I don't know if it was already considered, if yes please excuse me...

Is it possible to implement communication spells into the game, like sending and mindlink?

They would be terribly useful (as they are in pen and pencil D&D), and they can be easily put in: they would simply allow to use the NWN chat functions IC way. There is nothing forbids to use the party talk or the talk to function except the RP self-controll (the same way we ask for the name of people even if it gets known OoC with simply putting th cursor over them). With these spells these functions could be used IC.

Sending can allow to use the "talk to" for one sentence only, mindlink could allow to use the party chat for a time.

Thoughts?

Too easily exploitable, too much work, and too little gain.

As metropakt said, the difficulties in regulating this would be immense. While this would be a good approach for a small campaign always being overseen by a DM, it is just unworkable for a persistent world like EfU.

The idea is sound though, immersion wise it's much better than in game /tell /party etc , making in game standard functions work as spells instead or items is an interesting twist.

/tell person <xxxx> could be unusuble except via the spell, of course there may be a spell to intercept this communication (or block it) /p message etc

Cast a locate person divination, find out where somebody is.

Cast a locate object divination , find out where that item is that somebody stole from you.

Cast a identify creature spell and get the OLD full examine info on something you look at PLUS some extra information.

Think of it like what happened with EXAMINE, the ability of that in-game function was curtailed to allow some other things to be possible. To make knowledge powerful, general knowledge must be obscured.

I doubt the engine can support NOT allowing /tell etc and 2 out of X d.ms arent in favour of this so thats pretty much a death knell.

Anyway divination's are a HUGE amount of work as arkov said about communication spells/abilities however doable they are, i'm sure they have other priorities.

Woww, Metropack was swift, short and to the point. :) Thanks for Arkov for the more detailed explanation, and to Chaosprism for the additional ideas, I like them!

An easy way to do the communication spells is to simply make the spell which effectively does nothing, just having a duration. During that duration the use of party chat in IC is okay. Simply the player burns up a spell slot to use that function in an IC way. That's for mindlink.

For sending it can be a same, and it doesn't have a duration. Just burn a spell slot, and send a "tell to" to somebody in IC. It can be enhanced by a similar script like used by the sending system at the Town Hall, which puts same flavour message before like "You hear XY sound in your mind" or somesuch. And make sending as a zero level spell would be a nice addition, as these spells are usually under-utilised.

Regarding exploiting: it doesn't exploit more than the current situation. Only role playing self controll stops people abusing the party chat and the tell to functions. It doesn't change if there are those way to use these functions IC. If the 'sending' spell is scripted even newbies could see that it doesn't happen as a simple tell to. And when somebody gets mindlink (a level 4 spell) he/she already knows the drill in EfU.

Of course having other priorities is perfectly understandable reason. But I hope this can make it's way in the planned hak at least.

Well... I like the idea - but people must be able to have OOC chatter to avoid misunderstandings and grief. Or then I just didn't get your point. :)

chaosprism /tell person <xxxx> could be unusuble except via the spell, of course there may be a spell to intercept this communication (or block it) /p message etc

chaosprism I doubt the engine can support NOT allowing /tell etc...

Plus, would we really want to remove every sort of smooth, non-immersion breaking OOC communication? We'd drown in (()) messages :(.