Wizard Grimoire's: Why?

[FacesOfMu]

Mistaken double-post!

 

See the correct one here:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81222-wizard-grimoires-why/

Edited August 22, 2015 by FacesOfMu

[Sabotin]

The starting point for the system was the older dnd games, which used mostly x/day things, which translated into games as castable x/rest.

 

The point of mages in general is that they have powerful spells, but are physically weak and limited in the number of casts. If you give them an unlimited number of casts they will wreck everything with their strongest spell (why even bother with weaker ones?). If you balance the spells around that they become so weak you might as well not use them. The use of per rest over per encounter is that you have the option of releasing various amounts of power each encounter. If you're not using them that's your choice as is if you're using them at every opportunity. Both behaviours and all in between have their own advantages and disadvantages. I've also started with saving everything, but then eventually you learn to gauge a bit the investment in resources to overcome an encounter and it become more fun.

 

As is wizards don't compare to the BG type mages in terms of power already. They even shifted them to be more crowd control oriented than nuking power. I believe this was in an effort to simulate the mage duels from IE games which were based on preparation and counters. And especially on higher difficulties, controlling is key to survival. An unlimited supply can easily mean you permanently disable enemies or they permanently disable you, which in both cases is not fun (First time I played lv11 to 12 were super boring with amplified wave spam from GM for example).

 

Another aspect of it is that wizard spells are more diverse, allowing the wizard to be flexible. In IE games the issue they saw was that you could tailor your spells to an encounter, but you needed to have knowledge of it beforehand. This often led to a more "puzzle solving" type of play, which had its own advantages and disadvantages. So they made this grimoire system, which limited flexibility a bit but allowed players to be "somewhat prepared" for every eventuality, reducing the need for save/load behavior.

 

The issue I see isn't even with the wizard, but the enemies. The player is provided tools to handle situations, but they are then not needed. I don't think I've swapped one grimoire during my games. There just wasn't any need. The combat mechanics and enemy statistics in particular were designed in such a way as to not strictly require anything. But that also mean that with enough focus on the players part you could circumvent their strengths and weaknesses without having to adapt. I am eagerly waiting for the expansion to see how that fares as there will be some immunities in the game.

 

I really don't believe that the 4 spells/lvl is that strict of a limitation and it does add some strategic elements, despite the shortcomings. What I would point out though is that they might have gone a bit overboard in making lower spell levels useful at higher character levels as you end up with a spam of low level spells being as effective or even more so than higher level ones, all the while requiring less resources from the wizard to use.

[FacesOfMu]

 Thanks for the contextual information you added!  Just so I'm reading you right: BG = Baldur's Gate and IE = ??

 

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who didn't both with grimoire swapping. You might have seen my response in the other thread where I said I believe that the spells need some rebalancing. That's probably a difficult thing to do given how attractive tier 1 and 2 spells are to use given they become per-encounter. I'm a firm believer that skills shouldn't become obsolete by later skills, and from this game I've also learned the reverse is true, that earlier skills shouldn't make later skills irrelevant (unless that is a specific character build strategy that the player has chosen at the sacrifice of other benefits! ). I'd like to see all the skills developed in a way where they can all be useful, and on the whole the design team has done a great job with this. It's just that Tier 1 and 2 thing from level 10 that throws it all out of whack.

 

Also, of diversity, I'd say the Priest wins that hands down. The Priest is the only class that handles a decent number of damagers (single, AOE, DOT, and trap), CCs (smackdowns and Halt), PLUS foe debuffs PLUS heals PLUS protection, prevention, and cures.

Druid has a great variety of damage types and ranges, some heals, a handful of protections, another handful of slows, and that's about it.

Wizard has a wide array of damagers, a wide array of self buffs, some nice CCs, and that's about it. The Wizard could have 100 spells available, but as far as I'm concerned I pick out a few good ones to my style and repeatedly read about this "grimoire swapping" business on the load screens.

Edited August 22, 2015 by FacesOfMu

[FacesOfMu]

So recently my level 12 Wizard visited Cragholdt for some good arcane hijinks. A glorious reward was a spellbook containing next tier spells. How delighted was I to finally have the advantage of transcribing advanced spells to my grimoire, only to find that my wiz mofo can't cast them until level 13!

I felt cheated once again that having 19 intellect or more, and level 12 experience in the arcane (having bested some pretty reputable wizard foes, if you know what I mean), and I couldn't pew pew one single new spell from that book until a few more hours of gameplay had passed.

This grimoire thing was once again reduced to practical worth equal to, or lesser than, priest and druid spells. And the transcribing process has the gall to charge me pands for this displeasure? (not that we're short on pands at this level)

It's enough to make a mage want to throw the burdensome thing away and join the more useful spellcaster classes...

Edited September 4, 2015 by FacesOfMu

[Nobear]

So recently my level 12 Wizard visited Cragholdt for some good arcane hijinks. A glorious reward was a spellbook containing next tier spells. How delighted was I to finally have the advantage of transcribing advanced spells to my grimoire, only to find that my wiz mofo can't cast them until level 13!

I felt cheated once again that having 19 intellect or more, and level 12 experience in the arcane (having bested some pretty reputable wizard foes, if you know what I mean), and I couldn't pew pew one single new spell from that book until a few more hours of gameplay had passed.

This grimoire thing was once again reduced to practical worth equal to, or lesser than, priest and druid spells. And the transcribing process has the gall to charge me pands for this displeasure? (not that we're short on pands at this level)

It's enough to make a mage want to throw the burdensome thing away and join the more useful spellcaster classes...

 

All classes have the same limitation: their new abilities aren't usable until level 13. Intended, not a big deal, and nothing to feel disadvantaged about since it has nothing to do with your class.

[FacesOfMu]

All classes have the same limitation: their new abilities aren't usable until level 13. Intended, not a big deal, and nothing to feel disadvantaged about since it has nothing to do with your class.

Maybe my memory is fudged, but in other DnD, didn't Int rather than level determine spells per level per day? That way you could potentially cast any spell you transcribe so long as your int was high enough and the game devs had placed the spell in your path at that point.

On top of awesome gear, it also gave Wizards some nice extra incentive to explore into harder areas.

Edited September 6, 2015 by FacesOfMu

[KDubya]

 

All classes have the same limitation: their new abilities aren't usable until level 13. Intended, not a big deal, and nothing to feel disadvantaged about since it has nothing to do with your class.

Maybe my memory is fudged, but in other DnD, didn't Int rather than level determine spells per level per day? That way you could potentially cast any spell you transcribe so long as your int was high enough and the game devs had placed the spell in your path at that point.

On top of awesome gear, it also gave Wizards some nice extra incentive to explore into harder areas.

 

 

As far as I remember you always needed to have both the intelligence and the level to cast the spell. Plus in 2nd edition AD&D, Baldurs Gate I and II, you also needed to have found or bought a scroll before you could learn a spell. I remember the frustration in BG 1 using the SCS mod and not being able to find a breach spell until after I made it to the big city.

 

In later editions intelligence gave you bonus spell slots but you still needed the right level. A first level wizard with an 18 int got bonus spells up to level 3 or 4 but not at first level, that'd be game breaking.

[Ymarsakar]

If you really want to change or go back to the old mechanics, use IE Mod for Pillars. The new one for PX1 version is out.

 

IE=Infinity Engine like Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, BG1 to address a previous question.

 

In D n D, int gave bonus spells per level, and your level also increased your spell slots but not beyond a certain point per level.

 

 

 

<B>I remember the frustration in BG 1 using the SCS mod and not being able to find a breach spell until after I made it to the big city.</b>

 

I used to use AI scripts I custom wrote for myself to do potion spamming as well as correct auto attacks without freezing, in order to basically outlast some wizard protections. Their durations would go off, and then I would hammer them. That's probably the only way I had back then to bypass wizard protections without breach or other counters.

 

The grimoire needs to be switched when the wizard wants melee/defensive buffs vs cc/damage spells. A lot of the switches in the grimoire should come before a fight, but it's nice that they allow in combat switching as well, but it's not very optimum given the delays and looking through each grimoire using up a quick slot to figure out if it has the spell you want. Out of combat grimoire is nice, in combat needs a look at. For example, if they had an ability to use 2-3 per encounter spell levels to cast spell X, that would be nice. Or a way to metamagic boost stuff using spell levels or using higher spell levels to give lower spell slots back (tactically useful with some spells).

 

Josh Sawyer and others at Obsidian made the choice to tweak the attributes so that it is harder or impossible to make classes with dump stats. Like DnD wizards with high int and low whatever (cha). Then every good wizard is just a cookie cutter version of the other good wizard.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[lonelornfr]

I'm more concerned about finding 4 spells worth writing down in my grimoire for every level, than i am about having more room in said grimoire. And i have every mage spell available since i'm running a 2 mages party.

 

I'm not against better grimoires with more spells in it, but i dont think it's needed or even usefull.

[FacesOfMu]

I'm more concerned about finding 4 spells worth writing down in my grimoire for every level, than i am about having more room in said grimoire. And i have every mage spell available since i'm running a 2 mages party.

 

I'm not against better grimoires with more spells in it, but i dont think it's needed or even usefull.

Ya, I don't necessarily want to increase the number of spells, just give a rational system that incorporates more strategy while giving the Wizard more fun casts between inns.

 

Last night I retrained my mage for the first time to get a talent I desperately wanted just for a quest event. It was a bit painstaking to have to pick all the spells per 2 levels again, but I knew I was going to retrain back to normal afterwards so I didn't put any thought in to it.

The tragedy was that after retraining back to normal, my Wizard had forgotten ALL spells, including those I'd paid to transcribe from grimoires I sold long ago. I must have spent around 20,000 pands just re-scribing all that he currently had stored in his grimoire plus what I could get from the 6 or so grimoires I had on me.

 

Fail, grimoires, fail.

Edited September 7, 2015 by FacesOfMu

[lonelornfr]

Ya, I don't necessarily want to increase the number of spells, just give a rational system that incorporates more strategy while giving the Wizard more fun casts between inns.

 

Last night I retrained my mage for the first time to get a talent I desperately wanted just for a quest event. It was a bit painstaking to have to pick all the spells per 2 levels again, but I knew I was going to retrain back to normal afterwards so I didn't put any thought in to it.

The tragedy was that after retraining back to normal, my Wizard had forgotten ALL spells, including those I'd paid to transcribe from grimoires I sold long ago. I must have spent around 20,000 pands just re-scribing all that he currently had stored in his grimoire plus what I could get from the 6 or so grimoires I had on me.

 

Fail, grimoires, fail.

 

 

Yes, losing all you spells whenever you respec is a problem.

 

I would think Obsisian will change it, when they get the chance, so that you only forget the spells you have chosen when you leveled up. But given how busy they are at the moment trying to fix a fecalmatterload of bugs, it's probably not happening any time soon.

 

Edit : bypassing censorship.

Edited September 7, 2015 by lonelornfr

[Ymarsakar]

"The tragedy was that after retraining back to normal, my Wizard had forgotten ALL spells, including those I'd paid to transcribe from grimoires I sold long ago."

 

Giveplayermoney 30000

 

But the grimoires act as nice journals, for the amnesiac wizard to remember his past life.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[KDubya]

 

I'm more concerned about finding 4 spells worth writing down in my grimoire for every level, than i am about having more room in said grimoire. And i have every mage spell available since i'm running a 2 mages party.

 

I'm not against better grimoires with more spells in it, but i dont think it's needed or even usefull.

Ya, I don't necessarily want to increase the number of spells, just give a rational system that incorporates more strategy while giving the Wizard more fun casts between inns.

 

Last night I retrained my mage for the first time to get a talent I desperately wanted just for a quest event. It was a bit painstaking to have to pick all the spells per 2 levels again, but I knew I was going to retrain back to normal afterwards so I didn't put any thought in to it.

The tragedy was that after retraining back to normal, my Wizard had forgotten ALL spells, including those I'd paid to transcribe from grimoires I sold long ago. I must have spent around 20,000 pands just re-scribing all that he currently had stored in his grimoire plus what I could get from the 6 or so grimoires I had on me.

 

Fail, grimoires, fail.

 

 

 

You were trying to game the system by taking a re-spec for a talent to use on only one quest so ......  

[FacesOfMu]

You were trying to game the system by taking a re-spec for a talent to use on only one quest so ......  

 

 

Heh! Yes, I was a bit. Though what of the other Wizards respeccing for respec's sake?

 

I have around 120,000 pands at the mo, so I'm not worried about the money loss personally, just the very huge cost for Wizards.