anameforobsidian

Let's do it one by one: 1. This just proves the point Loren was making. That either Vancian systems or Camping supplies are too much. In other words, they don't mix nicely and just feel like they're suppressing each other. It also reinforces the notion that most cRPG variants of rest systems are severely lacking compared to the real PnP. 2. But you can still use abilities and not feel hindered on those classes. It doesn't feel restrained, but rather limited. But then again, most fights below PoTD and other difficult fights don't exactly require level 5+ casts. This is where Monk / Cipher etc shine compared to Vancians. Not to mention that due to lack of attribute modifier (say 17 / +3 Int), you lose on spellcasts of lower level and BIG TIME. In previous DnD games, you could've had like 8 casts of level 3- spells. In Pillars, you are always limited to 4-5 + 1 / enc. That combined with camping supplies just feels...odd. 3. I agree but in Pillars it just reinforces backtracking mechanics and those are ALMOST NEVER GOOD mechanics. Even ExtraCredits did an episode on it recently. This point just reinforces point 1. 4. Indeed it is, but if either of choices lead to player dissatisfaction and hence them leaving / abandoning games, then yes, it means it is a wrong choice. Either one can be wrong, but currently it feels like leaving them in would be an ultra conservative, if not wrong outright choice. 5. Because it doesn't work, doesn't make sense and pushes people AWAY from the game, hence making a dent in their profit? Idk, that sounds like a helluva motive. 6. You mentioned multiclassing and balance in the same point. Don't be so silly. Yes, it'd be good, but I'd rather have freedom of NWN + balance of Pillars - Multiclassing(I never even as much as thought of multiclassing...why, just why?). But that's just me. 7. Agreed, but they're very Vancian lite as they are. For example, there are no proper Wizard / Cleric / Druid in Pillars. What we have is a (fancy) Sorceror and regular Favoured Soul and < Sorc / FS like Druid class >. If you're against removing those systems, perhaps reverting the rest system to good ole BG / NWN system? 8. I was never against per rest. Per rests should be powerful and should be reserved for battle changer abilities, not for bread and butter abilities(what casts are to casters). 9. Quite a few people like to get hurt. Quite a few people favour nazism. ...so? What kind of argument is this? I don't understand, sorry. 1. Vancian systems and the camping supplies don't suppress each other, they work synergistically to challenge the player as they go further into a dungeon run. In Baldur's Gate the Vancian system was suppressed by the rest system. Every ability became per encounter. 2. I can still use abilities in both classes and not feel hindered. If you fight 8 battles and use all your spells plus the memorized one you get 12 casts, more if you take the feat or get a ring of wizardry. You just can't unload 8 casts of the same spell in a fight. If wizards are supposed to be adaptable because of their variety of spells, then let them be adaptable. 3. Backtracking to finish a dungeon is never necessary in Pillars unless you are horrifically underpowered for the dungeon. I almost always run with a druid, wizard, and priest, and only had to backtrack once in my potd playthrough, when I was level 6 going into the White Forge. Rest supplies are liberally placed. Backtracking is basically something you do to yourself. If you're backtracking a lot or resting when most of your characters have top health, then you're playing the game unstrategically and the game is telling you that. 4. And if removing it leads to a less interesting game, then that is a wrong decision too. Hypotheticals can be made to support any point. 5. Or maybe it draws people in because they missed those type of systems and the strategic choices they provide. Do you have data to support any of these points? I don't but I'm not advocating a radical change based on feels. 6. Fine, that was a weak argument. However the fact that there's an opportunity cost to rebalancing 3 class is pretty apparent, and you've yet to justify how the game would be significantly improved by that change. 7. The rest system and the spell casting system work together to make you conserve resources. Are you arguing against having to conserve resources? 8. Memorized spells are available for bread and butter abilities. But more importantly, PE casters aren't wilting flowers when they're not casting. Druids shift, priests get weapon proficiency bonuses, and wizards have non-spell abilities (and can be built effectively based on weapon damage). 9. Eh, it's a weak point. I was trying to say that a major controversial change needs a set of concrete reasons. But! Rather than get stuck up going back and forth on individual points, and have the whole discussion turn into a vindictive circlejerk, this is how I understand your arguments: + Vancian casting is just a way to annoy players by forcing them to turn back. + In BGII and NWN basically every ability was per encounter, and this was a good thing. + Obsidian doesn't have to do it anymore, so it shouldn't. Obviously, this kind of exercise leads to strawmen, but I read your argument and Loren's multiple times to try to do you justice. Here's my basic response. - If you're going to have a strategic limitation, there needs to be a resource that gets permanently or temporarily depleted. Permanently depleted resources are consumables, and Sawyer already said that too many players hoard them for them to be an effective strategic limitation. Temporarily depleted resources need to be recharged some time. If they're recharged after every fight, then there's no strategy to their use. Any other recharge system is going to involve something that looks a lot like backtracking or rest. - It wasn't a good thing to use the same spells over again, because it lead to a death of tactical diversity. When you have a giant unstoppable cost-free hammer, every problem gets a maximized missile swarm to the face etc. - Obsidian chose to change the rest , health, and casting system this way, it wasn't blind slavery to nostalgia. They work together to prod players into playing the game smarter without punishing them too hard. If you unload on spells too much, you run out of spells and then camping supplies. If you only save spells for bosses, you run out of health and then camping supplies. If you use both judiciously, you make it to the next set of camping supplies. If not, yes you turn back. The only other option is killing the players. That encourages riding the dice until your bad tactics are successful; lord knows that's how 12 year old me played BGII. - The most important counter is that Obsidian already gives you the in-game tools to circumvent these mechanics if you can't play this way. 8 out of 11 classes don't use a majority of daily abilities. If you don't like the Vancian classes, there are twice as many to choose from. If you don't like health punishing you, take field triage. And if you hate the current rest system in general, lower the difficulty and you get more (eventually infinite) resting supplies. Loren, I could get behind changing the availability of rests, although I think it would be hard to do without using checkpoints or encouraging even more backtracking. I think the bigger problem is that a lot of players would hate an even harder game. You know there were frequent complaints that the game was too hard even on easy until story mode appeared. There are surprisingly few complaints that the game is too easy on potd (though they still do and always will crop up). However, I could get behind it if a designer went through and took out half of the camping supplies scattered around the world on potd.

Here's a couple of counter arguments. Strategic layer is not lacking in most standard Vancian setting. Sometimes games cut off resting in certain points. Other times they mob you with random encounters to interrupt your rest. Just because you can break through that by repeatedly pressing the rest until the random encounters go away does not mean you're playing as intended. And PnP DMs just plain don't allow CRPG style fight, fight, nap play. Ciphers and chanters are limited in different ways. At mid levels, most random trash fights are over before you build up resources for their most powerful abilities. Not using Dragon Breath or Maximized Missile Swarm every fight is a good thing. Fights should vary in scale in both mechanics and narrative. Encouraging players to use their most powerful abilities in every fight leads to lack of tactical variance, which leads to boredom. Vancian systems shine when characters are half out of spells and have to start scrimping. Removing Vancian spell-casting is not the right choice or the wrong choice. It's just a design decision. Why would they dramatically rework a system that has evolved quite well over several years? Most players haven't even had the chance to see the difference between release and patch 3.0. Furthermore, the resources spent to rework a system are not infinite. The time spent reworking and rebalancing the system could be much better spent either adding additional classes or bringing in multiclassing. Multiclassing is one of those things repeatedly mentioned across several sites. If Vancian casting were removed, the classes would need to find a new way to differentiate from other classes. One of the things Pillars does very well is make every class feel unique without a huge power gradient. There's a reason other classes have daily's too. They work really well at changing the scale of the fight, and let a character shine under a different set of circumstances. Finally, quite a few players like it. That's a whole long list of reasons why it shouldn't be changed. But here's the real problem, the benefits you give for changing it are pretty weak. Basically, they're getting to unload every spell, every fight. You can already do that in Pillars if you put it on one of the modes with unlimited camping supplies.

I didn't get the ice blight damage immunity. It wasn't a terrible problem but I didn't get it.

Graphics being too static probably refers to moving trees and the like.

Wizardry would be pleased.

Interesting. I assume it'll be a long time before the talk is actually posted. - It looks like he got the right take on the Stronghold. - I might have different opinions if I could hear it. I would hardly say PE is less tactically complex than BG: alpha strikes; positioning; and status effects are more important in PE on the harder modes. I'm still divided over whether hard counters are better than strong soft counters. Basically, I think hard counters should have some type of verisimilitude. Flying creatures immune to ground spells? Makes perfect sense. Immune to fighter's knockdown, maybe, maybe not. Immune to a thrown net or sleep? Definitely not. Soft counters (basically very strong defenses against a certain type of attack), basically do the same thing but allow for those so-so cases. Maybe a fighter could send a blind, disoriented, and sickened dragon careening to the ground. I don't think the 5+ party members were what made it fast and complex. Complex sure, as more people add more options. However, the real driver of complex combat is the vast number of active options in gameplay. Encouraging less active builds would mean you get the tactical and build complexity of a full party, but have to switch your attention less. Fast? That's different entirely. - The bit about Betas makes me wonder if Obsidian will ever use beta access as a crowdfunding reward again. I can only puzzle out some of this from the slides rather than speech. - How would LoD and PBR affect art? I'm guessing from google searches that this is Level of Design and Physical Based Rendering. - Where did he come down on skeumorphic gui? I'm guessing against it. - What is Tyranny's Highlight system?

I would hesitate to call PotD easy, I beat it with story characters and it had quite a few challenges. In act II the game opens up, but everything basically has the same challenge levels (except Endless Paths) so it's likely you outlevel the game. I think the solution to this would just be to make sidequests vary by expected level, so you come back and do them later or push through with some more challenge.

Tactically that enchantment progression is way off. Think about what you would least like to happen to you in a fight. It should look more like. Daze - Whatever, this can mean anything. Deaf - You can fight without hearing, but not as well. Temporarily obstructed vision - Someone throws sand at your face. Sucks, but you can live through it. Confuse - Things get weird but it's hardly a death sentence. Mass Deaf - Suddenly you can't communicate with your teammates; CRPGs just don't do this spell well. Charm - This is bad. You're temporarily turned against your friends, Blind - Oh ****! Unless you're a super samurai, you're in a ton of trouble. Mass Blind - Double ****! Say goodbye to team tactics, aiming ranged weapons or spells that require aim. Sleep / Hold - You're ****ed. You're literally helpless while the enemy runs along and stabs you. Dominate Anything - Worse than dying because you kill your friends. Mass Sleep / Hold - All your friends and you are ****ed. Mass Dominate - You and your friends are turned against what you love. If only successful on half, they cheerful help your enemies slaughter your friends, and then are killed themselves when the spell breaks. Pillars follows a logical progression far closer than previous tabletop conversion games. But more importantly, it has all those things you listed. Pillars has you fight a whole army, and I end up dominating Dragons most of the time I fight them. Summoning is a better example, but in that case the order is just a little misplaced. Keep in mind that a max druid is summoning a stag made out of fire; conceptually that's at about the right power level. A max chanter is summoning what, swamp spores? That's very powerful mechanically, but not terribly impressive. Based on the the impressiveness of the myths I would say summons should go: Druid: Slimes, Wolves, Giant Spiders (summon spider was a neat spell and should be replicated), Tigers, Elementals, Dryads, Greater Elementals, Primal Beasts. Chanter: Wyrms (Xaurips would really be better), Skeletons, Will o' Wisp, Shades, Ogres, Drake, (Vithrack would make a cool appearance), Dragon Except for dragon, the vast majority of those summons are already in. They just need to be put in order.

Looks like it is probably getting Unity 5. Tyranny upgraded the engine to Unity 5. Supposedly it helped with performance. I've heard Unity 5 is much easier to mod than 4. That takes care of two major wish list items.

Your opinion is your opinion. So your complaints are as follows: NPCs uninteresting, lack sidequests, romances, and back stories. There are eleven NPCs, and they are written unevenly. Just like BG1, most of them are drifters and kind of aimless. They all have sidequests, back stories, and passive interaction, but I can see someone not liking that. Personal taste. I'm glad there are no romances. They are better done in different games. The tavern wasn't half-ass apologizing, it was included in the design from the beginning. It's basically a min-maxer's delight. Bland weapons. Soul bound weapons in the expansions have more flavor, but several unique weapons like Borresaine, Holdwall, and Tidefall have fairly unique effects. Problems with AI. There are three solutions: armor up, any class can put on any armor, so if your guys are dying give them some heavier armor; put more off tanks in your party, this isn't a tank and spank game anymore; use terrain to block off enemies, this is pretty boring, but effective in many fights. Stunlocking enemies and paladins. Try different tactics. Paladins only get two heals apiece, but they can't heal when they're stunned, prone, charmed, confused, frightened, or paralyzed. Most of these status effects are available to one class or another by the second spell level. The relatively rare stun-locking enemies can't do that when they're incapacitated or dead. Just focus them down. Stat system. This is a big controversy. Some like it, some don't, but the stats themselves are pretty straight forward. Other than some monkeying with defenses, they aren't hard to understand. Might is damage, con is health, dex is speed, per is to hit, Int is aoe size and spell duration, Resolve is armor. XP system. Every epic fight is tied to a quest, and all unique creatures have bestiary entries you get experience from. In effect it works very similar to any other rpg; you're just not penalized for not hunting down every last goblin in a goblin village. Replayability. Mechanically, the game is probably the most replayable to ever come out in terms of build variety. Your choices affect ending outcomes pretty significantly. And characters have a ton of different ending paths. But sadly it isn't Dragon Age: Origins, and no game before or since has matched their options. Plot. It's a matter of choice, but I can agree that there's not a strong unifying thread to the plot. The three acts feel like three different games. Your metaphor is dumb and you should feel bad.

I can see some possible areas where you might be having problems. One is that your cipher has far worse gear than your fighter. Are your Cipher's shots hitting with the same frequency as the fighter's? They changed perception so that it now affects to hit chances. 8 points of perception is a big difference, and 2 points of might is noticeable. So your cipher is probably hitting significantly less frequently and for less or even damage with the fighter. Two things you can do to make your Cipher better are: get to Dyrford and get the almighty Leadspitter, it might not be a bad idea to buy Borresaine either; also, it might not be a bad idea to take the Apprentice's sneak attack talent, that'll boost your damage especially since both the fighter and cipher can apply statuses that grant that 15%. If you're not hitting as often as you would like, Marksman could help too (or a paladin or priests buffs). On a separate note, class tier lists are overrated, especially since the game has changed a lot mechanically since it started. More importantly, even classes that are particularly useful don't do everything themselves. One very powerful character can still get his teeth kicked in on PotD, and different classes and builds fulfill different roles. While one character does the most damage, that certainly doesn't mean the others are useless.

He's one of the very rare ways areas change after you go through.

Do you mean more combat or large battles? I liked Yenwood (and fighting the Tethir army in ToB), but you have to be careful with that kind of thing. It loses its emotional impact quickly.

I would be surprised if it came before 2018 for two business reasons: they are probably wary of over-exposing the IP; they probably don't want to compete with Torment: Tides of Numenera. I don't think they're as desperate for money anymore. There are also artistic reasons to spend time now that they'er not as desperate for money (AFAIK). They could use the time to pay a programmer, artist, and Josh to upgrade the engine to Unity 5; adding mod support and possibly lowering load times. They could also hack away at the system, making changes to the system itself, like adding interrupts, prone attacks, sword and pistol style, and making speed readable. That certainly looks like what they're doing based on Josh's twitter.

Sword Coast Stratagems is a pretty good warning against making AI too optimal. It's great seeing mobs run around web, and not bunch up. It sucks using 800 counterspells vs. contingencies on one lich and then having a fighter ice them in one hit. There's a reason BG2 made its wizards overpowered but dumb.

I need more party members than four. I was very unhappy when I played NWN and had two characters. NWN2 was better with four, but still wrong. Combat just wasn't as complex. To use 4e parlance, you're always going to have a controller, healer, tank, and striker. More party members lets you play with off-tanks, dedicated buff characters, combinations of spell casters, and different builds of the same class. Narratively it also gives you more room to experiment with different characters. I think they could warn players during character creation to build their party with high and low action characters to make it easier on non-micromanagers.

While I agree in spirit Vogel could REALLY use an engine upgrade. He has been making games based on the same engine since before the infinity engine existed and it has not aged anything resembling well. They're changing engines for the next game (after Avernum 3 remake). (And they're 2 years younger than IE.) But for many companies, the choice is between making beautiful new graphic games or expansive & well-written games. I'm glad someone decided on the expansive & well-written side. Anyway, back to topic. I wouldn't mind games looking like this for 7 years. Using an upgraded Unity for upgraded mods (and loading?) would be nice, and maybe they'll have to change to 4k eventually. But for now I would rather see PE 2 with more in-game content than upgraded graphics.

I agree with a whole lot of this post (enough that I liked it). However, I disagree with these three: 1. I think that points 1 & 2 above contradict each other. Usually the best way to explore imaginary cultures is to show their living situations. Kirkwall did that well with the Qunari, but not well with everyone else. Multiple locations are solely a matter of the resources used to develop them. Stalwart and Dyrford as towns had way more content per area/person, so they worked better than Defiance Bay. However, I do see the benefit of having all your exploring centered around one very large hub, as you get to understand that hub better. BG2 did this twice in Amn and Ust Natha. There were other places (gnome village, trademeet), but no place eclipsed the local hub. I can see that working better than the kind of strange railroad PE offered. 2. I definitely want to see more Vithrack, but I honestly think the game could be improved by adding more content to the weird maps they have. Environmental storytelling is nice, as well as npcs who bark a few lines before giving a small quest or fighting you. Searing falls has these incredibly rare volcanic hotsprings (that don't make sense on the worldmap, lern2geography), and there's nothing leading to it or no one there. I have never seen a similar environment in any other game and it fel barren. Seriously, adding a half eaten lagufeth after White March came out would say something. Or observing a xaurip tribe dragging something back while drakes harass them. Or having a con man who sold mineral springs water as a cure-all. Black Meadow and Esternwood are two examples of relatively unique maps that are not commented on at all. There's a ton of dead dragons in Black Meadow and no one thinks that's odd or says anything about it and the map is empty. Esternwood is a particularly missed opportunity; there's a location full of incredibly violent diseased children. No one in Gilded vale talks about it, and more importantly there's no one to talk to you in Easternwood. Finding a bundle of food with a love letter, or a spouse who asks you to find their partner, or a family dropping a kid off would have done an immense job to contextualize it. Seriously, if I knew how to mod in people, I would add extremely minor characters everywhere just because it can use it. There needs to be a minor writer / designer who goes through and adds minor pieces of storytelling here and there because it makes an area so much better. Russetwood had it, most PE maps did not. 3. NWN 2 had more companions in the base game than Pillars had, and then added more in the expansion than Pillars added. Companions were not equal; Grobnar, Cassovir, and Construct weren't as well written as Sand or the Jerros. This is just a matter of time and resources, not a small or high number being better. BG2 had a lot of awesome characters. Planescape had a few awesome characters. Lionheart Legacy of the Crusader had characters.

Jeff Vogel has a great post on this. Basically reusing objects allowed his team to make 10 amazing RPGs (and a couple so-so ones).

Fair warning, the Ice Dragon in White March is probably the hardest boss in the game. There's no reason to deal with her until you hit max levels.

I thought the fatigue system was pretty cumbersome. It did not stop me from dungeon running. It did stop me from running around the overland map / traveling / exploring. On harder difficulties, health was usually gone in dungeons before fatigue was factor. If you want to force players to rest more often, there could just be abilities that do extra health damage (poison?). @Eric I can see the higher levels giving a ton of unused resources (hey every IE and NWN game), especially for your average fight. However, PE had some beautifully nasty boss fights that ground down literally all of my spell levels before I won (mainly the harder dragons, especially the first time I fought them). I would say it's already doing better than its predecessors in this regard. Priests and mages shine in the most difficult / most dramatic fights, but that doesn't mean that their overall utility matches the less dramatic classes or that their power is necessarily based on their vancian nature. Priests immediately have access to generally counter status effects in a way other classes don't (or get too late). Mages have unparalleled access to petrify, sleep, and terror; those are damn powerful status effects. They also get better use of confusion than Ciphers do (confusion & the amazing wall of colors). This has nothing to do with their Vancian nature; Vancian casting just exacerbates the already apparent differences. Also, some classes are built for different situations that are less noticeable by the lack of dramatic tension. Barbarians, rangers, ciphers, and paladins shine in large groups with lower defenses, but have very build dependent effectiveness against bosses. That makes their effectiveness less noticeable, but not less present. Chanters weirdly enough, are probably the class that works best in all situations; after that, probably fighters.

Enemies tend to attack lighter armored targets or those they're engaged with. You may want to put on a piece of armor to discourage them. Also, enemies seem to weigh the potential damage from a disengagement attack before disengaging. It is possible to build a tank who is so armored but does so little damage that enemies don't really see a point paying attention to them. The game favors armored melee damage dealers to tank and spank with glass cannons anyways; I would respec once you're out of the current situation. If you want to keep the current approach, use their desire for your main character to kite.

1. You've repeated this opinion again and again, but the idea that wizards aren't powerful is just not true. Not only do wizards have amazing build variety, they have many spells that completely alter the battlefield. The control that Slicken, Confusion, Gaze of the Adragan, and Wall of Colors grant are virtually unparalleled by other classes. That's before build specific spells like Combusting Wounds or Citzal's spells. They're not quadratic like BG2 wizards, but they are a top tier class. 2. Sure. I'll be honest, no sidequest (besides the whole WM line) was as good as the skinner murders. However, BG2 is one of the best games ever made; PE starting out with merely engaging and varied is pretty good.

I agree with this 100%. As a standalone game, I think White March was excellent. It improved combat (lagufeths! xaurip ambushes!), level design (Abbey of the Fallen Moon), skill challenges (burning house, mines), and most importantly content density (hey random fampyr! that's the thing I like to see). It also fit really well into the Pillars universe. It didn't quite fit well into PE itself though. However, I think that's less the problem of White March, and more that PE in general feels extremely modular. Gilded Vale is one massive region; Defiance Bay is probably smaller in world maps; the Endless Paths is a great little dungeon runner in its own right; Dyrford is a small but distinct region; and finally Twin Elms. The game could have used some smaller throwaway maps with throwaway content just to make the world feel more real and connected. As of now, the game feels more like Baldur's Gate II; the world map is mostly useless, disconnected adventures take place far apart from each other. Even within the regions, there's some great artistic designs that don't feel connected to the rest of the world. Outside of Defiance there's massive hot springs that just (ahem) spring up. Raedrics keep had literally nothing to the East in the base game. Caed Nua has no ruined outlying farms or overgrown settlements. The game could have definitely used some of the visual cues that Baldur's Gate 1 used. Environment would change before map transition. The grasslands of Beregost got scrubbier as you moved south and east (North Nashkel Road) or towards Firewine bridge, and the enemy composition changed. Whitemarch was slightly better about making the region thematically unified. Your choices were snow, frozen lakes, or hot springs, and that's okay because that's what you find in that environment (and also Dwarf Fortresses). However, one reason White March feels so disconnected is because there's no transition Evergreen forest that has snow in the Northern half, and there should have been for artistic and gameplay continuity. If you're exploring the small patch of snow and you get wrecked by a small group of Ogres running from the matron, that foreshadows the WM setting visually, thematically, and through gameplay. I really hope they'll fix that as the team grows more experienced in PE2.

I like the current rest system. For me, it's an an improvement on the IE style that encourages you to go further on limited abilities without being too different, which is all I wanted. However, moving spell casters to the same resource is just not a good idea. One of the greatest triumphs of the current system is that each class feels and plays differently. Characters really only have three axes of variation: melee vs. ranged; ability resource management; and effects of abilities (damage, healing, status effects). If you remove the ability resource management axis, several classes would feel the effect. Fighters vs. Monks: Their largest effective difference is wounds. Wizard vs. Cypher: Their largest difference is focus. Wizards get confusion mechanics after all. Chanters vs. paladins: They both are tanky, aura buffers. The largest difference is how chanters build and use power. Mana as a solution particularly leaves something to be desired, because in the vast majority of mana systems you either don't use it or you unload the exact same spells at the start of major fights and then potion up. At least spell levels force characters to go up and down spell levels, reacting more to longer fights. I believe this even though I do like the idea of some class gaining resources from deaths. If the devs want to improve the game they should capitalize on the past success of unique classes and now focus on making classes more unique. What if druids had a bunch of powerful spells, but certain spells were empowered based on environment? That would make them feel like more than also ran mages with a bit of tank. What if barbarians had rages so strong they went neutral and attacked anyone near them, but gained an astonishing +8 to might and con? What if priest spells varied based on deity? Imagine casting Avatar and getting an AoE flaming burst on guns if you worship magran, or a big stunning hammer with Abydon? What if Chanters had lyrics that worked together, or a bonus for lines that rhymed? What if mage grimoires could only have two slots per level, and mages had to change grimoires (more quickly than now) to use different spells? Is the opportunity cost of switching grimoires worth the adaptive bonus? What if in this framework, metamagic ate three memorization slots (the original spell, the metamagic, and the final result)? Metamagic would still be powerful, but comes at a pretty high cost.