So, I logged on here to check out interesting stuff about Tempus and didn't see anything recent about mages. One of my multi's, perhaps the one I play most often, is a mage - Anskiere. Well, I'm pretty happy with being a mage. I've never really had a problem with hitpoints 'cept when I didn't summon enough elementals and decided to take on something too big. I'm good as a backup 'cause I can buff people up. Mana is all good and since I learnt to fly I haven't had any problems with move points. I like mages. They're well balanced. Just wanted to say that. Did any other mages have problems at all? Only problem I had was getting beaten on too often as a mort … sigh mage/merc atm and I love hamstring/triple attack .. after casting locust regen of course.

Love ya work Tempus!

Riverwind/Anskiere

Ps. What're your favourite secondary classes? Thinking about Phyz next gen.

So, catching up some reading and glanced across at the knights posts ..

I love all the ideas but I worry about the summoning of angels for the good knights? One of the defining features of the mage class, at least to me, was the ability to summon elementals … Then evil knights were able to summon demons .. then Bards were created and able to summon some pretty crazy audience members.

sigh

Anyone able to enlighten me as to the differences in the summoned mobs? Elementals/Legion/Audience?

Here's the difference between the summons as I know them:

Ranger: Call , Gen 0, various levels -This is probably the weakest of all the classes summons. When it was first created, it was incomplete, and rangers were getting weak level 1 mobs. It was recently revamped, and now the summons are stronger as the ranger levels up. For example, at low levels, the ranger might get a mouse and then at high levels, they might get a crocodile. These calls can only be summoned in outside sectors. Depending on the sector type (hills/mountains/etc), the ranger will get a different set of animals. I believe you can only summon 1 animal at a time, but I’m unsure of this.

Mage: Conjure elemental, Gen 0, level 20 -I guess this is the original pet class. Conjure elemental allows the mage to summon various elementals, which get slightly stronger as the mage levels/gens up. As far as I know, they can summon an unlimited amount of elementals (or huge huge amount).

Bard: Instant audience, Gen 0, level 26 -When bards cast this, they summon up to 3 audiences at once (depending on gen/level). Each audience member is a bit stronger than an elemental, but bards cannot summon more than 3 at a time. Interestingly enough, when bards were first released, instant audience let bards summon a large amount of audience (I think around 10 members), and the audience members could be any class. So, bards had access to things like a thief stun or a monk’s hiptoss. You can see why this was quickly changed. Now, bards can only summon I believe knights, mages, clerics, and barbs.

Evil Cleric: Unholy stalker, Gen 3, level 25 -This spell is one of two remort spell summons. It is much different that the other summons in that the cleric’s stalker doesn’t follow him around. Instead, the cleric must specify a target for the stalker, and the stalker will hunt down that target and attack it. Stalkers are about as strong as elementals, but they can only be hurt by magical weapons and spells. I don’t believe there’s a limit to how many stalkers the cleric can send out, but I’m unsure of that.

Evil Knight: Summon legion, Gen 5, level 27 -This is another remort spell pet, and a pretty high gen spell at that. And because of this, it’s the best summon spell. Depending on gen/level, the knight has access to the devils of hell, ranging from the weaker barbed devils and spined devils to the stronger bone devils and horned devils. Like unholy stalkers, horned devils can only be hit by magical weapons and spells. The limit for this summon (at high gen/high level) is 4 horned devils and 6 bone devils.

The other consideration that I can’t really talk about is spell cost. I can tell you at gen 10, level 49, summon legion costs 100 mana. At gen 10, level 49, instant audience costs 100 mana. I don’t have gen 10s of the other classes, so I don’t know what spells cost is like at gen 10/level 49. Keep in mind that as you level up, your spells cost less and less mana to cast.

In addition to those, mages also have a pseudo pet spell, with the summon/charm combination. I think it's well known that a good strategy for tanking bosses with mages is to summon a few trolls, charm them, and then use them as tanks. Trolls of course have heavy dam reduct, but the process takes a while since it has 2 steps. It is also mana draining.

Very good re-cap Lysol. Just to help on one of the unknown varibles. Mages can not summon as many elementals as they wish. It has alot and all about cha. The higher your char the more elementals you can have as pets. With 19-20cha I can summon up to 10. With each 1-2 cha improve points you can summon one more. This is what it seems. A prime mage level 49 gen 10 should be able to summon around 14-18 elementals. Not sure the cap on the ammount. The most I have seen is 15.

Also, I have just tested out the ranger pets. You can only have one at a time and the mob does vary from small animals to pumas, bears and wolfs. This is the weakest of all the pets because of ammount allowed and the mobs can take some damage but can be hit by anything.

One last consideration that I'd like to add to pets:

When you have pets, you can cast mass attack spells without hurting your pets that are in the same room. From this, mages and bards have an advantage with their pets because of meteor storm and sonic disruption.

I often use my bard in abyss with audience members tanking and just spam sonic disruption.

Lysol, even better re-cap! Awesome point. This is a great advantage that many did not know about. This is one point that many over look when speaking bout certain classes being weaker then others. Just another reason why psionic is a thing of the past.

I think mages should be able to conjure more than just elementals, I would really like to see some summon dragon but i guess those should be remort spells, so that mages can have better tanks, my air elementals doesn't last, and they die in like 4 turns against Vampires. and the summons should have some skills like trip and stuff. just my 2 cents..

I think mages should be able to conjure more than just elementals, I would really like to see some summon dragon but i guess those should be remort spells, so that mages can have better tanks, my air elementals doesn't last, and they die in like 4 turns against Vampires. and the summons should have some skills like trip and stuff. just my 2 cents..

Actually, Cast, you can summon pretty much anything you want. Conjure elemental isn't the only way to get a tank. You can use the summon spell to summon a different type of monster, then charm it, and it'll work just the same as an elemental. This is a little tougher than just summoning an elemental, however. Many mobs are !summon or !charm, but a little experimentation should suffice. Many people summon trolls for their natural 75% damage redux.

In addition to this, if you DO happen to summon a mob that's a ranger, you can type "order sweepkick" and it'll do so. Play around with it!

well, summon-charm, is really expensive in mana to a mort mage, even w/ mana tap… but i guess it's worth it.

but just out of curiosity, i think mages should be able to have a new spell elemental enchant this spell would give an element to a weapon, and it will do that kind of element to the target. i think this would make element weakness, element strength, or maybe elemental absorb(restore hp from a type of spell) more common. this spell would only be tempory, and may last from 1-5 hours tempus time.

i guess it would be fun, it's gonna take a lot of work to add all those stuff i know, but i would make the game more challenging, and addictive.

(())) |! !|

~ /

Ok I seem to have a problem with only my air elementals following me. Ive made myself totally visible and they still just sit there. I've given all the proper orders but they stay put in the room they're summoned in. My wis and int are fine. Was there a recent change? Any other one summoned follows me just fine. I was away from tempus for a while. (glad to be back by the way.) Can someone please enlighten me. Thanks

I can't speak for elementals but my summoned legion of devils follows me around a lot. Granted when I fly off a cliff and haven't cast fly on the non-horned devils they get left behind but I don't think you need to do that with elementals.

When was the last time you saw a bloody eyeball vstone in MVC? Why is there a load limit on vstones.

I just loaded one tye other day