[Kameron8]

I've made like two threads trying to get this nerfed before. Nobody is arguing the special attack is not situational, the problem is that it outperforms every other special attack by a large margin. As a mage, book smack does respectable damage (40-100 blunt, usually), and removes an entire action from the opponent. You can't create distance, because your one movement action will be met with the attacker following and book smacking once again. It can be paired with knockdown to eat an entire turn, which is not as 'gimmicky' as many of you are trying to make it out to be, just a death sentence.

As a tank, this translates roughly to "In this battle we both take one action per turn but uh you take 80 damage every turn on top of that." Better hope you're a crit whore.

So, yes, you can get high dodge, you can go first, you can make it dangerous to approach so close with a tome class, but there is NO other instance of a special attack causing this kind of impact on a fight. When's the last time somebody's heard "oh man, I fought them but I just could NOT win because of (slice/stab/multifront/widespin/palm strike)"? Because I hear that often about Book Smack. Make the momentum reduction 1 instead of 2, punish people who hit resists after being book smacked.

[Zakizo]

If it's that much of a problem then isn't the situation easily fixed by adding some knockback to it? Mages are supposed to like keeping distance, so it'd be nothing for them to complain about, and it would keep any nasty stunlock loops from happening.

Book smack being a projectile sounds like a bug, by the way.

[Rendar]

Adding knockback to it adds a bit more of "oh boy, a mage just got a way to fling people away". That and HSDW the turn before, Next turn Book Smack + Invocation start means you get 2 M next turn.

[Trexmaster]

I'll just pop in to say Book Smack is a projectile because it's a basic attack with a tome. Maybe it could be changed to be considered a melee attack. If that's possible. Of course then it turns into a work around to excel smack people through mirrors.

But yeah. Book Smack is definitely the most overbearing special attack in the game. Reducing its momentum cut to 1 always seems like the way to go.