Update #74: Wizard & Druid Reflections

[J.E. Sawyer]

I wonder: can druids gain combat talents for fighting in demi-human form? I.e. can they specialize in shapeshifted combat rather than focusing on particular weapons and martial styles?

 

That is likely.  Talents are still somewhat nebulous now, though they will be getting less nebulous in the very near future!

[Lephys]

Also, scaling spells produce a double-scaling effect (spells scale and you get better spells) that is in part responsible for the typically exponential growth of spellcasters relative to non-spellcasters in most RPGs. The refusal to scale spells should help curb that tendency.

In a sense, it's kind of redundant.

 

Nothing dictates that either of two different spells are "better" than one another.

 

If you have a Firebolt that just launches a fire-based projectile at one target and deals damage, then for a different spell you have Fireball, which launches a fire-based projectile that explodes, deals damage to an area (and maybe knocks people down from the explosive force?), then one is not inherently "better" than the other without specific values coming into play. If the Firebolt does 700 damage to one target, and the Fireball does 15 damage to a 20-foot radius and knocks people down, which one is better?

 

So, it's rather arbitrary to say "The specific function of magic that throws a single fire projectile at a single target is inherently lower-level/weaker/worse than all other fire spells," because it's just an effect you can produce with fire magic.

 

If, every so many levels, you gain "Firebolt II" and "Firebolt III," then that's serving the same function as scaling would. If you don't gain those upgrades, then it's a bit silly to become some legendary Wizard who's lived for 50 years now, and still have a Firebolt spell that you can only do 5 damage with, just because you now have Greater Firestorm that's a "better" fire spell.

 

Why does the world assume that, if you're a powerful/accomplished Wizard, you NEVER ever again wish to just launch a single fire projectile at a single target?

 

"Look, a lone bandit in the woods! GREATER FIRESTORM!

 

Well... the forest is gone now, BUT, at least I got that bandit! Firebolt only would've done like 10% of his health, but luckily I had learned this other, completely differently functioning spell!"

 

A child with a hammer is going to strike more weakly with it. But, after 5 years of growth and training and strength-building, he doesn't need a whole new hammer to hit harder with.

[Jarrakul]

Understand, I'm not saying that there's no reason at all to scale spells. I am saying that combining spell scaling with spell levels tends to produce quadratic results. Note that many systems (from Diablo 3 to pen-and-paper Shadowrun) have no concept of spell level or anything like it, and instead only focus on spell scaling. This is cool because it allows a given spell to become more powerful (eliminating exactly the situation you describe) without inherently leading to exponential growth. Which is neat. But it also means that you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level. Any spell that you can cast, you could cast (if you chose to learn it) at first level. Not as well, but you could. Now, there are ways around that. Certain spells could have certain minimum requirements but, once you meet those requirements, they might be no better than your old spells. This is slightly boring, but it generally works. Similarly, a non-scaling system with things like Fireball I, Fireball II, Fireball III, etc. works but is also slightly boring. As usual, I'm left concluding that there is no perfect solution, and that the ones the devs chose is at least as good as any.

 

Now, I do want to point out that all of this only matters if you need to avoid quadratic power growth. If you just design all classes such that they grow quadratically in the same way as spellcasters do (which is hard to do without just turning everyone into casters-in-all-but-name), you can avoid the problem at its root.

[PrimeJunta]

D&D had spell variants too. They even had an entire mechanic for it, namely metamagic feats. And then there were straight-out variants like magic missile -> minor missile storm -> major missile storm, lesser dispel magic -> dispel magic -> greater dispel magic, and so on. I quite like metamagic actually; the thing I don't like about Vancian magic is that it's extremely rigid, and metamagic introduces some flexibility to shaping it. A metamagic-focused sorcerer is my favorite caster class in D&D. (Also ridiculously overpowered at higher levels, but hey.)

[Silent Winter]

 A metamagic-focused sorcerer is my favorite caster class in D&D. (Also ridiculously overpowered at higher levels, but hey.)

slightly off topic but: I've been playing a sorceror in NWN2 - it's kind of amusing to be silenced and then say 'Ok, I'll just kill you with slightly lower level silent-spells' at the click of a button (Wizards need to waste slots preparing them just in case - Sorcerors get the option as needed if they take the feat).

Or "I wish my x-spell were more powerful for this foe ... oh yeah, I took the 'empower spell' option ... click..click... lol

 

back on topic - I find 'fireball 1, fireball 2, fireball 3' etc boring - but a name change and a little tweaking go a long way to helping with that:

Stupid name example:

Fireball->Boom->Nuke (Boom adds concussive damage, Nuke adds EMP (Eye Melting Penalty))

I liked that Magic Missile increased in value in BG, not sure it's needed for all spells though.  There's only so invisible you can get - then again, if the duration was less OTT (24 hours?) it could scale with duration - so your invisible rogue could do longer scouting trips as you went on.

 

If there's to be no spell scaling at all, at least have equivalently useful spells at higher levels - as Lephys says, a single-target fire spell is not the same as an AOE fire spell, especially if you have friendly fire on and your melee fighters are in the thick of it.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Right now I see no reason to use a wizard instead of a druid. Wizards are weak, unlike druids, and those druid spells covers almost every situation a wizard or priest can do,but being able to resist more and to use armors.

 

Mmm... nope. Both classes can use any armor, and wizards automatically get Arcane Veil and likely more defensive abilities down the line, so I wouldn't exactly call them weak (as in 'defenseless'). Furthermore, druids can't use equipment while spiritshifted, so that armor advantage you spoke of (which, I repeat, was nonexistent to begin with) presumably disappears, too. You also have to consider the broader repertoire of spells a wizard has access to, and the fact that their preferred skills are (well, seem to me) more useful.

All in all, I'm fairly sure my first character will be a wizard.

[LankeyGit]

 

I wonder: can druids gain combat talents for fighting in demi-human form? I.e. can they specialize in shapeshifted combat rather than focusing on particular weapons and martial styles?

 

That is likely.  Talents are still somewhat nebulous now, though they will be getting less nebulous in the very near future!

 

 

 

Furthering the question, are Druids limited to melee while shifted or are spells still available?

 

 While I'm all for a bit of intelligent decision making on when to shift, I'd love to know I can use a major class abilities without locking myself out of the other half of them. And then you run into problems with builds, you create a heavily caster focused character that then turns into a half-arsed melee that doesn't get enough benefits to keep it on the front line.

[Tamerlane]

They've confirmed that druids can cast while shifted.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I see Mr. Sawyer has been on a posting rampage of sorts. Thank you for the information both in this thread and others.

 

 

 

EDIT: Im also slightly concerned that since spells don't scale with level that if you miss finding whatever the next spell upgrade is that the mage will fall behind but hopefully the new spells aren't too hidden.

 

Our current design for wizards allows them to learn a new spell every time they gain a level, so if there's one that you REALLY want, the system allows you to take it when you advance.

 

E: This doesn't apply to unique spells, but there will probably be very few of them.

 

 

How are you handled "Difficulty Class" of spells in PoE? With not having spell scale, I'm hopeful that you're planning to have a universal spell DC for each caster based on abilities/feats, while having spell levels differentiated by what effects they can produce. That's the kind of information I was looking forward to seeing in this most recent update. Is it still to "risky" to share any of those details?

[LankeyGit]

They've confirmed that druids can cast while shifted.

Can you remember when/where that was said? Trying to dig up as much Druid info as I can.... you may be able to tell which class I'm most fond of.

[Lephys]

Understand, I'm not saying that there's no reason at all to scale spells. I am saying that combining spell scaling with spell levels tends to produce quadratic results. Note that many systems (from Diablo 3 to pen-and-paper Shadowrun) have no concept of spell level or anything like it, and instead only focus on spell scaling.

Firstly, I wasn't trying to imply that you were suggesting spell scaling, in general just-plain causes issues. I realized you didn't mean that, so I was just sort of emphasizing the clarification is all -- that it's the combination of scaling + another aspect of spell improvement that causes the usual issue. Yeah, if Fireball 1 is better 'cause you've gained three levels, and you get Fireball 2 (or any other boost to Fireball), then you're literally just getting redundant boosts to Fireball.

 

This is cool because it allows a given spell to become more powerful (eliminating exactly the situation you describe) without inherently leading to exponential growth. Which is neat. But it also means that you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level. Any spell that you can cast, you could cast (if you chose to learn it) at first level.

Secondly, I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level." Sure you can, right? The sheer fact that spells scale as you become more powerful has nothing to do with how and when you gain spells, and in no way prevents you from introducing beginning or additional/new spells in any fashion you please.

 

Are you meaning that, since you can choose whatever spell you want (in PoE) at each level (and possibly learn them in various orders, depending on what grimoires you manage to find after battles), that you might learn "Holy Hand Grenade" before you learn "PewPewbolt"? Because, while true, it doesn't change the fact that, if you don't learn PewPewbolt until level 7, then it's still a "new" spell to you when you learn it. Whether or not it's affiliated with a level or potency is a completely different matter. *shrug*

 

Honestly, the way I've always hoped to one day see a magic system work is to have the whole "you gain 'better' stuff as you go" aspect deal specifically with the complexity of spells, rather than the damage of them. Instead of "Okay, you're level 4 now? Time to give you a 50-damage spell instead of a 20-damage one," you could gain a more complex spell (one that boosts your tactical "seeds" from which to develop specific combat tactics."

 

For an extraordinarily simple example, we'll go back to my favorite buddies, Firebolt and Fireball. Maybe when you hit level 2, you learn Fireball. Well, now, you can do more than just hit one target with fire damage (Firebolt). But, that doesn't mean FireBALL has to do 3 times the damage of FireBOLT. It CAN, in total numbers, if you hit 6 enemies for 10 damage instead of 1 enemy for 10 damage. But, if you ask me, a single-target fire projectile spell should be just another tool in your magic belt, so to speak. What if there's ONE guy on the battlefield, and I just want to hit him with fire? Why would I use Fireball, or Magma Storm, or SUPER IFRIT WORLD-MELTING ASSAULT CELESTIAL 1,000 LOTUS BLOSSUM DRAGON STRIKE!? I probably wouldn't. So, even though those spells are cool, if I have the magical power capability to summon THAT much fire damage that behaves in a certain manner, you'd think I could just form ONE really, really potent Firebolt and be done with it.

 

Now, that's not to say I think it's just plain bad to have any kind of power difference between spells. Namely, when you use something like the spell level system (a la D&D -- the system that PoE's pretty much using), you have tiers of spells. And this works. Why? Because when you're level 7 and have 4th-level spells, you maybe can only cast two 4th-level spells, but you can now probably cast 8-or-so 1st-level spells per encounter. (Just an example... I dunno when you can cast exactly how many of whichever level spells, in the actual design, or when something shifts to per-encounter, or at-will). But, yeah, it's balanced by the limitation. However, as I mentioned before, if Firebolt does 7 fire damage, and you reach 4th-level magic, and there's some 4th-level spell that does 100 fire damage to a single target, and most things have like 3 or 4 armor now, then what's better? Using the 4th-level spell, or casting ALL 8 of my Firebolts and doing 24 total fire damage to the thing over a lot longer period of time?

 

So, yeah. Even in that system, there's definitely room for SOME scaling. Maybe Firebolt gets like +1 damage per level (just for example). And then, maybe Fireblast (a made-up "upgraded" Firebolt spell of 3rd-level) gets +2 damage per level. etc.

 

*shrug*. This is all just to point out how things could function, and not specifically what values should be used or exactly how it should be set up, etc..

 

Another thing I'm fond of (but don't think would necessarily fit into PoE's current design) is the improvement of spells as you level via the addition of effects. In other words, you level up, and instead of "Yay, Firebolt now does more damage, according to your level," you'd get something like "Firebolt now has a chance to knock the opponent down." Or, even better (in isolation, admittedly), the Mass Effect ability-improvement tree approach in which you get to choose from a few different options. In ME's case, it was just a pair of options each time. It was pretty basic... I could see more than two, though. Maybe you can add armor penetration, or DOT burn damage, or increase the number of targets the spell can strike (half damage to each, but it's something you couldn't do with the spell before as it was only single-target, even if there were two very-low-health enemies standing around.)

 

Anywho...

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Another thing I'm fond of (but don't think would necessarily fit into PoE's current design) is the improvement of spells as you level via the addition of effects. Anywho...

 

This is what is going to matter for PoE, I believe. If spell do not scale with caster class level, then spells must be differentiated by what effects they can produce. For example, areas of effect. A first level spell would only be able to target a single foe, while a second level spell could use the "line" or "single target" area of effect. The same would be applicable to other effects, like Paralysis, Concealment, Poison, Absorption, Reflection, Damage over Time, etc.

 

There are two issues for a system that would work in this way though. DCs and damage would both have to be calculated independently of the spell level they belonged to. If not, lower level spells would become completely, or at least effectively useless. Only by computing these things through class level + abilities + feats/traits (etc) without respect to the level of the spell being cast would they be able to translate to higher level engagements. This is a form of scaling though, so I doubt that we will see this.

[Lephys]

^ I was talking about the improvement of a given spell. But, yeah, it serves as a nice differentiator between spells of different levels/tiers, as well.

 

But, yeah, my main concern (not so much "Oh no, this is gonna happen!", but just "this is a concern that should be, and hopefully is being, considered) is just the fading of lower-level spells into uselessness, purely because they didn't scale or improve in any way at all (in terms of effectiveness -- I get that we get to cast more and more of them as we go). Again, if you have a spell that, for example, does 1 damage at the end of the game, it doesn't really matter if you can cast it infinite times.

 

It's like LvL-0 spells in Pathfinder. Sure, you can cast Ray of Frost infinite times, but it does three damage, and everything pretty much resists a LvL-0 spell later on. There are still useful LvL-0 spells for non-combat stuff, but, in terms of combat, that level of spells just becomes useless later on. Which, it's fine, 'cause you get much better spells. It's not like Ray of Frost is your only ice spell or something.

 

*shrug*... It's more the principle of the thing, to me. Even with Wizard magic being largely external (they don't actually channel magic through themselves, or use a font of mana or something, or their own willpower, etc.) in PoE, it's still like science. It's formulas and such, and getting ambient soul essence to catalyze like you want it to. No different from chemistry or something, really. If you can make an ounce of acid with chemicals, then, with different amounts of those same ingredients, you can make a gallon.

 

If you can make a certain "amount" of fire projectile, then you should be able to make a different amount of fire projectile. That's just always bugged me about any system in which this one spell does this one, specific thing, this exact amount of damage, and has this exact size and speed and range, for eternity. "Oh, you've literally become god and created your own planet? Still, when you cast 'Firebolt,' it's going to do 6 damage and have a range of 30 feet, and travel the speed of an arrow."

[rjshae]

 

They've confirmed that druids can cast while shifted.

Can you remember when/where that was said? Trying to dig up as much Druid info as I can.... you may be able to tell which class I'm most fond of.

 

See here.

[Jarrakul]

 

This is cool because it allows a given spell to become more powerful (eliminating exactly the situation you describe) without inherently leading to exponential growth. Which is neat. But it also means that you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level. Any spell that you can cast, you could cast (if you chose to learn it) at first level.

Secondly, I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level." Sure you can, right? The sheer fact that spells scale as you become more powerful has nothing to do with how and when you gain spells, and in no way prevents you from introducing beginning or additional/new spells in any fashion you please.

 

Are you meaning that, since you can choose whatever spell you want (in PoE) at each level (and possibly learn them in various orders, depending on what grimoires you manage to find after battles), that you might learn "Holy Hand Grenade" before you learn "PewPewbolt"? Because, while true, it doesn't change the fact that, if you don't learn PewPewbolt until level 7, then it's still a "new" spell to you when you learn it. Whether or not it's affiliated with a level or potency is a completely different matter. *shrug*

 

Honestly, the way I've always hoped to one day see a magic system work is to have the whole "you gain 'better' stuff as you go" aspect deal specifically with the complexity of spells, rather than the damage of them. Instead of "Okay, you're level 4 now? Time to give you a 50-damage spell instead of a 20-damage one," you could gain a more complex spell (one that boosts your tactical "seeds" from which to develop specific combat tactics."

 

For an extraordinarily simple example, we'll go back to my favorite buddies, Firebolt and Fireball. Maybe when you hit level 2, you learn Fireball. Well, now, you can do more than just hit one target with fire damage (Firebolt). But, that doesn't mean FireBALL has to do 3 times the damage of FireBOLT. It CAN, in total numbers, if you hit 6 enemies for 10 damage instead of 1 enemy for 10 damage. But, if you ask me, a single-target fire projectile spell should be just another tool in your magic belt, so to speak. What if there's ONE guy on the battlefield, and I just want to hit him with fire? Why would I use Fireball, or Magma Storm, or SUPER IFRIT WORLD-MELTING ASSAULT CELESTIAL 1,000 LOTUS BLOSSUM DRAGON STRIKE!? I probably wouldn't. So, even though those spells are cool, if I have the magical power capability to summon THAT much fire damage that behaves in a certain manner, you'd think I could just form ONE really, really potent Firebolt and be done with it.

 

Now, that's not to say I think it's just plain bad to have any kind of power difference between spells. Namely, when you use something like the spell level system (a la D&D -- the system that PoE's pretty much using), you have tiers of spells. And this works. Why? Because when you're level 7 and have 4th-level spells, you maybe can only cast two 4th-level spells, but you can now probably cast 8-or-so 1st-level spells per encounter. (Just an example... I dunno when you can cast exactly how many of whichever level spells, in the actual design, or when something shifts to per-encounter, or at-will). But, yeah, it's balanced by the limitation. However, as I mentioned before, if Firebolt does 7 fire damage, and you reach 4th-level magic, and there's some 4th-level spell that does 100 fire damage to a single target, and most things have like 3 or 4 armor now, then what's better? Using the 4th-level spell, or casting ALL 8 of my Firebolts and doing 24 total fire damage to the thing over a lot longer period of time?

 

So, yeah. Even in that system, there's definitely room for SOME scaling. Maybe Firebolt gets like +1 damage per level (just for example). And then, maybe Fireblast (a made-up "upgraded" Firebolt spell of 3rd-level) gets +2 damage per level. etc.

 

*shrug*. This is all just to point out how things could function, and not specifically what values should be used or exactly how it should be set up, etc..

 

Another thing I'm fond of (but don't think would necessarily fit into PoE's current design) is the improvement of spells as you level via the addition of effects. In other words, you level up, and instead of "Yay, Firebolt now does more damage, according to your level," you'd get something like "Firebolt now has a chance to knock the opponent down." Or, even better (in isolation, admittedly), the Mass Effect ability-improvement tree approach in which you get to choose from a few different options. In ME's case, it was just a pair of options each time. It was pretty basic... I could see more than two, though. Maybe you can add armor penetration, or DOT burn damage, or increase the number of targets the spell can strike (half damage to each, but it's something you couldn't do with the spell before as it was only single-target, even if there were two very-low-health enemies standing around.)

 

Anywho...

 

 

I seem to have jumped from one idea to another without connecting them with a sentence. I meant to say that in systems that rely totally on spell scaling, and not also spell levels it's difficult to add new, cooler spells. Because probably the mage has already taken the coolest spells early on, because they were all available from the beginning. I did note one way in which this might be overcome, but of course it can also be overcome by adding both spell scaling and spell levels. But this tends to produce the aforementioned quadratic power growth, which for the purposes of this discussion I am calling a bad thing (it usually is when it's tied specifically to spellcasting).

 

That said, I don't really disagree with anything you've said here. Increasing complexity, rather than strictly power, would be an interesting way to have a spell level system and spell scaling without necessarily producing quadratic growth (except in available options, which admittedly can be problematic but is easier to balance for on its own). It'd be interesting to figure out what the spell level limitations should be in such a system, but it's definitely a cool concept.

[rjshae]

It would be nice--if not preferable--to be able to apply metamagical properties to a spell by expending extra stamina and/or increasing the casting time, rather than requiring a higher spell level. In fact, all three options seem viable: say, doubling the stamina cost/bumping the casting time/increasing spell by a level, could all provide a level's worth of metamagic bump.

Edited March 25, 2014 by rjshae

[WotanAnubis]

When it comes to Druids and pretty much every other class as well I'm much less interested in the pure mechanical functions and more into the lore stuff surrounding them.

 

And in my experience, Druids so rarely get lore stuff - at least when compared to nearly everybody else. I guess I can understand why - Druids (and Rangers I suppose) tend to stand outside the society the whole narrative is usually about so they stand outside the narrative as well.

 

So while I'm OK with the idea that Druids unlock a second spriritshift form when they reach Level 5 or whatever, what I hope for is that they unlock additional spiritshift forms by performing some kind of special Druid quests for Druids that go into what Druids are and what they do and what they believe and their role in society and place in the world and all that jazz.

[Endrosz]

It would be nice--if not preferable--to be able to apply metamagical properties to a spell by expending extra stamina and/or increasing the casting time, rather than requiring a higher spell level. In fact, all three options seem viable: say, doubling the stamina cost/bumping the casting time/increasing spell by a level, could all provide a level's worth of metamagic bump.

 

IMO that's one of the best player-supplied ideas I read on these forums. I always felt that with DnD3 metamagic, the 'true' cost is the extra spell slot levels, and requiring a feat is just diminishing the available fun options. If I were to GM a PnP campaign starting now, I'd be willing to give my caster players all of the metamagic feats for free. Both of the resources (stamina, casting time) you mention are in short supply, since healing is rather limited and interruption is a standard mechanic calculated with every attack that hits. I reckon it would be possible to balance metamagic with those costs.

 

In the '90s I stopped playing DnD altogether (got fed up with endless Complete Handbook cheese), and switched to Earthdawn instead. In ED, spellcasting is a more complex affair where you need to weave threads before making the final spellcasting check, each thread costing an action. In the Magic sourcebook, they added the option to "compress" threadweaving at the cost of 3 hit points per thread (HP values are comparable with DnD characters), reducing the number of actions necessary to cast the spell. This sounds like a low cost, but a spell might require multiple threads, and it's just for one spell. Those 3 HPs add up actually pretty fast for those low-HP casters, so it was an option best used sparingly. But the option was there, which made spellcasting more interesting.

 

Having said all that, the "caster" classes already eat up more design and production man-hours than the others. I doubt that any sort of metamagic will make it into this first iteration of the Eternity engine -- but I do hope that something like this is on 'the list' for the expansion.

[rjshae]

There's more you can do with metamagic than what was implemented in D&D v3. You can modify an area effect spell to shield allies from its effects; make a touch-attack spell ranged instead; apply a contact trigger or a delay timer; turn an instantaneous offensive spell into a shield spell; allow a ranged spell to target concealed enemies; provide the spell instance to an ally for them to activate, &c.

[No idea]

I hope druids dont suck, like it happens in most crpgs. Anyway, hello everybody¡

[Silent Winter]

Druids shall not suck, they shall blow (*casts Winter Wind*)

[PrimeJunta]

Druids what, in which cRPG's?

 

At least in all D&D3 based ones, druids do the opposite of suck. They rule. Stomp. Win. They're the best all-rounder class, hands down. They heal, self-buff both offense and defense, debuff, area-debuff, area-damage, are extremely durable especially with long-duration self-buffs, they're supplied with a big honking meat shield, and they have that spontaneous-conversion summoning that's so powerful it's almost not even funny. If you want to solo any DnD3 cRPG, druid is the way to go.

 

A while back I made an all-druid party in SoZ and it made the game a freakin' cakewalk. Battle consisted of (1) start, (2) everyone summon suitable minion, (3) watch them obliterate the opposition. Okay, for the tougher ones, (4) watch minions become killed so (5) summon another one. The only challenge was keeping track of which druid summoned which minion so I could have the right ones re-summon them. 

 

(Okay, I gave one of the druids high INT, Able Learner, and one level of rogue so I got those skills covered, but still.)

[Shadenuat]

I'm surprised I actually would get to throw dead people's heads at enemies as a druid. Now how about burning elves inside wooden statues?

 

For the spells, list feels satisfying to me. Nice to see all the "moon" spells and such.

[magicwallis]

I want a wizard reflection. That would be awesome!

[Gfted1]

So has anyone seen any more details on Wizard spells on any of the other places Sawyer posts? I cant quite wrap my head around spell power progression without spell scaling. For example we know Fireball is in the game, and typical D&D version start the spell damage at 1d6 and add 1d6 every level up to 10d6. This mechanic doesn't exist in PE so then the only other way I can think of is that PE must just give you a new, renamed, more powerful Fireball spell?