Should a Wizard be hunted by the crew?

General
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I want to discuss the response level related to Wizards for the crew.

Story-time for why this thread exists :

In a recent round, a wizard spawned with one sec, one acting hos, an acting cap and one cmo.
They started talking about wanting to hijack shuttle, and where openly built for mass murder (combat armor, destruction apprentice, mjolnir, fireball)

I ahelped admins to know, just in case, if I as a chef could go and try to hunt the wizard due to how powerful these people are, especially on an actual low pop.

I was told no, that i should flee and escape/preserve my own life and only act in self defence unless I get deputized. Wizard promptly killed all remaining heads and sec, and then started hijacking, with no one really fighting them while they ran around the place, and having already killed the main “fighting force” able to distribute weapons and rally the crew against him. Everyone was helpless as they fireballed the shuttle and used their mjolnir against whoever was in there.

So, wizard should only be fought in self-defence, a normal crewmember can’t hunt them and it is solely a security job (unless deputized if it makes sense IC)

But, I find that completely stupid ! Wizard is a round ending threat who more often than not will murderbone completely freely and hijack shuttle. It is completely comparable to threats like xenomorphs and blob - antagonists so powerful everyone needs to rally and fight against at all costs to not let them run rampant.
Wizards are NOT balanced to fight only sec, no matter how many seccies there are. They are balanced for fighting a full crew !

I fully believe wizard should be a threat seen alike a blob/xenomorphs - everyone can prepare and get weapons and even actively hunt him due to the massive threat he poses.

I am making this thread due to being in opposition to admin stance and wanting to make it known, but I wanna hear your opinions on this - do you guys think this staff ruling should change ? should wizard be nerfed in consequence ?
Or is it a proper way to approach this situation and a good thing ?

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What makes wizard so fun, is the stupid magic he has, I dont think we should opt to nerf him, hell when was wizard even balanced, I only know that chap used to be magicproof?

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Chaplains are still magicproof.
This apply to any paranormal antagonist which includes :

  • Any cultists abilities including bolas and EMPs
  • Revenant abilities, all of them. They also cannot get their soul consumed by a revenant.
  • Most heretic abilities
  • MOST Wizard spells.

It goes to a point where the wizard rod form does nothing to a chaplain and he’ll just be left unharmed. Fireballs will just flash the chaplain but otherwise it’ll just despawn on contact. I won’t describe every spells but basically, if you have to fight a wizard, get the chaplain deputized ASAP.

(side note, chaplains can also bless the floor by spraying holy water, which prevents any (I think) form of magical jaunts)

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I for one truly despise “friendly” wizards and believe that such cases should be bwoinkable. They are a mortal enemy of the corporation that go to the station with the sole intent of wrecking havoc, then bloody well act like it.

Regarding the topic at hand, absolutely not. Wizards being OP is what makes them fun in the first place and if youre playing SS13 but are too salty to accept that you cant win them all, you might need to look for another game. Its about the drama, its always been all about the drama. Let the crew fight the wizard with all its got, for the wizard should show no quarter.

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I’m not sure how you were told that wizards should act in self-defense. The lore seems to indicate that the Space Wizard Federation hates anything with an NT logo and the federation itself is comprised of the most chaotic wizards (since not all wizards are automatically part of the federation), so them causing havoc and murder all over the SS13 seems like the most appropriate from a story perspective. They’re an EOTC for a good reason ^.^

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I mean, sure, but I was actively told that I should not try to hunt and attack them by an admin after I ahelped in round, and that I would only be allowed if I got deputized.

I’m not pulling this opinion out of nowhere, this is something I was directly told

EDIT : Oh, @XtremePrime , you misunderstood - I was told that the crew must act in self defence against a wizard. A wizard can still murderbone all he wants.

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Let’s take this from the Wizard’s point of view.
You finally roll wizard for the first time after playing this game for 500+ hours, you get some gear and spells and teleport to the station
You mess around for a bit and then a botanist with a plant bag full of deathnettles and a chemist with a methnade attached to a spear show up and annihilate you.
And that’s it, your wizard round is over, dynameme doesn’t spawn any more antags because it spent all of the treat on you and the round becomes essentially a greenshift after all the dead people get revived. Would that have been fun for everyone? Maybe on LRP but not here.

And, let’s be honest, if you hear about a fucking wizard rampaging across the station with a lightning hammer and slinging fireballs everywhere. Should your first thought really be 'I should gear up and hunt him down even though I have no previous combat experience or training"?

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It would either be “oh shit hide in a locker” or “let’s get him first.” If a crew member is willing to fight the Benos then they’d probably pick the latter.

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Yeah… which is why you target most of these firsthand… Like, that’s how wizard actually works and what wizard is balanced around.

Spear grenades are already banned though in any circumstances because that’s just outright non RP, but it’s why you rush the epic botany/xenobio.

Let’s rephrase that : You hear about a fucking wizard rampaging accross the station with a lightning hammer and slinging fireballs everywhere. He’s killed a lot of people, and sec + heads are obviously unable to fight back against him. Should you wait and hide in your department in fear as he will inevitably come for your ass or should you prepare weaponry and help security fight back in hope someone can revive you later?

I’m not trying to argue to rush the wizard at all costs at any point in time, i’m arguing that if the wizard is clearly going for a hostile route then fighting back against him should be allowed even without sec authorization

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Howl, remember how angry you were at that captain for choosing to go for the ‘kill the antag’ route because he knew he could beat your desword with his sabre?
Now imagine how mad you would be if your wizard round got cut short by a MD with a syringe gun and a couple of piercing syringes with Mute Toxin and a deathmix.

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You can’t really make a deathmix inside of a piercing syringe but still

I was not even angry at that captain, I found our interaction to be fun and only got angry when he got insanely salty in dchat afterwards and said (because he lost in our second fight), that he’d never RP with antags anymore
I had taken the L normally, I don’t even know why you’re bringing this one up ?

Nontheless, it’s wizard, everyone already expects that when they start playing wizard. Again, I am only talking about an openly hostile wizard, not a friendly one who talks with the station and makes demands and whatnot. But if the wizard is clearly murdering a ton of people or making it clear they want to hijack, it should be allowed to fight back with all you have

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Oh, sorry! Then I 100% agree with you, even if this should be security’s primary duty, but I feel the whole crew banding together would make for a fun team effort! Like a “This is our workplace, we’ll defend it” kind of moment! Though again, this should be done in a coordinated manner with the help of Captain/Command/CC/Security, not disorganized fight for your life thingy.
Yeah, I also can’t see CC denying the crew the ability to save their investment a.i. the SS13 ^.^

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Basically my thoughts. Does your character have a genuine fucking death wish to willingly confront an entity only known to exist in fairy tales??? That makes no sense from a character’s point of view, and it’s just the player’s desire to hunt the valid, there is no character at that point

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And when faced with people saying this, a lot of people will answer “Yes but it’s fight or flight ! My character fights ! That’s how he reacts !”

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This truly says a lot about our society :pensive:

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then nerf the shit out of wizard lol
wizard is not balanced to just face security only

and again, genuinely do not like this mentality of calling anyone who thinks it’d be roleplay to want to take arms and fight the threat threatening themselves and their coworkers, “validhunters”

like bruh

Again, I don’t see why your logic should apply to wizard
“oh if you decide to fight instead of letting combat oriented job handle it you’re actively validhunting and not roleplaying”
but when the crew takes arms to fight blob or xeno… it’s different?
Keep in mind a murderbone/actively hostile wizard is a guaranteed red alert

Red halo cult, malf AI, nuclear operatives, clockies? why are those scenarios treated differently here? and why can’t you conceive of characters who’s “fight or flight” reaction is “fight” ?

I am not advocating for hunting all antags. But in the case of such a major threat as a space wizard which NT crew is trained to spot and knows most of them are genocidal maniacs, why would it suddenly make no roleplay sense t try and fight with security

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I never said anything about defending yourself. I was talking about actively chasing the valid.

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So, If I, assistant mcgee, get spears and armor to fight nuke ops and comb maints to fight them & call security over
i am validhunting and breaking roleplay? there is no roleplay scenario where a character can be conceived to decide to defend their home, their coworkers, their job from the genocidal threat actively trying to kill everyone?

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Roleplay wise, if you don’t fight the nuclear agents, it is guaranteed death with the explosion. You may mention running away to a pod but it’ll get you to lavaland, not much better.

A wizard, in the context you mentionned, doesn’t guarantee your death in case of inaction.

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He’s bringing this up because it is relevant here, random crewman putting all the pressure on the antag to game and murderbone, while at the same time criticizing antags that only go for green or only round-remove people because fun. If you don’t see how that’s not helpful for rp, then there is no discussion here.

Wizard is an antag that can interact in a great variety of ways with the crew, it is not fair to compare it to xenomorphs or blob because those two can only go down one route.

Wizard doesn’t work well because while it can interact with people, it can also just say “fuck you”, take fireball and other spells to straight up one shot people in one of the most unfun and uninteractive way possible. Fireball is a testament on how not to give power to an antag that can also interact with the crew. It is instant range aoe crit on a 15 sec cd.
Its mere possibility pushes players to act paranoid and value removing the threat at any cost, before the threat does the same to them.
I’m vocal about xenos just being stuns on top of more stuns not being good, and I was vocal about the ability of abductors to 1v6 while being able to escape from anything, but none of this come as close to fireball gating roleplay.

“Let’s make the crew hunt the wizard”. Ok, then you’ll just push all players to roll wizard to murderbone and be as efficient as humanly possible to just kill everyone. Fast forward 6 months from now, and people will call wizard as being nukies but even worse, comparisons will be drawn to revs and removal will be considered by some.

“Let’s limit the crew in how they can fight the wizard”. You now leave the possibility for the wizard to experiment and be more creative with how they decide to approach the station, creating more potential for varied roleplay which would lead to better rounds. However, you also make it easier for bad antag players who don’t care about anything going on to just game and round remove everyone. It doesn’t matter if 6 wizard rounds are memorable vs 1 where the wizard was just gaming, because everyone will remember that 1 shit round.

“Let’s not spawn a wizard”. Problem averted.
I’m not joking, this is the reason why I never spawn a wizard. Not only do you get someone standing afk in the wizard ship for 20-30 min, looking at all the spells and not doing anything. But you run the risk of having the wizard die instantly to a chef wacking them with the rolling pin while they are typing, or you just spawn a fireball auto-turret that griefs everyone in sight. The funniest thing is that this last possibility is the better one.

Maybe you could rework the wizard, by adressing its more lethal spells and making them less uninteractive, statue and polymorphs are technically round removals (I think?), but they leave something for the players to do, and open up ideas for potential rp.

This thread tackles a very complex issue from one of the most narrow angles imaginable.

To get back on what was raised, no, I am not letting you, the chef, ruin a wizard’s round because it’s gamer time. This behaviour right here breeds more bad antag players, the kind that plague rounds.

You cannot ever complain about bad antag mindsets and blindly support this line of thought without outlining the issues I raised here. Otherwise, you’re just playing here with a switch between RP mode (when the valid is not here), and gaming mode (the valid appeared, go to armory and shoot the gun).
That usually goes in hand with not playing with a character, because this is the obvious go-to if you are just being yourself when playing.

A wizard is not at all the same a nuke ops, this ““conversation”” will never go anywhere thanks to these throwaways analogies that don’t have any ground to stand on.

For those that didn’t read, this is what we try to avoid by balancing these decisions:
(https://imgur.com/a/6UfLIy3)

Note: also the friendly wizards are a strawman here, they are their own issue and no staff is saying we want this to happen in place of what I criticize here.

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