Mummer AoE casting revisited

[Lun]

The previous cost to effectiveness of the mummer's Word of Tranquility (20 energy, cast Word of Tranquility on everyone in the room not in your party) was a bit off, and quite overpowered. I do, however, still miss the ability to pause combat in order to save, say, an unconscious ally.
I'd like it if a mummer could channel a substantial amount of energy in an attempt to calm down everyone in the room. (Energy cost of 100?) It would roll like a regular calming, and could fail, but in the event of a critical success could allow the mummer and his party to flee certain death.


* This could require the learning of a new passive ability that teaches them how to channel out a Word to a large group, and extend to all the Words currently known.

[Rias]

"AoE" effects can be expected from some further abilities at some point.

[TheGreatMalvio]

I would love to see this! Such as the ability to cast word of wonder on a group of people while they stand dazzled and amazed at my flawless performance of the linking rings!

[Marauder]

Not to burst the bubble here or anything, but Mummers are already really, really strong right now, especially in a group. If you want AoE period, you should probably expect the duration and effectiveness of the Word being used to be halved or more. Probably quartered per opponent effected.

Abilities that can be used to heavily lower rolls and crowd control in general are the strongest thing in the game against all foes that aren't specifically made immune to them, like drakolins. Just taking out one enemy via Word of Wonder allows a possibility to instantly kill them and move onto the next, depending on party members and their equipment.

I personally believe Mummers, if anything, should get rebalanced along with the general use of fear-inflicting abilities, before they get anything new that adds to their currently massive combat ability.

[Jirato]

I feel like mummers have strayed from their original intent. I'd like to see a way to creatively redesign some of their abilities to have less active combat potential and be more of a preventative anti-combat mechanic rather than a "I can use this to dominate stuff on the battlefield and kill everything in sight!".

I can think of a couple room-wide effects I could do, but they would serve zero purpose in actively fighting.

[Rias]

Ooohhh, what if their stuff had to be more actively channeled/focused to maintain? Not as in having to keep a channel open like elemancy and whatnot, but more like a target is only mesmerized by Wonder for as long as you actively maintain that mesmerization , and doing other things interrupts that? Still useful for keeping a single target crowd-controlled, but no longer able to just toss a Word on every critter in the room in rapid succession and then proceed to safely dispatch them one by one solo as they all reel from over a minute's worth of crowd control.

Some kind of high-energy short-term AoE version could be roughly equivalent to an elemancer aero/hydro nova, but without the stun and knockdown. Mesmerize non-party-members with Wonder for 5-10 seconds or something. Less setting up the helpless foes for leisurely slaughter at your convenience, more an "oh crap" button to help give you/your group a few seconds of respite to get things under control again, pull up knocked down allies, recover from stuns, flee the room, etc. And there's always the option of putting in a cooldown timer or something to prevent rapid-fire abuse of such things.

P.S. Mummers were invented with the intent to be a "RP heavy" guild, and not a combat class. Their combat applications and effectiveness got a tad out of hand, clearly.

[Marauder]

I really would like Mummers to have SOME sort of solo combat effectiveness since it's not just about singing songs and playing an instrument, some Mummers are explorers (which is inherently dangerous due to the region), but the combat effectiveness of the guild is second to none due to how you can combo things to take a target out of the fight and kill/severely wound them them before they have a chance to do anything again.

And by anything, I mean their rolls are effectively 0 and they can no longer fight back or attempt to run.

Honestly I'd like to see Mummers rewritten to have more of an RP focus, as mentioned, as well as a miscellaneous ability focus, the latter of which COULD help with solo combat but could be infinitely better with a friend.

More abilities based on the Telepathy and Mindsense ones would be cool, like being able to attempt to establish very brief telepathic contact with one individual but only if they agree to it on a mental level, allowing the Mummer to get a feel for the general state of their body (like through sensing pain) and have short conversations. Mindsense could be expanded to have its own tree of abilities which would allow Mummers more psychic perceptiveness, though not necessarily to immediately point out an assassin who succeeded on their sneaking rolls, but perhaps to coordinate themselves better against sneak attacks (like giving them a small-mid chance to retain their defenses when stealth attacked, effectively ignoring otherwise blatant success of a hidden attacker but not being impervious to sneaky tactics).

Emotions and the mind are a very broad thing to use magic against or with, so there's a lot you can do with it in the end.

[Jirato]

A non-guilded person can still be an effective combatant. Mummers are very much intended to be a non-combat guild. To change their abilities so that they can't be used directly to rule the battlefield solo, does not mean that a mummer cannot be an effective solo combatant.