We should uhhhh... talk about Rathen's secret

[Adhara In Space]

arse nath sucks where it is right now. it isnt even as much the spell, but that every wizard takes it because its one of the most powerful spells right now. and then every wizard who has it plays the same. teleport in. arse nath. teleport out. and when multiple wizards are doing this, its actually genuinely awful. or if youre on the shuttle and a wiz has arse nath, youre fucked. and if you get hit by it 4 times without managing to get to surgery (if theres still living medical personnel), youre fucked.

[Superlagg]

Aight how about this:

Can't remove an arm (or leg) if you're already missing an arm (or leg).

If it can't remove a limb because you're too fucked up, you poop out a non-lethal-to-lose organ.

It can't remove cyberlimbs or cyberorgans, including cyberbutts.

If you're all out of things to lose (or they're robot parts), just puke and bleed and shoot gibs all over the place.

[Arlian]

Aight how about this:

Can't remove an arm (or leg) if you're already missing an arm (or leg).

If it can't remove a limb because you're too fucked up, you poop out a non-lethal-to-lose organ.

It can't remove cyberlimbs or cyberorgans, including cyberbutts.

If you're all out of things to lose (or they're robot parts), just puke and bleed and shoot gibs all over the place.

I really like the idea of it not being able to remove cyberlimbs. That would mean that Rathen's Secret loses it's effectiveness over time once the crew slowly replaces their blown off body parts with cyberlimbs. It's still very powerful with the stun, smoke and damage without being able to blow off cyberlimbs and it'd give the crew a way to counter the spell like other spells can be countered.

[Carbadox]

I don't see the need for the compromise, I think the delimbing is pretty bad no matter how it's presented.

[Drago156]

I think the biggest problem here is similar to what Blind's biggest problem was: cooldown was way to low for how quickly and long you could completely disable someone for. I have to say that the butt removal is fine but probably where it should stop in terms of delimbing. I have fought a number of wizards while HoS that used rathen's, cluwning, shield, and teleport and it is just a complete an absolute hassle to even get a shot on them. I've had a very specific round on Horizon that comes to mind where, as HoS, I spent about 30-50 minutes chasing the one wizard, shooting out the entire armory's buckshot, flares, two boxes of nailshot given by an admin, rubber slugs, probably 2 or 3 clips of tranqs, and who knows how many taser and lawbringer shots, making sure each and every time that I was caught in arse nath to head to medical and slap my ass back on first thing. It's incredibly annoying and seriously not fun in any way for anyone but the wizard, and in my opinion gets way more value out of a single use than any other spell, by well over two fold.

[vampirate]

If we do the cyberlimbs thing can robotocists start with robot buttes? Can they either way?

[Lady Birb]

If we do the cyberlimbs thing can robotocists start with robot buttes?   Can they either way?

Hacked robotics fabricators can make cyberbutts for an incredibly small amount of materials, and any roboticist that knows what they're doing hacks the fabricators immediately.

[vampirate]

If we do the cyberlimbs thing can robotocists start with robot buttes?   Can they either way?

Hacked robotics fabricators can make cyberbutts for an incredibly small amount of materials, and any roboticist that knows what they're doing hacks the fabricators immediately.

Yeah... that is what makes just starting with them cool.

[Studenterhue]

Late to this thread, not that the Rathen's Secret conversations stopped with this thread, but this PR has been freshly merged. Now, Rathen's only has a 30% chance to remove a limb if the victim has no butt, down from 100%. It still just removes one limb, as per the PR that made the spell only delimb upon absence of ass (Ass-sence if you will).

[zjdtmkhzt]

Changing the chance to remove a limb to 100 back when I made it only delimb when you have no butt was no accident on my part, but it seems I severely overestimated how much that change would affect its power.
I guess people just didn't feel like getting their asses reattached in order to be immune to future delimbings?

Anyway, as already mentioned in that thread at that time (https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/1192), it probably needs other changes as well.
I myself like the idea of it having a short delay and being avoidable by throwing yourself to the ground, similar to the admin-triggered blast waves.
This would still make it useful defensively, because people may not react quickly enough and an opponent that intentionally goes prone is still at a disadvantage for a moment.

[Drago156]

I guess people just didn't feel like getting their asses reattached in order to be immune to future delimbings?

I do it every time, it's just awful to have to do it every 30 seconds or so just to avoid getting delimbed and probably killed shortly after if you don't re-attach it.

Personally I think 30% delimb chance is still a tad bit high for the current cooldown, I'd be more agreeable with something like 20-25%.

[KikiMofo]

If you have a problem with wizards delimbing you then get some plant limbs from botany. You can literally just stick those back on after they get popped off.

[Carbadox]

Personally I think 30% delimb chance is still a tad bit high for the current cooldown, I'd be more agreeable with something like 20-25%.

I was hoping that the PR would stay up a bit longer to get some feedback regarding the exact number but it got merged in less than 5 minutes

[Katzen]

I read this thread months ago and have seen this used a lot by some people as wizards and it's pretty clear why.

Sundance and Carbodox are correct, the real power of this spell is the 6(?) second full screen AOE stun without targeting or channelling. Wizards can use this as an escape or an opener, if they are against a single target they can put them into crit by following up with magic missile and a damage spell before anyone is off the floor. Relatively good 50 second cool down as well.