Spells / abilities and their casting time

[agris]

GameBanshee posted a new social roundup of comments, heavily weighted by JES, and there was one point that stuck out. And I quote:

 

 

[Q: dunno] I don't know if this has been said anywhere, but will spells/abilities have different casting times like in BG/IWD or will everything take equally long to use? I kinda prefer the first since it feels like a good balancing mechanic for powerful effects.

[A: JES] We will probably have three casting/ability use durations: immediate, short, and long. Those will be set to specific intervals and will be consistent between characters. E.g. a fighter's "short" ability use is the same as a wizard's "short" casting time, etc.

 

Am I crazy, or does JES misinterpret the question? It seems that they are asking about the length of time, on a fresh round, to cast / activate an ability. The answer seems to mingle durations (first sentence) and casting time (third sentence), and is not clear.

 

So: will spells / abilities have discrete casting / activation times, or will they be grouped into categories based on the duration of the effect (which I think is what JES is getting at)?

 

To be clear, I don't mean the duration of an effect. I'm asking about the time it takes for a character to 'cast' a spell / ability, after it has been selected, and a fresh round of combat has started (I don't know enough to say if rounds even make sense in this world.. I'm defaulting back to my IE understanding of combat time).

 

[Lephys]

To address the "rounds of combat" concept from IE games, I'm fairly certain they've said that P:E will be fully real-time, and not round-based. So, no worries there.

 

With that being said, I believe Josh was simply being concise. Out of the two options in the question, his answer was the second: "everything will take equally long to use." Except the answer is more precise than that, so he elaborated. Everything will take one of three (in the design thus far) "casting" durations. So, all short-cast abilities will take the same amount of time, all immediate-cast abilities will take the same amount of time, and all long-cast abilities will take the same amount of time. However, an immediate-cast ability will obviously take less time (essentially none) than a long-cast ability.

 

So, his answer is either "neither" or "both," basically, however you want to look at it.

 

Is there still something that remains unclear?

 

EDIT: Ohhhh, I see. The word "duration." Yeah, it's used very often to refer to effects, but a "duration," alone, is still simply a period of time "during" which something is occurring. In this case, he's referring to "casting duration." Thus the "we will probably have three casting/ability use durations" bit. He means the time during which you are still in the act of using/casting the ability.

Edited October 1, 2013 by Lephys

[agris]

Hey Lephys!

 

Ok, maybe I'm failing at reading comprehension. Lets look again at what he said...

 

 

[A: JES] We will probably have three casting/ability use durations: immediate, short, and long. Those will be set to specific intervals and will be consistent between characters. E.g. a fighter's "short" ability use is the same as a wizard's "short" casting time, etc.

 

So he splits casting durations (i.e. time to cast something) into 3 categories: immediate, short and long. These categorical stratifications are equal amongst all character classes (fighter, cleric, wizard, etc). I suppose this answers my question, except it begs the question: what percentage of a round (pardon the nomenclature) are immediate (this is obvious), short and long?

 

You were right though, I was caught up on the use of duration and the answer to the question was right there. Now it's a matter of clarification.

[Greydragon]

It may not even be a complete standstill; it would be a change to have some kind of skill choice in the game that allows the mage to move (even if it just slowly) while casting.

As far as casting time; pre prepared 'instant' spells would also be good, as long as they are limited use. Short casting time spells (two or three seconds) would include weak attack spells and short duration physical/elemental damage absorption. Medium length (I'd say around 7 seconds) would be varied useful effects and high damage spells. Long length (I'd assume maybe fifteen seconds or so to allow for disruption) would be the massively damaging spells and high level summons, etc. 

[Greensleeve]

Hey Lephys!

 

Ok, maybe I'm failing at reading comprehension. Lets look again at what he said...

 

 

[A: JES] We will probably have three casting/ability use durations: immediate, short, and long. Those will be set to specific intervals and will be consistent between characters. E.g. a fighter's "short" ability use is the same as a wizard's "short" casting time, etc.

 

So he splits casting durations (i.e. time to cast something) into 3 categories: immediate, short and long. These categorical stratifications are equal amongst all character classes (fighter, cleric, wizard, etc). I suppose this answers my question, except it begs the question: what percentage of a round (pardon the nomenclature) are immediate (this is obvious), short and long?

 

You were right though, I was caught up on the use of duration and the answer to the question was right there. Now it's a matter of clarification.

 

Well, they won't be expressed in percentages of a round, as there are no rounds. They will all be expressed in seconds, or fractions of them, instead. So hypothetically, an immediate might happen as soon as possible, a short would take 3 seconds (the standard round in KotOR), and a long might take 9 seconds to case. No need to express them any other way than in seconds really. 

 

As for Josh no telling us the numbers, I'm sure they're still tweaking them to ensure the system is nicely balanced, and they don't want to show us something they're not yet ready to. 

[rjshae]

GameBanshee posted a new social roundup of comments, heavily weighted by JES, and there was one point that stuck out. And I quote:

 

 

[Q: dunno] I don't know if this has been said anywhere, but will spells/abilities have different casting times like in BG/IWD or will everything take equally long to use? I kinda prefer the first since it feels like a good balancing mechanic for powerful effects.

 

[A: JES] We will probably have three casting/ability use durations: immediate, short, and long. Those will be set to specific intervals and will be consistent between characters. E.g. a fighter's "short" ability use is the same as a wizard's "short" casting time, etc.

 

Am I crazy, or does JES misinterpret the question? It seems that they are asking about the length of time, on a fresh round, to cast / activate an ability. The answer seems to mingle durations (first sentence) and casting time (third sentence), and is not clear.

 

No, I think he tried to answer the question. It's mildly confusing because he says 'ability use' rather than 'ability activation'. But the clue is in the E.g., where he compares 'ability use' to 'casting time'.

[Lephys]

Hey Lephys!

 

Ok, maybe I'm failing at reading comprehension. Lets look again at what he said...

 

[A: JES] We will probably have three casting/ability use durations: immediate, short, and long. Those will be set to specific intervals and will be consistent between characters. E.g. a fighter's "short" ability use is the same as a wizard's "short" casting time, etc.

 

So he splits casting durations (i.e. time to cast something) into 3 categories: immediate, short and long. These categorical stratifications are equal amongst all character classes (fighter, cleric, wizard, etc). I suppose this answers my question, except it begs the question: what percentage of a round (pardon the nomenclature) are immediate (this is obvious), short and long?

 

You were right though, I was caught up on the use of duration and the answer to the question was right there. Now it's a matter of clarification.

 

No worries. We're constantly putting our thoughts into words with oodles of meanings, and everyone sees words in different pairings and with different meanings with greater frequency than others. It just happens. 8P

 

As Greensleeve said, they're just going to be specific increments of time, but they probably don't have the EXACT numbers finalized yet. I mean, instant will probably be instantaneous (although there might be some minimum amount of "stick out your hand to focus the ability" time or something... like .1 seconds *shrug*... like a reflexes/reaction time thing, so that you can't fire off some kind of instant counter-spell .0000000001 seconds before the tip of a sword strikes your face or something, I dunno). And then short might be something like 3 seconds, while long might be 7 seconds.

 

Also, while this is mainly speculation, I would bet that those are going to be simply static BASE cast times. In other words, you'll probably have things that modify those. So that, some Wizard with a bunch of feats, or maybe who has really high casting skill or something, might have a 30% reduction in casting time. So, his would be just over 2 seconds, for short-cast-time abilities, and somewhere around 5 for long (again, purely example numbers, plucked from thin air). And someone else might have LONGER cast times. Or, buffs and debuffs might also affect this (things like haste, and slow).

 

The reason I'm thinking that is that Josh mentioned penalties from heavy armor being applied to combat actions. He said they wouldn't slow your move speed, or affect spell/ability failure (like in DnD), but would simply encumber you by slowing your actions. This leads me to believe that a penalty would be applied to the base cast time of your abilities (Short abilities go from 3 to 5 seconds for that character, and long go from 7 to 10 seconds, etc.).

 

It's very similar to how Mass Effect 3 handles ability "cast" times, only in that, weapons were the things that affected weight/encumbrance, instead of armor. Works pretty well, though. *shrug*

[TrashMan]

Cant' say the like the idea of mages and fighters havng equal "casting time".

[rjshae]

Cant' say the like the idea of mages and fighters havng equal "casting time".

 

A mage and a fighter walk into a fisherman's bar. The discussion turns to rods and reels...

[Lephys]

Cant' say the like the idea of mages and fighters havng equal "casting time".

What, specifically, don't you like about such an idea, if I might ask?

[TrashMan]

Fighters swing pointy or blunt stuff to kill things dead.

Mages cast magic.

To my mind, powerfull spells is something that requires preparation, concetration and time. It kinda makes sense - you invest a lot into an attack, you get a lot out of it.

 

I just don't see fighters as requireing that much time to ready anything.

[Sabotin]

I may be talking out of the wrong hole here, but I think fighters could need some time to execute special maneuvers. I can imagine a smart and/or experienced fighter attacking in such a way as to lead an opponent into a position which makes it possible to then hit them "just so". And at the same time try not to get themselves caught in the same trap.

 

Though I'd take the statement more at face value. It wouldn't surprise me if most of the stuff was instant for fighters, having the cast time descriptions be the same just for clarity purposes (and possibly easier balancing).

Edited October 3, 2013 by Sabotin

[Lephys]

Fighters swing pointy or blunt stuff to kill things dead.

Mages cast magic.

To my mind, powerfull spells is something that requires preparation, concetration and time. It kinda makes sense - you invest a lot into an attack, you get a lot out of it.

 

I just don't see fighters as requireing that much time to ready anything.

Fair enough. However, I've always found that such an idea of magic (it's always super time-consuming and requires ridiculously elaborate amounts of precision efforts and such compared to non-magic actions/attacks, but is always super powerful) to be a bit silly. It just seems so needlessly narrow. If it takes 8 seconds (game abstraction time) of waving my hands around and reciting incantations to mold some kind of fictional energy into a fireball, then SURELY I could produce roughly 1/8th the effect with 1/8th the effort, right? I mean, a physical Fighter can either draw back and swing his sword as hard as he can, OR he can jab you in the face with the pommel (or just his gauntleted fist clutching the hilt). The distance between his fist and your face is FAR less.

 

Or, if a Fighter isn't doing it for you in that example (I was just trying to stick to the context of the game and classes), think of a boxer. It takes longer to throw a haymaker than it does to jab. That's what I was getting at.

 

So, why shouldn't magic work the same way? The longer you build up potential energy, the more energy you deliver when you release it. In whatever form.

 

*shrug*. That's pretty preferencial. I don't really have any evidence as to why that "should" happen, other than "It seems like everything but magic works like that, but magic arbitrarily doesn't."

 

Anywho. As for the Fighter... you could think of his "cast time" as an abstraction of simply his building of focus to perform the elaborate maneuver. In other words, he might be a master of passive form during combat, and so swinging just so is second nature. But, performing some kind of combo (especially a circumstantial maneuver against multiple opponents) would require, probably, at least a second or two of focus/calculation to perform. On top of the normal observe-and-react of regular, ongoing combat against a foe. *shrug*

 

Now, I will say that maybe it makes sense that the Fighter continue defending and using footwork, etc., while "casting." So that, basically, if you have a 5-second cast time, it was 5 seconds spent not attacking, to build up for an elaborate attack, rather than 5 seconds standing around like a doofus. Whereas, the Wizard might need to focus (hence the typical Concentration seen in almost every game since DnD came out, ever), so that his 5 seconds is actually just standing there and/or performing somatic components and such that prevent him from performing standard combat defenses/actions.

 

That, and a lot of the Fighter's abilities will probably rely upon the manipulation of soul energy, which makes a lot more sense to require cast time than simply physical moves (as it may actually require some duration of energy focus/buildup/manipulation).

 

That's all I've got on that. *shrug*. Between that, and the necessary abstraction for gameplay balancing and the like, it doesn't trouble me much, personally. That's just me, though.

 

Oh, and, as Sabotin pointed out, just because all abilities are going to draw from the same handful of cast/use durations doesn't mean that Fighters won't have mainly instant/short-"cast" abilities, while Wizards (for example) have mainly long-cast abilities with a sprinkling of short-cast and instant ones. In other words, yes, if a Fighter has a short ability, and a Wizard has a short ability, then those are going to be the same. But that doesn't necessarily mean "a Fighter and a Wizard's abilities are all going to take the same amount of time." You're not necessarily going to be standing around for 5 seconds every time you want to use a Fighter ability, but SOME might take that long, and I'd figure it's going to be the ones that most heavily involve soul power.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Lephys

[teknoman2]

to make an example.

imediate magic (up to 1s casting time) is magic missile, mirror image, shield etc. short (3s casting time) is vitriolic sphere, acid/flame arrow. long (5s casting time) is firestorm, summon elemental etc

in fighter/paladin terms, imediate is stance change, aura change etc. short is power attack. long is flurry (several fast attacks over a 5s period)

[jamoecw]

keep in mind that mages generally are weak and frail in exchange for being able to do more damage than warrior classes as well, compared to a ranger wizards were able to do about 35 dpr (fireball at tenth level) while rangers did 18 dpr (longbow, 4 attacks per round) at double the base health and without taking defense or AoE into account (at which point wizards win out easily).  the fact that rangers lack spells per day is how they can compete with wiards ignoring defenses (kinda) and do AoE at higher levels, throw that out and you then have to tone down wizards or boost the amount of time it takes them to do things.  so with fighters having the same range of time taken for their abilities, that means that wizards must be toned down, which quite a few people don't like (not me though, spells per day thing is overcome with resting too much, which breaks balance and skewed things to make wizards seem more powerful than they were intended to be).

 

so ya there is stuff to not like about such a decision, i can see it.

[TrashMan]

 

Fair enough. However, I've always found that such an idea of magic (it's always super time-consuming and requires ridiculously elaborate amounts of precision efforts and such compared to non-magic actions/attacks, but is always super powerful) to be a bit silly. It just seems so needlessly narrow. If it takes 8 seconds (game abstraction time) of waving my hands around and reciting incantations to mold some kind of fictional energy into a fireball, then SURELY I could produce roughly 1/8th the effect with 1/8th the effort, right? I mean, a physical Fighter can either draw back and swing his sword as hard as he can, OR he can jab you in the face with the pommel (or just his gauntleted fist clutching the hilt). The distance between his fist and your face is FAR less.

 

 

 

Isnt that what I said? Since when did I say ALL mage spells have to have a long casting time?

You'd have instant one (kinda like DA2 auto-attack), but the more powerfull the spell, the longer it takes to prep.

 

There's a certain mystical charm to ritual and complicated, but powerfull spells.

Granted, it's hard to put the best of such spells in computer games.

For PnP players, think Thievsworld.

 

Digressing..anyway, I'm saying that at no point can I see even the mightiest of fighters moves requireing nearly as much time as the wizzards.

[kgambit]

to make an example.

imediate magic (up to 1s casting time) is magic missile, mirror image, shield etc. short (3s casting time) is vitriolic sphere, acid/flame arrow. long (5s casting time) is firestorm, summon elemental etc

in fighter/paladin terms, imediate is stance change, aura change etc. short is power attack. long is flurry (several fast attacks over a 5s period)

 

Good comparison.  I think some of the claims about massive casting times for high level spells are grossly overstated, but that's just my opinion.  High level attack abilities / sequences can be every bit as time consuming as spell casting.

 

Two videos:

 

First, a prolonged attack ability for a fighter - a whirlwind attack (try to imagine the longer sequence required for improved whirlwind attack):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PKgJs5e9u0

 

and next a high level spell cast by a mage

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqEC0m-EAn0

 

seems like the whirlwind attack actually might take a bit longer to fully implement .... 

[jamoecw]

 

to make an example.

imediate magic (up to 1s casting time) is magic missile, mirror image, shield etc. short (3s casting time) is vitriolic sphere, acid/flame arrow. long (5s casting time) is firestorm, summon elemental etc

in fighter/paladin terms, imediate is stance change, aura change etc. short is power attack. long is flurry (several fast attacks over a 5s period)

 

Good comparison.  I think some of the claims about massive casting times for high level spells are grossly overstated, but that's just my opinion.  High level attack abilities / sequences can be every bit as time consuming as spell casting.

 

Two videos:

 

First, a prolonged attack ability for a fighter - a whirlwind attack (try to imagine the longer sequence required for improved whirlwind attack):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PKgJs5e9u0

 

and next a high level spell cast by a mage

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqEC0m-EAn0

 

seems like the whirlwind attack actually might take a bit longer to fully implement .... 

 

2secs for whirlwind attack, about 5 for the full animation of the hellball spell.  the hellball spell is by far the better move (quite a bit more damage output than 2.5* the whirlwind), but then again mages were a bit OP in NWN, and in DnD at the epic level, so mages at epic level in NWN even more OP.  according to lore between levels 5-10 is the retirement level for most adventurers, which makes level 20 (max normal level) legendary, and beyond (epic level) is venturing into demigod hood (the weakest examples of gods made flesh can be taken on at around levels 30-40, depending on class and equipment).  as a result epic level abilities for fighters make little sense lore wise (they should be using some type of magic, after all they are in the process of becoming a god at that point), probably something like monk magic (inner magic that lets them do fantastic things, gaining extraordinary and supernatural abilities).

[kgambit]

 

2secs for whirlwind attack, about 5 for the full animation of the hellball spell.  the hellball spell is by far the better move (quite a bit more damage output than 2.5* the whirlwind), but then again mages were a bit OP in NWN, and in DnD at the epic level, so mages at epic level in NWN even more OP.  according to lore between levels 5-10 is the retirement level for most adventurers, which makes level 20 (max normal level) legendary, and beyond (epic level) is venturing into demigod hood (the weakest examples of gods made flesh can be taken on at around levels 30-40, depending on class and equipment).  as a result epic level abilities for fighters make little sense lore wise (they should be using some type of magic, after all they are in the process of becoming a god at that point), probably something like monk magic (inner magic that lets them do fantastic things, gaining extraordinary and supernatural abilities).

 

 

That was supposed to be a video of the improved whirlwind attack, my bad.  Yes an epic level spell is a much better move than a 6th level attack.  That wasn't the point.

 

The point was that the comparison showed a fairly low level fighter ability versus a very high level casting ability with a relatively small casting differential.  If the attack sequence had involved the improved whirlwind attack the duration difference would have been significantly less.  The whole purpose was to dispel the misconception that fighter attack sequences should be significantly shorter and could not scale appropriately to magic casting times.  That was all.    So 2 seconds for a level 6 Whirlwind attack versus 5 seconds for an epic level spell cast by a level 21+ mage demonstrates that point nicely I think.  It's not a perfect comparison, but close enough to suit me since I can extrapolate an improved whirlwind attack into the 4 or 5 second range easily.  .

 

 

I'll concede all the points about DnD lore because they are immaterial to the issue of casting times.  Interesting though. 

[jamoecw]

same animation, the improved one has some wind effects, but that's about it, whirlwind (and improved whirlwind) are supposed to take twice as long to perform as hellball (full round action vs. standard action), you notice this in game with the pause for whirlwind before and after that isn't shown in the video (and it cuts out some of the animation too, taking from about 4 secs to 2.5), and you can move and such with hellball before it has finished its animation.  a standard action is what it to swing your sword (3 secs somehow, while 5+ only takes 6, go figure), so pretty much most combat magic in DnD operates off of the principal of equal time for fighters and mages, more so than video games let on with the animations.  lore wise there is supposed to be a lot of preparation before hand, for such feats, but it really doesn't scale (making something glow takes just as much preparation as leveling all enemies).

[Lephys]

Isnt that what I said? Since when did I say ALL mage spells have to have a long casting time?

You'd have instant one (kinda like DA2 auto-attack), but the more powerfull the spell, the longer it takes to prep.

I guess technically you did touch on that, now that I look back at it. You seemed to only be emphasizing the "more prep time = takes longer" idea, so I didn't realize you were trying to also point out the less = shorter aspect as well. My mistake.

 

Digressing..anyway, I'm saying that at no point can I see even the mightiest of fighters moves requireing nearly as much time as the wizzards.

Isn't that what I said? Well, except that you seem to be ignoring what I said about soul power manipulation possibly justifying the longer prep times for Fighter-type abilities. I don't think readying to use an attack takes 5-7 seconds, so I'm not disagreeing with you there.

 

Then, that being said, maybe the Fighter has 5 total abilities that have long cast times, and the Wizard has 37. Does that make sense? I dunno... just seems like you looked at the fact that a given ability used by a Fighter COULD take the same amount of time as a given ability used by the Wizard, and decided "Great, everything the Fighter does is going to take an unnatural amount of time, to make it all comparable to Wizards casting spells."

 

I think the point of the structured cast times is that, IF an ability is going to take a moderate amount of preparation, you automatically know how long it's going to take. You don't have to say "Okay, is that going to be a 3-second ability, or a 4-second ability, or a 5-second ability?" and learn them all individually. Simplifies the timing. I don't think the goal is in any way to mandate that all abilities, regardless of class, are all the same types by quantity. Again, the Fighter could have 80% instant abilities, and the Wizard could have 80% long-cast abilities. *shrug* That just doesn't seem to me like an "Oh no, both classes are going to take the same amount of time to do everything" situation. That's all. So, if that's what you're worried about, I'm just trying to encourage you to not be worried, and point you to some hope.

 

If that's not what you're worried about, then I honestly apologize for missing your point, and gladly welcome clarification.

[jamoecw]

Then, that being said, maybe the Fighter has 5 total abilities that have long cast times, and the Wizard has 37. Does that make sense?

depends, does the wizard kill everything in a targeted 30ft radius, while the fighter injures everyone in a set 15ft. radius?  if so then i'd say that the fighter is spending too much time, or the wizard not enough.  though that is more of a balance between classes and abilities and such.

[Lephys]

depends, does the wizard kill everything in a targeted 30ft radius, while the fighter injures everyone in a set 15ft. radius?  if so then i'd say that the fighter is spending too much time, or the wizard not enough.  though that is more of a balance between classes and abilities and such.

That's just as much of a factor for consideration as the number of abilities each class has and their casting duration.

 

Also, I was merely addressing the concern of uniform "casting" times somehow forcing two classes (such as Fighter and Wizard) to function the exact same way in terms of cast times. Technically, one class could hav e nothing but instant-cast abilities, while another had nothing but long-cast abilities, with the effects and other factors balanced accordingly. That's HORRIBLY unlikely, but just points out how far the spectrum can possibly go as far as differences between classes. Surely, all classes will have at least a handful of instant, short, AND long abilities, or there wouldn't be nearly as much benefit from establishing standard casting durations. But, the specific ratios can still vary drastically.