Yonjuro

Hmm, I think you're right. The quote says that he is changing things that now take 3 seconds to take 2 seconds instead. It doesn't say that every spell will take 2 seconds.

If your friends got from Candlekeep to Draconis' lair they aren't exactly noobs. It could be that a given fight was too hard but, I think the magic system is an orthogonal issue. Draconis was beatable without getting too deep into the magic system - by then, you had high levels summons to sic on him (if you had a mage, cleric or paladin in your party), spike traps (if you had a thief or bard), greater whirlwind (if you had any warrior types). Etc. There are lots of tools available and you don't need to stack spells in any particular way to beat the encounter. Again, it's possible that that encounter should have been turned down a bit, but I think that's a separate discussion. Draconis is too hard so, make the magic system less potent? I don't think it follows.

Very good response! I'm surprised that you're giving most every spell a uniform casting time. With the weapon system design you have, wouldn't it be more more consistent to have spells with graduated casting times? In that way, casting duration and recovery would be proportionate to the power/level of a spell. I agree with this, but I think the most important point is this one: Sure variable casting times are good and all, but: PoE will probably be received as, at least, a cool retro game but whether it ends there or is received as a masterpiece that people will be playing a decade or two later depends on this second point. BG2, whatever flaws it had, nailed the spell system in that the system as a whole was much more than the sum of its parts. That said, I'm still ok with separate spell lists for the different classes. The make or break for PoE (break, as in, failed to become a new classic, not failed to be a fun retro flavored game; I expect the latter but hope for more), will be whether the gameplay has enough complexity to keep it interesting several playthroughs later. By 'complexity' I don't mean it should be hard to figure out how to play, I mean, you start off using spells/abilities well enough to advance in the game, but that you can find new, more powerful, things to do with them as you get better at the game.

I have no idea what you're really describing, but it sounds extremely tedious and it also sounds like it relies on abusing a glitch or technical oddity (stealth not breaking immediately). Err, I'm really describing exactly how you can use stealth in the IE games to detect traps and, as far I know, that's how it was intended to work. Note that if you use invisibility to detect traps in BG you can't just walk at full speed or you will trigger some of the traps. I'm just telling you how the BG system worked. I'm not suggesting that you should like it better than the PoE system. (Unless BG style backstabbing is important to you. In that case, you would clearly like the BG system better.) No, it doesn't ignore anything. I have completed the game using the technique that I posted. It works. You are using stealth to avoid being seen and detecting traps. If there are enemies around, you may need to stop detecting traps and fight the enemies (limiting your movements to the places where you have already disarmed the traps; so, e.g., backstabbing might be out of the question). Yup. BG is complex. A lot of people missed a lot of things about it.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games? Yes, I have been playing the beta and using the stealth system. (And, I agree that in some ways it's better but, if you recall, stealth and invisibility allowed you do things in the IE games that the stealth system in PoE does not allow you do - so to say it's far superior is a a bit of stretch). In any case, I was responding to a post that said that preparing for a battle is the same as metagaming. My point was that if you have stealth (as you do in both the IE games and PoE) then you are not metagaming, you are using knowledge that you gained by scouting to get ready for the battle. You should read my earlier post. You couldn't use stealth to scout in the IE games on a consistent basis because dungeons were filled with traps, and you couldn't detect them while being stealthed. Therefore, stealthing through a dungeon did effectively require meta-game knowledge. Not only does PoE fix this issue, but you can stealth through with the entire party. You could use it without metagaming if you understood how it worked. When you are stealthed, you hear a sound that indicates that you are breaking stealth. You can: 1. detect traps (important that this is first) 2. Enter stealth and move forward - there are no traps close to you because you've already looked in step 1). 3. Detect traps while stealthed - you will break stealth but not immediately. 4. Repeat from step 2 Try it, it works. It's certainly easier to use the mage spell, but you can use stealth if you don't have a mage in your party. Call me crazy, but I don't think thieves should need the help of another class to be useful at the one thing they're supposed to be good at: thieving (considering they weren't all that great in combat). You're not crazy. You just don't know how to use stealth in the IE games. See above. Here is exactly what you said: Perhaps you meant to say: "turn invisible (out of sight of the enemy) and stay that way (even right in front of the enemy)" but what you said is what I quoted. If you meant the latter, fine, but it isn't obvious, at all, from that quote. I (and, I'm sure, many other people) might have misunderstood you, but nobody is misrepresenting anything. Neither system is a realistic simulation of sneaking up on someone, but sure, the PoE system is interesting and it gives you a new stealth minigame. The IE games stealth gave you a hit and fade minigame. Not everyone liked backstabbing as a mechanic (I didn't use it that often), but for some people, it's a major element of the IE games, so to them, the PoE stealth system won't be a clear win as it is for you.

There were some nice examples in BG2 of spells that worked much better in combination than they did individually. I think that's a big part of the reason why a lot of us still play it. An area where PoE could really shine is to take that further, including synergies of spells(/talents) between different classes (including the non-spell casting classes).

Yes, you did post this earlier. It's better not to keep repeating this because it's wrong. The stealth skill of thieves, rangers and monks worked in the IE games required you to break line of site. That was the minigame of using stealth for combat in the IE games. You needed to hit and fade using the environment to restealth for backstabs etc. On the other hand, various invisibility spells did allow you you turn invisible in front of an enemy in the IE games. Note that PoE rogues can do that too using a class specific skill. The IE games had a second level mage spell that you could cast on your thief that also solved that same problem. It lasted for 12 hours and disarming traps didn't break invisibility. You could also use stealth to disarm traps, but it was more difficult. Stealth worked better for combat applications because it wasn't a per rest resource.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games? Yes, I have been playing the beta and using the stealth system. (And, I agree that in some ways it's better but, if you recall, stealth and invisibility allowed you do things in the IE games that the stealth system in PoE does not allow you do - so to say it's far superior is a a bit of stretch). In any case, I was responding to a post that said that preparing for a battle is the same as metagaming. My point was that if you have stealth (as you do in both the IE games and PoE) then you are not metagaming, you are using knowledge that you gained by scouting to get ready for the battle. My point was that in the IE games, after you have pre-scouted an area you have a lot more options to get ready. In PoE you can position your party and do the first attack. That's about it.

I'm not sure you are correct on skeletons and spiders in BG1. The 4th level Spider Spawn was a new spell in BG2 and for the 5th level Animate Dead I'm not sure there's any scroll for it in BG1.... I'm sure that both are in the game that I have installed (BGTuTu with ToTSC), but they may have been added by mods. Yes, the wands were very powerful in BG1, especially the monster summoning wand that can literally summon an army. I agree that clerics were good for summons in the BG series and I would be ok with spells being divided up between the classes in PoE as long as there were interesting combinations of spells/abilities. E.g., the chanter casts a spell that interacts in an interesting way with a wizard's spell etc. (I would also prefer to see more interesting combinations in a single class, but one thing at a time.)

That's a well thought-out explanation but I'm not entirely convinced..... I agree with your main point: PoE is a low level campaign - IWD and BG1 didn't have Timestop etc. and PoE doesn't need to either. However: I disagree on two points here. In BG1, a mage could summon skeletons and spiders. Skeletons are immune to stinking cloud, spiders are immune to web. Monster summoning I sometimes summoned kobold commandos and Monster summoning 2 (or the Wand of monster summoning) sometimes gave you hobgoblins. What they have is common is bows and bows were very powerful in BG1. The hobgoblins shot poison arrows. Combine ranged summons with web, stinking cloud, sleep etc. and hilarity ensues. If anything, the argument should be that mage summoning was overpowered at low levels especially considering the synergies with other spells. Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting. I have played the beta a fair amount and I agree. I don't think spell damage is really that much of a problem in PoE. In one of my beta play throughs I made it a point to try to make the best use of BB Wizard and, by the end, he had done the most damage by far. For another play through, I rolled a wizard PC and hired a wizard adventurer. Three wizards can be very effective and they do a lot of damage. The only issue I have with the class is that it is too one dimensional (or maybe two dimensional if I want to be charitable). They are mainly a ranged damage class, though some of the CC spells can be useful too, especially with multiple wizards in the party to cast CC plus damage at the same time. If the CC and damage spells remained as they are and some new things were added (invisibility, pre combat summons, teleport and maybe a few other things) I think we would have an interesting low level class. (For PoE 2, I will have a much longer list.)

Yes. Useful feedback is more like "here is a specific thing that the IE games did well but is missing in PoE." I gave some examples earlier in the thread of what I thought was missing, essentially: Wizards are too much of a ranged damage class and their spells don't seem to have synergy with each other or with the spells of the other casters. I think the reason for the current situation is that one way to balance the combat system is to remove some of the more powerful elements. My preference would be to achieve however much balance is desired by adding abilities (e.g. spell X is too powerful - well, class Y is immune, class Z has an ability that mitigates spell X etc.) If I had added this statement to the preceding: "Josh Sawyer is on a crusade to end fun in cRPGs," that wouldn't have added anything to my point. It also isn't true. If everyone will start with the assumption that Josh Sawyer is trying to make a game that will be fun for people who liked the IE games (and also for new people who haven't played them) we would get more useful feedback and less noise.

Plenty of good suggestions here Sensuki (and good call on the Dave Brubeck backing track too ). I just wanted to highlight this one: 5:07 Status Effect Boxes - Revert to v257 style In general, if you are mousing over an icon and getting text, you should be able to see the mouse pointer as you are reading the text. A UI where you have to take your eyes off the mouse pointer to read the associated text is a broken UI. You could easily move your mouse to a different icon as you move your eyes to the text, not notice and read the wrong text. (The spell and ability selector on the level up screen is similarly broken with icons in the left window, text in the right window and a character model in the middle.)

I think it must be a bug; there are two talents to improve interdiction.

I see where you are coming from and I got something out of your posts before as well. As I said, I think its just about personal preference. Yup. We might not agree, but that's fine. And, if it isn't clear, I do think PoE will be a good game with some amount of replay value due to the story. The combat, so far, seems to have a sameness about it. I'll say more about that below. Fair enough, I'll give you an example - but (If you are playing the beta; if you aren't, then I realize that it's impossible to answer this question from the spell descriptions alone) are there tactics that you think are interesting? This isn't a rhetorical question - there may very well be more to the spell system than I've noticed so far. Here's an example that I think could be interesting: There's a wizard spell (or talent) to switch places with any character. An interesting tactic could be to start combat with a high damage AoE spell which would draw the enemies to the wizard. Then, as they close in, do a very damaging spell that requires the wizard to be at close range. Finally, switch places with the rogue using your special ability and simultaneously use the rogue's escape ability and a second AoE spell. This requires a high enough damage output from the three spells (especially the in-close spell) to make it a worthwhile tactic. In particular, you need a spell that is worth the risk of allowing the enemies to get close to the wizard and the rogue; otherwise it would be smarter to stay in the back row and hurl bombs at the enemy. Getting back to the earlier point: I think this is a big part of the problem. The limitations on casting outside of combat limits the strategic decisions to the initial positioning and attack (if you start the fight). During the fight, the engagement mechanic limits your movements to the extent that tactical retreating is pretty much impossible (unless you use Sensuki's exploit where he killed an enemy purely by retreating (which repeatedly triggered disengagement attacks on the enemy), but presumably that won't be possible in the final game). It might partially be due to being less familiar with PoE than with the IE games, but the PoE fights seem to have a lot less variety of strategy and tactics than the IE games did. It's one fight repeated a bunch of times.

Umm, no. In BG1 (using BGTuTu) mages were good but the most powerful class was the ranger with the archer kit. In BG2 anything with mage in the title was very powerful (but playing a mage isn't the easiest way to play, especially at the beginning). Then again, thieves were really powerful too, especially the bounty hunter and swashbuckler kits (for different reasons). All thieves got timestop as a high level ability (in the form of a trap) and also spike traps which could kill just about anything if you planned ahead enough to set them. Paladins, especially inquisitors, nullified mage abilities and, as such were an exceptionally powerful class. Monks got so much magic resistance that mages were essentially irrelevant to them. Ranger/clerics were, well. maybe you get the idea already. Mages didn't nullify all of the other classes. Have you played any of the classes I mentioned in the IE games? You aren't following the argument. If you want, have a look at my earlier post and focus on the part in huge letters. Balance is fine. Achieving balance by making all of the classes equally uninteresting is not fine. Is the point clearer now? A wizard that functions purely as artillery is not an interesting class. That's the point. Even if it gets really powerful at higher levels, it still isn't interesting if it is purely a ranged damage class.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that part of roleplay in a roleplaying game is how you can use the capabilities of your character/party to solve the problems that the game throws at you. The mage class in the BG series is powerful but it doesn't come with an "I win" button. You need to use the capabilities correctly and the seriously overpowered tactics that you have (such as Stun's second example) are complex to figure out and difficult to do correctly. That's why the class is as interesting to play as it is. Earlier, I asked the question if the spells in PoE, from all of the classes, not just wizards, combine in the same interesting ways as the IE spell system and for examples. I judge by the dead silence from everyone that the answer is no. I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth. If you disagree with me, I'm happy to hear the examples. If you get nothing else from any of my posts, understand this: For me, it would be fine if wizard spells and chanter spells combined in one way, wizard and cipher spells combined in another interesting and equally powerful way - having all three would open up new possibilities etc. That would also add replay value to the game. I don't object to balance, I object to achieving balance by removing all of the powerful things from the game. BG2 is still near the top of the best games list at metacritic. Whatever you think of metacritic, it's pretty interesting that people still like a game with relatively primitive tech. a decade and a half after it's release. It isn't there because it is balanced, it's there because it's still fun to play. Partly because there are new things to learn about how to play a character.

Nice post generally, but it sounds like you're misunderstanding the concept of Quadratic Mages and why they are so. The 'Quadratic' in Quadratic mages refers to the increase of their power as the gain levels. Not only do they gain new high-powered spells, but their existing spells (Think Magic Missile for the best example) also increase in power. Yes, I understand where it comes from. I was co-opting the phrase to mean something else to make my point. Namely that if you lose a capability you lose the option to combine it with all of your other capabilities. Phrase co-option fail, I guess.

These are very good examples. PoE is a lower level campaign, so it's ok with me if we don't see spells like simulacrum, but PoE 2 and PoE 3, wherever the franchise goes, really needs a magic system with the complexity that we saw in BG2 (or better, I'm totally ok with better ). If a level 25 wizard is casting Minoletta's BFG9000 and little else, that isn't good enough. The magic system needs interesting interactions between spells or the games won't have the same replay value as the BG series.

The druid and chanter have about a dozen summoning spells between them, and I believe the wizard has at least one summon spell. Any character can use figurines to summon stuff. I think you misunderstood this point. By 'effectively no summons' the magniloquent one meant that the summons happen in combat only - that limitation removes some of the most interesting tactics from the game. That's because the stealth in this game functions as actual stealth, dependent on factors like enemy proximity and how long you're in the enemy's line of sight. It's not the 'turn invisible (even right in front of an enemy)' mode from the IE games which wasn't a good implementation of stealth at all. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any invisibility spells, you're right about that. This is a tangential point, but stealth in the IE games didn't work that way. Thieves, rangers and monks had to break line of sight to re-stealth. The various invisibility spells (and items) were the only ways to turn invisible in front of an enemy. As you point out, that option is gone in PoE (except for the rogue skill that turns a rogue invisible in combat). This strikes me as a touch dramatic. It is a touch dramatic but it isn't false. Excellent. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards solving it. Fine. You have any party of six that you like. Can you demonstrate some interesting ways to stack spells (or other abilities)? I'll give you an example to start with. In PoE, if you have two wizards in your party, one of them can cast wall of flame and one can cast malignant cloud. Depending on positioning etc. the enemies might need to cross the flame wall to escape the malignant cloud. So, that's a little more exciting than slinging minor missiles from the back row but not quite as interesting as the examples I mentioned earlier. Maybe I'm missing something good. Do you have better examples? I think you're missing something important. When you lose invisibility spells, you aren't losing one thing, you're losing all of the interactions with the other spells. There's the saying that fighters are linear and mages are quadratic. That's almost literally true - the interesting thing is the interaction of the spells. The spells in PoE don't seem to have as many interesting uses and interesting interactions. I could be wrong. If so, show me how the spells combine.

Fair enough. Prior to ToSC, there weren't a lot of level 5 spells. Are you sure? Suppose you only have Summon Skeletons and Cloud Kill at level 5 plus lower level spells. You can summon some skeletons and cast stinking cloud into some enemies. Many of the enemies will go to sleep but the skeletons are immune. (Add in ToSC spells and you can cast Greater Malison to make this more effective). You can set up an ambush where you summon skeletons, cast invisibility on a party member and use the skeletons and the invisible party member to lead enemies into the ambush point (which could include a well timed cloudkill) - this was a useful tactic all the way into BG2 when the (low level) skeletons weren't very useful in melee anymore. Feel free to dislike either of these tactics, but they illustrate that the spell system was more than the sum of its parts. Your turn. Stack some of the PoE spells for an interesting strategy or tactic. Also, as an exercise, try stacking some BG spells other than the ones I already mentioned. You will find a lot of good combinations even in BG1 (and an explosion of possibilities when you get to high levels of BG2). Certainly, but the PoE Wizard currently plays more like a BG2 Archer than like a BG Mage. Adjusting the power of the spells doesn't fix that.

I agree that wizards need help. A few observations: 1. Friendly fire: I agree with this point. The spell descriptions should be explicit about this. 2. A second point is that it is difficult to tell which status effects are applied to enemies (or party members), when they are applied and what happens as a result. E.g., in the IE games, the spells melf's acid arrow, confusion, domination, horror etc. had obvious effects. In PoE, the different spells probably affect a character's attack resolution in some non-obvious way (umm, yippee?). Some of this difference is on purpose, a design choice of how screwed a character is allowed to be based on a spell effect but some of it is just lack of obvious feedback. 3. Damage: Actually, BB Wizard does a surprising amount of damage. I never really noticed until I looked at the character sheets from a recent (333 build) save and saw that BB wizard had the highest damage output. I was surprised. The game really needs to give better visual feedback about this. 4. Currently combat as a whole feels too much like an angle grinder fight; whoever gets ground down to nothing first, loses. The magic system is a different grit on the grinding wheel. It needs to be more than that; I think a lot of what needs to happen is look and feel kinds of things. E.g., if one spell causes a fear status and another causes a diseased status, those things need to look very different and they need to have different effects on the character's abilities. Both of those differences, how it looks and what it does, need to be obvious in the game. e: formatting

Yup, and I agree with the 2-3 level difference (or, some small but real difference relative to the range of levels in the game). Sounds good. I will be interested to read it.

This is quite a treatise you've put together here Endarire. Nicely done. I think agree with both wanderon and Sarex; at this point, I don't know how much OE would want to change the XP system for the game (meaning, I don't think they would do a major redesign), but it's not too late to think about things for any sequels they might produce. Anyway, a few thoughts to keep the discussion going: In BG2, I think it is ends up being more than 400% due to level scaling of enemies (but I haven't dumped out the numbers and done the calculation because I'm lazy....err .... I mean busy. Yes. Busy). Your point here is, of course, that a solo character levels a lot faster than a party of 6 in the IE games and the point stands whether it's 400% or whatever it ends up being. I only bring this up because it is relevant to a point I will make below. Exploration XP seems like something that could easily go wrong. Mr. Sawyer has used the term 'degenerate game play' (which somehow got turned into the term 'degenerative game play' in many forum posts) to describe when players end up doing things that they don't find fun because the game rewards them for playing that way. A good (err, bad) example is The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where, due to badly implemented level scaling coupled with badly implemented leveling, a lot of players will choose things they never do as their 'major skills' (that is, skills that affect leveling) at character creation and then when they want to gain a level will do those things for half an hour or so. E.g. they might choose acrobatics as a 'major skill' and then jump up and down for half an hour to gain a level. Ick. So, back to exploration XP; one could imagine getting a significant XP reward in BG1 for entering every room in every building in Baldur's Gate (the city, not the game) and uncovering all of the fog of war in the sewers. That doesn't sound to me like it would make the game better. On the other hand, I'm not against the idea of exploration XP. So, my question to you (or to anyone else), what would make exploration XP worthwhile and when does it become a chore? Finally, regarding soloing the game and hard modes; let's use BG2 as an example here. Once you figure out how different character classes can counter various 'game over' scenarios (e.g. an enemy casts Domination on your solo character) soloing the game is probably easier than playing with a party of 6 for the reasons you pointed out. I think this is a good feature of BG2. On the other hand, it would be broken if the game was strictly easier on 'hard mode' or if solo play was always strictly easier than playing a party of 6. To sum that up: a game design where, if you solve a bunch of hard problems, you are rewarded with a better power curve would be a good design. A game design where hard mode is just easier than easy mode or soloing is just easier than playing with a party, that would be a bad design. It is not hard at all to think of ways that an XP system design can go wrong in this way.

Yes, now it all makes sense. TNO has come back as a piglet this time.

Yes, it seems to (more or less) do a random walk centered on the PC. It isn't an especially efficient way to disarm traps, but it can be done - especially if you can detect but not disarm the traps (but really, it's mostly for the lulz).