Wishlist and Suggestions for PoE2

[PangaeaACDC]

Kinda fun to keep going when your health isn't too messed up, and your druid, priest and wizard is out of juice

Edited October 20, 2017 by PangaeaACDC

[injurai]

Kinda fun to keep going when your health isn't too messed up, and your druid, priest and wizard is out of juice

 

Yeah that's fun too, watch them get beat around on the front lines.

[Lephys]

Kinda fun to keep going when your health isn't too messed up, and your druid, priest and wizard is out of juice

 

*shrug*. It is, in a way. My problem is that with old DnD/Infinity Engine rules, your casters being out of juice means that they're basically reduced to walking decoys. It's one thing to be down to a limited amount of effectiveness, but another thing to be functionally useless. That was always my biggest problem with older DnD Vancian magic. "You're a Wizard? Here, you get no competency at anything, and also these couple of Just Piss Off The Enemy spells per day! 8D!". Especially in the tabletop setting. You'd better hope your DM has a boat-load of non-combat adventuring planned for you for the next hour-or-so, 'cause you're not resting anytime soon.

 

"I'd like to swing my shoestring (the only thing I'm strong enough/competent enough to wield) at the goblin."

*rolls*... "You critically miss because you suck so badly at anything that isn't magic, and now you've choked yourself to death with your shoestring."

 

If not for that, I'd love to keep going when my Wizard's out of juice. That and my main character was always the Wizard, ... I'd imagine it's not as bad if the caster who's out of spells is just one of your lackeys.

[Abel]

If not for that, I'd love to keep going when my Wizard's out of juice. That and my main character was always the Wizard, ... I'd imagine it's not as bad if the caster who's out of spells is just one of your lackeys.

 

Absolutely true. Having your main character being useless at some point is not a good feeling. But now, Pillars allows for wizards to wield anything and have a decent accuracy, which should limit their uselesness, depending on how the character is built. It would be even more so with the possibility of multiclassing.

 

But still, i definitely miss the healing spells and low level self buffs of my priestess. This is the first thing that makes me want to play BG rather than PoE these days.

[PangaeaACDC]

I readily admit that it was a big problem in BG when your wizard was out of juice, as they'd have horrible chances to hit, and when they did, the damage was poor. In POE, however, your wizard can have a wand with area damage, and accuracy is generally good enough, so I don't find them useless. In fact, I often tend to just let the wizard use the wand after he's spent the per-combat abilities.

 

I suppose that is a problem in itself, and one of the reasons they're moving further away from Vancian casting now. However, for people who don't rest spam, I find the system in POE to be fun. Even more so in BG actually, as I found it fun and challenging to conserve spells and only use what was needed.

 

Part of the RAT PACK mentality really. "Maybe I can use this oddly shaped rock in a tough boss encounter way down the road, better save it."

[Lephys]

I readily admit that it was a big problem in BG when your wizard was out of juice, as they'd have horrible chances to hit, and when they did, the damage was poor. In POE, however, your wizard can have a wand with area damage, and accuracy is generally good enough, so I don't find them useless. In fact, I often tend to just let the wizard use the wand after he's spent the per-combat abilities.

 

In PoE, it's not as bad, but your Wizard is still relatively usless. If you could put them in a bubble and let them stand around wand-blasting people all day, sure. Their output isn't the problem. The problem is that, at some point (and the game SHOULD be designed this way, so I'm not criticizing this), you cannot block ALL combatants from engaging your Wizard. Or rather, I suppose maybe you COULD, if you just had him jog around all day, Benny Hill style, and avoid getting 1-or-2-shotted. But, then he's not actually contributing to combat.

 

*shrug*. I'd love to see an evolution of this style of combat, in which there's a lot more organization as to who's fighting whom and who's able to do what, etc. Almost like a hybrid between grid-based turn-based and active. I think there's a lot of room for creativity there. But, that's kind of a whole different discussion, I suppose.

 

For me, it just comes down to having interesting stuff for a Wizard (for example... this goes for every class) to do when they don't want to use up their spell "heavy weapons ammo." "You get a blasty wand attack!" isn't a bunch of interesting options, to me. But, again, I'd love to see different stances/dispositions in combat, so you could actually have a Wizard who's designed to tie-up combatants and still live, to keep them from overwhelming your other party members. THEN he could use his spells if he needs to.

 

This is the beauty of a mana system, though, as opposed to Vancian-esque magic. Mana naturally limits what you can do when, how often you can do it, etc. You can use little bits of mana almost constantly, if you so choose. Or you can use it all up in one big blast, but are left without as many options afterwards. You can even have doing other things in combat directly translate into replenishing mana (a lot like how Cipher's and Focus work, or a number of other class mechanics). This gives you so much more agency in combat. The Vancian-style system just makes your magic feel like grenades. There's no "it'll be a bit before I can use this again if I use it up like this." It's just "Nope, I ran out of spells. Better pew-pew with my wand for a while. Or should I... I dunno... pew-pew with my wand? You know what? I think I'll go with Option C: PEW-PEW WITH MY WAND! 8D!"