Phoenix and Bahamut Summons

[Jordache]

It's about time we discussed Phoenix and Bahamut summons: how do they work? How big are they? What is the purpose of summoning them?

Phoenix: Regenerative Medicine!
Lv 99 Master Evoker Astral Flow summon: Rebirth Flame
Rebirth Flame: Regen V plus ARISE (where applicable) and gives Reraise IV effects (Maybe III) to all in AOE range.
Only available to Mastered Jobs (you have those three stars above your head).

Bahamut: Patent-Issued Industrial Power!
Lv 99 Astral Flow Summon: Mega Flare
Mega Flare: Catastrophic AOE damage like Zantetsuken, with a GEO-type lingering DOT halo effect within a specific radius.
Only available to MAX-level Master level jobs (we're not there yet).

I don't care what SE said 500 years ago. Get past COVID and cancer cures and get the job done.

I want to expand on this and amend the Phoenix summon to:

Rebirth Flame: AOE fire+light damage that casts Raise III on party members and leaves behind a GEO-type luopan that gives Regen/refresh/regain to all within AOE. All trust magic summons are consumed/dispelled upon use.

Or that is consumes trusts summons to cast O_o. No probably no, just thought it sounded cool, like there's a Phoenix burden or something. But maybe that's the way: Liek how tusts have more power the fewer there are in a PT, maybe this works like the more trusts summons you sacrifice the better the phoenix summon is:
1 trust: only AOE regen;
2 trusts: AOE regen, and refresh;
3 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, and regain;
4 trusts AOE regen, refresh, regain, and AOE fire + light dmg;
5 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, regain, fire + light dmg, and raise gets cast on all within the AOE and the caster gets RR effect and HP/MP retored.

[Zenion]

I want to expand on this and amend the Phoenix summon to:

Rebirth Flame: AOE fire+light damage that casts Raise III on party members and leaves behind a GEO-type luopan that gives Regen/refresh/regain to all within AOE. All trust magic summons are consumed/dispelled upon use.

Or that is consumes trusts summons to cast O_o. No probably no, just thought it sounded cool, like there's a Phoenix burden or something. But maybe that's the way: Liek how tusts have more power the fewer there are in a PT, maybe this works like the more trusts summons you sacrifice the better the phoenix summon is:
1 trust: only AOE regen;
2 trusts: AOE regen, and refresh;
3 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, and regain;
4 trusts AOE regen, refresh, regain, and AOE fire + light dmg;
5 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, regain, fire + light dmg, and raise gets cast on all within the AOE and the caster gets RR effect and HP/MP retored.

So you want Searing Light plus Inferno, a little Altana's Favor, and maybe Embrava just for fun, and you want it to be neutered if the user is playing with other people?

The consuming five trusts to add Raise effect is especially funny because that effect would literally never be usable: if the one party member you had needed a Raise, they'd already be incapacitated and unable to summon Phoenix at all.

You could maybe get away with doing it in two parts: Phoenix's Favor gives Regen/Refresh/Regain/Reraise IV, and you have access to an AoE attack, but you can only have Phoenix active while Astral Flow is active and using the attack consumes the rest of the Astral Flow timer.

Or maybe we can throw Summoner a bone for once and make this the one blood pact that targets alliance instead of party, and it applies an Arise or Reraise IV effect as appropriate to alliance members in range, but the user dies like they used Mijin Gakure (whether you should get a free reraise is debatable there, if you do it's basically just like Final Sting applying Weakness.)

As for Bahamut... I mean, the halo thing is basically just impossible, because FFXI doesn't like having two pets attached to one player at all, so you'd be trading all of your Summoner class features for one Geomancer one. Maybe do it the same way as my proposal for Phoenix, with a Bahamut's Favor effect which boosts, say, physical damage level, and your final Mega Flare gets its damage scaled up based on how long that effect has been active? Makes it a bit risk/reward, you want to hold off on pulling the trigger as long as possible for maximum effect, but you still need to give yourself a buffer in case your positioning is off or you get stunned. This would also strongly incentivize using the relic piece which enhances the duration of Astral Flow.

[Jordache]

Yeah something like that: It's intended as a trust post-Siren, so its like a fully-mastered SMN (three-stars) spell-only, and more like the trusts are going to be sacrificed to fuel Phoenix's flame or something, but I was more like in FF8: where you're dead and phoenix come and does dmg and raises your party. There's some COP-level cannon that phoenix is SUPER weak [dispersed?] because vana'diel is in decay so I'm not really expecting more than an odin/alex type of summon>move>release thing.

OR its a model with auto attack ai and a super stong avatar boon like a bird-shaped luopan.

See: phoenix is a huge model so I don't want it to be out for like logistical/lag/framerate reasons. I like the Odin/Alex type of smn, but it should be closer to Siren in execution/reality.

And no bones lol this is FFXI, nothing ever targets alliance :P

And your Mijin idea: I'm imagining the SMN to just like explode and die (w arrise on) as this GIANT bird erupts through its abdomen like one of those things from the Aliens movie.

I'm not attached to the idea but as an explanation/elaboration:
I was thinking for smn that phoenix becomes MORE useful the more trusts you have out in exchange for the trust's power, so you're trading 5 trusts for one ultimate SMN move to save yourself lol. I thought there was an exchange element in there to play with. I like a lot of parties are a mix of trusts/players and I think trusts are phoenix magic or something (probably wrong on that).

And for the bahamut thing: I'm thinking is more of an environmental effect, not a pet, like a lingering residue of the mega flare after-birth/math[?]. Like how nuclear stuff has a devastated environment or a forest fire is all charred earth. But ideas are ideas.

[Zenion]

Yeah something like that: It's intended as a trust post-Siren, so its like a fully-mastered SMN (three-stars) spell-only, and more like the trusts are going to be sacrificed to fuel Phoenix's flame or something, but I was more like in FF8: where you're dead and phoenix come and does dmg and raises your party. There's some COP-level cannon that phoenix is SUPER weak [dispersed?] because vana'diel is in decay so I'm not really expecting more than an odin/alex type of summon>move>release thing.

OR its a model with auto attack ai and a super stong avatar boon like a bird-shaped luopan.

See: phoenix is a huge model so I don't want it to be out for like logistical/lag/framerate reasons. I like the Odin/Alex type of smn, but it should be closer to Siren in execution/reality.

Fafnir was a huge model, but they managed to fill a map square with it. Now, whether the team that actually remains can do that or not, that's another question entirely, I'm not convinced they held on to any 3D modellers.

I'm not attached to the idea but as an explanation/elaboration:
I was thinking for smn that phoenix becomes MORE useful the more trusts you have out in exchange for the trust's power, so you're trading 5 trusts for one ultimate SMN move to save yourself lol. I thought there was an exchange element in there to play with. I like a lot of parties are a mix of trusts/players and I think trusts are phoenix magic or something (probably wrong on that).

Anything that erases trusts needs to be an instant win button for it to appeal to players, though. You'd be sacrificing a crucial role that your remaining party members aren't able to fill: your regen and regain won't replace the only tank in the party, or active healing. Maybe in an edge case where you're using nothing but buffing trusts, but it's still putting you at a large disadvantage if it doesn't get you out of whatever encounter you're in immediately. If you're in a position where you're relying on five trusts for a fight... forget about it, losing them and your pet at the same time would be certain death.

Also I don't think Phoenix was involved in trust magic, she was pretty busy with keeping Iroha in the game when that was making its big story appearance, not really a whole lot of room there.

(You know what Phoenix is involved with, though? Omen. Omen and Fickblix, if I remember correctly; it would be cool to see something happen with that. Maybe you do enough Omen, Incantrix has enough Phoenix magic from your breath to finally revive Fickblix (only not quite because Chaos fight says no happy endings) and there's enough left over to reconstitute Phoenix?)

And for the bahamut thing: I'm thinking is more of an environmental effect, not a pet, like a lingering residue of the mega flare after-birth/math[?]. Like how nuclear stuff has a devastated environment or a forest fire is all charred earth. But ideas are ideas.

So, the thing there is, how do you think that works, mechanically? I can only think of a couple of zones where effects are applied to locations, and that feels very much like something that had to be baked into that zone specifically. To be able to do an area effect that can just be arbitrarily dropped anywhere, there would need to be a source. Whatever that source is will need to be attached to whoever created it, in order to handle cleanup - as fun an idea as it is to have an effect that lasts after you zone out, that would have all sorts of disastrous potential given the overall fragility of FFXI's code; your effect needs to be automatically culled if you zone out or are defeated.

There's basically one system presently in place to handle that sort of thing: pets. It would take up the pet slot. I don't know why a luopan counts as a pet (besides making it easier to fit multiple jobs on one piece of gear) but it does; this would almost certainly have to be the same situation.

You could wave it off by saying Bahamut is just that much, that you need to take time to recharge before you can summon again, but I just can't see a way that you'd get a lingering area effect without it having to eat the pet slot, in the game as it's presently structured. I don't know what the FFXI source code looks like so I can only speculate, but I think this is probably also the reason we don't have beastmaster or puppetmaster trusts, and the summoner and geomancer ones barely leverage their job features. Trusts aren't quite pets, but they tie themselves to their owner in such a way that having them generate a pet would probably make that pet count as the player's one and only available pet? Which is... a weird problem, on the surface, but programming-wise I can see exactly how it could happen.

Getting a little off track now but TL;DR I don't think Bahamut could have a lingering after-effect without either a non-trivial change to the game's code base (creating a new pet class that doesn't count as your pet, similar to your adventuring fellow, or copying Reisenjima's darkness spheres to every zone and instance where Bahamut could potentially be used just in case) or blocking the summoner's summoning.

[Zenion]

I can do the bahamut thing with a one-two-punch: 1) is the pet as a summon, then 2) is the summon as inert NPC, you're gonna pallet swap the model to a point model (lie a pixle sized bahamut or clear box) that counts as a pet until the effect timer is finished. Basically you can write a conditional to the summoned pet that silences of deactivates JA upon use like a stance, it's not conceptually hard:

summon pet
pet animation
pet transition to non-interactable npc aura
SMN cooldown timer starts
summoner silenced or unable to take further actions (silence and amnesia or something) until effect timer ends, say.

You're changing the smn pet model for a different smn pet model within the same set of animations, like a luopan.

or you reverse the summoning: the bahamut animation is not the pet that's counted but the loupan after effect, like a scripted npc like Atomos: the pet you summon is the after effect, but there's no pet commands, and what the player actually sees as the avatar is a summoning special effect animation. So the pet is the after effect and the bahamut is like tied into the summing glyph.

Sure, that basically works, and you don't even need to silence or amnesia the summoner: if you control a luopan, you cannot summon an avatar, there's already specific code preventing it (as tested on geo/smn.) There would be an edge case where smn/geo would hypothetically be able to dismiss it with Full Circle, that would need to be addressed, but otherwise it's a relatively simple approach to implementation.

Which leaves the original issue: For however long the geo effect lasts, the user is not a summoner, they're whatever their subjob says they are. If that's not a deal-breaker, then problem solved; as I said before, just add on a snippet of lore that says the Bahamut summon is just that little bit more taxing and takes some time to recover from, maybe tweak the message the player gets when they try to summon up too soon, and you're settled.

Interesting sub-issue that this raises though, for avatars and luopans at least you get the pet HP bar glued to your message window. I wonder if it would be more helpful to find a way to hide that, or to use it as a visible timer counting down your summoning lockout: when this hits 0%, you can have pets again.

[Jordache]

Sure, that basically works, and you don't even need to silence or amnesia the summoner: if you control a luopan, you cannot summon an avatar, there's already specific code preventing it (as tested on geo/smn.) There would be an edge case where smn/geo would hypothetically be able to dismiss it with Full Circle, that would need to be addressed, but otherwise it's a relatively simple approach to implementation.

Which leaves the original issue: For however long the geo effect lasts, the user is not a summoner, they're whatever their subjob says they are. If that's not a deal-breaker, then problem solved; as I said before, just add on a snippet of lore that says the Bahamut summon is just that little bit more taxing and takes some time to recover from, maybe tweak the message the player gets when they try to summon up too soon, and you're settled.

Interesting sub-issue that this raises though, for avatars and luopans at least you get the pet HP bar glued to your message window. I wonder if it would be more helpful to find a way to hide that, or to use it as a visible timer counting down your summoning lockout: when this hits 0%, you can have pets again.

Ooh I like that: it's like: a yes, with a short if *pun intended* lol.

"Um it's like an undispellable summon" we would just not give it a pet command menu like the spirits have. Maybe just apply a temporary weakness type of status effect[?], and when the effect wears the pet "releases", like an auto-script?

Maybe we have something lol

For that window thing:
I think that it's a player state or status: player in command of pet: ON/OFF

Which we could just have it be a pet called "Flare Residuum", give it no controls, and stick a bio effect on it until it dies, like you said, and slap the summoner with a weakness lol. I say weakness b/c other mobs like Tchakka can apply it as a temporary stats.

[Jordache]

So, the thing there is, how do you think that works, mechanically? I can only think of a couple of zones where effects are applied to locations, and that feels very much like something that had to be baked into that zone specifically. To be able to do an area effect that can just be arbitrarily dropped anywhere, there would need to be a source. Whatever that source is will need to be attached to whoever created it, in order to handle cleanup - as fun an idea as it is to have an effect that lasts after you zone out, that would have all sorts of disastrous potential given the overall fragility of FFXI's code; your effect needs to be automatically culled if you zone out or are defeated.

There's basically one system presently in place to handle that sort of thing: pets. It would take up the pet slot. I don't know why a luopan counts as a pet (besides making it easier to fit multiple jobs on one piece of gear) but it does; this would almost certainly have to be the same situation.

You could wave it off by saying Bahamut is just that much, that you need to take time to recharge before you can summon again, but I just can't see a way that you'd get a lingering area effect without it having to eat the pet slot, in the game as it's presently structured. I don't know what the FFXI source code looks like so I can only speculate, but I think this is probably also the reason we don't have beastmaster or puppetmaster trusts, and the summoner and geomancer ones barely leverage their job features. Trusts aren't quite pets, but they tie themselves to their owner in such a way that having them generate a pet would probably make that pet count as the player's one and only available pet? Which is... a weird problem, on the surface, but programming-wise I can see exactly how it could happen.

Getting a little off track now but TL;DR I don't think Bahamut could have a lingering after-effect without either a non-trivial change to the game's code base (creating a new pet class that doesn't count as your pet, similar to your adventuring fellow, or copying Reisenjima's darkness spheres to every zone and instance where Bahamut could potentially be used just in case) or blocking the summoner's summoning.

I can do the bahamut thing with a one-two-punch: 1) is the pet as a summon, then 2) is the summon as inert NPC, you're gonna pallet swap the model to a point model (lie a pixle sized bahamut or clear box) that counts as a pet until the effect timer is finished. Basically you can write a conditional to the summoned pet that silences of deactivates JA upon use like a stance, it's not conceptually hard:

summon pet
pet animation
pet transition to non-interactable npc aura
SMN cooldown timer starts
summoner silenced or unable to take further actions (silence and amnesia or something) until effect timer ends, say.

You're changing the smn pet model for a different smn pet model within the same set of animations, like a luopan.

or you reverse the summoning: the bahamut animation is not the pet that's counted but the loupan after effect, like a scripted npc like Atomos: the pet you summon is the after effect, but there's no pet commands, and what the player actually sees as the avatar is a summoning special effect animation. So the pet is the after effect and the bahamut is like tied into the summing glyph.

Also that flixblix ting: maybe just give me lots (500/ 1000?) of merits points to revive phoenix, lol.