Retraining Wizards

[Springwight]

Retraining a wizard causes him to lose all his spells known, including spells learned other spell books. It also clears all the spells in your spell book for some reason.

 

This essentially means that to retrain your Wizard, you have to get a bunch of other spell books, write down all your spells into those books, and after retraining relearn them all, paying the potentially very high cost over again.

 

My only solution to this issue is giving you an option to retrain the Wizard without touching his spells, but I feel there needs to be some kind of solution. It's rather unfair that Wizards are handicapped in this way.

[Katarack21]

I haven't retrained Aloth because I was worried this might be a thing.

[norfar]

heh i was just thinking abou this issue with wizads book and wanted to test what they did and voila now i know , yeah they will have to fix this somehow cuz this is not fair, on the other hand if wizads book is not cleared this could be used as an exploit to get all spells cheeply

[Perturabo]

Does it surprise you though? Wizards are screwed from every angle - they need to pay for new spells, they are limited by grimoire capacity, they are saddled with grimoire cooldown... It's almost as if the designers have something against the class.

 

Then again, didn't Sawyer once say outright that he thought that wizards were too powerful and flexible in other games and that his mission would be to nerf them?

[Springwight]

Does it surprise you though? Wizards are screwed from every angle - they need to pay for new spells, they are limited by grimoire capacity, they are saddled with grimoire cooldown... It's almost as if the designers have something against the class.

 

Then again, didn't Sawyer once say outright that he thought that wizards were too powerful and flexible in other games and that his mission would be to nerf them?

They still have some of the best spells in the game (though not more than other casters) and are generally pretty powerful. I really think this was an oversight or perhaps something they meant to address later, due to practical considerations, rather than part of a grand conspiracy to demean Wizards everywhere.

 

Also, if he said that, he was right. In some other games, Wizards pretty much dominate everything.

[Perturabo]

Well we aren't talking about "some other games", are we now? We're talking about PoE and the fact that of all spellcasting classes, Wizards are saddled with the most hurdles, obstacles and inconveniences IN POE. Offensively, druids offer nearly as much in terms of direct damage spells and perhaps more when you factor in summons. Ditto for ciphers who have a narrower repertoire, but are more competent in regular combat and aren't constrained by per-rest spells (which also makes their crowd control spells better than wizards'). Priests bring a truckload of buffs that are quick to cast and provide better bonuses. The only area where wizards excel is debuffing, which is a "nice to have" rather than a "must have" in a competently put together party. But all other spellcaster classes can also debuff to an "OK" degree.

 

So you'll excuse me if I don't see why wizards, while not being a standout in any particular fashion, warranted extra limitations. Other than, that is, Sawyer's "author bias". And no, this doesn't amount to "a grand conspiracy to demean wizards everywhere" (so in the future, kindly don't put your words into my mouth), just a biased design decision with which I happen to strongly disagree.

[jsaving]

I can understand possibly erasing the spells you select at level-up, but also wiping the ones you earn and pay for over the course of the game through adventuring?  That makes about as much sense as erasing the armor a priest has earned/bought or the weapons a fighter has earned/bought. 

 

If the engine doesn't track which specific spells you select at level-up, it would probably make the most sense to just leave the spellbook untouched (and not let wizards select any new spells while respeccing).  Alternatively, the engine would certainly know how *many* spells you selected over the course of your lifetime when you leveled up, so perhaps that number of spells could be erased from your book when the respec begins (with the player of course having the option to reselect them as he levels back up).  That would be cumbersome but it at least would diminish the punitive aspect of respeccing a wizard.

Edited August 26, 2015 by jsaving

[hk79v1]

Could it possibly be avoided by removing the Grimoire from their equipment slot before respecc'ing them?

[Elric Galad]

Wizard are the best crowd controllers, except maybe in low level trash encounters.

And crowd control is extremely powerful in this game. Saying it is "nice to have" is weird.

 

Come one...

Confusion,

Call to slumber,

Slicken,

Gaze of the adragan..

They can chain cast all of these and stop all ennemies from acting meanwhile cipher is reloading his blunderbuss...

 

And they even have other uses.

 

Nothing is more powerful than a wizard in this game. And only priest may be harder to replace.

 

They are just no more walking gods like in BG.

[Katarack21]

They are just no more walking gods like in BG.

I have binders full of dead level 1 wizards and sorcerers, in BG and in tabletop.

 

I once had a level 1 Sorcerer character in a tabletop game get killed by a squirrel. True story.

[Elric Galad]

Fighters goes from Arya Stark to Conan.

 

Wizards goes from squirrels to walking gods.

[Katarack21]

Bad example--Conan *lives* to bitch out walking gods. :-P

[Killyox]

on a side note there is an easy way to learn all spells. Recruiting mage mercs giving each of them diff spells on lvl up and then copying. Costs some gold but it's still pretty good

[Killyox]

 

They are just no more walking gods like in BG.

I have binders full of dead level 1 wizards and sorcerers, in BG and in tabletop.

 

I once had a level 1 Sorcerer character in a tabletop game get killed by a squirrel. True story.

 

You had a terrible GM then.