The Mage's guild --- underlying concepts
========================================

The Mage's guild attempts to continue the Mage's guild written once ago by
Ploi. As such, every player who was member of that guild can become member
of this guild without additional cost. New players must pay a fee of 2000
coins (copper) and have an intelligence of at least 5 (?). This makes it
possible for a new elf to immediately join the guild, whether an orc has
to exercise his intelligence a bit before. (Maybe a player will have to
pay an additional fee paid when rising to level 11.)

Guild membership is not alignment- or race-dependent.

There are no additional quests for guild members. (This is mainly a question
of programming time :-)

The ID of the guild (in property P_GUILD) is currently "Mages". (If you
want me to change this, please mail immediately!)

Guild levels range from 1 to 30. If you are higher than Lvl20, you may
become wizard if you want to: just go into the guild and type "wizard".
But since there are players who want to play further, they can do that.

The advantages of the guild are that you may be able to cast powerful spells
and may talk to other guild members without SP cost. These advantages are
balanced by certain stat restrictions (which can only be imposed if there is
no adventurer's guild which allows members of this guild advancing): the
maximum strength is 16, the maximum constitution is 18. Maybe there will
be imposed additional restrictions concerning the wielding of too powerful
weapons or the wearing of too protective armours... we have to see what the
AW of Defence will decide here.

Currently, there are two ways of learning new spells:
1) Learning by searching the library (as implemented in the old guild as
   well)
2) A higher Mage may show you his/her spellbook, and you can copy spells
   from it. This also works only in the library, and will hopefully
   encourage teamwork among the guild members.

If you have learned a new spell, you can cast it rather bad (5% probability
of success). This may be improved by learning it in a cell (similar as
implemented in the old guild). Furthermore, the ability to cast a spell is
improved by successful casting. It is decreased if a critical error occurs
(which happens in 1 of 20 casts). Currently, the ability is increased in
1% and decreased in 3% steps. (This might be changed if it shows that this
is not balanced enough). The maximum ability of casting a spell is 95%, that
is, there is always a chance of failure (was 90% in the old guild).

If a normal error occurs, part of the spell has worked right, and part wrong.
This usually has the result that the spell effects turn upon the spell caster.
This has some disadvantages for the caster, such as being hit by a fireball,
but the caster doesn't lose casting ability.
If a critical error occurs, the caster has messed up the spell completely,
and something wholly different occurs. This is worse than a normal error,
since the caster loses 3% casting ability. On the other hand, the caster
does not suffer from adverse spell effects.

The Mage's guild features a special shop as well where you can buy several
miscellaneous autoloading items. This shop can be used by non-members as
well.

Suggested spells so far are:
"shield"
"light"
"magic missile"
"chill touch"
"ventriloquism"
"armour"
"find familiar"
"rope trick"
"shocking grasp"
"know alignment"
"cure light wounds"
"sanctuary"
"cone of cold"
"teleport"
"invisibility"
"lightning bolt"
"identify"
"fear"
"bless weapon"
"animate dead"
"conjure elemental"
"darkness"
"slow monster"
"finger of death"
"silence"
"bless armour"
"explosive runes"
"true seeing"

It must be noted that the regenerate spell has gone (as demanded by many
wizards before The Big Change (TM)) and the teleport spell will be restricted
in comparison with the previous version, although I currently do not know
in which way (no teleport to players as decided in the last wizconf before
The Big Change, but some replacement for that).

The rooms of the guild are almost finished and can be found in
/d/woodland/organimedes/guild/rooms. Part of them are accessible only to
Mages, others are accessible to everyone.

I have not thought of guild commanders so far, this will depend on the
number of wizards who want to help me with the guild. Primarily I think
to have guild commanders could be rather dangerous. (There is a mechanism
which allows to fix a guild membership without human involvement.) Maybe
a Seer/Learner (that is, a not fully fledged wizard) could become a guild
commander. One could also think if the players > Lvl20 could be guild
commanders.

The guild will be situated in a rather large wood somewhere between NF City
and Crescent Lake. It will change its position with every reboot.

Questions, suggestions and the like to Organimedes.
