My opinion about the spells

by Crush

OK

Detect Players

Might be useful and I see no abuse potential.

Barrier

Considering that monsters have no magical attacks and I shot down any effects which harm players outside PvP I don't see the use of this spell besides PvP but there it might be useful.

Heal

TMW definitely needs more teamplay, so this spell gets my OK.

Life

Should have an expensive material ingredient and it shouldn't be possible to cast it on oneself but when these conditions are statisfied I say OK for the sake of teamplay.

Agreed. As far as I can tell, it is impossible to cast spells while dead. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Aggravate

I don't see any benefit in this but also not much abuse potential.

This can actually be beneficial in team play; I have been in several situations in which I would have found this spell useful. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Peace

Should have an unbuyable material component to avoid overuse, but otherwise OK in my opinion.

Emote Curse

Sounds funny and I don't really consider it harmful to the "victim".

Needs to be changed

Protect

Needs some expensive ingredient and we have to be careful not to make it over- or underpowered in any level ranges. Thus the effect should depend on the target. The slowdown effect should be removed because it might be used to harass people.

I added the slowdown to balance this spell. If you require an expensive ingredient anyway, I don't see much abuse potential-- being a bit slower but well-protected is only a minor annoyance in my experience. --Fate

Haste

The positive effect seems OK to me because we already got an item with that effect. But the negative effect should be removed because it can be used to harass people.

Again, the negative effect was added to balance the spell. I believe that the abuse potential is small, though-- add an expensive material component, and people will think twice about abusing this for short-term harassment. Yes, you can kill someone with it indirectly (unlike `protect'), but it's a cumbersome and unreliable way to kill, and (as noted) quite possibly an expensive one. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Some more on `haste' and `protect': The problem with not having negative effects to balance these spells is that players who don't cast them are effectively penalised. (If you add an expensive material component and use that as the sole balancing point, you penalise poor players, which is even worse). I would like to avoid a situation in which you have to go through a ritual to make yourself `as effective as possible' before entering a dungeon. Yes, players already do that to some extent-- very few of the more experienced players wear their plate mail all day long-- but that's because they choose to, not because the game mechanics penalise them if they don't. If you consider the harassment potential to be too great, I would prefer that the spells are disabled entirely. --Fate 17:43, 22 May 2008 (CEST)

Definitely NO

Shroud

Makes it easy to break server rules without any chance of prove in form of a screenshot. Even when there are spells to counter this effect you can not assume that everyone knows these and is able to use them at that moment.

I haven't been abused in either side of an abuse complaint, so I'm not sure how/whether these are reacted to at all. What kind of rules are you thinking of there? Otherwise, how about you set the minimum level to 80? That seems to be the group of people who might actually benefit from this spell, and small enough a group to identify abusers in some situations. Finally, I can give you a patch that will log all messages sent (and timestamps) with users, so you can track down abusers trivially. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Reveal

Unnecessary without shroud.

Teleport

I fail to see the use of this spell when there is no way for the user to control the destination.

The user can control the destination. You cast this spell as (using the default config as an example) `vasrelpor tulimshar' and are teleported to Tulimshar. However, the set of destinations is limited to those defined in the configuration file, and each destination may impose additional requirements. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Death's Door

Impossible to balance and negative effect on other players is a big no-no.

This is the one spell I am most sceptical about myself. The negative effect on other players is mostly intended to harm party members; if it is added, it should be short-range, very high-level, and very expensive. Note that this hurts the caster as much-- if not more-- than anyone else. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Indifferent

Wind

The technical realization seems very difficult to me. I haven't seen it in action yet, so I would make my judgement on this spell after I experienced it in action.

It looks a little jerky, since movement is achieved by `teleporting' one square at a time-- but there's nothing to be done about that without client changes. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Delayed Teleport

I don't really see the benefit of this spell, but I am afraid it might break elaborated scripted sequences which rely on the player staying in a specific area (think: teleporter puzzle). We currently don't have any such sequences and it is unsure if we will ever have some. But it might restrict further quest development.

I don't see this being an issue on eathena. If it becomes one, we can add anti-teleport zones. The benefit for this one is quite small, admittedly, but there are a few scenarios in which it helps (peeking into a possibly lethal dungeon to check whether the snakes are waiting for you, luring dropstealers into traps etc.). --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Magic Mouth

Might be interesting for announcemets. But has to be designed carefully to avoid it becomming a nuisance. How it is implemented? As an NPC? Or does it dispatch chat messages automatically?'

This is implemented as an NPC, so it doesn't bother players who don't click on it. I would still recommend an expensive material component. Finally, each message is tagged with the name of the caster (even when the caster is under `shroud'), making it easy to detect verbal abuse. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Kill

Please add the exact formulas so that it is possible to judge if it is balanced or not.

The precise formulas are fully configurable, as long as the functions are bounded linear maps. The setup in the sample config file is `power = {0 + 13 * x}' and `hpcost = 20 <= {80 + -0.333 * x}'. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Dragon Slave

Please add the exact formulas so that it is possible to judge if it is balanced or not.

Again, the precise formlulas are fully configurable. The default configuration includes one very unbalanced setup (to illustrate how the same spell can be used with different setups/invocations) and also the following, which I consider to be more sensible: `range = {2 + 2 * x}', `duration = {0 + 0.033 * x}', `power = {0 + 10 * x}', `hpcost = 20 <= {50 + -0.2 * x}'. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Create Item

Without a material component this spell would be a real gamebreaker. With a material component it would be rather a "transmute item" spell. If it is fair or not depends on the components. How about converting raw logs into stacks of arrows?

Without material components this could break the economy; it seems that we both largely see this as a `quasi-crafting' hook. I like your particular suggestion, by the way-- the two scenarios I had been considering were (a) spell component preparation and (b) spellcasters as craftsmen, possibly even for new items. --Fate 00:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)