Why does every class have to have magic?

[Loren Tyr]

To be honest, in almost any high-magic fantasy setting, it would actually be way more unbelievable if there *were* a strict separation between magic and non-magic classes. Clearly in such a setting the rules of reality are quite different from our own, and people can innately tap into sources of power and do things that are impossible in our reality.

 

Given this, there is no particular reason to assume that this capability is restricted to a select subset of people, unless the setting provides a specific justification for that being the case. And in fact in most cases those justifications aren't particulary convincing anyway if they are there; if we look at our own reality, abilities and aptitudes and dispositions, and natural properties of objects and environments as well, these almost invariably follow some continuous statistical distribution. Cognitive faculties, physical strength, psychiatric disorder, 2D:4D ratio, what have you... it is not discrete categories, it's invariably all on a spectrum. Why would it be any different for fantasy abilities? 

 

Of course some people would have a lot of natural talent for a particular set of abilities, like arcane magic; and these people would be much or likely to end up as, and be succesful as, a wizard (though again, realistically a host of environmental, social and cultural factors are going to affect such 'career' trajectories). But there will be many others who will have only some natural aptitude of this kind, or who perhaps had more but never had the interest or resources to become a wizard (and quite possibly, whether you have an aptitude for it may not be inherently obvious to people themselves anyway). And they are bound to tap into that, consciously or unconsciously, in whatever other path in life they end up following, whether that's a soldier, a politician, a farmer, a thief, whatever. Just as people in our reality will tend to use their specific intelllectual abilities, creative talents, physical prowess, et cetera, in whatever they do; even if those aren't the primary prerequisites for whatever it is they do.

 

And I would add to this also that by necessity, what is shown in the game is an abstraction. This applies to most games but especially to stat-based games like this. For example, people have shields, but do we ever see them use those? Auto-attacking characters essentially do nothing for a bit, then every so often swing their weapon at their enemy; their enemy does the same, there is no interaction there. If we interpret this literally, it is completely ridiculous; imagine you saw the same thing in a movie (not that movie fights are anywhere near realistic, but much better than that). Clearly, we are meant to see this as a more abstract depiction of what's really going on. So is it then so much of a stretch that the Escape ability is meant to represent the nimble rogue darting past people, dodging their attacks? Perhaps powered by some form of magic, but even if it were completely mundane this depiction would be entirely reasonable (especially keeping in mind considerations of graphical design, it should be reasonably clear and recognisable what's happening in a potentially quite crowded fight scene). 

[Lokithecat]

I hear 'Oregon Trail' is a great sim that doesn't have magic.  Give that a shot.

[Seroster01]

A paladin should have some magical effects because the nature of the class. But there is an overwhelming amount of magical classes in the game. In fact, the vast majority are magical hybrids of some type. On top of being able to multi class. Why is it needed to make the only 4 mundane classes magical? Not to mention, it breaks the concept of a fighter or barbarian to be leaping around in balls of fire, and using telekinesis. What separates them from a wizard then?

It breaks YOUR concept of a fighter/barbarian. Even in D&D, going back to 3e at least, Barbarians at least have many powers/abilities that would qualify as supernatural IRL. They've even got a subclass in 5e that makes fire & lightning storms to attack their enemies! So unless you're going back to like Conan-style definitions of martial vs. arcane classes IDK where you're getting this concept, or which games you're seeing it in.

 

What separates them from a wizard? The fact that they channel their powers primarily into body enhancements and physical attacks instead of throwing fire/ice/lighting/acid. The fact that a Barbarian leaps into combat to punch his enemies in the mouth, and the landing causes an explosion, is thematically very different from a caster throwing a fireball from the back line being all safe & cozy.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Seroster01

[ibanix]

1) There's no magic like you think there is, not in Eora. EVERYTHING is powered by souls, or using pieces of souls, in some way.

 

2) Different abilities in different classes use soul powers in different ways. Highlight word here: Ability.

 

3) Perhaps you need to reconsider your 1980s-based wizard/magic D&D-style stereotype? 

[Neckbitbasket]

Also, shouldn't this topic belong in the General Discussion section of the forums? This is neither a character build nor a discussion about strategy. The poster's complaint is rooted in the lore and flavor of the game.

[gkathellar]

To be honest, in almost any high-magic fantasy setting, it would actually be way more unbelievable if there *were* a strict separation between magic and non-magic classes. Clearly in such a setting the rules of reality are quite different from our own, and people can innately tap into sources of power and do things that are impossible in our reality.

 

Given this, there is no particular reason to assume that this capability is restricted to a select subset of people, unless the setting provides a specific justification for that being the case. And in fact in most cases those justifications aren't particulary convincing anyway if they are there; if we look at our own reality, abilities and aptitudes and dispositions, and natural properties of objects and environments as well, these almost invariably follow some continuous statistical distribution. Cognitive faculties, physical strength, psychiatric disorder, 2D:4D ratio, what have you... it is not discrete categories, it's invariably all on a spectrum. Why would it be any different for fantasy abilities?

 

On that note, I've always found the notion that magic is performed exclusively by waving your hands around in odd patterns and muttering to be rather silly. There's no particular reason this should be the case in a majority of settings, and while I suppose it's meant to be evocative of mudras and mantras, it tends to be disconnected from any of the symbolic reasoning that those have in real esoteric and occult traditions. In general, I find the whole, "wave hands and talk in Latin," bit is devoid of context and uncompelling, and I far prefer the old wuxia standby of "kung fu gives you superpowers."

 

I think the prevalence of the trope comes from a lot of places, notably tradition and nostalgia (which aren't bad, especially in a game, but they also don't move me personally). I've also encountered an odd, toxic, "but wizards are nerds," argument at times, which is ... very strange and has a lot of geek elitism to it. Basically, the premise is that magic is like programming or the hard sciences, and is therefore not the province of jocks fighters, who are inferior in personal combat because I guess CS majors make a lot of money, and have low intellect scores because martial arts definitely don't engage your intellect. The whole notion feels weird to me, but I've definitely seen it around, especially in the tabletop gaming community.

[Big-Ben]

I confess I'm baffled that someone would not want to play a game over something this ridiculous. I mean I remember in Baldur's Gate that all your powers were essentially limited to beating things with whatever was in your hands (Or your hands themselves) if you were a martial class. I mean if you can summon some spirit stuff to make your warrior more powerful why is this such an issue? Must he only be allowed to use his flesh and bone? Where does this limitation end? Can he use potions? Must he recover from lacerations naturally?

 

???????????

[E.RedMark]

 

 

Rogues teleport around in purple smoke, and vanish in a cloud of magical dust

waaaaaaaaait a minute...

 

can they really do that in game ? Cose..now I may just give them a try ! Woot! 

 

Also for the OP : it aint Magic . And honestly....if you ever looked at what peoples like to play..in general anyway . Simple fighter are boring . Sure they are tanky and such....but take like Mass effect games . Soldier is always recommanded for noobs , but then everyone jump on Adept or Vanguard...why ? cose MAGIC! . 

[topologista]

the central conceit of the eora setting is that souls exist and can be harnessed and utilized. so of course everybody can do some cool soul-stuff. also, a lot of the complaints you had are just related to the limitations of video game effects. it'd be really boring and tedious if Into the Fray 's animation was just your fighter running up to an enemy and... pulling on them. with no special effects. 

[Shadenuat]

I find the whole, "wave hands and talk in Latin," bit is devoid of context and uncompelling

The context is hermetic magic, which has roots in real history and where latin was a language of the educated.

 

PoE's "lel souls do everything" is pretty dumb in comparison. It also doesn't stand to scrutiny, since everything about souls in PoE does pretty much same as any other fantasy magic, while at the same time lacking all the rules, nuances of something like, say, arcane magic in D&D with it's ingredients, counter spells, unique rules for magical creatures and so on. The best example is story in PoE2, by the way - "hunt god, get back your soul". Yet in the game, losing soul has less effect than Irenicus derping around with your soul in BG2 (you lose abilities, you turn into monster and suddenly kill your favorite waifu because you forgot to cast Stoneskin on her).

 

Let's not be too apologetic about PoE setting here, because the implementation of it's core idea in the game so far was 1) dumb backer NPCs and 2) errrr not really anything else. For wherever you can use soulpowers in PoE, in any other RPG you could use some detect spell or find a note on someone's corpse.

 

Designer(s) of PoE liked D&D4 with it's power pools and abilities for everyone, and "everyone is a mage". That's why game is like this, not because hand waving with souls. Arguably it could have done way better than bunch of mmo buttons, but buttons are easier to do than more complicated rules for physical classes (Codex Martialis comes to mind) or even good stealth (which wasn't even a thing in PoE1).

 

In some way it does hurt the gameplay, since Rogues, for example, do not need any help from the party as they are both magical effect distributors, can stealth all by themselves and do stupid amounts of damage; so instead of working as a team with other party members (like casting mass invisibility with a wizard and ambushing with rogues for massive damage), you just mash same buttons all the time every battle and you're good. Hurr souls.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Shadenuat

[Jajo]

That's not true at all! Chanters use the power of emotions!!

[Loren Tyr]

On that note, I've always found the notion that magic is performed exclusively by waving your hands around in odd patterns and muttering to be rather silly. There's no particular reason this should be the case in a majority of settings, and while I suppose it's meant to be evocative of mudras and mantras, it tends to be disconnected from any of the symbolic reasoning that those have in real esoteric and occult traditions. In general, I find the whole, "wave hands and talk in Latin," bit is devoid of context and uncompelling, and I far prefer the old wuxia standby of "kung fu gives you superpowers."

 

I think the prevalence of the trope comes from a lot of places, notably tradition and nostalgia (which aren't bad, especially in a game, but they also don't move me personally). I've also encountered an odd, toxic, "but wizards are nerds," argument at times, which is ... very strange and has a lot of geek elitism to it. Basically, the premise is that magic is like programming or the hard sciences, and is therefore not the province of jocks fighters, who are inferior in personal combat because I guess CS majors make a lot of money, and have low intellect scores because martial arts definitely don't engage your intellect. The whole notion feels weird to me, but I've definitely seen it around, especially in the tabletop gaming community.

 

 

Yeah, much agreed. In many settings a lot of magic is probably something like manipulating some kind of energy, tapping into some kind of (super)natural force, something to that effect. There would be no particular reason at all why that would need to involve anything linguistic or symbolic (both in the form of gestures as well as stuff like runic magic, really). I mean, what... the forces of nature are going to do your bidding but only if you ask them nicely / draw them a pretty picture? It makes more sense when it is meant to represent drawing on the power of some deity or demon or spirit or whatever, but even then you have to wonder: would such entities really be that fussy about the details? It's this kind of thing that tends to bother me most frequently about fantasy (and sci-fi; any "not proper reality", really) settings, that the internal logic and coherence of these fairly major things is just weak or lacking altogether. Which is also begging for a deus ex machina at some point, because there isn't anything stopping the authors from just making something up to get them out of a corner they painted themselves into, and calling it "magic" (or "reversing the shield polarity"). A lot of it is indeed just because they are common tropes, which always feels a bit lazy and uninteresting. Though actually, a setting where magic really was treated scientifically could of course be very interesting (even then, it's hardly just scientists that use science anyway)

 

Having said that I can certainly see how in a setting with magic, systems like this could arise even if it isn't actually necessary for the magic to happen. As a rule inhabitants of such a reality won't exactly know how magic works after all, and how to manipulate whatever is driving it. Particular rituals or incantations or gestures may just be what happened to work for them, these just happen to be practical ways to perform whatever physical or mental action that is necessary to make the magic happen. But in that case it's more a psychological thing, a trick of sorts, which you'd expect to then vary considerably across cultures and such; and similarly, just mimicking the phrases and gestures by itself would then not necessarily have any effect (just as even the most convincing-sounding parrot isn't actually speaking).

 

I think Wheel of Time did something like this. I recall that the contemporary Aes Sedai all learned their channeling in a way that involved gesturing, even though it turned out that it wasn't actually necessary; but having learned it that way, that's the only way they could do it (and I think also there was mention that they could sometimes recognise who taught a particular weave to an Aes Sedai, by the details of their gestures).

[Archaven]

magic is life magic is awesome. the moment i saw frostseeker bow i immediately fell in love with it. melee and range has always been a boredom for me without fancy effects. i wished there can be more stuff like this in the game.

[tinysalamander]

I think it's the opposite. We need more of the stuff. Just “import” the whole Tome of battle somehow.

[Thibax]

Magic is pure love. 

I understand your point and there are a lot of games that are more weapon based and restrict magic a lot too.

[gkathellar]

 

I find the whole, "wave hands and talk in Latin," bit is devoid of context and uncompelling

The context is hermetic magic, which has roots in real history and where latin was a language of the educated.

 

 

Hermetic magic is an entire family of syncretic belief systems, with their own deeply entrenched theological and cosmological justifications for what they are and how they're practiced. Fantasy certainly copies its imagery (although it's not unique imagery by any means, itself owing a great deal to the Indo-European diaspora), but that imagery is overwhelmingly separated from its justifications - one could liken it to have characters take communion in a setting where there is no Christianity, nor any remotely equivalent belief system. I can think of a couple of exceptions, mostly from the tabletop: Ars Magica is explicitly hermetic and take place in a pretty specifically Medieval Christian universe, while in settings like WoD's Mage, Shadowrun, or Unknown Armies, all magical traditions work. There's also Alan Moore's Promethea, which is pretty much a comic about the philosophical underpinnings of modern Hermetic theory, and also science heroes.

 

 

PoE's "lel souls do everything" is pretty dumb in comparison. It also doesn't stand to scrutiny, since everything about souls in PoE does pretty much same as any other fantasy magic, while at the same time lacking all the rules, nuances of something like, say, arcane magic in D&D with it's ingredients, counter spells, unique rules for magical creatures and so on. The best example is story in PoE2, by the way - "hunt god, get back your soul". Yet in the game, losing soul has less effect than Irenicus derping around with your soul in BG2 (you lose abilities, you turn into monster and suddenly kill your favorite waifu because you forgot to cast Stoneskin on her).

Let's not be too apologetic about PoE setting here, because the implementation of it's core idea in the game so far was 1) dumb backer NPCs and 2) errrr not really anything else. For wherever you can use soulpowers in PoE, in any other RPG you could use some detect spell or find a note on someone's corpse.

 

Designer(s) of PoE liked D&D4 with it's power pools and abilities for everyone, and "everyone is a mage". That's why game is like this, not because hand waving with souls. Arguably it could have done way better than bunch of mmo buttons, but buttons are easier to do than more complicated rules for physical classes (Codex Martialis comes to mind) or even good stealth (which wasn't even a thing in PoE1).

 

In some way it does hurt the gameplay, since Rogues, for example, do not need any help from the party as they are both magical effect distributors, can stealth all by themselves and do stupid amounts of damage; so instead of working as a team with other party members (like casting mass invisibility with a wizard and ambushing with rogues for massive damage), you just mash same buttons all the time every battle and you're good. Hurr souls.

 

I'm seeing a whole bunch of very separate points being lumped together here, so I'm going to address them separately. I'm not gonna do the quote-by-quote because it's a pain and I don't care that much, so ... yeah.

• PoE's soul schtick makes less sense than D&D: Eh ... it makes more sense sometimes, and less sense sometimes. D&D's "default setting" (including both Spelljammer and Planescape) is sort of a big floppy grab bag of ideas, and you have to really stretch to make them anything coherent, but that's half the fun of it. The other half is that, by a mix of accident and design, D&D has ended up with something truly and profoundly weird once you really get into the details of it. Hell, it even has its own soul schtick, incarnum, which looks a lot like PoE's. D&D certainly looks like standard fantasy on the surface, but that's because one can only immediately see the fuselage, the same way that you can't tell that someone has replaced their car's engine block with hamster wheels and crystals until they pop the front hood and the garage turns purple and everyone starts hallucinating. PoE's soul stuff is comparatively straightforward, if a little bit vague by design: everything runs on soul power, and people can manipulate that soul power with their minds and certain objects to produce various effects along the lines of what we expect from D&D-esque fantasy adventurers. This has its virtues - you don't need to toss out nearly as much crap, for one thing, or devise really obtuse explanations for how everything fits together. It also loses that bizarro-universe charm.
• PoE2 doesn't make sense because losing your soul doesn't make you turn into a demigod like in BG2: You're certainly entitled to dislike that PoE doesn't work on the same narrative rules as BG2, but I don't know that you can really field it as an objective statement of PoE's incoherence. If anything, the narrative rules for soul loss in BG2 are extremely vague: you're slowly dying, and in your weakened state your Bhaal essence is starting to take over, but we don't really know anything else about the significance of souls or their loss in general. PoE actually gives us all of that information pretty explicitly in both games.
• The only reason for the soul stuff was the backer NPCs: Do you have a basis for this beyond speculation? Because just as the Watcher junk could've been skinned in any one of a wide variety of different ways, the backer NPCs could've been done differently. I think it's far more likely that the setting designers just wanted a single, cohesive source of phlebotinum, and since they didn't want to call it "chi," or "prana," or "life-energy," or "spiral power," they called it souls. Obviously I have no particular basis for that notion, either, but I'm generally willing to assume that not everything Obsidian does is a cynical cash-grab.
• Watcher powers are just a way to spice up narrative things that could've been done in other ways: For sure, but I'm not convinced being reductive has any use here. Seasoning is good, after all (or so I tend to think). Aesthetics are important. Presentation matters. Explaining certain narrative beats through talking to ghosts and performing psychometry and whatnot is a tonal decision, but tonal decisions are hugely important.
• 4e comparisons: ... are quite apt, and I guess if you just globally dislike 4e's approach and game flow, that's an opinion you're entitled to. I wouldn't overstate the point, though, since even in Deadfire the system of ability management for casters is quite different from that of non-casters. I quite like 4e in spite of its warts, and I find the entire "its just like an mmo so it sucks" line of reasoning to be silly. In general, this is something I think we agree on the facts of, and simply diverge on how much we like it.
• Insulting Codex Martialis: I will fight you with my fists.
• Martials having nice things hurts gameplay: It changes gameplay, certainly, but just because the specific beats aren't exactly what they were in the IE games doesn't mean it's bad. With respect to your rogue example, I've certainly never felt that having caster support was unhelpful to a rogue in either PoE1 or PoE2, and, if anything, rogues really shine with a wizard to back them up.
• Fights are repetitive: ... because they're numerous, pointless, and often homogeneous throughout an area, which lends to using the same tactics over and over again. Were they more varied and more complex, this wouldn't be a problem. But, you know. Trash mobs.

Edited June 9, 2018 by gkathellar

[Shadenuat]

Not sure why you thought I insulted CM - it was an example of a system that makes martial classes use martial rules and abilities, instead of ninja magic soul abilities; but since it's more complicated (power pool in real time wouldn't work), we don't see this kind of design often. I am all up for martial classes having things to do in combat, but if they are, as OP stated, are just another form of magic, there's little roleplaying (and, frankly, systemic - hobbled is what hobbled does for both rogues and druids for example) difference.

 

I'm not gonna do the quote-by-quote because it's a pain and I don't care that much

I wonder how much you write in comparison when you do care lol.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Shadenuat

[Neckbitbasket]

Not sure why you thought I insulted CM - it was an example of a system that makes martial classes use martial rules and abilities, instead of ninja magic soul abilities; but since it's more complicated (power pool in real time wouldn't work), we don't see this kind of design often. I am all up for martial classes having things to do in combat, but if they are, as OP stated, are just another form of magic, there's little roleplaying (and, frankly, systemic - hobbled is what hobbled does for both rogues and druids for example) difference.

 

I'm not gonna do the quote-by-quote because it's a pain and I don't care that much

I wonder how much you write in comparison when you do care lol.

 

Care to explain how every classes' use of magic restricts variety in roleplaying?

[QuiteGoneJin]

I mean, this isn't a low fantasy game, nothing in POE1 or Deadfire's lore ever hinted so either. 

[gkathellar]

Not sure why you thought I insulted CM - it was an example of a system that makes martial classes use martial rules and abilities, instead of ninja magic soul abilities; but since it's more complicated (power pool in real time wouldn't work), we don't see this kind of design often. I am all up for martial classes having things to do in combat, but if they are, as OP stated, are just another form of magic, there's little roleplaying (and, frankly, systemic - hobbled is what hobbled does for both rogues and druids for example) difference.

 

I'm not gonna do the quote-by-quote because it's a pain and I don't care that much

I wonder how much you write in comparison when you do care lol.

 

I spoke in jest with respect to CM - I actually really appreciate that someone even knows about it.

 

In terms of afflictions, yeah, that makes sense. It comes of generalizing stuff don't to a limited set of ailments, which ... is handy in tabletop and less useful in a video game where all of the heavy lifting is done by the machine.

[Ad Hoc]

There does seem to be some stress between the psuedo-historical elements of the setting (I know Josh is keen on historical settings) and the high-fantasy/power-fantasy elements that attract people to RPGs like this. We're told guns and cannons have revolutionized warfare and the way people build their castles/fortifications--something analogous to our own history of warfare--but this is also a setting where people shoot fireballs and leap over walls in fiery explosions.

 

The thing is, though, that you can apply this logic to pretty much any high-fantasy setting. You seriously need to contort your ideas of historical progression and cause-and-effect to arrive at a world that at all resembles the one we live in. In a way, the most authentic fantasy world would be completely alien, such as Planescape: Torment, driven by forces and a culture that are fundamentally different to our own.

 

If anything, I would suggest Obsidian decrease the historicity of the setting and further create their own unique world. We see glimpses of it in this game. In the real world technology let empires dominate native populations the world over. In this setting, however, the native's magic has let them fight back the invaders to an uneasy truce. In this world, technology is not the be-all end-all, and that leads to divergent power-dynamics and divergent cultures, which is all very interesting.

Edited June 10, 2018 by Ad Hoc

[PizzaSHARK]

I can use OP’s argument against him, it also cheapen the experience of playing a martial class, when I can only auto attacks. Baldur’s Gate 2 is an example your fighter are only be able to attack. It’s very boring to play a fighter there.

 

Not really?  Fighters get all kinds of magical armor and tools that let them do different things, and ToB added in HLAs which let them do all kinds of wickedly awesome stuff.  **** like Mantle, Absolute Immunity, etc exists because Wizards will get mulched by Fighters if they don't have them.  Wizards are unquestionably more powerful than Fighters, generally speaking, but the way it's done so is still interesting and engaging.

 

3.5E and Pathfinder and 5E have all given them more active means of hitting things with sharpened sticks.

 

I like that someone mentioned trash mobs, because trash mobs have ZERO PURPOSE in a game that's not built around attrition death.  They just serve to make the game tedious and monotonous and holy **** I'm bored I'm gonna go play something else, especially when difficulty levels are just "enemies fall over when you fart at them" and "enemies have absurd amounts of defenses and health but are still developmentally disabled so have fun kiting the dragon's special needs class in circles for 5 minutes."  The closest you come to trash mobs having a purpose is in something like MMO raids, but even Blizzard cottoned on to the idea that trash needs to be meaningful and playing raids at anything approaching actual difficulty can result in a TPK if you don't fight the trash packs intelligently - they're certainly NOT "go afk and watch numbers scroll across the screen," not anymore.  Trash is generally used as a sort of combination palate cleanser and prep period before the next big encounter, often showcasing some minor elements of the upcoming encounter or setting the narrative stage.

 

Trash in Deadfire is just the equivalent of speed bumps in an empty parking lot - we'd all really prefer to just drive around them if at all possible.

Edited June 10, 2018 by PizzaSHARK

[Neckbitbasket]

 

I can use OP’s argument against him, it also cheapen the experience of playing a martial class, when I can only auto attacks. Baldur’s Gate 2 is an example your fighter are only be able to attack. It’s very boring to play a fighter there.

 

Not really?  Fighters get all kinds of magical armor and tools that let them do different things, and ToB added in HLAs which let them do all kinds of wickedly awesome stuff.  **** like Mantle, Absolute Immunity, etc exists because Wizards will get mulched by Fighters if they don't have them.  Wizards are unquestionably more powerful than Fighters, generally speaking, but the way it's done so is still interesting and engaging.

 

3.5E and Pathfinder and 5E have all given them more active means of hitting things with sharpened sticks.

 

I like that someone mentioned trash mobs, because trash mobs have ZERO PURPOSE in a game that's not built around attrition death.  They just serve to make the game tedious and monotonous and holy **** I'm bored I'm gonna go play something else, especially when difficulty levels are just "enemies fall over when you fart at them" and "enemies have absurd amounts of defenses and health but are still developmentally disabled so have fun kiting the dragon's special needs class in circles for 5 minutes."  The closest you come to trash mobs having a purpose is in something like MMO raids, but even Blizzard cottoned on to the idea that trash needs to be meaningful and playing raids at anything approaching actual difficulty can result in a TPK if you don't fight the trash packs intelligently - they're certainly NOT "go afk and watch numbers scroll across the screen," not anymore.  Trash is generally used as a sort of combination palate cleanser and prep period before the next big encounter, often showcasing some minor elements of the upcoming encounter or setting the narrative stage.

 

Trash in Deadfire is just the equivalent of speed bumps in an empty parking lot - we'd all really prefer to just drive around them if at all possible.

 

 

Pillars of Eternity and D&D are entirely different experiences, despite their somewhat similar mechanics. If you were to take a 5e Fighter, and translate it directly into the Pillars engine, it would be boring as hell. The reason the fighter works mechanically in 5e, and seems interesting, is because of the collaborative effort between the players and DM, which turns combat into more than a simple sum of its mechanics.

 

In D&D, you can invent possibilities and play off of the other players, while in Pillars you are one person in control of all the players, the world is generated and controlled by a game engine which operates, by necessity, under a rigid structure of rules and programmed sets of possibilities. 

[Darkprince048]

You all took everything way out of context. I never said I wanted less magic, I said I wanted the wizard to have a role in lore. This is one of the issues with this new generarion of gamers. Nobody has an imagination, they just care about min maxing their toon to be uber OP. They put zero thought into the actual lore behind a character they are making.

 

If any Joe shmoe can use magic, then what role does the wizard have? What makes the wizard different? Absolutly nothing lore wise. "Ranged vs melee" is a ridiculous argument. And if a fighter is just an up close spell caster, cuz dats cool dude, then we have really lost sight of things.

 

The concept of magic is very similar to science in the real world. Not just anybody can become an astrophysicist. It takes intelligence, understanding of advanced concepts and years of study. The concept of magic is largly the same in most fantasy settings. I mean, why even have classes in the game?

 

And no, its not just my understanding of a fighter and barbarian. The definition of a fighter or barbarian is pretty universal, and it doesn't generally involve the use of sorcery... How many UFC champions do you know that are scientists? How many front line fighters are scientists? Its rare. Why? Because the qualities that are involved with each of those professions don't usually match. Hence the concept of mage vs warrior. It really is not that hard to understand

[PizzaSHARK]

You all took everything way out of context. I never said I wanted less magic, I said I wanted the wizard to have a role in lore. This is one of the issues with this new generarion of gamers. Nobody has an imagination, they just care about min maxing their toon to be uber OP. They put zero thought into the actual lore behind a character they are making.

 

If any Joe shmoe can use magic, then what role does the wizard have? What makes the wizard different? Absolutly nothing lore wise. "Ranged vs melee" is a ridiculous argument. And if a fighter is just an up close spell caster, cuz dats cool dude, then we have really lost sight of things.

 

The concept of magic is very similar to science in the real world. Not just anybody can become an astrophysicist. It takes intelligence, understanding of advanced concepts and years of study. The concept of magic is largly the same in most fantasy settings. I mean, why even have classes in the game?

 

And no, its not just my understanding of a fighter and barbarian. The definition of a fighter or barbarian is pretty universal, and it doesn't generally involve the use of sorcery... How many UFC champions do you know that are scientists? How many front line fighters are scientists? Its rare. Why? Because the qualities that are involved with each of those professions don't usually match. Hence the concept of mage vs warrior. It really is not that hard to understand

 

Who are you even responding to?

 

Also lol, blaming "this new generation of gamers."