When I go on a mod, we count how many Life spells we have in the party. If the number is two or less? Folks get paranoid. Some folks won't even go.

In this new world of no EE (which is a world I genuinely want, don't mistake me), Life spell will be king. People will ask, "What did you memorize?" and -expect- a plethora of Life. Healing Storm will probably be okay...but probably no more than two, and that's -if- you've got a bunch of columns.

That expectation is terrible, but it's also understandable. Death sounds great, but it might as well be Solidify.

 

[norman b]

That expectation is terrible, but it's also understandable. Death sounds great, but it might as well be Solidify.

Didn't think it was THAT bad. But I can see your point why it now becomes niche even if everything is effected by it. Your life spell lets all of your party keep swinging. It's also the only thing to oppose enemy spell caster's death spells.

 

[Sita]

So, I'm going to ask my favorite question. Mostly because it seems the consensus is swinging toward "Why -would- Earth Casters take the Death spell over Life?"

What is the objective of having a separate Death spell?

 

[MaxIrons]

So, I'm going to ask my favorite question. Mostly because it seems the consensus is swinging toward "Why -would- Earth Casters take the Death spell over Life?"

What is the objective of having a separate Death spell?

I know why my wife will be taking Death over life, because she has wanted to play a curse tossing Earth caster since she started playing. She was pigeon holed as a healer as soon as they found out she could cast Earth spells. It got to the point where that was one of the reasons she stopped playing that character.

Something I think all of us need to remember is that there should always be room for someone to consciously choose a non optimised build or memorization list. I memorize Elemental Blades, Banish, and Solidify every event. They don't come in handy often, but put me in a niche space of usefulness where when they are needed, people know who to get. Death is going to be the same way I think.