Just a friendly little reminder here regarding the development of spells/abilities. Any time something is created for us, whether it be a buff or a damage dealing proc etc. you will have created a specific mechanic within the game itself. The thing is, that when you do something like this it becomes very "financially sound" (and not just in terms of money, but in gaming resources too) to re-use the code. What does this mean? If you are a wizard and you find that it would be "really cool" to get a 100000 (add zeros here) nuke so you can go about smashing frogs, rats, and kicking snakes, just remember that the same spell can be thrown at you by another mob. If you think "Wow! my slow makes it so that the mob only attacks at 60% of it's normal speed!" then what you may need to realize is two things: In order to keep the fight interesting and keep the game balanced, they are going to have to create a "normal" attack speed of things that would then have to be de-buffed AND the same spell might very well be used on you. Now you would be thinking "Wow, my attacks are only doing 60% attack speed...".
Really though, this isn't all bad. This, IMHO, is great design. It can make for some very dynamic events. Say your in thronefast and a Pickpocket NPC runs up and snatches a percentage of your coin and starts running away. You give chase and just as you throw a meteor at him, HE feigns death in front of some guards. Whoops.
Point here is that for every action, there is a reaction. This applies to gaming as well. You are not going to get ANYTHING that will not be used against you. Be careful of what you ask for. Because my friends, they just might give it to you.
Well, not necessarily. Most of the spell/skill code has flagging options that can dictate effectiveness on a speciific target type. For a PC, you can actually set to havre reduced fucntionality or not effective at all. I am not stating if we should or should not have spells/skills on equal footing for both PC and NPC, just stating that it is easily configurable to adjust what may be 100% effective for a PC, may be only 60% effective for an NPC. In some situations, you can give PC certain fucntionality that would be a disaster to give to the NPCs.
