Whining About Nerfed Surges (Demons, Wards, and Elementals) for Wild Mages

[Xersaoth]

I don’t know whose idea it was to disable fating demons, but it is beyond upsetting. I went into epic wizardry purely for RP reasons, and the ability to summon demons that persist in random places is no longer there. I used to leave them in conjuration rooms, various quarters, and just random places, giving people more opportunities to roleplay, but now I just have one more useless surge added to the stockpile. I can now only summon a useless rock, but not a demon as an epic wizard - such a fun killer.

For those who say it is still possible: I am not going to surge for it fully randomly, waiting half an hour for a bunch of negative effects to pass, because it was deemed too unbalanced, while a bunch of low-level, inexperienced characters still can do it in the middle of Skal anyway.

Also, half the other surges seem to vanish now when they clearly should work, for example, the spell resistance, invisibility, etc., when I target self with haste - this is very frustrating every time too. I cannot ward with any additional effects essentially, unless I make a conscious effort. I can only summon a random volcano or a lightning storm and confuse everyone. Where is the upside in this?

Ultimately, having a monolithic elemental on Skal was the only surge worth having while doing writs as a wild mage, but it seems to have been silently disabled for lower-levels characters, since I could not summon one on my last character no matter how much I tried. They literally cannot benefit from anything else, because wards last only a few seconds, while other effects may also kill the entire group.

P.S. I wrote this as a wild mage enthusiast, who has had nearly ten wizard characters in all possible combinations. Nerfing surges is killing the fun even for me at this point.

[chris a gogo]

Monolith is rubbish as it doesn't guard the mage so your better off with anything else.
The demon I've had it twice in a 2 week period so it is still there, no idea if it can be fated not tried to get a hostile demon summon.
SR surge has always worked fine for my character not sure why your having issues with it.
Invisibility doesn't work on the caster but it does work on spawns so maybe it's hostile target only.

[Peacewhisper]

I love how on a server with four different types of divine weapon masters, an arcane weapon master subclass, mundane weapon masters that cast level 9 spells, and monolith earth elemental druids that deal weapon master damage, we keep nerfing wizards.

[Kalopsia]

I love how on a server with four different types of divine weapon masters, an arcane weapon master subclass, mundane weapon masters that cast level 9 spells, and monolith earth elemental druids that deal weapon master damage, we keep nerfing wizards.

The Gate surge limitations were introduced in mid-2022, presumably in response to a pattern of problematic player behaviour.

In fact, beyond a few fixes unrelated to the OP's complaints, the wild surge script hasn't been modified in almost 2.5 years. Back then, we reacted to complaints about monolith surges unsummoning existing (buffed) summons. Now, they instead re-roll on the surge table if a summon is present - like most surges that would otherwise fail.

The "surge vanished" text basically only appears if -fate is active and the desired surge not available, as re-rolling in this case would cause an infinite loop for pure wild mages.

[Xersaoth]

I love how on a server with four different types of divine weapon masters, an arcane weapon master subclass, mundane weapon masters that cast level 9 spells, and monolith earth elemental druids that deal weapon master damage, we keep nerfing wizards.

The Gate surge limitations were introduced in mid-2022, presumably in response to a pattern of problematic player behaviour.

In fact, beyond a few fixes unrelated to the OP's complaints, the wild surge script hasn't been modified in almost 2.5 years. Back then, we reacted to complaints about monolith surges unsummoning existing (buffed) summons. Now, they instead re-roll on the surge table if a summon is present - like most surges that would otherwise fail.

The "surge vanished" text basically only appears if -fate is active and the desired surge not available, as re-rolling in this case would cause an infinite loop for pure wild mages.

Thank you for some clarification.

I’m not sure what those limitations were, and I could use -fate 12 and -fate 13 to summon demons at will on my other character just a few months ago. Today, it didn’t work and instead triggered a random surge several times on multiple wild mage characters, as someone else tried to use it on their character after witnessing my confusion with the result. My best guess is that something broke. Many ward surges vanish too (spell resistance, invisibility, ghost, and others) when targeting myself or using spells with an automatic self-target. I’d have to do a lot of playing to write a detailed report on what I think isn’t working as intended, taking into account the small chances, randomness, and variety of effects and targets. I might have gotten extremely unlucky with Monolithic Elementals at lower levels - I suppose that’s possible, but I really started to suspect it just had got changed intentionally.

It is also important to note that the -fate command for summoning works fine on PGGC and only has issues live.

[AddledPunster]

I don’t have anything to actually add to this discussion, except that I misread “fating demons” as “farting demons,” and had to pause for a moment to think about what that could be referring to.

Just thought you should know.