Saving the Wizard Class

[Namutree]

It's no evidence towards anything, just of minor note and vaguely on topic, but I recently restarted BG2.

 

My previous BG2 playthrough was using NPCs an focusing upon the magic classes (PC Sorceror, Viconia, Aerie, Jan/Imoen, Nalia, Edwin). It was really enjoyable.

 

This one was all melee-based used a custom party (Longsword and Shield Paladin [undead Hunter], Greatsword wielding Paladin [inquisitor], Staff wielding Kensai, Dual Katana wielding Swashbuckler->Fighter dual, Dual Mace wielding Cleric/Ranger, Halberd Wielding Mage->Fighter dual (In order to use Protection Scrolls)).

 

I lost interest by level 2 of Irenicus' dungeon.

Custom parties are soulless.

[Namutree]

 

It is also not fair to compare it with vanilla BG1 as that was first such game for Interplay/Bioware and OE has experience from making such games now. It is not fair to compare PoE with BG2 size or AI complexity but it is fair to compare to features BG2 had like big spells lists, lots of classes and kits and so on. Putting stronghold into PoE tells you even OE rather compare with BG2 than BG1.

-Not to mention the fact that BG1's level cap was only 8 or 9, while PoE's will be 12

-And not to mention the fact that PoE's Spell levels will go up to 6, while BG1's only went up to 5.

 

A more accurate comparison would be vanilla IWD1 (before its expansions), where your character could only reach about 13th level

 

I suspect that a level in poe isn't as meaningful as it is in BG. Level 12 might be the poe equal of BG's level 9.

[Kjaamor]

Custom parties are soulless.

 

Mild agreement, and one of the problems of the IWDs and ToEE. However I have done custom parties before for both BGs and they do offer something.

 

Perhaps a fairer test would've been fighter/thief PC, Korgan, Keldorn, Mazzy, Anomen, Minsc, but with the non-magic party already being at a severe disadvantage, the idea of taking that bunch is just a bridge too far.

 

Challenge not currently accepted.

[archangel979]

 

Custom parties are soulless.

 

Mild agreement, and one of the problems of the IWDs and ToEE. However I have done custom parties before for both BGs and they do offer something.

 

Perhaps a fairer test would've been fighter/thief PC, Korgan, Keldorn, Mazzy, Anomen, Minsc, but with the non-magic party already being at a severe disadvantage, the idea of taking that bunch is just a bridge too far.

 

Challenge not currently accepted.

 

Not everyone enjoys that gameplay but with a mostly melee/martial party you will do all fights much much faster. Edited November 21, 2014 by archangel979

[Kjaamor]

Yes, but the difference between that party and my own is that they are at a substantial disadvantage in terms of health, THAC0 and per-hit damage. Without buffs/gauntlets/girdles, only Korgan has 18 strength and can attain five stars in a weapon (in Axes, which is hardly the most desirable type), and with buffing items only Mazzy can be added to that list (with the even less appealing short-swords).

[tdphys]

I find the dependency of BG2 on the mage class detracts from the game.  I'm all for powerful mages, but when they make the rest of the other classes redundant at high levels, I think that's lame.   IWD seemed more balanced.

 

Lore wise, I prefer a magic system that feels powerful but has limitations.  rather then the ascendancy into GODLIKE.   I understand that

becoming all-powerful and invulnerable can be fun for some,  but I think it honestly detracts from the game and the story.

 

Just thought I'd salt the conversation so that this thread sounded a little less like an Echo chamber

 

For examples...

 

Protection from weapons/ magic weapons/ tensors transformation

 

Shouldn't exist or have really low durations ( I know magic weapons does, but still )

 

Mage counters that aren't Mages need to exist for other classes.  Scrolls just don't do it for me.

 

 

Cheers

Edited November 21, 2014 by tdphys

[Doppelschwert]

 

-snip-

 

 If your friends got from Candlekeep to Draconis' lair they aren't exactly noobs. It could be that a given fight was too hard but, I think the magic system is an orthogonal issue. 

 

 Draconis was beatable without  getting too deep into the magic system - by then, you had high levels summons to sic on him (if you had a mage, cleric or paladin in your party), spike traps (if you had a thief or bard), greater whirlwind (if you had any warrior types). Etc.

 

 There are lots of tools available and you don't need to stack spells in any particular way to beat the encounter.

 

 Again, it's possible that that encounter should have been turned down a bit, but I think that's a separate discussion.

 

 Draconis is too hard so, make the magic system less potent? I don't think it follows.

 

Didn't see your post before, sorry.

That's not the point I wanted to make. My friends quit because they felt treated unfairly by the game after losing after a couple of retries and their conclusion was that it is because the magic system is too strong. They prefer to roleplay martial characters, so they naturally wouldn't be very proficient with the mages, especially as the rest of the game was fairly doable without them. I did better than them and was able to complete ToB, but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to finish the ascension mod final boss fight without heavy abuse of mages. My personal opinion is that mages were too mandatory in ToB because they were so strong. I'm not saying my opinion is any more valuable than any other opinion but I'm saying that I don't think that the implementation of mages in the IE games are uniformly well received, which was the original point I responded to.

 

 

 

DPS

There's our first problem right here.

 

If magic has to be conceptualized and designed only within the constricting confines of soullessly gamey MMO and ARPG terminology, then this entire discussion is hopeless.

 

You don't get the magic behind magic. And I lack the communication skills to explain it to you. Suffice to say, we're ALL going to need to re-condition our minds and try to erase the DECADE of damage that games like WoW and Dragon Age have caused to the entire RPG genre.

 

 

You don't lack the communication skills, I get the magic behind the magic you people want, but that doesn't mean I want it as well. As everyone here agrees, the (arcane) magic in PoE is not the magic you guys want. In the actual game, wizards have the most damage spells and my point is that if you can't have the magic you want, then it's still probably better if mages are actually good at the stuff they are designed for. Given the most probable outcome that wizards will stay the way they are, it is not useful to increase the casting time of their stronger spells was all that I was saying.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I find the dependency of BG2 on the mage class detracts from the game.  I'm all for powerful mages, but when they make the rest of the other classes redundant at high levels, I think that's lame.   IWD seemed more balanced.....

...Mage counters that aren't Mages need to exist for other classes.  Scrolls just don't do it for me.

 

Refuted

 

Cleric: Silence,  Dispel Magic, Shield of Archons, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Miscast Magic, Negative Plane Protection, Protection from Fire/Cold/Acid/Electricity, Storm Shield (Talos Kit), Protection from Evil, Zone of Sweet Air, Animate Dead

 

Druid: Dispel Magic, Summon Insects, Insect Plague, Creeping Doom, Death Ward, Chaotic Commands, Negative Plane Protection, Protection from Fire/Cold/Acid/Electricity, Zone of Sweet Air, Conjure Elemental(s), Improved Invisibility (Avenger Kit)

 

Breserker rage makes a warrior immune to everything but direct damage and Time Stop. Barbarian rage does the same but without immunity to imprisonment. The subpar Wizard Slayer could still be used to devastating effect with fast weapons, particularly thrown weapons.

 

Undead Hunters were immune to Hold, Cavaliers were immune to Fear and Poison with some damage resistences, Inquisitors were immune to Hold and Charm effects, while also being able to cast Dispel Magic at twice their level. Their true sight ability also laid the powerful illusion school low.

 

Theif backstab was instagib, traps/snares were instagibs, Assassin poison was a death sentence, the Detect Illusion ability was an infinite toggle use True Sight, breaking LoS and hiding would cancel any spell targeted on your theif, Evasion prevented being targeted by spells, Time Trap = Time Stop, and Use Any Item allowed scroll usage and other schenanigans.

 

Monks had various immunities, stunning blow penetrated stoneskin, and innate magical resistence that made them almost untouchable by enemy mages.

 

The only real class that was more or less without innate class features to deal with mages were rangers--even the Stalker kit didn't have much against them. Taking down a higher level mage is certainly less efficient, but so is defeating any of the many golems without a warrior. Considering that it only took 1 damage to interrupt and waste a mage's spell, thwarting them was as simple as a single elemental arrow. Furthermore, with the copious amount of powerful items around that make a character immune to every status effect and nearly every damage type outside of Imprisonment....non-arcane casters were far from being helpless before mage classes.

 

 

 

You don't lack the communication skills, I get the magic behind the magic you people want, but that doesn't mean I want it as well. As everyone here agrees, the (arcane) magic in PoE is not the magic you guys want. In the actual game, wizards have the most damage spells and my point is that if you can't have the magic you want, then it's still probably better if mages are actually good at the stuff they are designed for. Given the most probable outcome that wizards will stay the way they are, it is not useful to increase the casting time of their stronger spells was all that I was saying.

 

See this. Or the most important part:

 

Emphasis mine. Is that response surprising? The magic/spell selection in the IE games was a massive part of what made them what they were and are. Aside from the narrative and general glorious adventure, it's perhaps the most iconic part of the greatest success among the IE games, Baldur's Gate 2. Where gaming really changed after it was the word you use frequently within this quote: "balance".

 

That word is the poison which has largely afflicted cRPGs since 2002 second only to the epithet: "streamlined". Both the individual spell design and the ability to access them all made the IE games have a spell system greater than the sum of their parts because it allowed the player input to utilize them beyond intended or imagined use. This is a major legacy of the IE games. The spell casting in PoE does not appear so much balanced between classes as it does fragmented. This is a stark contrast, and gives the wizard class in particular an unsatisfying and contrived feeling. Is it not worth considering that perhaps the class limitations through spell selection are simply not desirable means or ends?

 

We were promised a game that would blend the best of all of the IE games. The spell casting in those games were essential to their experience. Even if we incorrectly dismiss the most prominent and heralded of the IE games for whatever reason, PoE's spell casting still does not satisfy. Any spell casting class had full access to a myriad of options and were not relegated to the modern inferiority that PoE was sold as a refutation of. This non-IE inspired MMO spell casting alternative PoE has is inferior in spirit, concept, and delivery. That one of the essentials of the IE experience has been deliberately discarded is all the more galling.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Mr. Magniloquent

[Yonjuro]

 

....

 

Didn't see your post before, sorry.

That's not the point I wanted to make. My friends quit because they felt treated unfairly by the game after losing after a couple of retries and their conclusion was that it is because the magic system is too strong. They prefer to roleplay martial characters, so they naturally wouldn't be very proficient with the mages, especially as the rest of the game was fairly doable without them. I did better than them and was able to complete ToB, but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to finish the ascension mod final boss fight without heavy abuse of mages. My personal opinion is that mages were too mandatory in ToB because they were so strong. I'm not saying my opinion is any more valuable than any other opinion but I'm saying that I don't think that the implementation of mages in the IE games are uniformly well received, which was the original point I responded to.

 

 

 

 Fair enough. You have two friends that paid for the game and didn't like it because they felt that spell casters were overpowered compared to the martial classes that they wanted to play. They had a point, magic was very powerful.

 

 There are certainly martial classes in ToB that are well suited to the Draconis fight (or any magic heavy fight). Inquisitors, especially, but any paladin kit (or rogue with UAI) equipped with Carsomyr (or Carsomyr's bastard (sword) brother) were very effective. Monks could essentially ignore magic and just beat spell casters to death by that point. Wizard slayers could also be useful against spell casters (but were a weak kit overall). 

 

 Let's assume that your friends weren't playing one of those classes and they got to the Draconis fight in ToB and found their PC to be under powered. Yeah, that sucks.  Inquisitors and Monks, were, if anything, too powerful against spellcasters, but that doesn't help you if rolled a PC of a different class, play all the way through the main game and then find that it doesn't work so well half way through the expansion.

 

 My answer to that is that each class should have some way to deal with each encounter in the game (but that doesn't mean it needs to be easy to do or to figure out - at least on the harder difficulty settings; we want a challenge, right?). 

 

 That said, I think your friends could have beaten Draconis with any party if they really wanted. The game does give you a lot of tools for fighters to use against spell casters. ToB was seriously lacking in the story department, so they may have decided that it wasn't worth the effort. (Seriously. Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming yet my uber intelligent PC mage, with divine help, follows Melissan around like an idiot. WTF.  )

[archangel979]

Yes, but the difference between that party and my own is that they are at a substantial disadvantage in terms of health, THAC0 and per-hit damage. Without buffs/gauntlets/girdles, only Korgan has 18 strength and can attain five stars in a weapon (in Axes, which is hardly the most desirable type), and with buffing items only Mazzy can be added to that list (with the even less appealing short-swords).

I was referring to playing all martial vs all casters. 

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

I'm surprised that you're giving most every spell a uniform casting time. With the weapon system design you have, wouldn't it be more more consistent to have spells with graduated casting times? In that way, casting duration and recovery would be proportionate to the power/level of a spell.

 

Emphasis mine. This is something that I just plainly do not understand. Especially before the skill system was changed, every class could do nearly everything anyway. Stealth, detect secrets/traps, disable traps, craft, overcome athletic/lore/survival challenges, succeed any dialogue check, wear any armor, use any weapon, etc. Every class already has/had the ability to do everything, more or less. How does restricting spell lists prevent any of that?

 

Emphasis mine. Is that response surprising?

 

Every spell does not have a uniform casting time.  Spells have one of three casting times: instant, short, and long.  Instant and short are both used a lot.  Long is currently used less frequently.  We could subdivide casting times even more, but I think past a certain point, differentiating your choices becomes difficult.

 

Classes don't have the ability to do everything.  Yes, any class has the ability to access any skill.  A single character cannot excel at all skills.  Any class can equip a great sword.  If you want to rush a barbarian, a rogue, and a wizard into a mob swinging that sword, it's going to proceed differently for those three characters.  PoE's fighters don't have class abilities to chuck fireballs.  Rogues don't have class abilities to revive people.  Paladins can't transform into animalistic forms.

 

If you do a comparison of class abilities, wizards have the most by a good margin (a little below 70). Druids and priests also have a lot of spells (about 45 each), but still fewer than wizards.  Chanters and ciphers have the smallest list.  I don't disagree that it would be cool to have more diverse options like polymorphs, spell doublers, sequencers, contingencies, time stop, etc.  We designed a list of more diverse, complex, niche spells and most of them didn't wind up being implemented because of the enormous amount of time (and often specialized UI) that they demand.  I would like to implement more of these in the future, but it wasn't realistic for core PoE because we were building all of the game systems from scratch.

 

No, the response is not surprising.  Even so, I have always tried to be straightforward about why I make design decisions.  None of these stated reasons have ever been because I have animosity toward caster classes (which would be pretty weird for any reason).  Throughout the project I've tried to give casters the majority of the ability time, with wizards receiving the most even in that select group.  I've tried to ensure that wizards have good access to personal protection magic, personal strengthening magic, and a mix of different offensive spells that do a variety of things: bounding from target to target, temporarily negating enemies' beneficial magic, sickening/terrifying anyone who comes near the wizard, swapping locations with an ally and hurting enemies caught between, temporarily stealing spells from enemy grimoires, etc.  Is it enough?  Clearly not for everyone, but this was honestly what we were able to do -- not because we decided to short-change spellcasters, but because even with 5 out of 11 classes (the casters) receiving about 3/4 of all abilities, we could only do so many special case scripts for them.

[Longknife]

No, the response is not surprising.  Even so, I have always tried to be straightforward about why I make design decisions.  None of these stated reasons have ever been because I have animosity toward caster classes (which would be pretty weird for any reason). 

 

 

Don't give us that bull****, we all know you were born and raised in Winterhold shortly after the Great Collapse! Your prejudice towards wizards and all things magic is plain as day!!

[J.E. Sawyer]

I am not sure if the comment about per rest spells being on reserve is really all that important. People play as they like to. Some of us use that the resource often and some of us don't. Finally, it's a tactical choice everyone makes. There always have been extreme players who tend to minimize their resource consumption. It would be a folly to base the gameplay after their behavior. 

 

Using per rest abilities (spells or otherwise) is both a tactical and a strategic choice.  That's one of the things that makes the choice more interesting.  However, I've found throughout my career that people who minimize resource consumption are not extreme and they're not small in overall number.  It's a very common behavior exhibited by a lot of players, both RPG veterans and new players.*

 

I still think it's important to have those per rest (or simply limited overall, like potions/scrolls) resources to consume, but I also think it's important for players to feel that they have something core to their class that they can fall back on if all of their per rest resources have been exhausted.

 

* Not me, honestly.  I use per rests/dailies/consumables all the time.

[Dark_Ansem]

All very reasonable points. worthy of expansion, even if post-release, if such support is planned.

 

how customizable are those elementns, by the way? this game appears to be very difficult to mod without official Dev tools.

[Shevek]

I don't disagree that it would be cool to have more diverse options like polymorphs, spell doublers, sequencers, contingencies, time stop, etc.

Well, hopefully you can work some of that in when the xpac comes out.

[Lephys]

 

DPS

There's our first problem right here.

 

If magic has to be conceptualized and designed only within the constricting confines of soullessly gamey MMO and ARPG terminology, then this entire discussion is hopeless.

 

You don't get the magic behind magic. And I lack the communication skills to explain it to you. Suffice to say, we're ALL going to need to re-condition our minds and try to erase the DECADE of damage that games like WoW and Dragon Age have caused to the entire RPG genre.

 

Whoa whoa whoa... DPS is an actual thing. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. Now, I'm with you in that I hate it when it becomes THE basis for design. It's simply a measurement, that, when referenced accordingly, can be valuable.

 

In terms of Doppleschwert's argument, he's simply using the literal definition of DPS to say that, if you're more powerful and you do damage (which is quantified in some manner for the purposes of a ruleset for a game, so that it's not an indefinite amount of damage), then you're going to be doing MORE damage in the same amount of time. Thus, damage per second. Damage per minute. Damage per (insert time interval here). It doesn't really matter. The amount of damage you're capable of issuing forth is going to be greater in a given amount of time than it was when you were less powerful. So, if you had Firebolt, then acquire the ability to cast Fireball, OR teleport someone to a dimension in which they get torn apart by the fabric of reality (doesn't really matter what affect the spell has, so long as it produces the equivalent of some measure of damage, for the sole purpose of comparing it to prior damage-producing spells you were able to cast), then you don't want it to take an amount of time to cast proportionate to the extra damage it's doing. And the closer you get to that, the more pointless it becomes.

 

"I used to be able to cast a 3-second spell and kill a dude. Now, I can cast a 15-second spell and kill 5 dudes." That's great, IF you can pull off the spell. You'd be better off casting the 3-second one 5 times and having a much greater chance of not-losing-concentration or being murdered to death, etc.

 

It's a perfectly valid point. There's no need to go off on Doppleschwert for all crimes ever committed in affiliation with the term "DPS."

[archangel979]

No, the response is not surprising.  Even so, I have always tried to be straightforward about why I make design decisions.  None of these stated reasons have ever been because I have animosity toward caster classes (which would be pretty weird for any reason).  Throughout the project I've tried to give casters the majority of the ability time, with wizards receiving the most even in that select group.  I've tried to ensure that wizards have good access to personal protection magic, personal strengthening magic, and a mix of different offensive spells that do a variety of things: bounding from target to target, temporarily negating enemies' beneficial magic, sickening/terrifying anyone who comes near the wizard, swapping locations with an ally and hurting enemies caught between, temporarily stealing spells from enemy grimoires, etc.  Is it enough?  Clearly not for everyone, but this was honestly what we were able to do -- not because we decided to short-change spellcasters, but because even with 5 out of 11 classes (the casters) receiving about 3/4 of all abilities, we could only do so many special case scripts for them.

Thank you for this response. It is certainly much better than you hating spellcasters :D

 

I also hope to see more spells (for all classes) added in an expansion.

[Hormalakh]

It seems like Pillars of Eternity has too many designers and not enough coders/programmers.

Having more ideas than people who can script them (not to mention the slow turn-arounds on bug fixes, monthly updates for example) is likely a symptom of that problem.

 

For your next game (if we ever get there), you should think about readjusting your skill pool. 

 

In the meantime, don't anger your coders.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Hormalakh

[Lephys]

I dunno... I mean, unless you have like 1 designer and 100 coders, it seems like imagination is always going to outpace coding/resources.

[Doppelschwert]

 

 

....

 

Didn't see your post before, sorry.

That's not the point I wanted to make. My friends quit because they felt treated unfairly by the game after losing after a couple of retries and their conclusion was that it is because the magic system is too strong. They prefer to roleplay martial characters, so they naturally wouldn't be very proficient with the mages, especially as the rest of the game was fairly doable without them. I did better than them and was able to complete ToB, but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to finish the ascension mod final boss fight without heavy abuse of mages. My personal opinion is that mages were too mandatory in ToB because they were so strong. I'm not saying my opinion is any more valuable than any other opinion but I'm saying that I don't think that the implementation of mages in the IE games are uniformly well received, which was the original point I responded to.

 

 

 

 Fair enough. You have two friends that paid for the game and didn't like it because they felt that spell casters were overpowered compared to the martial classes that they wanted to play. They had a point, magic was very powerful.

 

 There are certainly martial classes in ToB that are well suited to the Draconis fight (or any magic heavy fight). Inquisitors, especially, but any paladin kit (or rogue with UAI) equipped with Carsomyr (or Carsomyr's bastard (sword) brother) were very effective. Monks could essentially ignore magic and just beat spell casters to death by that point. Wizard slayers could also be useful against spell casters (but were a weak kit overall). 

 

 Let's assume that your friends weren't playing one of those classes and they got to the Draconis fight in ToB and found their PC to be under powered. Yeah, that sucks.  Inquisitors and Monks, were, if anything, too powerful against spellcasters, but that doesn't help you if rolled a PC of a different class, play all the way through the main game and then find that it doesn't work so well half way through the expansion.

 

 My answer to that is that each class should have some way to deal with each encounter in the game (but that doesn't mean it needs to be easy to do or to figure out - at least on the harder difficulty settings; we want a challenge, right?). 

 

 That said, I think your friends could have beaten Draconis with any party if they really wanted. The game does give you a lot of tools for fighters to use against spell casters. ToB was seriously lacking in the story department, so they may have decided that it wasn't worth the effort. (Seriously. Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming yet my uber intelligent PC mage, with divine help, follows Melissan around like an idiot. WTF.  )

 

 

Total agreement here. Although you have to be fair in that if you play with the NPCs that TOB gives you, then you basically have to fall back to mages for most effects if you don't play any of the cool kits as your main character. You actually already said that part.

I'm fine with mages having a wide variety of spells at their disposal, but I think they should neither be all exclusive nor equally good/better than all the stuff other classes can get. There should still be some unique benefit to choosing each class.

 

I also think that josh explained himself very well, so if anyone still wants to hold a grudge against him, I guess it can't be helped. A more productive way would probably be to be creative about it and compile a list of cool spell effects you'd like to see in the add-on and keep it ready after release.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Doppelschwert

[Mr. Magniloquent]

 

I'm surprised that you're giving most every spell a uniform casting time. With the weapon system design you have, wouldn't it be more more consistent to have spells with graduated casting times? In that way, casting duration and recovery would be proportionate to the power/level of a spell.

 

Emphasis mine. This is something that I just plainly do not understand. Especially before the skill system was changed, every class could do nearly everything anyway. Stealth, detect secrets/traps, disable traps, craft, overcome athletic/lore/survival challenges, succeed any dialogue check, wear any armor, use any weapon, etc. Every class already has/had the ability to do everything, more or less. How does restricting spell lists prevent any of that?

 

Emphasis mine. Is that response surprising?

 

Every spell does not have a uniform casting time.  Spells have one of three casting times: instant, short, and long.  Instant and short are both used a lot.  Long is currently used less frequently.  We could subdivide casting times even more, but I think past a certain point, differentiating your choices becomes difficult.

 

Classes don't have the ability to do everything.  Yes, any class has the ability to access any skill.  A single character cannot excel at all skills.  Any class can equip a great sword.  If you want to rush a barbarian, a rogue, and a wizard into a mob swinging that sword, it's going to proceed differently for those three characters.  PoE's fighters don't have class abilities to chuck fireballs.  Rogues don't have class abilities to revive people.  Paladins can't transform into animalistic forms.

 

If you do a comparison of class abilities, wizards have the most by a good margin (a little below 70). Druids and priests also have a lot of spells (about 45 each), but still fewer than wizards.  Chanters and ciphers have the smallest list.  I don't disagree that it would be cool to have more diverse options like polymorphs, spell doublers, sequencers, contingencies, time stop, etc.  We designed a list of more diverse, complex, niche spells and most of them didn't wind up being implemented because of the enormous amount of time (and often specialized UI) that they demand.  I would like to implement more of these in the future, but it wasn't realistic for core PoE because we were building all of the game systems from scratch.

 

No, the response is not surprising.  Even so, I have always tried to be straightforward about why I make design decisions.  None of these stated reasons have ever been because I have animosity toward caster classes (which would be pretty weird for any reason).  Throughout the project I've tried to give casters the majority of the ability time, with wizards receiving the most even in that select group.  I've tried to ensure that wizards have good access to personal protection magic, personal strengthening magic, and a mix of different offensive spells that do a variety of things: bounding from target to target, temporarily negating enemies' beneficial magic, sickening/terrifying anyone who comes near the wizard, swapping locations with an ally and hurting enemies caught between, temporarily stealing spells from enemy grimoires, etc.  Is it enough?  Clearly not for everyone, but this was honestly what we were able to do -- not because we decided to short-change spellcasters, but because even with 5 out of 11 classes (the casters) receiving about 3/4 of all abilities, we could only do so many special case scripts for them.

 

I would like to believe that more diverse spells were intentioned, but I remain skeptical to that assertion.

 

I agree in that you have been clear about your design choices. You have concerns over class overlap, so utility spells like Clairvoyance, Find Traps, Knock, Wizard Eye, Far Sight, Invisibility, etc.--all gone. I'm having difficulty finding the quote, but there was an interview where you discussed this. There was a specific example about dissolving a lock with magic, rather than picking it. You've also expressed concerns over summons invalidating party members, so summons have been effectively removed for all but one class of which can only summon once battle has begun and only after certain lengthy conditions have been met. Then there is your preference against "hard-counters", which means everything with a permanent effect is gone. This is not merely death spells, but also negates Feeblemind, Contagion, Curses, Polymorph Other, etc. Such removals are also extended to defensive spells which extend any sort of absolute protection from any one source--brief or otherwise. On the vein of defenses, you're also against parties taking advantage of having scouted by protecting themselves before battle (pre-buffing). Then there is the whole issue of damage potential.

 

Examples abound beyond this, but my point is illustrated. You may not have any sort of explicit resentment of the class, but the same results are achieved by your preferences. Arguably, claiming that someone hates apples is a dubious claim. However, if such a person did not like the taste, texture, or color of apples--but insisted that apples (as we know them) would be better if their taste, texture, and color were far removed from what apples have been known as.....a case can be built beyond that person's claims.

 

This game's magic system has turned out to be distinctly not-IE inspired in the fundamental ways that matter. Burning Hands is not what distinguished spell casting in the IE games. It was spells like Mislead, and Limited Wish among many others. I funded in large because I thought Obsidian would understand that significance. I would love to be less critical, but the problem is that your reasons for these departures are clear. Even if your budget had been doubled, your design preferences suggest that the system would merely be a larger incarnation of what it presently is. Unfortunately, what it is--does not resemble what any IE games offered either in spirit or function. That is where the resentment comes from.

[Captain Shrek]

 

I am not sure if the comment about per rest spells being on reserve is really all that important. People play as they like to. Some of us use that the resource often and some of us don't. Finally, it's a tactical choice everyone makes. There always have been extreme players who tend to minimize their resource consumption. It would be a folly to base the gameplay after their behavior. 

 

Using per rest abilities (spells or otherwise) is both a tactical and a strategic choice.  That's one of the things that makes the choice more interesting.  However, I've found throughout my career that people who minimize resource consumption are not extreme and they're not small in overall number.  It's a very common behavior exhibited by a lot of players, both RPG veterans and new players.*

 

I still think it's important to have those per rest (or simply limited overall, like potions/scrolls) resources to consume, but I also think it's important for players to feel that they have something core to their class that they can fall back on if all of their per rest resources have been exhausted.

 

* Not me, honestly.  I use per rests/dailies/consumables all the time.

 

 

 

Well, I am not sure how the resource consumption minimizers are not extreme. This *is* a computer game. When you finish it, the leftover resources are not going to turn into real life currency of any kind. So yeah, playing too conservatively has a benefit only if there is a meta-knowledge involved concerning the future availability of resources. This statement should be beyond reproach.

 

Now, my statement above is even more applicable to *per rest* resources. They are not even being really lost! Every time you rest, *woof* there they are. Not using them is really of no benefit whatsoever. Once again, this is especially true of the per encounter resource. The *best* strategic/tactical (let's not get into semantics) choice here is to use them every encounter, by default. 

 

So I can't really agree with you here. There is no reason as I see it, to conserve spells in PoE. 

 

Now to your next point:

 

Spellcasting *is* the core class ability. I am not sure what you are alluding to here. Fighters are not going to get the opportunity to cast spells and wizards are not going to knock people down willynilly. So they always can (and will) depend on their core abilities. Now, your point *maybe* that the classes need skills which are *infinite* in availability, so that it never happens that they feel out of their depth. Once again, this is a tradeoff. There is just no reason that this *has* to happen. It might be a nice touch in general, but can't see how it relates to the previous point. 

Edited November 21, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[Lephys]

Now, my statement above is even more applicable to *per rest* resources. They are not even being really lost! Every time you rest, *woof* there they are. Not using them is really of no benefit whatsoever. Once again, this is especially true of the per encounter resource. The *best* strategic/tactical (let's not get into semantics) choice here is to use them every encounter, by default.

But they are being lost. Just, temporarily. And, unless you find camping supplies after every single encounter, your ability to rest is limited. So, sure, the factor values could render things moot, but the system still has you losing resources that could've been useful at some given time (at which you were without them).

 

Granted, being too careful is definitely a bad idea. It's kind of a bell curve. If you just save them all, you're going through a lot of trouble you wouldn't need to, for no ultimate benefit. If you use them all too quickly, then you're putting yourself through a bunch of situations in which you could've used some abilities before you next rested.

 

 

@Mr. Magniloquent:

 

To be fair, they said they were making a game in the spirit of the IE games, Not making a game in the spirit of the D&D universe. I don't believe that designing a different magic system and a different combat system from the ground up inherently causes the game to fail to resemble the IE games.

 

That being said, I'm not saying the magic system is flawless, or that other people like it so it's better than what you like, which is somehow stupid. But, I fear you're harboring an irrationally inflated level of resentment toward Josh and Co., to be honest.

[Infinitron]

There are actually plenty of classic/iconic D&D spells that comply quite nicely with the no-hard-counters philosophy. For example, the Mirror Image spell, a mainstay of low level mage combat in Baldur's Gate, is an archetypal "soft counter" - very powerful, but still defeatable by a variety of means.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Infinitron

[Lephys]

^ That, and I don't think his qualm is with hard counters of any kind, per se (for example, poison, and an antidote for poison), as much as it is with the extent of the counter. Namely, "you're screwed because of this ability, except when you completely negate it with this other ability." It's like... advantage whiplash. "We're protected from 72 things, via this magical shield!" "Nope, I just dispelled your entire magical shield! MUAHAHA!"

 

I do feel it's a lot more interesting when both sides typically just influence factors in their favor. I much prefer to overcome an obstacle than to cast "anti-obstacle" on it.