The loss of Vancian casting?!

[Lamppost in Winter]

Only long term resource now (other than consumables of course) is if your characters are knocked out and become wounded.

 

They're still experimenting with the system, so we may well just see Health/Endurance again.

[blotter]

Spell components might be an interesting way in which to introduce the possibility for more research management to formerly Vancian casters. Not necessarily in the sense of requiring specific items to cast spells, but perhaps allowing the expenditure of sufficiently rare and valuable items to augment various spell types.

[Blades of Vanatar]

PoE was the promoted as the heir apparent to the I.E. games where we had vancian casters which goes back to the AD&D games of old. It is mainly why I donated to its kickstarter. Where I don't expect a clone of the IE games I do expect something somewhat similar since vancian casting IMO was the best part of the IE style games in the first place. Taking it away moves PoE to another spectrum. That sucks for me.... and it's why I am on the fence of backing part 2.

[Gromnir]

spell components?  we just got rid of vancian and you want spell components?

 

why won't theses 2e d&d anachronisms stay dead.  worse than nazi zombies.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-KhNEOe70M

 

HA! Good Fun!

[blotter]

spell components?  we just got rid of vancian and you want spell components?

 

Like I said, spell components of the optional variety. Things that might bolster magic if used, but would most likely have competing applications as potion or crafting ingredients.

 

That's clearly different from how they're used in D&D, so the association and condemnation on its basis doesn't hold.

Edited February 10, 2017 by blotter

[Ganrich]

 

spell components? we just got rid of vancian and you want spell components?

Like I said, spell components of the optional variety. Things that might bolster magic if used, but would most likely have competing applications as potion or crafting ingredients.

 

That's clearly different from how they're used in D&D, so the association and condemnation on its basis doesn't hold.

Wouldn't that just be the Empower system with inventory management. I played Ultima Online for 4-5 years (and other games that have used similar systems) and have no issue with components/reagents, but this idea is just like Empower. The one differences are a bunch of stuff in your inventory vs camping supplies, and reagents/components would be Spell specific vs a Empower being a catch all for every active ability for every class.

 

As an aside, Josh specifically mentioned Empower being useable with every "Active Ability" (because they scale with level. What about the class(es) that are mostly passive like the Chanter? Will Phrases not work with Empower? If not then my thread on them needing a redesign just got another reason to exist.

 

Edit: Perhaps Empower for Chanters will just let the Chanter cast an Invocation by reducing Chant requirements by 3. That way they can cast level 1 Invocations at the start of combat, or if they have the Chants built up it then boosts damage. I don't know.

Edited February 10, 2017 by Ganrich

[Gromnir]

am not certain why bolstering is significant. is an arbitrary limit which will necessarily affect the completionist different than the critical path player.  critical path player can still cast a fireball, but the completionist who will likely have far more o' your components will be the guy able to fire off super nova fireballs as if they were being unloaded from an automatic weapon?  

 

in a single-player campaign, with a live dm, those spell component scavenger hunts can be made integral, fluid and fun.  

 

kill zombies.  don't try and make friends with 'em.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[blotter]

 

 

Wouldn't that just be the Empower system with inventory management.

 

It'd be more limited in terms of what it can affect and most likely less dramatic in the improvements it offers, but yeah. At least the way I considered it, anyway. Other possibilities could include things like adding minor inspirations or afflictions to spell effects, having environmental effects like producing areas of light, darkness, or fog, or what have you. 

 

 

but the completionist who will likely have far more o' your components will be the guy able to fire off super nova fireballs as if they were being unloaded from an automatic weapon?

 

That would depend on the implementation of the feature itself and the variety of alternative uses for the components in question. The use of components in this fashion could easily have built-in limitations in regards to its frequency during encounters, there could be added risks associated with the disruption of spells cost this way (e.g., the caster suffering burn damage from a failed fireball as they lose control of the energy they were channeling from the component), it could potentially increase casting time, etc. My initial thought was simply that the range of competing applications could be enough to discourage excessive use of components without making the whole thing too convoluted, but maybe.

 

As for whether the difference is between what I suggested and what you condemned is significant, I suppose it is only if it's important that criticisms be relevant to the ideas they're directed towards. This could very well be a bad idea and I'm certainly not demanding that you or anyone else like it, but it's not a callback to 2e spellcasting like you described.

[Gromnir]

This could very well be a bad idea and I'm certainly not demanding that you or anyone else like it, but it's not a callback to 2e spellcasting like you described

sure it is.  am honest not seeing the disconnect.  you create an arbitrary limit on spell casting: a resource o' as yet undefined scarcity.  the resource is needed to cast an augmented spell.  distinguish 'tween augmented and standard is illusory.  if you wanna cast an augmented fireball, you need a wuzzle, or whatever.  is somehow essential different 'cause there is no limit on casting the base spell?  why?  

 

is an anachronism. stuff salt in its mouth and sew it shut.  cut off its head.  burn it.  whatever.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 10, 2017 by Gromnir

[blotter]

 

 

is somehow essential different 'cause there is no limit on casting the base spell?

 

Yes, I'd say that the difference between not being able to cast a spell at all without a resource and not being able to cast a particular augmented form of a spell is an essential one. The former restricts access to the basic features of a class, while the latter only limits a particular casting option that already has a built-in, component-free, alternative in the form of Empowerment.

[Gromnir]

 

is somehow essential different 'cause there is no limit on casting the base spell?

 

Yes, I'd say that the difference between not being able to cast a spell at all without a resource and not being able to cast a particular augmented form of a spell is an essential one. The former restricts access to the basic features of a class, while the latter only limits a particular casting option that already has a built-in, component-free, alternative in the form of Empowerment.

 

am not seeing why you think this makes better. you would effective be buying uses of empower with a resource. empower is a basic feature.  

 

*shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[blotter]

 

am not seeing why you think this makes better. you would effective be buying uses of empower with a resource. empower is a basic feature.

 

If the use of spell components were identical to empower, you might have a point. Then again, describing something as an alternative isn't the same as stating that there is perfect equivalence between them. I've already discussed some ideas as to how the two features might be differentiated from one another.

 

Still, I'm glad to see some change of direction in discussion toward the flaws of the idea itself rather than another outcry of 2e regression. Maybe that's a kind of progress.

[Gromnir]

 

Still, I'm glad to see some change of direction in discussion toward the flaws of the idea itself rather than another outcry of 2e regression. Maybe that's a kind of progress.

kinda missing the point if you see progress.  is an anachronistic to reinject an early edition d&d anachronism into poe-- a game which is finally shedding itself o' such baggage. we already got food and drugs which can increase spell effectiveness.  add bloat via anachronism.  am not seeing an upside.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[blotter]

I'm not seeing an actual argument, or point for that matter (beyond maybe "nuh-uh"), in this particular turn of the wheel, but that does make it stand out as a good point to hop off.

[Perzyn]

I personally am happy with that. Maybe it is me not being hardcore enough to appreiate resource menagement aspect, but the "per rest system" is unfun. It just causes me to develop hoarder mentality with spells and abilities. "No, I won't use any of those spells now, cause I might need them later." Especially in the early game it either caused me to agonize over using that Slicken or Armor of Faith or to make an encounter more difficult than it had to be, cause I adamantly refused to use the spell.

So going into per encounter might need some rebalancing and finding challenge elsewhere, but it is a welcome change from the point of view of develpoing a neurosis.

[Eurhetemec]

 

 

 

The change makes affliction immunity a lot less important because you now have tools to remove them. It wouldn't even be surprised me if the Prayer Against X now granted inspiration instead of immunity too.

 

 

I wouldn't be surprised as well but i'd be disappointed.

 

The big problem of affliction removal is that they can be reapplied 0.5s later equally easy.

 

Got poisoned by a spider? No problem, you drink an antidote and you're fine! Half a second later spider hits and poisons you again. You've just wasted your round and and antidote, congratulations.

 

Liberating Exhortation sounded great but didn't work as well because it wasn't suspending afflictions gained after it was cast.

 

Enemies with afflictions on hit could ruin this mechanic, i hope Obsidian will not let that happen.

 

 

These are legitimate concerns, but even if they haven't thought of them - and I think they will have - they should be obvious in playtesting.

 

I will be very surprised if they take away immunity spells but keep enemies who spam-apply conditions. I suspect they'll actually keep both.

[Infinitron]

 

Only long term resource now (other than consumables of course) is if your characters are knocked out and become wounded.

Empower?

 

 

And that.

[demeisen]

 

 

Only long term resource now (other than consumables of course) is if your characters are knocked out and become wounded.

Empower?

 

 

And that.

 

 

I'd have to see how it plays, but on the surface it does sound like a significant watering-down of the idea of long term resource management.

 

I even understand why they'd do that.  Gaming tastes have changed over the decades, and while there are some who still want that experience, we're few.

 

The more things like the stamina/health split (a nice idea, IMHO) or per-rest abilities are turned into per-encounter, the less I feel like my group is undertaking some significant feat of exploration into a dangerous place.  There's no sense of journey, if you are almost as fresh at the end as the beginning, provided you survived each individual fight.

 

This is probably my biggest point of fear for PoE2.  It's critically important for some of us, because it's hard to inflict it on yourself if the game mechanic isn't there.  In PoE1 I could avoid using most of the camping supplies scattered around, and thus pay the stamina/per-rest ability cost.  If those things regen anyway even if I don't use camps, there isn't much to be done.  It starts to feel too Diablo-esque.

 

I suppose it depends on how this is balanced in the end.  If everything except empowered abilities are significantly weak, then it might be tolerable (if weird and a bit hard to explain in the game world).  If empower is only a modest increase, I don't think it'll go nearly far enough.

[Archaven]

 

 

 

 

The change makes affliction immunity a lot less important because you now have tools to remove them. It wouldn't even be surprised me if the Prayer Against X now granted inspiration instead of immunity too.

 

 

I wouldn't be surprised as well but i'd be disappointed.

 

The big problem of affliction removal is that they can be reapplied 0.5s later equally easy.

 

Got poisoned by a spider? No problem, you drink an antidote and you're fine! Half a second later spider hits and poisons you again. You've just wasted your round and and antidote, congratulations.

 

Liberating Exhortation sounded great but didn't work as well because it wasn't suspending afflictions gained after it was cast.

 

Enemies with afflictions on hit could ruin this mechanic, i hope Obsidian will not let that happen.

 

 

These are legitimate concerns, but even if they haven't thought of them - and I think they will have - they should be obvious in playtesting.

 

I will be very surprised if they take away immunity spells but keep enemies who spam-apply conditions. I suspect they'll actually keep both.

 

 

+1. Completely agree. One may think devs wouldn't be oversight. But they do. This kind of happen to be in Original Sin IINM. I've got poisoned, use antidote and then the poisoned get re-applied the next round. This become an annoyance simply that you must get poisoned, cursed, debuffs and tough your way in to complete the battle before you can remove those affliction. In other words, it's an artificial way to up the difficulty so that game becomes harder for your characters to get handicapped intentionally?

[Guest 4ward]

@demeisen, what you said. Resource management but also casting outside combat are choices taken away. During my last playthrough of SoA i ran into a vampire in bodhi's lair who could cast and she immediately stunned half of my party with the way saving throws worked in that game as i was unprepared since i forgot about her. Still continued with the battle and won in the end. It's those nuances like how well you're prepared that aren't there anymore. Josh Sawyer mentioned here during PoE's beta that sequencer spells would be considered for a sequel, perhaps protection spells like in SoA for mages are considered to make them more dangerous. I don't hold my breath though, i'm not sure that beyond art/sketches in those old games there's actually anything that designers nowaydays value. Just happy that IE games were even made.

[Mygaffer]

Josh Sawyer recently explained what the current combat system looks like:

 

Currently, everything is either per encounter or based on a resource that builds up (i.e. resources like Focus, Phrases, or Wounds).

 

The per rest resource is Empower. Every character has a certain number of Empowers per rest. When you click Empower, your active abilities will highlight, allowing you to click on one to boost its effect. The effect may be more projectiles, a longer duration, more damage/healing, etc. A wizard could empower a Minoletta's Minor Missiles, adding missiles. A fighter could empower Vigorous Defense, increasing the bonuses.

 

I believe this will be a significant step back in terms of strategic resource management. Even if spells are weaker, making Empowerment a significant boost, or very limited per-encounter uses, I don't think this is enough. You'd still have the problem of the original game in which you'd use the same (per-encounter) spells too often, and even if they are very limited in (per-encounter) uses, it would only create a priority list.

 

I'd love for Josh Sawyer to explain his reasoning in detail and give some example scenarios. That said, I think eliminating having to make a conscious decision of saving spell uses for following encounters would be a huge loss.

I think this actually solves lots of issues with per rest stuff, which I frankly hated. You either ended up with people like me, who never used the per rest because I was always saving it for "when I needed it" yet on anything short of PotD I rarely did. So I literally wasn't using spells for like 90% of encounters until I started forcing myself to just because otherwise I never would.

 

It also really unbalances the combat. I can either push through with my two camping supplies through a dungeon, or I can leave after every encounter, go to an inn and rest, and then go back to the dungeon and have fresh per rest for every encounter. That's literally the scope. Super abusable.

 

Also spells won't be weaker, they'll be stronger, but take longer to cast and be able to be interrupted, making the cast just not go off at all. To compensate you'll be able to re-target them before you actually cast.

 

These are GREAT design changes that honestly needed to happen. I love Pillars of Eternity, I really do, but there are some major design flaws that hopefully Deadfire will address.

 

I mean especially after the White March stuff, by the time I'm in Act III on hard I'm steam rolling encounters to easily I had to start a PotD playthrough b/c frankly I got bored with the really easy encounters.

 

I think people get used to one way and any change automatically feels scary. I've been super enthusiastic about pretty much all the changes announced, it shows they really know the areas that the first game fell short in and that they want to address those. I think Deadfire is going to end up being amazing.

 

EDIT: Oh not to mention that with per rest your ability change up strategy, especially with spell casters, goes a little out of the window. Oh, you want use a fire spell in this situation? Sorry, you've used up all your casts for the levels for which you have fire spells. It just reduces player choice and makes it hard to know just what a given player will have entering any encounter. Did they just rest before this encounter? Are they completely out of per rest spells/abilities going into this encounter? The per rest system just overall detracted from the game, especially for the caster classes.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Mygaffer

[Liagod]

Hearing that the crowdfunding campaign of PoE2 had begun made me extremely excited.  I went to the Fig page and signed up my pledge, eagerly awaiting the new stretch goals.

 

Then a few days afterwards I read in the comment section that the spell casting will be implemented with a new empowerment feature. My first reaction to it was denial. Reading this forum has brought me out of that, but drained away all the giddiness I felt towards PoE2.

 

I always play a wizard when I play a rpg, and I have never had more fun playing a spellcaster than I did in the IE games. In my opinion the right step is moving closer to a vancian system with more limitations. Not infinite magic missiles, so that the wizard can be used as a backup fighter.

 

Since some of the inspiration for the empowerment system seems to be coming from Tyranny let's take it as an example. For most part of the combat I can let the AI control all of my characters and set it to use all abilities. The computer will do almost just as good a job at removing the trash mob as I would. I don’t have to care about which abilities that are used since I have an infinite use of them. Now the argument against this could be that the empowerment/mana only replenishes at rest, but why rest if all I'm getting is a few more missiles or larger area of effect. I never had much problem with getting rid of trash mobs (not even in PotD) in the first place and all this feature does is make your characters more capable of handling such mobs. If the choice was mine there would be almost no trash mobs, they make no sense character wise anyway. Trash mobs are boring and exist solely for the purpose of that the player can get more bang for his buck while decreasing the role playing aspects of the game. This is one of the reasons I'm strongly against removing the Vancian spellcasting system.

 

If rest spamming is a problem, it can be solved in numerous ways, some excellent suggestions have already been mentioned above. This of course discourages casual gamers and those new to the genre, but it could be solved by for example adding a difficulty setting where every character has unlimited access to his special abilities.

 

This post is getting to long, and even though there are other aspects of spellcasting I would like to discuss, I'm ending it here for now. Having been informed of the new spellcasting system I have reduced my pledge to just the digital version of the game from a collectors edition.

 

P.S.: Sleeping in a dungeon is cheating, and if I was your DM none of the sleeping beauties would wake up from their magical dreams. Going back to an inn for sleep while exploring a cave would result in that cave being evacuated by the time you come back.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Liagod

[tinysalamander]

P.S.: Sleeping in a dungeon is cheating, and if I was your DM none of the sleeping beauties would wake up from their magical dreams. Going back to an inn for sleep while exploring a cave would result in that cave being evacuated by the time you come back.

 

I’ve got a fine cave evacuation business idea just now

[Pel]

The removal of Vancian casting, while beneficial for helping smooth out balancing and pacing issues, does also unfortunately remove a lot of the great immersive excitement and power one feels while playing a Wizard (or other Vancian-magic caster). Obsidian already acknowledged that most people really didn't like how weak fireballs felt in Pillars 1 compared to the Infinity Engine games, and now I'm assuming that virtually all spells will be like this while using them without the contrived "Power-Up!" empower mechanic. As someone whose favorite class has always been Wizard, I am greatly saddened by this choice.

 

I just hope Obsidian veritably remembers that this is a single player game before its too late, ergo balancing should not be their number 1 priority - a cool, fun, organic, nostalgia-inducing world should be ahead of balancing imo.

 

Edit: And I apologize in advance if someone already mentioned the same stuff because I haven't had time to read all 13 pages of this thread yet, but what about making camping supplies cost A LOT more on higher difficulties instead of limiting the max number of possessable supplies as a solution to rest spamming? I truly believe this would greatly reduce the amount of annoyance us Hard/PotD players faced when having to sporadically traverse back to an inn through multiple loading screens to re-up on our measly 2-max supply limit while still keeping the game challenging. Having extremely expensive supplies on the harder/hardest difficulties will give us more choice in the form of economic decisions and breathe more organic life into the game, imo, while still enabling us to keep Vancian casting. But I do know how headstrong the leads of Obsidian are when it comes to changing these seemingly already set-in-stone mechanics, so sadly my plea (and the pleas of other similarly minded Infinity Engine fanboy/girl gamers) seems like a pipe dream at this point.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[Infinitron]

Since some of the inspiration for the empowerment system seems to be coming from Tyranny let's take it as an example. For most part of the combat I can let the AI control all of my characters and set it to use all abilities. The computer will do almost just as good a job at removing the trash mob as I would. I don’t have to care about which abilities that are used since I have an infinite use of them. Now the argument against this could be that the empowerment/mana only replenishes at rest, but why rest if all I'm getting is a few more missiles or larger area of effect. I never had much problem with getting rid of trash mobs (not even in PotD) in the first place and all this feature does is make your characters more capable of handling such mobs. If the choice was mine there would be almost no trash mobs, they make no sense character wise anyway. Trash mobs are boring and exist solely for the purpose of that the player can get more bang for his buck while decreasing the role playing aspects of the game. This is one of the reasons I'm strongly against removing the Vancian spellcasting system.

 

 

Don't you see that you're arguing against yourself here? Removing trash mobs makes Vancian mechanics less necessary. You're not going to run out of spells when there's no gauntlet of battles to go through to get to the boss, so you might as well have a full set every time.