JerekKruger

I think you're assuming that for something to be rational it must be rational under the rules of our world. That's not the case. The creation story in the Silmarillion is perfectly rational within its own framework. So long as there are rules there will be people who seek to codify those rules, and who look for deeper principles that govern those rules. Those people are doing science. Personally if I lived in a world with dragons I'd want to know their origins, how they breath fire and, if they do, why they eat virgins. That doesn't mean every story that is set in such a world has to explain any or all of those things. After all, there are plenty of other interesting things to explore in such a world. As for there being no rational explanation for why dragons eat virgins that's nonsense. There wouldn't be a rational explanation in our world, but then dragons themselves wouldn't be rational in our world. In a world where there are dragons, where the rules are different to those of our own, there can easily be rational explanations. Indeed, it's easy to come up with some by drawing upon myths surrounding virginity in our own world e.g. virgins have some sort of purity to them which dragons need to live.

I'd let him off wrecking Caed Nua if he agreed to allow me to build a new keep on to of his shoulders and go where I told him.

At level 9 with 16 Intellect it was around 90s for me. Perhaps for the first few levels the bonus duration will be useful, but I can't see needing much more than 90s myself.

I hope so, and you're probably right. Concelhaut's Staff looks great, a big improvement over PoE's model, so hopefully what we've currently got for Citzal's Lance and Firebrand are just the VFX for them and the physical model will come later. This is also supported by the Priest summons, or at least the Priest of Magran's sword and pistol (I haven't checked all of them). These are, as far as I can tell, simply the same model as a normal sword and pistol so probably placeholders.

The God of the gaps

To be honest I don't mind the second type of magic so long as it's made clear that that's the point. I've not read Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (though I might now) so I can't comment on it in particular but so long as it's well written that sort of unknowableness can be really interesting. In a sense you get something similar in Cthulhu mythos: you have these utterly incomprehensible beings and merely trying to understand them sends people insane. I guess what I dislike really is the use of "because magic" as a lazy explanation for things. I would however argue that there are rules even in these situations. Those rules are unknown to the inhabitants of the setting, to the reader, and even the author might only have a vague outline of what they are, but the fact that a character can, by going insane, improve their mastery of magic tells us that they're there. You might not be able to establish a scientific theory that says things like "if I use this amount of these types of mana I will get this affect" but you can still work things out about it through observations (one of those things might even be: the behaviour of magic seems to change specifically to avoid conforming to prescriptive laws). The only system where this wouldn't be possible would be a completely random one, but I don't think any fiction has such a system and I suspect that such a system, if written honestly, would be rather uninteresting and possible incompatible with the rise of complex societies.

I assume this proposed change is instead of the might>strength change. Fix perception and resolve independently rather than changing Might.

I think an increase to the accuracy/deflection bonus of perception/resolve would be a simple solution to try out during the beta. One thing I'd say is that, because of rounding, non-integer values aren't a good idea. Instead of suggest making them give +2 and residing enemy deflection/accuracy by a proportionately smaller amount.

Honestly, if you knock up a spore you probably deserve it

But if players weren't willing to read through all their new spells on levelling up in Pillars, are they really going to read through their options upon levelling in Deadfire? My guess would be no. By the way, I was replying on my phone earlier so didn't respond to your suggestion of giving more low level spells at higher levels. I think that would be an improvement but it would still presumably leave lots of higher level spells unavailable and it would be a bit messy to implement from a UI point of view.

Oh I know, I was the same, but I'm not really sure how the change improves that.

So the solution to most players not using most their spells is to remove most spells from all players? This seems like a strange thing to do. Is the experience really changing much for those players who already didn't use most the spells?

I wouldn't say so no. After all, one would expect a single class wizard to cast a more powerful version of a spell than a multiclass wizard, and moreover a Conjurer to cast a more powerful version of a conjuration spell than a non-Conjurer, and added duration doesn't really express this (especially since the duration is plenty long enough already).

I don't believe I said you weren't. Sure, that's true. However I think the creator of a fantasy setting ought to have some idea of the rules of their magic system even if the occupants of their world don't, and they never set them out explicitly to their readers. As for the Strength point, I don't disagree, although you could add "and that's how magic works in this setting" as well.

So apparently summoned weapon Accuracy, Damage and Penetration bonuses only scale with character level and not power level. Power level affects the duration but nothing else. The stated reason is to avoid summoned weapons being weaker for multiclass characters. This seems like an odd choice to me. Firstly, surely a dedicated Wizard should be better at summoning magical weapons than a multiclassed one. Secondly this seems to make the Conjurer's bonus power level a lot weaker since it does almost nothing for those spells (at power level 3 Parasitic Staff already have a long duration, I don't need it to be super long at level 10).

That's a good question. My initial thought was make each spell cost X spell points, where X = spell level. However without testing it's hard to tell whether this would be a good ratio. Balancing casting ten Minor Missiles against one level 10 damage spell is going to be rather tricky as you've going to have to weigh up the AoE (and whether it's foe only), the cast time, the penetration and the overall damage.

Agreed, and honestly I don't think it would make Druids or Priests much more powerful if they were given access to their full suite of spells as they were in Pillars as they'll still be limited by the number of casts per encounter. Similarly for Wizards and scribing spells.

My apologies: I didn't notice the date jump from late October to late November and also forgot that this subforum isn't part of the beta subforums.

Very well explained Lephys. Also I agree with your original point: good fantasy/science fiction can (and perhaps should) break the rules of our reality, however it should have its own set of rules and should adhere to them. Once "it's magic" is invoked to explain away everything in a setting that setting becomes uninteresting (to me at least).

1 and 2 seem the same to me. The reason I might not cast more than one spell from a given level is because I have better options at other levels. This could be seen as powergaming I guess (though I challenge you to find me people who will choose to cast worse spells for role-playing reasons) but it's also a problem of poor spell selection at that level. This is particularly bad when you're a specialist mage, since you can find yourself losing access to more than 40% of spells at some levels. At will spell mastery could help this a situation a bit yes, though as yet we've not heard that it's going to be a feature. And you're welcome Almost every time I see the term Vancian caster used I see someone point this out so I thought I'd preempt.

I believe one of the goals when designing Pillars attribute system was to avoid the sort of situation where certain values would offer significantly bigger bonuses than most. Making Penetration work like this would go against that aim.

It is indeed. Even without penetrating I managed to do some pretty decent damage with an Echoed Minor Missile after casting Fleet Feet to activate Wellspring of Life. However, playing around with this is what made me realise I'm not fond of the changes to Vancian casters. Two spell casts per level is too restrictive to my mind.

To be a little more precise, in a world where magic exists magic would be part of nature. Magic itself wouldn't be science, much like gravity isn't science; but the study of the laws governing magic would be. Questions like "why is there magic?" would, much like "why is there space and time?", be questions of philosophy rather than science.

Yep. They also have a max focus cap so even if they could it wouldn't allow them to spam nearly as many powers as Wizards. Another thing I'm not particularly fond of in the new Deadfire system is the loss of niche powers. In Pillars the spell Charm Beast was great when fighting beasts and useless otherwise: it still exists in Deadfire but I can't imagine any Druid ever taking it since it's a waste for all those fights where you aren't fighting beasts. In fact I suspect that only a small selection of spells for each of the Vancian casters will ever be taken.

I think the point is the Cipher has to spend time building up Focus, whereas the Wizard can simply cast Spells uninterrupted. In PoE this was balanced by the fact that Wizard Spells were per rest whereas Cipher's could use their Powers as often as they could gain enough Focus to do so, but now that Spells are per encounter the Wizard has no reason to hold back from emptying their spell books. I would say however that the Cipher is likely doing pretty good damage whilst building their Focus up, so it's not like they're getting nothing during their non-casting time.