Mages Vs Mundanes.

It's generally widely accepted that magic is powerful of course in every setting this is true. A levl 20 wizard for the most part withh PWN the fuck out of a level 20 warrior depending on the circumstances. BUt spells are no joke.. however the difference is that warrior can ROLL to dodge that fireball or what have you. So it's unfair that Arm doesn't allow realistic things such as this to happen. You can't dodge any of the offensive spells? I can't block the lightning bolt with a lightning-resistant shield made from the hide of a strange lizard that lives deep in the mantis valley? Stuff like this would just be plain cool. But nope.

Some magick builds are really powerful, some are not. They are not designed to be on a par with mundane classes, by definition. It's not a guy with a sword that broke the world. It was a fucking wizard. Every large, devastating event in history is the result of magick in one form or another. To believe that someone with a sword should be able to equal that is patently ridiculous. That said, there are some guilds which are much more combat capable than others, as far as mages go, too. Yes, your krathi/whiran/ruk is scary, simultaneously, for a mundane, that nilazi is not much at all to go up against, and that viv is going to be easier to cut through than hot butter unless they're fully branched and have a cool headed, experienced mage player behind them. It is what it is.

ARM is not D&D 3rd edition. With every class balanced with strong and weak points and so.. Magickers are OP in hack&slash sense but that's not a problem, that's a choice. On the other hand, they are very difficult to deal with in RPI game mechanics.

- There are really bad roleplayers who will twink and unneccesarily turn game into a hack&slash one. One after another, revenge characters, powerful magickers just PKing others, etc. I hate the idea feeling IMMs breath at my back constantly but I can not think of another way. Maybe just all magickers be sponsored roles or like that?

- It's really hard to balance the game when a magicker group unites. I remember a post LoD from 2004s about dangers of elementalist/sorcerer/psionic groups to the game. In setting sense, there are very powerful virtual groups and even Sorcerer Kings. So when a group comes into existance and takes down a few really powerful figures down (templars, elder elf tribal, etc.) probably those virtual powerful beings would cut them down for fear of they may lose status to those groups. On the other hand, there is of course playability issue. Noone should cut powerful magicker PCs to down without a good reason. So solution would be slapping PCs to stop PK just in sake of OOC reason, or force them store or bring up an NPC(I saw some using word 'avatar' in this forum) to treathen them or kill them.

Magickers are OP in hack&slash sense and for me that's great. I really would like to see them even more powerful in magick sense. You know, to the limit a mundane could not kill any magicker when prepared. But there is the issue of RPI MUD in general, and can not decide what would be best thing to do when a group unites and begins to change world unrealisticly. There must be magickers around maybe thousands of years old. They would not, or realisticly should not, sweat while killing a 30 years old whiran. Why would they want the world they are totally controlling to change anyway?

I wanted to add: Especially after reading this forum, I begin to have a feeling giving players some level of trust calling it karma, then letting them play that powerful PCs without direct IMM interaction seemed to me a really tough choice. It requires too much effort. Maybe ARM is so popular and has a good playerbase because of Karma system and magickers, I really don't know. On the other hand, I can not see any easy way to balance virtual powerful levels and PC power levels. Maybe best way would be trusting players of very powerful PCs to make some decisions based on OOC reasons. But then, if they don't? Spending days of playtime to a character, and not becoming personal is a hard thing to do. It requires real maturity for PC side and IMM side. Since ARM is 20 years old and still running, system is somewhat working though.

It should be as powerful as it is imo. But it should progress very slowly. I like that the game world isn't even but I did it in about 4 days before I got my class death spell, not maxed mind you but just going for my yourfucked spells. That's terrible; slower progression would separate mages and have master/apprentice type shit happening not just a bunch of power rangers with the same skills.

I always feel those who whine and cry about mages, are just the ones with out the Karma to play them.
Or it just means they can't subjugate more players to their shitty role play.

Some GDBers hate the fact somebody perhaps, just doesn't wanna role play with them. Some of them would get rid of all outdoor rooms, and make leaving the gates an insta death with out staff support if it meant more people to look at their 4 line emotes, and 20 line mdescs.

That's understandable Delerak, my comment usually aimed at the standard GDB response that "Mages aren't rare enough!" "There isn't enough mage hate!"

It's always along the same lines of "Indies needs nerf, force everyone into clans!"

Which is code for "People seem not to like role playing with my characters, so lets force them too."

Which is a bullshit meta game attitude of those players with out sufficient karma I think.

Every time I run into a "witch hunter" I always think "Sour grapes".

Which might be unfair is someone being legit, but I Can't help but always feel that characters who by docs should fear the fuck out of some witch who can make your head explode, decides "Ya know what! I should fight that thing!".

We can blame staff for this or that, but sometimes Arm's players are fucking lame.