Saving the Wizard Class

[ctn2003]

shaving the wizerd? um no

[Stun]

Yeah, I would also enjoy to go to a forum where I'm constantly blamed for everything I do in order to justify my everyday work, especially if I'm supposed to be busy working on my job during chrunch time.

Oh Boo-Hoo.

 

This double edged sword is... double edged. If by some miracle PoE turns out to be an all time classic, who do you think will receive the lion's share of the credit? That's right. Josh Sawyer. And it will be fully deserved.

[Lephys]

It's funny that people act like the whole design is only because of joshs preference. Like everyone at obsidian is like 'No josh, you can't do that, it goes against all our principles' and then josh is all like 'I don't care, I use my supreme decision power of being lead designer, MUAHAHAH' and then everyone has to accept fate.

Yeah, heh. That, and people act like he hasn't provided explanations for basically everything he's done, and/or tested things he's liked, found them to be less than satisfactory, and switched back to designs he didn't like.

 

It's a design process, and he's not perfect, but man does he take a lot of uncalled for, hyperbolic flak.

 

Not only that, but you even begin to suggest such a thing, and immediately you obviously think he's a deity who can do no wrong. There's a difference between thinking someone isn't perfect and that their designs have room for improvement, and thinking "OMG, this guy hates us and all his designs are shyte and he doesn't even consider anything or employ the process of thought!"

[Zeckul]

The reason we regard Obsidian (Mr. Sawyer) as hostile towards spell casting, is because he is. It's that simple. It starts with the fear of the "omni-class", so magic with any sort of utility is removed--including those with flexible uses like Scrying and Invisibility spells. It worsened with the fear of out-moding party members, so summons were removed. Then came the terror of damage potential, which made spell damage mediocre at best. Closely followed was the horror of "hard-counters", which eliminated effects like petrification, death, and disintegration. Likewise there was the scourge of the meaningful protections which granted immunities of any form or duration, so they too were laid low. Finally, the most unique and intriguing of spells--of which have never been reproduced in an video game for 15 years....Contingencies, Simulacrums, Project Image, Time Stop, (Limited) Wish, etc. etc.....all purged so that this game might not be tainted by what created an unrivaled classic.

 

That's why were are skeptical. Everything good, intriguing, and superior about spell casting in Baldur's Gate has been eviscerated by design.

That's a well thought-out explanation but I'm not entirely convinced.

 

Concerning summoning, wizards were the worst summoners in BG. Their first summoning spell was the 3rd level Monster Summoning 1 which spawns such weak creatures that they can only serve as a brief diversion. The entire Monster Summoning line was basically this weak. Mages could summon elementals in BG2 but they were relatively weak (compared to priest summons), had a very long casting delay and a chance of the elemental turning against the wizard so this could only be used pre-battle. So I'm not terribly concerned that wizards are not summoners in PoE as they never were good summoners anyway and PoE tries to do away with pre-battle metagaming mechanics.

 

Absence of utility magic - Fleet Feet, Arcane Dampener, Minor Grimoire Imprint look like valid counterexamples to me.

 

Spell damage - I haven't played the beta much, but based on its description Minoletta's Missiles look more powerful than Magic Missile until character level 5, with a fixed 3 missiles. Jolting touch is basically chain lightning at level 1 - probably not doing a ton of damage but better than anything a level 1 mage could cast in BG. There are lots of AoE spells with damage over time, much more than in BG it seems.

 

Effects like death, petrification; the 6th level Gaze of the Adragan petrifies enemies within the area of effect so it's like a much more powerful version of the 6th level BG petrification. Also "The 6th level Death Ring "potentially destroys those with low stamina" so similar to death spell, more situational but potentially more powerful - could conceivably kill higher level targets. Seems more interesting to me than the all-or-nothing Death Spell. BG had no spells of lower level with such devastating effects.

 

Immunities - high-level immunities led to problematic gameplay in BG2 - basically an obscure rock-paper-scissors dispelling game, I despised it so I welcome less focus on immunities this time around. That said, Arcane Reflection and Minor Arcane Reflection are spell immunity spells and there are several spells that grant effects similar to mirror image or increase defense in some way.

 

All the very interesting spells you mention - Simulacrum, Project Image, Time Stop, Limited Wish, were very high-level spells in BG2 and BG2 was a high-level campaign. PoE is not a high-level campaign, it's more akin to IWD in its reach. There's no reason to expect very high-level spells in PoE.

 

Mages were never that powerful or interesting in low-level D&D, they got ridiculous in high-level D&D and BG2 illustrated that but there's no reason to expect PoE should be anything like BG2 or high-level D&D in regard to its mages.

Edited November 18, 2014 by Zeckul

[Yonjuro]

 

It's a design process, and he's not perfect, but man does he take a lot of uncalled for, hyperbolic flak.

...

 

  Yes. Useful feedback is more like "here is a specific thing that the IE games did well but is missing in PoE." I gave some examples earlier in the thread of what I thought was missing, essentially: Wizards are too much of a ranged damage class and their spells don't seem to have synergy with each other or with the spells of the other casters. I think the reason for the current situation is that one way to balance the combat system is to remove some of the more powerful elements. My preference would be to achieve however much balance is desired by adding abilities (e.g. spell X is too powerful - well, class Y is immune, class Z has an ability that mitigates spell X etc.)

 

 If I had added this statement to the preceding: "Josh Sawyer is on a crusade to end fun in cRPGs," that wouldn't have added anything to my point. It also isn't true. If everyone will start with the assumption that Josh Sawyer is trying to make a game that will be fun for people who liked the IE games (and also for new people who haven't played them) we would get more useful feedback and less noise.

[Yonjuro]

 

...

That's a well thought-out explanation but I'm not entirely convinced.....

 

 I agree with your main point: PoE is a low level campaign - IWD and BG1 didn't have Timestop etc. and PoE doesn't need to either.

 

 However:

 

Concerning summoning, wizards were the worst summoners in BG. Their first summoning spell was the 3rd level Monster Summoning 1 which spawns such weak creatures that they can only serve as a brief diversion. The entire Monster Summoning line was basically this weak. Mages could summon elementals in BG2 but they were relatively weak (compared to priest summons), had a very long casting delay and a chance of the elemental turning against the wizard so this could only be used pre-battle. So I'm not terribly concerned that wizards are not summoners in PoE as they never were good summoners anyway and PoE tries to do away with pre-battle metagaming mechanics.

 

 I disagree on two points here. In BG1, a mage could summon skeletons and spiders. Skeletons are immune to stinking cloud, spiders are immune to web. Monster summoning I sometimes summoned kobold commandos and Monster summoning 2 (or the Wand of monster summoning) sometimes gave you hobgoblins. What they have is common is bows and bows were very powerful in BG1. The hobgoblins shot poison arrows. Combine ranged summons with web, stinking cloud, sleep etc. and hilarity ensues. If anything, the argument should be that mage summoning was overpowered at low levels especially considering the synergies with other spells. 

 

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

 

 

Spell damage - I haven't played the beta much, but based on its description Minoletta's Missiles look more powerful than Magic Missile until character level 5, with a fixed 3 missiles. Jolting touch is basically chain lightning at level 1 - probably not doing a ton of damage but better than anything a level 1 mage could cast in BG. There are lots of AoE spells with damage over time, much more than in BG it seems.

 

 I have played the beta a fair amount and I agree. I don't think spell damage is really that much of a problem in PoE. In one of my beta play throughs I made it a point to try to make the best use of BB Wizard and, by the end, he had done the most damage by far. For another play through, I rolled a wizard PC and hired a wizard adventurer. Three wizards can be very effective and they do a lot of damage.

 

 The only issue I have with the class is that it is too one dimensional (or maybe two dimensional if I want to be charitable). They are mainly a ranged damage class, though some of the CC spells can be useful too, especially with multiple wizards in the party to cast CC plus damage at the same time. If the CC and damage spells remained as they are and some new things were added (invisibility, pre combat summons, teleport and maybe a few other things) I think we would have an interesting low level class. (For PoE 2, I will have a much longer list.)

Edited November 19, 2014 by Yonjuro

[Zeckul]

I disagree on two points here. In BG1, a mage could summon skeletons and spiders. Skeletons are immune to stinking cloud, spiders are immune to web. Monster summoning I sometimes summoned kobold commandos and Monster summoning 2 (or the Wand of monster summoning) sometimes gave you hobgoblins. What they have is common is bows and bows were very powerful in BG1. The hobgoblins shot poison arrows. Combine ranged summons with web, stinking cloud, sleep etc. and hilarity ensues. If anything, the argument should be that mage summoning was overpowered at low levels especially considering the synergies with other spells.

I'm not sure you are correct on skeletons and spiders in BG1. The 4th level Spider Spawn was a new spell in BG2 and for the 5th level Animate Dead I'm not sure there's any scroll for it in BG1. It's true though that there was no limit on the number of summons which allowed for completely broken summon spam tactics. I probably wouldn't have beaten Sarevok without my trusty wand of summoning You're probably right that I underestimate Monster Summoning, but with Priests getting Animate Dead at level 3 I never found a need to summon anything with my mages.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Zeckul

[Shevek]

 

 

The reason we regard Obsidian (Mr. Sawyer) as hostile towards spell casting, is because he is. It's that simple. It starts with the fear of the "omni-class", so magic with any sort of utility is removed--including those with flexible uses like Scrying and Invisibility spells. It worsened with the fear of out-moding party members, so summons were removed. Then came the terror of damage potential, which made spell damage mediocre at best. Closely followed was the horror of "hard-counters", which eliminated effects like petrification, death, and disintegration. Likewise there was the scourge of the meaningful protections which granted immunities of any form or duration, so they too were laid low. Finally, the most unique and intriguing of spells--of which have never been reproduced in an video game for 15 years....Contingencies, Simulacrums, Project Image, Time Stop, (Limited) Wish, etc. etc.....all purged so that this game might not be tainted by what created an unrivaled classic.

 

That's why were are skeptical. Everything good, intriguing, and superior about spell casting in Baldur's Gate has been eviscerated by design.

That's a well thought-out explanation but I'm not entirely convinced.

 

Concerning summoning, wizards were the worst summoners in BG. Their first summoning spell was the 3rd level Monster Summoning 1 which spawns such weak creatures that they can only serve as a brief diversion. The entire Monster Summoning line was basically this weak. Mages could summon elementals in BG2 but they were relatively weak (compared to priest summons), had a very long casting delay and a chance of the elemental turning against the wizard so this could only be used pre-battle. So I'm not terribly concerned that wizards are not summoners in PoE as they never were good summoners anyway and PoE tries to do away with pre-battle metagaming mechanics.

 

Absence of utility magic - Fleet Feet, Arcane Dampener, Minor Grimoire Imprint look like valid counterexamples to me.

 

Spell damage - I haven't played the beta much, but based on its description Minoletta's Missiles look more powerful than Magic Missile until character level 5, with a fixed 3 missiles. Jolting touch is basically chain lightning at level 1 - probably not doing a ton of damage but better than anything a level 1 mage could cast in BG. There are lots of AoE spells with damage over time, much more than in BG it seems.

 

Effects like death, petrification; the 6th level Gaze of the Adragan petrifies enemies within the area of effect so it's like a much more powerful version of the 6th level BG petrification. Also "The 6th level Death Ring "potentially destroys those with low stamina" so similar to death spell, more situational but potentially more powerful - could conceivably kill higher level targets. Seems more interesting to me than the all-or-nothing Death Spell. BG had no spells of lower level with such devastating effects.

 

Immunities - high-level immunities led to problematic gameplay in BG2 - basically an obscure rock-paper-scissors dispelling game, I despised it so I welcome less focus on immunities this time around. That said, Arcane Reflection and Minor Arcane Reflection are spell immunity spells and there are several spells that grant effects similar to mirror image or increase defense in some way.

 

All the very interesting spells you mention - Simulacrum, Project Image, Time Stop, Limited Wish, were very high-level spells in BG2 and BG2 was a high-level campaign. PoE is not a high-level campaign, it's more akin to IWD in its reach. There's no reason to expect very high-level spells in PoE.

 

Mages were never that powerful or interesting in low-level D&D, they got ridiculous in high-level D&D and BG2 illustrated that but there's no reason to expect PoE should be anything like BG2 or high-level D&D in regard to its mages.

Those are some decent points.

[Dark_Ansem]

Obsidian could always pull a HotU with Pillars, and allow us to go on the epic levels later on. and do not lock it for us, together with an extensible GUI and feat system.

 

about timestop: maybe not necessary, but I want it! LOL

[archangel979]

Mages were never that powerful or interesting in low-level D&D, they got ridiculous in high-level D&D and BG2 illustrated that but there's no reason to expect PoE should be anything like BG2 or high-level D&D in regard to its mages.

I am not sure. I am just doing an all mage run in BG1EE and the least spells I will be using are damage spells. Sleep, Charm Person, Color Spray, Horror, Web, Stinking Cloud and Invisibility to scout are bread and butter of low level mages. Then we get to Fireball that works well to soften or kill weaker enemies. Agranazar's Scorcher is a very interesting spell that promotes good positioning (which would be killed in PoE due to engagement). Invisibility 10" is a very nice support spell, Haste makes all your warriors 2x better. Weapon Enchant (lvl 4) is very useful buff spell and so is Improved Invisibility. Fire shield + Stoneskin is something that makes melee wizards interesting. And so on and on

[Yonjuro]

 

....

I'm not sure you are correct on skeletons and spiders in BG1. The 4th level Spider Spawn was a new spell in BG2 and for the 5th level Animate Dead I'm not sure there's any scroll for it in BG1....

 

 I'm sure that both are in the game that I have installed (BGTuTu with ToTSC), but they may have been added by mods.

 

 It's true though that there was no limit on the number of summons which allowed for completely broken summon spam tactics. I probably wouldn't have beaten Sarevok without my trusty wand of summoning You're probably right that I underestimate Monster Summoning, ...

 

 Yes, the wands were very powerful in BG1, especially the monster summoning wand that can literally summon an army.

 

...with Priests getting Animate Dead at level 3 I never found a need to summon anything with my mages.

 

 I agree that clerics were good for summons in the BG series and I would be ok with spells being divided up between the classes in PoE as long as there were interesting combinations of spells/abilities. E.g., the chanter casts a spell that interacts in an interesting way with a wizard's spell etc.

 

 (I would also prefer to see more interesting combinations in a single class, but one thing at a time.)

[Guest 4ward]

sorry if it's already been asked but i was wondering if there are any ranged weapons for casters like sling/bullets or darts as in BG1/2??

[Doppelschwert]

Every class can use any weapon in PoE, so yes, there are various ranged weapons for spellcasters:

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Weapon#Ranged_Weapons

 

The wizard also gets a small AoE bonus on using attacks with implements:

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Blast

[Guest 4ward]

thanks a lot Doppelschwert! That sounds very interesting and promising, looking forward to trying these out.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

[Dark_Ansem]

 

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

 

what? how?

[Seari]

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

Some posts crack me up.

[archangel979]

 

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

It is more realistic but I don't know if it is superior.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Casting times have been adjusted downward for all standard casts (from 3 seconds to 2 seconds).  You should see this in the next Backer Beta update (I don't think it's in the version you have).  I do think that the traditional caster classes (wizard, priest, druid) do need more casts per rest.  I also certainly agree that we need to find a better balance between the number of per rest uses and the power of individual spells.  Most spells take longer to cast and recover from than weapon-based attacks, and they're linked to a per rest resources, so they should have some kick to them.

 

A big issue we found in our play week is that wizards do not find enough grimoires with additional spells.  This is supposed to be a big part of playing a wizard, so we're trying to address it now.

 

I do not think we need to move to a point based system for wizards and I don't think that wizards need to be able to do everything.  What they do does need to be expansive IMO, with many potential good spells to choose from, and those spells should feel appropriately powerful for the limited per rest use the wizards get out of them (and the time they take to cast).

[Dark_Ansem]

Casting times have been adjusted downward for all standard casts (from 3 seconds to 2 seconds).  You should see this in the next Backer Beta update (I don't think it's in the version you have).  I do think that the traditional caster classes (wizard, priest, druid) do need more casts per rest.  I also certainly agree that we need to find a better balance between the number of per rest uses and the power of individual spells.  Most spells take longer to cast and recover from than weapon-based attacks, and they're linked to a per rest resources, so they should have some kick to them.

 

A big issue we found in our play week is that wizards do not find enough grimoires with additional spells.  This is supposed to be a big part of playing a wizard, so we're trying to address it now.

 

I do not think we need to move to a point based system for wizards and I don't think that wizards need to be able to do everything.  What they do does need to be expansive IMO, with many potential good spells to choose from, and those spells should feel appropriately powerful for the limited per rest use the wizards get out of them (and the time they take to cast).

 

but we can still, potentially, enhance them via mods? or, in any case, alter it if we want to make, say, a rebalance?

wizards feel very weak right now I fear.

 

May I ask the reason of so much hostility towards spellcasting?

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

 

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

 

what? how?

 

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post:

 

the stealth in this game functions as actual stealth, dependent on factors like enemy proximity and how long you're in the enemy's line of sight. It's not the 'turn invisible (even right in front of an enemy)' mode from the IE games which wasn't a good implementation of stealth at all.

 

There's also the fact that stealth in this game doubles as a trap detection mode. In the IE games I found stealth to be mostly useless because you couldn't detect traps while being stealthed and most dungeons were filled with traps. Thankfully, Pillars remedies that problem.

 

And there's also the fact that you can stealth through with an entire party, at added difficulty - naturally.

 

For a future PoE sequel, I'd like to see the stealth system take things like footstep noises for different surfaces and illumination/dynamic lighting into account. Those things are already in the game, they just don't affect the stealth at the moment.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Quetzalcoatl

[Sarex]

May I ask the reason of so much hostility towards spellcasting?

 

There is no hostility towards spellcasting, there is only balance. All classes being equal and all that jazz.

[Yonjuro]

 

Also, in doing away with pre-battle metagaming tactics, PoE also does away with many of the strategies that one could employ in the IE games using stealth to pre-scout an encounter. That isn't metagaming at all - it is making use of stealth to be better prepared. It made the IE games more interesting.

You realize this game has a stealth system as well, one that is far superior to that of the IE games?

 

 

 Yes,  I have been playing the beta and using the stealth system. (And, I agree that in some ways it's better but, if you recall, stealth and invisibility allowed you do  things in the IE games that the stealth system in PoE does not allow you do - so to say it's far superior is a a bit of stretch).

 

  In any case, I was responding to a post that said that preparing for a battle is the same as metagaming. My point was that if you have stealth (as you do in both the IE games and PoE) then you are not metagaming, you are using knowledge that you gained by scouting to get ready for the battle. 

 

 My point was that in the IE games, after you have pre-scouted an area you have a lot more options to get ready. In PoE you can position your party and do the first attack. That's about it. 

[J.E. Sawyer]

May I ask the reason of so much hostility towards spellcasting?

 

I don't have any hostility toward spellcasters/spellcasting.  In A/D&D, I usually play clerics.  For the past year and a half, I've been playing in one Ars Magica game and running another.  Magic is a big part of most FRPGs.  The difference between a game like Ars Magica, where magi are explicitly stated to be insanely powerful compared to mundanes, and a game like D&D or PoE, where wizards are ostensibly roughly on par with other classes, is the expectation of viability and relative difficulty.  You should have fun playing a wizard, I should have fun playing a priest, Gfted should have fun playing paladin, Volourn should have fun playing a dwarf, etc.  It's impossible to make everyone happy, but viability and relative balance are a big part of ensuring that the character you choose to play is going to feel good throughout the game, beginning to end.

 

I believe there is a healthy place between "balance is irrelevant" and "perfect balance is necessary".  I don't want wizards to receive the exact same number of powers as a fighter -- or even the same number of powers as a priest -- because having access to a boatload of spells is part of the fantasy of playing a wizard.  Obviously having a lot of options that feel weak is bad, so we need to find the right level of power per spell, speed of casting spells, number of spells available, casts available per rest/per encounter, etc.  But it's also important that when someone plays a rogue, a druid, a cipher, a fighter, etc., they shouldn't feel like they dead-end with the character or run out of steam while other classes easily sail by every challenge in the game.

 

We want people to have different experiences when they play different classes, but we want all of those experiences to feature the same relative level of challenge and power growth (which are strongly connected).  This is a difficult thing to do and it takes a lot of iteration, but that is the onoing goal.

 

On a related note, if you want to play Wizards Are Cool: The Game, I do recommend Ars Magica 5E.  It has a lot of cool things going for it, most obviously the magic system but also the general downtime system.  Also, Pendragon seems to be Knights Are Actually Cooler and Wizards are Terrible: The Game, so check that out if you want to be a glory hound, manage a manor, and brutally destroy Saxons from horseback.

[Yonjuro]

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post:

 

 

<incorrect description of stealth in ie games redacted to avoid spreading misinformation>

 

 Yes, you did post this earlier. It's better not to keep repeating this because it's wrong.

 

 The stealth skill of thieves, rangers and monks worked in the IE games required you to break line of site. That was the minigame of using stealth for combat in the IE games. You needed to hit and fade using the environment to restealth for backstabs etc.

 

 On the other hand, various invisibility spells did allow you you turn invisible in front of an enemy in the IE games. Note that PoE rogues can do that too using a class specific skill.

 

There's also the fact that stealth in this game doubles as a trap detection mode. In the IE games I found stealth to be mostly useless because you couldn't detect traps while being stealthed and most dungeons were filled with traps. Thankfully, Pillars remedies that problem.

 

 The IE games had a second level mage spell that you could cast on your thief that also solved that same problem. It lasted for 12 hours and disarming traps didn't break invisibility. 

 

 You could also use stealth to disarm traps, but it was more difficult. Stealth worked better for combat applications because it wasn't a per rest resource.