Oracle / Mystic Discussion Thread

[kablizzy]

        Oracle / Mystic       
Mystic Arts / Yin Yang Magic

Ability	Description	MP	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Umbra / Blind	Rob targets of sight, reducing the success rate of their physical attacks. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Blind. Quote: "All light fall into darkness! Bound darkness!"	4	4	2	50	100
Empowerment / Spell Absorb	Absorb MP from the target. Quote: "Guiding light, shed magic power from above! Spell Absorb!"	2	4	1	50	200
Invigoration / Life Drain	Absorb HP from the target. Quote: "Lost energy... raise the heartrate! Life Drain!"	16	4	1	50	350
Belief / Pray Faith	Fill the target's soul with a zealous fervor. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Faith. Quote: "God is watching...have faith! Pray Faith!"	6	4	1	25	400
Disbelief / Doubt Faith	Drain the target's soul of piety. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Atheist. Quote: "Seek the true tone to form our will... Doubt Faith!"	6	4	1	25	400
Corruption / Zombie	Transform the target into one of the walking dead. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Undead. Quote: "Great tree of life, inject rotten extract! Zombie!"	20	4	1	20	300
Quiescence / Silence Song	Rob targets of speech, rendering them unable to cast magicks. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Silence. Quote: "Conjurors, seek truth in silence... Silence Song!"	16	4	2	34	170
Fervor / Blind Rage	Impart a thirst for destruction, rendering the target mad for blood. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Berserk. Quote: "Reason with confusion, judge with recklessness... Brave Insanity!"	16	4	1	20	400
Trepidation / Foxbird	Reduce the target's Bravery. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Quote: "Cowards, weak, those rushing to die! Foxbird!"	20	4	1	25	200
Delirium / Confusion Song	Cause the target to become delirious and act irrationally. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Confuse. Quote: "Smash all who hunger for destruction... Confusion Song!"	20	4	1	20	400
Harmony / Dispel	Neutralize beneficial status effects on the target. Arithmeticks. Removes: Float, Reraise, Invisible, Regen, Protect, Shell, Haste, Faith, Reflect. Quote: "Illusions, lies, to heaven! Dispel Magic!"	34	4	1	34	800
Hesitation / Paralyze	Render the target incapable of action. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Disable. Quote: "Mindless, spiritless, hear the immutable beat... Paralyze!"	10	4	2	20	100
Repose / Sleep	Put the target into a deep slumber. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Sleep. Quote: "Lose conscious, wash away into the silent sea... Sleep!"	24	4	2	17	350
Induration / Petrify / Break	Turn the target's body into stone. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: Stone. Quote: "Suffering spirits, to eternity! Break Seal!"	16	4	1	10	580/600

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Absorb Used MP	Recover MP equal to the amount used by the opponent.	Magick	250

Support

Name	Description	JP
Defense UP	Take less damage from physical attacks.	400

Movement

Name	Description	JP Needed
Ignore Weather / Any Weather	Traverse any marsh, swamp, or poisonous fen unimpeded by weather conditions.	200
Manafont / Move MP UP	Recover MP upon moving.	350

[Mordred]

The Oracle is a mage who kills mages: Silence and Drain cripple the target, then a stick beating finishes the job.

Let's start cutting down that skill list to the target 9...

Skills from FFT Oracle that don't fit: Pray Faith, Doubt Faith, Paralyze, and potentially Foxbird. Pray Faith and Doubt Faith deal with status effects that would be omgwtfbroken in and of themselves if we used Faith in the magic damage formula, but we don't. As such, the only reasonable alternatve is for Pray/Doubt to affect MA, which I already kicked over to the Mediator.

Paralyze is straight-up stolen from Time Mages.

Foxbird's problem is that it requires multiple castings before it actually does anything. Foxbird should just straight-up add Chicken status to the victim.

What we're left with:

Blind (yes)
Spell Absorb (Gotta keep this)
Life Drain (Must keep)
Zombie (yes)
Silence Song (VERY MUCH YES)
Blind Rage
Foxbird
Confusion Song
Dispel Magic (Gotta keep this)
Sleep
Petrify (Oh my, yes)

That's down to 11. Mediators may also be casting Berserk, Confuse, and Sleep, so let's decide who gets which status. I think Mimic Daravon is way too classy for Mediators to lose it, so that would make Sleep a natural choice to cut from Oracles.

So, pick 2 of the following 3: Blind Rage, Foxbird, Confusion Song, I guess.

[Schwerpunkt]

Here's my thoughts on this class. Note that we're retaining the high-damage rods.

1. Drain Life (HP)
2. Drain Soul (MP)
3. Purge - Removes all magical status effects on the target (Regen, Poison, whatever; wouldn't affect stuff like Hemorrhage or Oil).
4. Hallucination - Add Terror (our more practical version of Sleep; otherwise functionally identical)
5. Tongue-Tie - Add silence.
6. Cloud Vision - Add blind.
7. Delirium - Add confuse.
8. Enrage - Add berserk.
9. Petrify - Since auto-petrify is ridiculously broken, this adds a 3 turn timer, at which point the character turns to stone. Sort of like Doom. Only Petrify is actually harder to get rid of.

Zombie and Petrify both provide extremely easy ways to inflict perma-CC on the target. That's not kosher. You get one and that's it. I went with Petrify. I added a timer to make it less ostentatious.

Foxbird is basically the exact same thing as Polymorph (our version of Toad). I cut it for being redundant.

The Faith stuff is gone for the reasons Mord outlined.

We could cut one of the status effects (probably Enrage, since that's more along the lines of the mediator) in favor of something like 'Drain Spirit' (after renaming Drain Soul to Drain Mana) which would sap both HP and MP at a reduced rate from the core skills.

Note that Manafont renders Drain MP pointless. It really does. This class shouldn't get it. That movement ability is more the Geomancer's thing.

For RSM, I'm thinking.

Reaction
1. Absorb Magick (Absorb Used MP)

Support
1. Equip Rod
2. Reinforced Robes - While wearing robes, reduces physical damage received by 15%.

Movement
1. Move +1 and Jump +1 (like the Archer's Agile), since this guy's a fairly move-heavy MOJ.

[kablizzy]

Petrify makes a world more sense in an elemental build, (e.g. Geomancer), but this runs into the problem of, "How does the Oracle kill someone?" If we leave him as-is, his only option is to spam Petrify until someone is petrified. Which is meh. Actually, that's not entirely true. This dude gets Rasp / Osmose. That's freakin' cool.

My early build is likely as follows -

Rasp
Osmose
Blind
Silence
Paralyze (Time Mage didn't actually get to keep this, and I'd like to see this with a chance to add Don't Move and/or Don't Act, as a Tier III option)
Confuse
Berserk
Dispel
Break

Hallucinate may work in place of Sleep, since Mediators with Mimic Daravon are way too cool to pass up, but I'd rather see Paralyze in place of either. I can also see Mediator using Berserk, but there's likely going to be at least one overlap ability there anyway. And Confuse could also go to Mediators, so we could remove one more and add in Hallucinate, which is cool.

The rest looks like we're in agreement with the exception that Schwer wants a timer on Zombie / Break, which is cool, but I have some slight concerns over those being Oracle's only win conditions, but beyond that, on to RSM!

Absorb Used MP is coolio.

Equip Rod! Dunno how I didn't see that. Also, perhaps Equip Stick? Does anyone have Equip Stick?

I don't get the conditional for needing to wear robes, but then again, I don't get why Oracle gets Defense UP anyway. I think we can do better than this, regardless.

Dunno what to do about Move. I'll ponder some stuff.

[Schwerpunkt]

The conditional for the robe is so you don't see Knights (with their ridiculous health pools) taking Mystic solely to drain HP/MP and get reduced physical damage. Because, believe it or not, that is exactly what I'd do. I'd basically be impossible to kill, barring some serious focus fire or some really cheesy stuff. Hell, even with robes I'd probably consider Spellsword/Oracle.

And I simply don't like Petrify or Zombie as basic abilities. They're simply way too powerful. Petrify is an auto-KO and Zombie is a death sentence in its own right (especially since the other guy can now freely include you in his heals and hurt you that way) -- plus I'd actually like to keep the 'Undead' effect for Necromancers.

I also dislike the Rasp/Osmose naming convention because it's nonsensical. Rasp is a description of sound and doesn't make any sense in the context of inflicting damage. Osmose makes more sense, but osmosis is a skill that really shouldn't belong to the Oracle (who is not, no matter how you cut it, a chemist). Drain <whatever> is much more direct and doesn't come across as contrived.

I can live with the Oracle getting Don't Act or Don't Move. But not both. Honestly, I can see Don't Move here and Don't Act on Mediator. Or the inverse.

I'd rather not have Equip Stick/Staff because Mord's hell-bent on using weapon elements to impact how well the Priest heals. We get Equip Rod because it's awesome, not because it's balanced.

I'd love to just axe Petrify and use some sort of direct damage spell. But I can't think of one.

[kablizzy]

Robe thing: Gotcha. Regardless, I'm sure there are 15 Support abilities that fit here better.

I'm not a huge fan of Petrify or Zombie, but I've got nothing else as of yet. I do like the concept of "You don't have to do damage to win," and givng players a bit more flavor options, but I'll have to spend more time pondering stuff like this. Undead for Necro is 100% yes in my book.

Rasp / Osmose being nonsensical : Eh, I'm not tied to it. I'm not above contrivance, in either case - they were always cool spell names, and here are some spells that do exactly that.

We can do Paralyze as the original, just a thought. And I can see Don't Move here and Don't Act on Mediator as well.

[Mordred]

Everybody seems to be using different names for the Oracle abilities... Can we stick with the FFT originals for now, just so we all don't have to keep scrolling up to look at the master list again?

We're all in agreement that Oracles' core ability set is going to include:

Life Drain (Drain HP)
Spell Absorb (Drain MP)
Silence Song (Silence)
Dispel Magic (Remove buffs)
Petrify (Petrify)
Blind (Blind)

I'm fine with Paralyze returning and cutting Zombie, but we really have to decide which status effects are going on the Mediator. Keeping Berserk, Sleep, and Confuse on the Oracle means we're going to have to come up with a whole bunch of totally new stuff for Mediator.

[kablizzy]

I can see a Mediator inflicting Berserk, Sleep, and confuse very easily. I cannot see him blinding someone with words, so I'd like to throw those at Mediator, if possible.

[Schwerpunkt]

This may be when we have to simply go back to the drawing board and hammer out all the status effects we're using in-game, what their sources are, and whether or not they're magical.

[kablizzy]

That's actually a really good idea. If someone wants to throw that topic up, I'll get to it after I'm done at the hospital tonight

[Mordred]

We all know, however, that females are capable of blinding you - WITH SCIENCE!



Figuring out our status list is a good idea. I'll slap up the list from the BMG if no one has gotten to it yet.

[Mordred]

Ok, having looked at the Big SFX List thread, let's take another crack at Oracle...

Life Drain (Drain HP)
Spell Absorb (Drain MP)
Dispel Magic (Remove buffs)
Silence Song (Silence)
Petrify (Petrify)
Blind (Blind)
Paralyze (Don't Act)

Oil effect?
Wound effect?

Basically, we just need to find 2 more skills for the Oracle. Note that Sleep, Confuse, Berserk, Charm, Death Sentence, and Chicken are reserved for Mediator.

[Schwerpunkt]

Oil effect should probably be restricted to Geomancer and Spellsword.

Don't Move is probably going to the Time Mage (as Gravity), so we can't use that.

What about Undead? With the amendment in the status list, it's not a "you are completely fucked" ability, although it does make Oracle/Priest or Priest/Oracle extremely dangerous. It's good enough to rate as a third tier ability.

I'm wondering about Virus (which just saps MP over time like Poison saps HP), but I don't think it's very thematic.

[Mordred]

Don't Move is pretty much certainly going on Time Mage. Oil on Geomancer is fine by me.

Undead would be fine; I don't know that we need to change it up after the fashion suggested in the SFX thread.

"Plague - The character cannot be healed by conventional means (drains and darkness spells will work, though). Unlike other effects, this wouldn't expire normally. Note that this is not the same as Undead (which simply turns healing into damage)."

Undead turning healing into harming is its whole schtick - I think keeping it as-is makes an Oracle-Priest or Priest-Oracle a very interesting class combo with those emergent properties I like so much.

Virus doesn't do it for me. I know that's a terrible argument. How about... uh... ffff. damn it. Morbol?

[Schwerpunkt]

Morbol is kind of silly.

Plague and Undead were both revised in my last post. I'm running off those amendments.

Petrify (working similar to the Geomancer option, but on hostile targets) may be worth considering. But the fact that it basically has a timer on it makes it pretty easy to counter -- and if it doesn't have a timer, it's completely broken.