The loss of Vancian casting?!

[Fenixp]

Also, the more that recharges between fights, the more devalued "trash fights" are.

Wait, are you saying that getting rid of per rest resources might get us rid of trash fights?

 

Well... Losing per rest might not be so bad after all :-P

[illathid]

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 breath 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.

 

Actually I expect all spells to feel more powerful in PoE2 than they did in PoE1. Spells will increase in power as you level up unlike in PoE. In addition spells are generally going to have longer cast times that can be interrupted causing you to lose the spell and thus will be more powerful to compensate.

 

And for the record, I'm an IE fanboy and I can't wait to dance of the grave of vancian casting.

[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 breath 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.

 

Actually I expect all spells to feel more powerful in PoE2 than they did in PoE1. Spells will increase in power as you level up unlike in PoE. In addition spells are generally going to have longer cast times that can be interrupted causing you to lose the spell and thus will be more powerful to compensate.

 

And for the record, I'm an IE fanboy and I can't wait to dance of the grave of vancian casting.

 

Let's hope so. They still have to make the decision(s) to balance around the empower mechanic as to either make empowered fireballs, etc, 1-shot most trash mobs or 2/3- shot while leaving the non-empowered fireballs feeling weak sauce. It's a tough decision that I don't even know how to truly answer because I personally want an insanely challenging/unforgiving PotD game while still having fun and feeling power-trip-inducing power-spikes.

[Pel]

VC was always an illusion/self imposed challenge in IE games and in PoE. Knights of the Chalice did it, some old rpgs did it, rogues like Darkest Dungeon or even FTL did resources right, Dark Souls did something quite similar to VC - note all these games either had respawning monsters/forced you to finish content without resting.

 

Actually, Mask of Betrayer did similar stuff, but let's face it - Obsidian will never, ever repeat that, because backlash from community would be hysterical. People are too afraid of strongarm design like that and missing content because they weren't good/quick enough.

 

The most logical thing for Obsidian would be to just make their own system with difficulty based around single encounter instead of a big dungeon.

 

They could expand on cipher-like magic, for example give priests Faith points that would allow extra/stronger casts and would increase if priest behaves accordingly to his god and other possible Ars Magica-inspired stuff. Anything actually interesting and unique and inspired by pnp games would be welcome instead of boring and pretentious not-D&D system PoE had.

 

For actual D&D to happen you'll have to simulate adventure, where you go out of the "safe space" of city/rest places into "adventure" and it takes lots of time and supplies and then party has to survive in the "adventure" microcosm. Whole game design would have to be changed from one people are used to (a checklist of things to do). That or every act of the game only giving you a set number of days to finish it/MoTB curse etc.

 

One other thing I want to mention is casting times. They were not used in PoE much, but if some per-encounter spells would be instant while others would require multiple rounds of casting, you could get your powerful spells in a non-VC system. Not to mention Interrupt value would finally become useful. It's a real time game so why not actually use the friggin time as a resource?

Agreed. As "annoying" as being ambushed by monsters while travelling or resting in the WILDerness was, it made the worlds feel SO much more alive and dangerous, thus making our minds become much more engaged and thus immersed in the world.

[Pel]

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol...

 

Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[Pel]

 

A different approach could consist of this:

- add random encounters, no XP from combat is a perfect setup for this

- add nighttime ambushes with chance of happening increasing with number of rests in given dungeon, it could decrease over time

- add extra monsters when player enters dungeon again, after a trip to a village for those oh so important inn resting bonuses

 

Because there wasn’t enough trash encounters in PoE1…

 

Am I the only one who enjoys killing trash mobs if the gameplay mechanics are designed in a fun way? The way most posters and Obsidian devs talk about trash mobs, you'd think the best option would be to just remove them altogether because of how "unfun" they apparently are to most people. Yet this seems like a bandaid fix to the true, more glaring issue, "Is combat itself even fun?". Personally, I don't find throwing in one unkillable super-tank into the fray who hits like a kitten while I cast mostly the same spells and use the same tactics over and over for each encounter incredibly fun.

 

The more I think about it, the more I remember that I had much more fun in the old IE games where there was a risk involved (ambushed while sleeping) in resting to regain my powerful spells, rather than soundly sleeping the night away and spamming the same per encounter abilities/spells over and over - with Pillars 1 it feels a bit like I'm playing an action RPG in that the short-term gameplay is, indeed, more fun and less annoying/frustrating, but the long-term fun factor suffers due to repetitiveness, which is bound to occur in these CRPGs which are played for 50+ hours. And yes, it's not like there was an insane difference between the repetitiveness of Pillars and the Infinity Engine games, but there were undoubtedly more immersively realistic RPG elements which are missing from the former which reduce its overall, long-term "believable world" gestalt.

 

And to the people saying "But then save-scumming and constant reloading ruins the experience!". Then don''t use it. That's the same response to the questions that stem from lack of willpower like "But what if the players just download a cheat software and bump their strength to 100?" Hopefully most are smart enough to realize that they will be tarnishing their own experience if they cheat in these varying matters - let's hope Obsidian gives us the benefit of the doubt that most of the CRPG fanbase have a good enough attention span & willpower and aren't afraid to see the game over screen once in awhile in order for them to tailor their game to its most immersive, engaging, thought-provoking, and fun level (though in this Information Age in which so many forms of media are successfully competing for people's attention, their profits may suffer too much if too many players put down this relatively frustrating "old-school" game in 2018.)

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[illathid]

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol...

 

Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

 

Gromnir isn't a troll, he's a half-orc. Also, it's bad form to post multiple times in the same thread without intervening posts.

 

 

Let's hope so. They still have to make the decision(s) to balance around the empower mechanic as to either make empowered fireballs, etc, 1-shot most trash mobs or 2/3- shot while leaving the non-empowered fireballs feeling weak sauce. It's a tough decision that I don't even know how to truly answer because I personally want an insanely challenging/unforgiving PotD game while still having fun and feeling power-trip-inducing power-spikes.

 

Well it depends on how they balance it. Your scenario is a false dichotomy as there's no inherent reason why empowered and empowered spells can't both be satisfying.

Edited February 21, 2017 by illathid

[Pel]

 

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol...

 

Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

 

Gromnir isn't a troll, he's a half-orc. Also, it's bad form to post multiple times in the same thread without intervening posts.

 

 

Let's hope so. They still have to make the decision(s) to balance around the empower mechanic as to either make empowered fireballs, etc, 1-shot most trash mobs or 2/3- shot while leaving the non-empowered fireballs feeling weak sauce. It's a tough decision that I don't even know how to truly answer because I personally want an insanely challenging/unforgiving PotD game while still having fun and feeling power-trip-inducing power-spikes.

 

Well it depends on how they balance it. Your scenario is a false dichotomy as there's no inherent reason why empowered and empowered spells can't both be satisfying.

 

I can see many inherent reasons, but they all depend on the person who is playing and are all subjective, as is the classification of something being "satisfying" or not. But going by the "almost everything is subjective" law won't get us very far, which is why it's nice for people to voice their concerns and desires in text, poll, or wallet-purchasing-power form so the devs can get more insight into what the players want and what they think they want but actually have misleading or misinformed (note: not wrong, just coming from a place where they only state the cons and leave the plentiful pros in the dark) opinions about (for example: whining and being frustrated at being ambushed while resting and "having" to save scum in a supposedly dangerous world).

 

Edit: Also, apologies for posting multiple times. I didn't think I had to wait an ambiguous amount of time 'til posting, seeing as my posts were responding to different people and mostly addressing different things.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[illathid]

I can see many inherent reasons, but they all depend on the person who is playing and are all subjective, as is the classification of something being "satisfying" or not.

 

Edit: Also, apologies for posting multiple times. I didn't think I had to wait an ambiguous amount of time 'til posting, seeing as my posts were responding to different people and mostly addressing different things.

 

Well considering we know next to nothing about how this new system works I have my doubts about any "inherent" reasons you can see. Could Josh's new system fail? Of course. But without having more information and potentially seeing it in practice I think it'll be hard to say. The fact that this system could fail shouldn't stop us from trying to come up with something better than the vancian shibboleth.

 

Regarding the multiples post, I don't believe it's against the rules (on this forum at least). However if responding to multiple posts it's generally considered good etiquette to use the "Edit" and/or the "multiquote" function to condense everything into one post rather that clogging up the thread. Just trying to be helpful.

Edited February 21, 2017 by illathid

[Koth]

Gromnir

 

Is Gromnir the resident troll? Seems a bit annoying for him to roleplay while endeavoring to soundly debate people lol...

 

Edit: I'm all for fun and games btw, but there's a time and place for everything and it seems a bit selfish to get his in this convo derailing way. It's important to keep in mind that someone "roleplaying" as a bully is still being a bully, just as someone roleplaying a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon is still being a fallacy-spouting curmudgeon in a place where fans of Obsidian are genuinely (to varyingly, obviously subjective degrees) trying to make the game they like/love the best it can be via discussion.

I actually rather like Gromnir's posts. Even though I have no idea what he's saying 90% of the time due to the inconsistencies with his own contrived role playing dialect. I'm sure that he's a very intelligent person, and that the content of his posts are very deep and meaningful, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to de-crypt them. Good for a laugh though. Ha! Good Fun!... Just kidding Grom, we luv ya!

Edited February 21, 2017 by Koth

[Pel]

 

I can see many inherent reasons, but they all depend on the person who is playing and are all subjective, as is the classification of something being "satisfying" or not.

 

Edit: Also, apologies for posting multiple times. I didn't think I had to wait an ambiguous amount of time 'til posting, seeing as my posts were responding to different people and mostly addressing different things.

 

Well considering we know next to nothing about how this new system works I have my doubts about any "inherent" reasons you can see. Could Josh's new system fail? Of course. But without having more information and potentially seeing it in practice I think it'll be hard to say. The fact that this system could fail shouldn't stop us from trying to come up with something better than the vancian shibboleth.

 

Regarding the multiples post, I don't believe it's against the rules (on this forum at least). However if responding to multiple posts it's generally considered good etiquette to use the "Edit" and/or the "multiquote" function to condense everything into one post rather that clogging up the thread. Just trying to be helpful.

 

Sorry, I don't mean to imply that it will fail in any way, just that it may not be optimal or ideal, mostly meaning that I hope muh Wizards feel like they are slinging some deadly magic and not tickling enemies into submission with lackluster spells over and over most fights.

 

Edit: And with the lengthy cast-times yet powerful spells change, I will most likely have at least some of what I desire - I just hope the unempowered spells which are left short-cast or medium-cast aren't too unsatisfying so that I can have a wide arsenal of fun, satisfyingly powerful spells to choose from. But I definitely see that these short/medium-cast spells will need to be balanced to be weaker if Vailian magic is indeed cut from the game and the devs are firmly set on making each class not too much more relatively powerful or less powerful than the next at every level. Like I briefly implied before, the devs have a choice to make between "overbalancing" a single-player crpg which will make players of every class happy yet will leave the world feeling relatively tepid and contrived, or constructing a nostalgia-boner-inducing game which has life-breathing, exciting, organic imbalances and incredibly OP/broken spells, builds, and items - and it appears that the leads have mostly chosen the former, which my "hardcore tactical" side says is awesome, but my "wants to be deeply immersed in a believable, engrossing fantasy rpg" side says is not ideal.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Pel

[JerekKruger]

... contrived "Power-Up!" empower mechanic...

 

All magic systems are contrived...

[JerekKruger]

Agreed. As "annoying" as being ambushed by monsters while travelling or resting in the WILDerness was, it made the worlds feel SO much more alive and dangerous, thus making our minds become much more engaged and thus immersed in the world.

 

It might have done so for you, but it made me hit reload and, given how many mods for BG2 included a "get rid of enemies on rest2 feature, I think I am far from alone.

[KDubya]

I think that PoE was a sort of 'proof of concept' experiment. - Is there a market for an old school isometric party based fantasy game? The answer is definitely yes. The problem inherited from the experiment was that PoE had to be crowd funded and thus the crowd had a lot of input as to how the game would be made. This led to including Vancian casters and all the headaches that follow.

 

The new resource classes such as Cipher, Monk and Chanter were great. They were fresh and fun and could be easily tuned to allow for challenge throughout the game. Vancian casters, on the other hand, brought with them the same issues of resting abuse and 'god mode Gandolph'.

 

I am looking forward to Josh's and Obsidian's revamp and elimination of Vancian casters. The empowerment resource sounds interesting but we will have to see how it all plays out.

[Ninjamestari]

...

 

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.

 

You have many good points there; a game with vancian magic *can* be done better than PoE1 was. However, the inherent problem is that vancian system, and the whole idea of tying ability access to rest cycles, doesn't really lend itself well to a crpg environment where it is incredibly difficult to model the consequences of skipping 8 hours of time. If a crpg was made around the vancian system, the whole game should be developed in a way that allows room for modeling those consequences, or alternatively restricting resting to predefined scripted opportunities.

[Guest 4ward]

@Infinitron

IMO per-encounter promotes less variation in the design of encounter difficulty. Per-rest goes hand-in-hand in designing encounters where the player faces all types of encounter difficulties. I've also seen the reasoning that the player has to have encounter because the opponent also has all availabilities but that would assume that say a gibberling has the same abilities as a lich.

 

Also, am not sure what things mentioned here like different cast times or interrupted casting, spells scaling has to do with why a game should be per-rest or per-encounter. Those are improvements over PoE1 but it was already in the IE games.

[Liagod]

 

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.

 

 

Removing trash mobs in an action crpg as PoE is impossible. Designing a game that is about 70 hours of gameplay with only meaningful story driven encounters would mean that the developers never finish the game. I therefore accept that trash mob will exist, the question is how do you want to handle the encounters. With a repetitive spell system with no care for preparation or a spell system that punishes you for not choosing the correct options in advance.

 

I really don't understand what is so cool about empowering a spell. Am I supposed to be excited over that the fireball covered a radius of 6 meter instead of 3? Or that at the next 5 level ups my magic missiles will do 3 times more damage? or that the accuracy of my confusion spell is now +15? The fun thing about spellcasting is the variety of spells like teleportation, wish, summoning, petrification, jump, fly, featherfall etc. and that you have to prepare accordingly to the quest your venturing on. Not that the same spell combination can be repeated at higher levels for same effect.

 

The world is more realistic when your characters are not allowed to rest between encounters without forfeiting the current quest, unless the quest builds up to a natural resting point. More constraints would make PoE engrossing not less. Death and losing the game should be possible. Making the mechanics so simple to navigate that almost anybody could finish the game increases its audience but diminishes its original appeal.

[Liagod]

 

...

 

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.

 

You have many good points there; a game with vancian magic *can* be done better than PoE1 was. However, the inherent problem is that vancian system, and the whole idea of tying ability access to rest cycles, doesn't really lend itself well to a crpg environment where it is incredibly difficult to model the consequences of skipping 8 hours of time. If a crpg was made around the vancian system, the whole game should be developed in a way that allows room for modeling those consequences, or alternatively restricting resting to predefined scripted opportunities.

 

 

I agree with you there completely. Getting all of the possible consequences of an action that would exist in real life in to the game is to much work. That is why the designers should take small steps towards making the encounters and the story choice consequences more realistic. Not turn the other direction.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Liagod

[Ninjamestari]

I don't think that trying to achieve all that with a system is the right way to go, there are ways of restricting spell-casting other than rest cycles. For example, some spells might require expensive and/or rare material components, other spells might require extensive preparation while yet others could require very specific circumstances. Having depth and variety doesn't come through a system, it comes through the details involved in individual spells and abilities.

[Ninjamestari]

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

Resting and Fatigue

 - Resting should be tied to fatigue levels, which will accumulate to characters through time and through exerting activities, such as combat, traveling, climbing, spell-casting etc.

 - These fatigue levels will add cumulative penalties to your stats.

 - Resting allows you to recover from fatigue

 - NO FREE RESTING ANYWHERE

 - Resting in a wilderness area has negative side effects, such as catching colds, not being able to rest properly, requiring camping supplies AND sleeping bags to be carried along.

 - Survival skill will allow you to better recover from fatigue while resting in a wilderness. A character without survival skill won't be as well rested after a night in the wilds.

 - Re-introduce carrying limitations by strength and containers you're carrying with you to make the ability to sleep in wilderness areas have a real opportunity cost.

 

Spell-casting

 - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting.

 - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting.

 

Wounds and lost hitpoints

 - Wounds that are not treated properly with proper herbs or other medicines do not heal during resting.

 - Wounds reduce the fatigue recovery gained from resting

 - Untreated wounds may fester while resting

 - Magical healing is available, but costs mana.

 - NO HEALING DURING COMBAT, this whole concept is fairly ridiculous to me.

 

And then for the last ingredient that is necessary to make this whole thing work: NO FREE SAVING. Saving the game should be restricted either to resting, or to resting at a safe location. So no reloading over and over and over again to avoid negative effects that require treatment, forcing you to plan ahead.

 

It looks like we're looking at quite a hardcore system here, but any compromise would make the whole system meaningless. That final bit is the most important one not to compromise, along with the no free resting part, the others can be worked around with less severe consequences.

[Liagod]

A system that requires special ingredients to cast specific spells sounds great to me. Having a fixed amount of the ingredients required for casting would limit the use of certain spells and be a good immersive feature. What this would mean though is increased restrictions on spellcasting and more planning required by the player, which is not the way Obsidian seems to be leaning.

[Doppelschwert]

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

All your system does is add tedium. You can sidestep all of the issues by tracking back to an inn, resting properly, and going back to the dungeon again.

It has been stated multiple times before, but a game mechanic that is balanced against the willingness of the player to indulge in boring, meaningless tasks is pretty bad. There is no meaningful trade-off, you just trade risk for boredom if you want to play safe.

 

Also, no frequent saving seems like a bad approach nowadays. Most people don't have unlimited time to play games in one session, so they should have the option to stop anytime without losing their progress.

[Ninjamestari]

Not so. First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management, which was the original goal. Second, resting at an inn isn't free, and traveling back from the inn to wherever you're adventuring causes fatigue, which lowers your stats to make sure that if you take this approach, there is a price to pay for it.

 

The whole point I'm trying to illustrate is that you either go with a proper hardcore punishing system, or you forget about the whole thing and make a system that doesn't revolve around resting. Compromises between the two don't really produce desirable results.

[Liagod]

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results.

 

Resting and Fatigue

 - Resting should be tied to fatigue levels, which will accumulate to characters through time and through exerting activities, such as combat, traveling, climbing, spell-casting etc.

 - These fatigue levels will add cumulative penalties to your stats.

 - Resting allows you to recover from fatigue

 - NO FREE RESTING ANYWHERE

 - Resting in a wilderness area has negative side effects, such as catching colds, not being able to rest properly, requiring camping supplies AND sleeping bags to be carried along.

 - Survival skill will allow you to better recover from fatigue while resting in a wilderness. A character without survival skill won't be as well rested after a night in the wilds.

 - Re-introduce carrying limitations by strength and containers you're carrying with you to make the ability to sleep in wilderness areas have a real opportunity cost.

 

Spell-casting

 - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting.

 - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting.

 

Wounds and lost hitpoints

 - Wounds that are not treated properly with proper herbs or other medicines do not heal during resting.

 - Wounds reduce the fatigue recovery gained from resting

 - Untreated wounds may fester while resting

 - Magical healing is available, but costs mana.

 - NO HEALING DURING COMBAT, this whole concept is fairly ridiculous to me.

 

And then for the last ingredient that is necessary to make this whole thing work: NO FREE SAVING. Saving the game should be restricted either to resting, or to resting at a safe location. So no reloading over and over and over again to avoid negative effects that require treatment, forcing you to plan ahead.

 

It looks like we're looking at quite a hardcore system here, but any compromise would make the whole system meaningless. That final bit is the most important one not to compromise, along with the no free resting part, the others can be worked around with less severe consequences.

 

Everything but the mana sounds good. I would rather have resting or other form of restrictions to spellcasting.

[Caeyrii]

Spell-casting

 - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting.

 - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting.

 

My gods, you just made wizard sleep more Hitler.