Saving the Wizard Class

[Stun]

So is a small child with a hidden rope in a field, who pulls it taught when the enemy is running through, and trips them. Doesn't mean it's fun to play a helpless child who can only spring traps, until you eventually become a demigod.

 

Any class should be useful in every instance of combat. That still leaves room for their sometimes being more useful, and sometimes being a bit less useful.

This is nonsense on 2 fronts. First off, If that kid with a rope is part of a party, and his job is to trip people so that they fall helplessly face first into your Rogue's flanking range, or your Archer's arrow barrage then not only is that kid useful, but he just turned the battle in your party's favor. This is, in fact, the main function of low level wizard spells.

 

Second, lets not forget that Party thing. This is not Skyrim. This is a game designed for a 6 person party, and that being the case, there's no reason for this banal one-size-fits-all garbage you're advocating. NO, Lephys not every class should be core-designed to be functional in every situation. Eventually, with gear, earned talents and massive amounts of power-gaming, a class should be able to overcome those situations that they were not built to succeed at, but until then, that's what decent party-based gameplay is supposed to be about..

Edited November 30, 2014 by Stun

[Osvir]

I guess I'm only responding to the topic title, but "Saving the Wizard Class". I read the document but I'm not 100% sure I followed, it's a well-thought out idea wrapped in a great presentation in my opinion. It tends to be a tad bit too formal at times, and some times vividly explaining colorfully but I think I'm going to have to read it again to wrap it around my head.

My latest play on Path of the Damned got me thinking of a party RP concept, and a bit of a new, re-invented and innovated Wizard Class but retaining it's core values. 6 Wizards that are "ritualists". A "Ritualist" is a "Wizard"~ but they get stronger the more they are, and they synchronize really well with each other and cast spells together (6 Wizards together summoning a Demon from hell, or putting an aggressive Dragon to sleep, a puzzle involving having to run around with 1 character, and 5 Wizards need to be focused on sub-duing or maintaining an illusion barrier from predators, 2 Wizards casting a stronger Fireball spell).

Thinking about it... there could be a Talent or Skill a la "Spell Sync" or "Animancy Link" with a description like:

"Animancy Link" (Passive)
- "The Wizard syncs with the Soul of another ally Wizard, empowering spells cast, and casts spells at the same time"

((Mechanics:
- If 2 Wizards casts the same spell at a Target, they will channel the spell at the same time individually, and cast it synched together.
- If 1 Wizard is ready to cast the spell, but the other one is recovering, the 1st Wizard would wait for the 2nd one.
- Spells would be more powerful, burst-wise, but takes longer to channel and concentrate upon.))

Regardless:
I had 3 Wizards in my party (including BB Wizard) and the rest BB party.

It was surprisingly fun playing with more than one Wizard, and extremely effective as well. Of course, I had a Fighter to take up most of the aggro from the enemies (Nyfre, upper floor) and clog the enemies in the doorway. Fear spells, weakening spells, illusion spells, and DPS spells. It made Path of the Damned enemies into maybe a low-mid Hard encounter.

We've discussed how the Wizard is usually the weakest class early-game (but still viable), and the strongest character late-game. Could an Early Game Wizard Party (More than 1 Wizard) be a thing...? It'd make sense that Low Level Wizards would band together under one banner and aid each other as well, and Late Game you only really need 1 Wizard, and can mix up your composition more freely.

It springs to mind the beginning of Icewind Dale, where there's several (IIRC) evil entities that stand above the ravine to cause the snow avalanche. Wizards that join together to create marvelous and grand magic, as well as powerful and corruptive magic.

The College in Winterhold, and even the Circle of Magi, are all some form of Wizards banding together to utilize their powers together, for whatever reason. Having Wizards be balanced from Early-Game to Late-Game as: Strong in numbers (Early Game), Strong individually (Late Game), could make it quite interesting, and it'd almost be as if you're the one building a Spell School-, Magic Study-, or a Wizard Cult Group yourself as well.

In essence: A Wizard in Early Game is "half" a Wizard. Having 2 Wizards makes up 1 Wizard (duh), but it adds choice into your early game composition in a way that adds even more strategic elements. Essentially with 2 Wizards, and 4 other random classes, you'd have 5 viable combat characters.

As the game progresses, that 5 eventually transforms into 6.

TL;DR: Just some thoughts about Wizards, and a bit of an experience/feel/effective build (currently) in Pillars of Eternity.

Edited November 30, 2014 by Osvir

[Grinsevent]

Hi, I think I will just say again what everyone already said ... But anyway, let's try to "save this class" too :

 

First of all, I don't care if it's not exactly (or even close) to the experiment I had in BG I and II, Icewind dale etc ... Why ? Because every class are here different, and with some flavor ... Except the Wizard

 

I tried it, again and again, and, it just didn't hook me... Playing a Lvl1 mage in BG 1 was terrible, but you knew it was going to be better, here, it's just "hey ... I'm already mid power and ... Just not fun at all".

 

I don't care if he is not overpowered, or anything like that, but right now, I feel it to be unenjoyable.

 

I didn't try all the classes, as I pretty much know how the Fighter or Barbarian felt, but I spent time on the wizard and priest classes. And, concerning the wizard, I don't find its role, or any mean he has to make its contribution "nice".

 

Two things strucked me :

 

First : I don't have enough spells, and as I don't want to be always resting, I don't spam my spells ... And so I only use auto attacks, so, less micromanagment than my fighter !

Second : Ok , now is the big fight, use your gun man ... WHAT... a Beetle is NOT killed by my fireball even if I can only spam two of them per rest and resting is really not encouraged in this game ...

 

So, I hope the (next?) improvement being made to this class would create something better out of it. Changing book and having versatility (less than priest) could be fun if playing our spells (and having some variety) were a right and nice option.

 

So, I remember what was told "Tell us if some class just aren't appealing to you" ... This is done

[Osvir]

I wrote a class idea inspired by this thread, and by some gameplay (having more than 1 Wizard in the party is fun :D maybe it could be fun to have Demonic Summoners acting better together? It'd be an innovated Wizard system that I haven't seen before) as well as an idea about making a magic Class or the actual Wizard Class interesting. Giving it an "aspect", similar to Ciphers, Chanters and Monks (A Resource System).

[Grinsevent]

I read it and, think it wouldn't have a place in this game (but is great for another, like a STR) ... Because having multiple time the same people seems to be quite diminushing for the group... If it's not synergie but rather "We designed it like that"...

 

I would love to hear from the dev what they think of the wizard ,if they are satisfied yet.

[Captain Shrek]

I have a feeling that the developers should have just dropped the class act and gone for a class-free society. Would have been a classical example of outclassing the issue. Right now the system lacks class. 

[Osvir]

That's what I've been saying from the start Captain Shrek. Start as a peasant, a caravaneer, or heck... even based on "Culture".

Imagine if "Culture" was your Starter Pick Class, and then as the game goes along you "Grow" into one of the Class archetypes? This can be abstracted, I suppose, seeing how the real thing starts. For instance: You're an ex-Slave, now a traveling innate Wizard. Abstraction: You've picked up Wizardry from one of the caravaneers, who even gave you a book of magic, as a token of good-will (Or whatever, abstraction~)

If you take that angle or perspective, in a shrewd way, it's a class-free game Not a true one though.

[Captain Shrek]

I can only agree. I have no idea why this kind of progression was necessary. It's not even a homage to D&D anymore as the classes are nothing like in IE games. I confuse. 

[Grinsevent]

I think tons of great class free games are on the market (D:OS am I speaking of you?) and this one shouldn't ... All the classes will feel special ... I hope And, right now, I like the mechanism of most of them (Chanter/Cypher are really different and nice, the monk is interesting, even if I would rather he didn't take so much damage and its abilities could make him stay longer/its ratio to its health should be smaller etc ... ) and would just like to enjoy playing with any character.

 

Right now, only the Wizard and the Rodeur (the guy with an animal companion) doesn't make my day.

[archangel979]

I can only agree. I have no idea why this kind of progression was necessary. It's not even a homage to D&D anymore as the classes are nothing like in IE games. I confuse.

The only possible problem is that OE promised too many classes, more than they can deliver in a finished state.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

This is an excellent example of a spell you shall not see in PoE. With Mirror Image, any attack that strikes an image will have its damage and effects absolutely negated. That is undesirable by Mr. Sawyer's design philosophy. 

Nonsense. You don't understand his philosophy. The mirror images can be torn down fairly swiftly with a variety of attacks (including mundane attacks), hence it is not a hard counter.

 

The Mirror Image spell in PoE, all things being equal, is actually more powerful than its AD&D counterpart. Several images with the same poor AC versus one character with very high Deflection that goes down piecemeal with every hit - the former are easier to destroy.

 

Hardly. +20 Deflection that decreases with each hit is far inferior to a high percent chance that the next attack will be totally invalidated. That it doesn't scale makes it even worse. With the AD&D Mirror Image, no matter how powerful the attack or how far outclassed by an opponent your character is, you've got a reliable time-frame to (likely) avoid all damage from weapon attacks. That is tremendously powerful. With PoE, +20 Deflection (for one attack) could potentially push an equal opponent's accuracy to where they may actually be able to miss--but overall will not accomplish that much. You're still going to get it. You're still likely to take damage. If that opponent far outclasses you or has high innate accuracy/damage (relative to level), then it's not going to do much of anything for you.

 

The AD&D Mirror Image functions like a lesser AD&D Stoneskin in that the damage type it protects against is absolutely negated. Critical hits, dragon claws, knockdown...all negated (for a time) by each image shed. Compare that to a <=20 Deflection bonus against a monster in PoE with >70 Accuracy....meh. You'll be slightly adjusting their graze and critical range down. That is the design difference. That is what has become of the no hard counters design. Nothing is absolute, everything is a threshold. Furthermore, those thresholds are balanced to be low enough so that they shall be overcome. It's a world of difference.

 

I have a feeling that the developers should have just dropped the class act and gone for a class-free society. Would have been a classical example of outclassing the issue. Right now the system lacks class......I can only agree. I have no idea why this kind of progression was necessary. It's not even a homage to D&D anymore as the classes are nothing like in IE games. I confuse.

 

Agreed.

[Seari]

 

This is an excellent example of a spell you shall not see in PoE. With Mirror Image, any attack that strikes an image will have its damage and effects absolutely negated. That is undesirable by Mr. Sawyer's design philosophy. 

 

Nonsense. You don't understand his philosophy. The mirror images can be torn down fairly swiftly with a variety of attacks (including mundane attacks), hence it is not a hard counter.

 

The Mirror Image spell in PoE, all things being equal, is actually more powerful than its AD&D counterpart. Several images with the same poor AC versus one character with very high Deflection that goes down piecemeal with every hit - the former are easier to destroy.

 

You are so wrong, it's kind of hilarious.

[Bester]

Infinitron is without any doubt the most gigantic troll I've ever witnessed in my entire internet life.

 

He knows what he says is wrong, but he keeps writing it just to get you butthurt, cause he can't help it. He's very subtle too, but he went over the top a few times, revealing himself just barely, but sufficiently. I'm constantly amazed at how skillful he is, it's really unbelievable. I've never been so blown away, seriously.

[Sarex]

He's got nothing on BruveVC.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

He's got nothing on BruveVC.

That isn't true, Bruce is very reasonable about romance and social justice ?

[constantine]

That's what I've been saying from the start Captain Shrek. Start as a peasant, a caravaneer, or heck... even based on "Culture".

Imagine if "Culture" was your Starter Pick Class, and then as the game goes along you "Grow" into one of the Class archetypes? This can be abstracted, I suppose, seeing how the real thing starts. For instance: You're an ex-Slave, now a traveling innate Wizard. Abstraction: You've picked up Wizardry from one of the caravaneers, who even gave you a book of magic, as a token of good-will (Or whatever, abstraction~)

If you take that angle or perspective, in a shrewd way, it's a class-free game Not a true one though.

  

I can only agree. I have no idea why this kind of progression was necessary. It's not even a homage to D&D anymore as the classes are nothing like in IE games. I confuse.

 

 

Pillars of Eternity is an rpg with classes and thank god they are many and they feel very special and unique.

[Captain Shrek]

Well, by unique if you mean different in ability names and usage then yeah. They don't feel very special. A lot of them are just ONE class from D&D split into many classes. I guess the only different one is the Cipher which is a psionic-like class. But he also feels more like a Wilder, really. 

[Lephys]

This is nonsense on 2 fronts. First off, If that kid with a rope is part of a party, and his job is to trip people so that they fall helplessly face first into your Rogue's flanking range, or your Archer's arrow barrage then not only is that kid useful, but he just turned the battle in your party's favor. This is, in fact, the main function of low level wizard spells.

 

Second, lets not forget that Party thing. This is not Skyrim. This is a game designed for a 6 person party, and that being the case, there's no reason for this banal one-size-fits-all garbage you're advocating.

Yes. Let's have a 6-year-old-rope-tripper class, shall we? Because, occasionally he'll be able to contribute so well to the party that... who cares about all the times he can't do anything at all? 8D!

 

NO, Lephys not every class should be core-designed to be functional in every situation. Eventually, with gear, earned talents and massive amounts of power-gaming, a class should be able to overcome those situations that they were not built to succeed at, but until then, that's what decent party-based gameplay is supposed to be about..

You must have an awfully strange definition of "functional." I thought the purpose of party-based gameplay was to always function in a collaborative fashion. "Oh, I can't heal you, but I can keep some more damage at bay for you!" "Oh, I can't kill that guy in two fell swoops, but I can paralyze him so that you can get away!"

 

Not "Oh, you guys go ahead... I've done my two things for this 24-hour period. Don't worry, though. I tripped the CRAP out of those guys! 8D! Oh, and, 3 years from now, I'll be so powerful I can just wipe out armies of bandits in a single flourish! But the world will constantly try to counter-counter-balance that with a bunch of 'lolz, that won't work here... it's useless!' immunities, which will then be countered with even more things that I can do. It's really okay. It all works out flawlessly, by design! 8D!"

[Namutree]

 

This is nonsense on 2 fronts. First off, If that kid with a rope is part of a party, and his job is to trip people so that they fall helplessly face first into your Rogue's flanking range, or your Archer's arrow barrage then not only is that kid useful, but he just turned the battle in your party's favor. This is, in fact, the main function of low level wizard spells.

 

Second, lets not forget that Party thing. This is not Skyrim. This is a game designed for a 6 person party, and that being the case, there's no reason for this banal one-size-fits-all garbage you're advocating.

Yes. Let's have a 6-year-old-rope-tripper class, shall we? Because, occasionally he'll be able to contribute so well to the party that... who cares about all the times he can't do anything at all? 8D!

 

NO, Lephys not every class should be core-designed to be functional in every situation. Eventually, with gear, earned talents and massive amounts of power-gaming, a class should be able to overcome those situations that they were not built to succeed at, but until then, that's what decent party-based gameplay is supposed to be about..

You must have an awfully strange definition of "functional." I thought the purpose of party-based gameplay was to always function in a collaborative fashion. "Oh, I can't heal you, but I can keep some more damage at bay for you!" "Oh, I can't kill that guy in two fell swoops, but I can paralyze him so that you can get away!"

 

Not "Oh, you guys go ahead... I've done my two things for this 24-hour period. Don't worry, though. I tripped the CRAP out of those guys! 8D! Oh, and, 3 years from now, I'll be so powerful I can just wipe out armies of bandits in a single flourish! But the world will constantly try to counter-counter-balance that with a bunch of 'lolz, that won't work here... it's useless!' immunities, which will then be countered with even more things that I can do. It's really okay. It all works out flawlessly, by design! 8D!"

 

Fine by me. Can the tripper have different kinds of trips though?

[Lephys]

Fine by me. Can the tripper have different kinds of trips though?

I dunno... that's getting awfully close to encroaching on "what other people can do" territory. I mean, if there's a trip that, say, does additional damage. Well, that's basically backstab. Backtrip?

 

This is a party-based game. Save everything-that-isn't-tripping for the other classes, alright? There's nothing else to consider when it comes to class design. Just one criterion, and done.

 

[Stun]

Fine by me. Can the tripper have different kinds of trips though?

To keep the analogy accurate, YES. In fact, during the course of the game, you can expect that 6-year-old Rope tripper to become a rope Master, being able to conjure different types of ropes from his fingertips; being able to summon giant animated ropes to the battlefield to do his job for him; being able to use those ropes as magic whips. Being able to manipulate those ropes and use them for teleporting purposes; being able to mass-grapple opponents from a distance with those ropes; being able to insta-kill enemies with rope chokes; being able to nuke the battlefield with Greater Rope Burning, and Mordinkanin's cataclysmic Rope Swarm, etc.

 

That's the nature of well designed Mages. They're a liability early, and super-powerful later when they've paid their dues.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Stun

[Lephys]

As long as he eventually gets to level entire cities with ropes, it doesn't matter if all he gets to do for 4 levels is hide in a corner and occasionally trip some guys.

[Malekith]

Lephys, on 11 Dec 2014 - 12:33 AM, said:

As long as he eventually gets to level entire cities with ropes, it doesn't matter if all he gets to do for 4 levels is hide in a corner and occasionally trip some guys.

At last, you begin to get it.

[Lephys]

I'm sorry, but as someone who plays the mage in everything ever that even remotely has something resembling a mage (Mass Effect biotics... SPACE MAGES!), I don't accept the "don't worry, you'll be a demigod in a bit" as justification for any amount of magery being lame or sub-par.

 

A) I don't even want to be a demigod. Or, if I am, I want to be a demigod in a God of War type setting, in which you're surrounded by things that are on-par with a demigod.

B) That doesn't make up for crap early-level class gameplay for me. In a PnP campaign, there are 73,000 other things I can be doing than being effective in combat. In any cRPG I've ever played, there's not nearly enough non-combat usefulness to anything I can do to justify my being a complete wuss at combat.

 

I'd rather manifest ethereal shurikens and toss them at my foes than do a whole lot of nothing-useful topped off with a single kill-8-people-at-once fireball, any day of the week.

 

A guy manning a cannon is fearsome. And yet, if he HAD to, he could abandon the cannon and engage something in combat. He's not just "Oh well... I'm out of cannon balls. But it's okay, because the cannon's SO POWERFUL! 8D!"

 

I want to see a Wizard who, once a year, gets to cast a spell that simply saves the world. The rest of the year, the mage is in a coma and must be toted around on a little wagon pulled behind a mule. BALANCE! 8D!

 

Seriously, though, one of my favorite things about Mr. Magniloquent's proposal in this thread is that you get to pick whether or not you want 3 brutally powerful spells, or 30 more weapon-ammo-type spells. A mage shouldn't be limited to either setup. It's friggin magic. You shape it how you want, to do cool things that regular "mundane" means cannot. A spell doesn't have to be 73-times more potent than a sword to justify being magical. It can just do things that a sword cannot, even if it does the same "quantity" of damage/effects/what-have-you.

 

A kick can knock a guy down. Maybe a magical spell that's exactly as powerful as a kick can simply do so from a range, and in whatever direction you please.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Lephys

[Stun]

As long as he eventually gets to level entire cities with ropes, it doesn't matter if all he gets to do for 4 levels is hide in a corner and occasionally trip some guys.

Agreed!

 

Or more precisely, they should be spending those first 4 levels studying, growing their beards, keeping their robes nice and clean, shopping for decent hats, and training their familiars. The time for world domination comes later.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Stun