Whats with the skills changes? Dual wield and parry are dedicated only now? Thats stupid. One really cool thing about the mud since merge was the ability to combine classes into unique and original characters. If it seems the cleric/bk combo is too powerful, well la de da. Maybe you should take a closer look at dwarfs, intead of messing with the warriors types. If I'm not mistaken, I am the only character of Mythic renown or higher that is NOT a dwarf.
Oh, and no news informing us of the changes? Tsk tsk.

Parry was unintended. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Now, now, name calling isn't very nice There is still plenty of potential for combining skills from other classes. If you want most or all of the combat skills then make one of the combat classes your primary class.
De da, da, da... de doo, doo, doo...
We're taking a closer look at a lot of things. I think it was a mistake on Zamadhi's part to increase dorf wisdom back to 60. But some things you just can't get across without experience.
What can I say, we're an imperfect bunch and oversights are bound to happen.

Cheers,
Blobbie.

I think what seems wrong about it is that 5 classes have dual wield (6 if you count jack, and assuming it not being dedicated for rangers is an oversight ), so how can it be considered 'dedicated'?. Make it dedicated for the warrior classes with spells, maybe, but second class thieves and warriors shouldnt have a problem with it.

Oh, when i posted i didnt think it was you, Blob, that made the change. It seemed uncharacteristic of you to make a change without mentioning it first or posting about it after. I take back that stupid thing and replace it with um, hasty.

With all honesty, I think making animate corpse a dedicated only spell would have been a better choice than dual wield. But, to each his own

I agree with you Jubs. changing animate would have been a much better way to go

Really though, this is incentive for builders to create better 2-handed weapons and put in block skill for shields

Honestly, before the merge happened I suggested that dual wield not be available to bk's and paladins anyway. My vision of a paladin or a bk (anti-paladin) is essentially a pious warrior using a shield or a 2-handed club, axe, or sword. Although, its easy for me to say that now that I have a few characters that took advantage of the lack of non-dedicated dual wield before the change.

Although this change didn't work out so well for me on my rebirth, i'm not that opposed to the change upon reflection. If you want to be a warrior type, make it your primary class .... if you want to be a healer, realize you don't automatically get 3 attacks (but you still get 2nd and HB! (assuming you don't pick ranger subclass)).

*hehehe* Good to see you're seeing the light BTW, a comment on changing animate instead... such a change would also have had to be made across the charms board... meaning animates, dancing swords, charm person, conjures, and befriended animals. That's a lot more than a single skill that more than likely does a better job of improving balance.

Yah but you dont see warriors walking around with dancing swords or pets all the time. I suggested animates because its been over-used and doesn't put emphasis on the warrior-types other skills. But really, one lvl 20 pet is nothing compared to four high level animated corpses. I say hit the current exploited skills and spells

I agree with Blobbie's take on this. IMHO one of the main reasons you probably don't see many Warriors with charmies or dancers at the moment is the weight restrictions on "mage" style spells versus those of piety. Most combo's that provide anim's enable warriors to keep their armour on whilst buffing, summoning or being a bit offsensive with the lighter weight piety spells during combat. Although anim's have reasonable HP's at higher levels, they hit like a chocolate teapot, have no combat skills like headbutt and in the main only hit a limited number of times per round. True they are easier to source than "good" charmies but they're open to a wide range of spells as they are always evil and undead at the end of the day.

I imagine if we had a craft/refine skill (as avail on other MUDs, generally through a quest point based system) to reduce item weight (or a spell) the use of charmies and dancers would rapidly increase on warriors, and become a rapidly imbalanced mold IMHO...

Another problem with this skill/spell is that everyone would be dual wielding blackwatch swords or finally getting a chance to wield that damn maul! In the same way that we have primary classes that mix combat/piety (although the number of spells is very limited e.g. BK) you could always have a new class thats combat/arcana (number of precidents in fantasy material) that doesn't suffer as much on weight implications on spells, however this would need to be dedicated in nature otherwise every potential new arcana mold would sub-class it to stack up on heavier AC.

I personally don't think that anim's are over-used intentionally, its just the current game mechanics for weight and arcana that naturally leads warriors to use anim's to provide "some" additional protection when solo'ing (tho very limited extra dam). I certainly still need to focus on the emphasis of using the other warrior skills at the same time, with the exception of groundsmash due to its availability. By the time you've paid the price for dual and third-attack prac's, prac'd piety and levelled up your wiz, mixing primary warrior and an anim capable class does take a fair old number of levels, champion minium, to get somewhere decent in your character build.... and seems nigh on impossible with specific races...

I'm running an experiment with one of my rebirth chars Made her a cleric knight just cause i dont think dual will really affect the affectiveness of the combo all that much.

Guess we will see what happens

Cheers!!

No need to get slash or bludgeon (one of em) - save ya a bunch of pracs!

actually planned on not getting pierce. Figured on getting slash and blud for those sneaky mobs that are one or the other

Interesting experiment - As a group cleric/healer then changes make no real difference. In terms of a solo character three attacks and the extra bonus of a 2nd weapon obviously enhances what you can handle alone. If your new character is a dwarf I think you will also notice the difference in reduced wisdom and dex from your older characters. It also seems a little unfair that a new player will not get the opportunities that the more experienced players here have already had.

Whilst I agree that balance is important, it is a bit frustrating though when the goalposts of stats/skills are moved. E.g. having seen dwarf wisdom go 60,55,60,58 in quite a short time it would be nice to agree a figure and stick with it.

RE: Thrudd: featherweight spell/quest bonus should hopefully have little effect on Weapon's. Which I hope will change to a system that is more dependant on the weapon's Size vs the size of the race wielding the weapon. Strength could still have some bearing but possibly not as much as it does currently.
And unless arcana/armour has changed it has more to do with the Material of the armour than its weight. Armours made from silk/cloth have the least or no negative effect on arcana, and leather on up start to have a negative effect.

RE: Marton, Dwarves. The Dex listed in help race just reflects what the dwarve's Dex range actually was, the numbers in help race were wrong.
And I dropped WIS as Blobbie said perhaps my inexperience with the new system weighted my initial increase of dwarves to 60. Should not be overly difficult for a dwarf to wear a couple pieces of +Wis equip to offset this.

And the change to Dual wield is one of the few things that will probably change as Classes are balanced and new skills are brought in to flesh out the weaker ones. Hopefully to give choice in skill selection than being able to have all.