Subject:  Designer Vex about the Fire Horn |
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Darkstone News
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Date Posted: Thu, May 16 2002, 10:34pm
Vex about the Fire Horn
Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2002, 12:48 PM EDT by Teich Dragon (GeneralNews)
Vex (Designer - Ultima Online) posted the following information about the fire horn in this thread on the MyUO-Boards:
In reply to:
Aren't I nice, Vex... leaving this thread open and ready for your post!
:P~~~~~~~~~
Ok, so here's what the fire horn is all about.
The point behind it is to fill a gap at the lower levels of bard abilities. When you provoke two low-level creatures against each other, chances are it will take somewhere between "a very long time" and "forever" for them to kill each other.
The fire horn is basically an area-effect flamestrike effect with some limitations and costs. The bard can only use it at short range, and not very often (you have to catch your breath between uses). While it is area-effect, having multiple targets in the area dilutes the damage. Also, each use consumes a quantity of sulfurous ash.
The damage done by use of the fire horn depends on the user's skill levels in Musicianship, Peacemaking, Discordance, and Provocation. In the hands of a non-bard it's probably a waste to use it, but it will be useful for someone with 200 or more points of bard skills.
Against low-level creatures, a good firehorn blast can leave a bunch of corpses and badly scorched monsters. Against mid-to-high level creatures, the fire horn does damage but isn't powerful enough to kill. It will aid against tough creatures but not be an uberweapon.
The firehorn doesn't have charges, but it does have a small (less than 0.5%) chance of being destroyed each use. This means that every firehorn always has the same chance of being destroyed each use (whether its new or quite old), so it's impossible to scam in the sale of one by using almost all of the item's charges. On the bad side, it does mean that a new item could be destroyed on its first use -- but on the good side, there's no worrying about charges and it's equally conceivable that a firehorn could go for many hundreds of uses before finally rolling snakeyes. It's possible we'll begin using the same system for other new magic items.
Oh, and the firehorn does work against other players -- since it's area effect it won't damage innocents, guildmates, faction allies, or their pets. It will damage reds, criminals, aggressors, and guild enemies. This does have certain implications that may need to be analyzed more deeply. As far as power goes, the fire horn's damage will certainly be noticeable against other players, but won't be extreme by any means. We will closely watch use of fire horns on public test shards and will alter their damage versus players as appropriate.
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