BrettNLowe

Circling back to report on spellcasts per fight - I just finished Llengrath on POTD. Spell casts left for my three Vancians: Priest MC: 3/4/4/4/4/3/3/2 Aloth: 6/2/6/4/4/3/1/2 Hiravias: 4/4/4/4/3/2/3/3 I believe each of them used 2 of their 4 mastered spells. My point being, 2 per-encounters per spell level is way overkill unless combat has drastically changed. And finally, changing the Vancians to Mana seems a really poor choice. There's no real reason to. Spell slots are interesting design space, and if you want a Mana pool, almost all of the other classes have you covered. To be frank, I think Mana pools were a poor choice for most classes. This favors mostly taking passive abilities and then the one or two best powers you want to spam. The per encounter system for martials in POE1 created more variety in ability usage because they weren't competing for resources. Sure, Barbaric Shout is cool, but do you really want to burn Rage on that when you could Heart of Fury instead? But it's far too late to worry about that now.

I'm 75 percent through a POTD playthrough, and more than ever I'm believing that you should only get one spell slot per spell level until you hit the former mastery levels - i.e., you get another level 1 spell at power level 5, 2 at 6, 3 at 7, 4 at 8, and 5 at 9. On almost no fights have I managed to burn through a significant number of spells before the fight is over, and that's including the boss fights that you aren't trying to hold back on. What's more is that there are spell levels that my characters don't even use because they just have so many casts at the levels that have the OP spells.

Honestly, the current system is the easiest. But too many people want muscle wizards.

Yeah, even if you steal recovery from Dex (worsening that stat), you've basically made a duplicate of Dex. Sure, it's slightly different, but they are both "do things faster."

Ugh. I guess the Muscle Wizard fans win after all. At the very least we can all hope *something* works out for Resolve other than going back to the Pillars 1 system where Resolve was terrible.

Can't you use Empower to refresh spell slots, or am I mistaken there?

Somewhat off-topic, but . . . "From SneakAttack perspective: Graze and UnderPen is multiplicative; while Crit and OverPen are additive; From Strength perspective: Graze and UnderPen is additive (with double inversion); while Crit and OverPen are multiplicative. That's because: - Sneak Attack, Crit, OverPen and other bonuses belong to preAdditive group; while - Strength, Graze and UnderPen belong to postAdditive group." Ugh! This seems completely wrong to me. Crits, Grazes, and Pen bonuses/maluses should be in one group with Strength, Sneak Attack, and Soul Whip in another. Especially Sneak Attack - historically, that was supposed to be a source of damage that makes you less reliant on strength. If Strength and Sneak Attack are multiplicative, then you want muscle rogues. Putting Soul Whip in that category also makes it so Ciphers don't have to worry as much about Strength and can focus on other stats. Some other bonuses you could consider as to what makes sense. For example, Two-Handed Style makes sense to not be in the Str group - you want Str to be multiplicative with it so 2-handers value Str rather than devalue it.

Saying Fireball serves a different purpose by comparing 4 fireballs vs 2 is a little off the mark. If you are firing off 4 fireballs per fight, that means you are resting every fight, too, which is clearly not how the game was designed. As I mentioned in the Vancian thread, POE1 at least felt like it was balanced around 4 fights per rest on average. Is it possible to mod attributes? I know I'm a pariah for preferring Str to Mgt, but I'm interested in seeing if you can add a 2%-per-point Armor recovery modifier to Str. Anyway, back to spells - another thing I mentioned in the Vancian thread is a point system for evaluating spells. There are a lot of variables, and it would take a lot more to evaluate how a debuff compares to damage, but perhaps we could come up with some ideas on damage spells alone. If I'm not too tired after work, I'll circle back, but here are some initial thoughts. First you start with a baseline - say, single target with either pierce, slashing, or crush damage - as X damage. Now we can consider damage types. Is it safe to say Frost and Fire are better? Maybe set them to .9X. Then Shock or Corrode might be slightly better than those, at .8X. Raw is the strongest, so maybe it warrants a .6X. For a mixed damage type, we take at least the lowest type, then subtract a little more based on the other type. Corrode/Crush might be .8-.05=.75X. Or Shock/Burn would be .8-.1=.7X. Then consider upfront vs. duration. I would consider instanced as well (magic missle vs single shot) except I don't think it matters as much now that there is no DR. The more damage is spread out over time, the less valuable it is. 6s DOT would get a minor boost - 1.05X. 12 s =1.1X, etc to 30s =1.25X. Or maybe the boost should be higher - again, this is just a starting point. Then consider shapes/sizes. A small AOE might be able to hit three enemies. But That's the ideal scenario, so just dropping damage to .33X would be too much. My gut says something more like .75X. Is it Foe only? On a small AOE, that is less important, so it makes sense for a smaller penalty - maybe .7x. Medium AOE can hit more targets, but harder to use unless Foe only, so maybe we're looking at .6X vs .5X. Large is even more pronounced - let's try .5X and .35X. Other shapes are trickier. Quick gut picks: Cones are .8X/.7X, beams are .9X/.8X. All of these numbers could be adjusted - this is just a theorycraft starting point. With Vancians, the main concern is balance within each spell level. For Ciphers, it is trickier because all spells have the same pool of resource.

I feel like the reason you cast the same spell over and over is because the spells aren't properly balanced, not because they are per encounter. In POE1 you usually cast the same spells everytime because generally speaking, the best spells were obvious. When Chill Fog was Foe AOE, that was the default level 1 Wizard spell because everything else paled in comparison. The spells in general could use a serious balance pass. It would take some doing, but one could conceivably create a formula to rate spells by giving different values and/or multipliers to spell characteristics like damage, duration, AOE, debuff/buff, range, cast time, etc. And if you did, you'd probably quickly find the balance of POE1 spells to be all over the place.

If you look at POE1, I figure the game was balanced around resting every 4 fights on average. With that in mind, the former Vancians have even more casts than they should. Just switching them to Mana is lazy - I think spell slots can be interesting design space. I'd even bring Vancian per encounter casts down. You shouldn't get your second 1st level spell until the time you get a spell mastery in POE1 - 9th level (5th power level). You still have strategic decisions to make regarding whether a spell is better cast as an opener or if you should save it for if things go south. Right now it is a no brainer to open with a spell because you have *so many* casts. If you don't open with a cast, you won't have an opportunity to actually use all of your spells. Lower the total casts also allows the spells to have a solid impact, bringing them more into balance.

You have to remember that Pillars 1 harkens back to Infinity engine games, which are all based on DND. Yes, the ruleset is different, but you can draw a lot of parallels. Accordingly, you can see that Fine/Exceptional/Superb are just replacements for +1/+2/+3 magical weapons. A Fine weapon increases accuracy by 4/100, and damage by 15%. A +1 enchantment on a 1-12 weapon increases accuracy by 1/20=5/100, and damage by 1/6.5=15.4%.

I really disagree on puppet master and whisper of treason (and to a slightly lesser extent re: Mental Binding, since it's AoE): they need to be fairly quick casts, because 10 seconds is a relatively short duration, and there's a miss rate. I've shown the math elsewhere on the forum, but once you factor in miss rates, whisper and domination need a fast cast time to be worthwhile -- otherwise you're just trading your time for the enemy's at an even rate, and since PC time is more valuable than the time of a random monster, you need a really strongly beneficial time trade to make casting the power worthwhile. There's an additional factor too, which is harder to quantify; I mention it because I'm not sure how you did your testing and it might not be obvious without extended play of the class. The "ex-vancian" casters have to wait a lot less time before casting, while Ciphers have to build focus over the course of the fight, which takes time; they can't open the fight with their strongest powers in the way that a Wizard or Priest or Druid can. Because of that, I'd argue that cipher powers should be *very* fast-casting, to make up for the time lost autoattacking and waiting to build focus. (The same argument applies to an extent to Chanter invocations). That argument applies generally to all Cipher powers though, not just the specific crowd-control powers. Net effect, I'd actually argue that ciphers (and possibly Chanters) should have cast times similar to or better than their casting times in the previous game, even given the generally longer casting times in Deadfire. Everyone else moved to non-vancian, per-encounter casting, and Ciphers need something to balance that out or they'll be relatively much weaker. Fast casting seems thematic and appropriate and not unbalanced given the focus mechanic. I completely agree with this. Ciphers lost their niche - the versatile caster that doesn't rely on per-rest resources - but kept the disadvantage they paid for that versatility (building focus). To give them back an edge, their powers should virtually all be fast or instant-cast, which would help them maintain their status as effective gishes.

For anyone who doesn't understand that Resolve was a dump stat in POE1, you have to look no further than 6th level priest spell Crowns for the Faithful, which adds a whopping 25 points of Resolve as a buff. Only one other buff goes into double digits (Champion's Boon), and it is a mere +10. Can you imagine a +25 buff for any other stat besides Resolve? It would be ludicrously overpowered.

Actually, Davriel, my original post also argued for divorcing ability damage and healing from Might on a mechanical level as well, not just because I hate muscle wizards. (Incidentally, I don't hate muscle wizards, if that is actually what they were. But muscle wizards did not actually fit the lore - again, see Concelhaut. Anyway, this is getting away from the point.) Again, I don't want to rewrite everything, but the short version was that Might affected too many things, and also percentage increases made it have way more of an impact on ability damage than it did on auto-attacks. Also, as another aside, Might was overrated as a Cipher stat in POE1. Dex and Perception were far superior due to Might's additive nature. Now that it is multiplicative, though, it is valuable to Ciphers again. Another reason to put Whip and Might bonuses back in the same category.

I still have issues with dual-wielding being the better option the more recovery penalty from armor you have. Dual-wielding should favor light armors, while sword and shield or two-handers should favor heavy armor. I'd rework it so that Dual-wield gets a greater penalty from armor recovery than single-wield. I don't know if the math works out so that double the penalty would be enough, but that would be my starting point as it is pretty intuitive.