Baldur's Gate PoE vs IE: Do wizards need to have more stuff to do in combat? DISCUSS!

[TheLostOne]

Using KotC as an example since I've played it recently, my wizard practically sits out 75% of battles.

Huhwaht
wizards start as very useful even in first dungeon when you kick spiders and quickly progress to be more and more powerful up to coneofcolding everything and FoGin dragons.

Yeah, they're useful. Especially against those spiders which are beasts at low level. If I want to have spells available for the tough fights, though, I'm not going all out in the others. 75% was a bit of hyperbole, but the point was that he's not casting every fight.

 

[Shadenuat]

I remember KotC being fairly restscumybalanced with bonfirescampsites so I was casting all the time, healing and buffing, and in my party (fighter cleric 2 wizards) wizards were the most important part.
If you wish to cast more maybe you should have taken more than 1 wizard.

(Btw in IE games I always liked to run at least 2 specialist wizards, even at level 1 that's 4 possible crowd control spells and at level 2 already 6, and then u just own with summons and stuff).

 

[Hobo Elf]

I usually run with two specialist wizards as well, but in a game like BG1 or IWD you can easily get away with 1 Wizard and substitute your 2nd Wizard with another Fighter and use your main Wizard to buff your guys with deathrapening spells like Haste.

 

[Damned Registrations]

People seem to be forgetting that at level 1 the difference between a wizard and a fighter is pretty much entirely core stats. You can't afford decent armour, and you have the same THACO, and your hp isn't that different either (at least not when compared to the 1d10 weapons being used against you.) Everyone is an utter weakling at level 1 in DnD, unless your fighters are rolled with 18 str/dex/con somehow. And even then, wizards do pretty much have finger of death. Sleep lets you coup de grace enemies, and it's a god damned AoE spell.

Battles where some party members need to sit out aren't necessarily a bad thing, hell, you can even have party members that are nigh useless in combat if they have shit to do outside of it. Though I don't really feel like a powerful wizard should only be able to light his fucking pipe 4 times a day before becoming exhausted either. If you can throw lightning around or teleport, small magics shouldn't feel very draining at all. The main problem in DnD is the fact that these spells scale in power. Why should they? Early spells should become trivially easy to cast but remain trivially weak. Magic missile doesn't need to be a deadly fucking spell in the hands of a level 15 wizard, but he ought to be able to cast it more than a few times a day.

 

[buzz]

That doesn't imply passive role in combat. You can make this formula work without forcing mage to nose-picking...

You can make anything work.
But that doesn't make the earlier, established formula somehow shit.

Think in terms of a typical strategy game. You can rush to make some basic units/ships and attack the unprepared enemies (zerg rushes in Starcraft). Or you can wait it out, properly upgrade and develop your army and then do the attacks. Just because the later strategy has to wait for a while to see some proper action, that doesn't mean we should necessarily insert some token crap for them to do to make things exciting.

The way I see it, you can either give him a useless, generic energy blast, which is just a sling shot with nice visual effects. Or you can make that energy blast highly effective, or make him a decent at melee/range combat, in which case you just overpowered the shit out of him and everyone will roll wizard next time. There's a fine middle ground to make it work, sure, and I respect Sawyer for actually trying to improve the way character development works. But it's a pretty heavy risk.

I'm going to keep emphasizing this: one of the biggest motives why I like old-school games is because of utilitarian reasons. It's a tested formula for most of the time, it's cost effective and resource effective and it's beloved. The visual are (theoretically) not as resource intensive as modern graphics, yet they look times better. The character development systems are more complex and better developed and they work really fine. The dialogue is written and doesn't have voice acting and contributes more to the atmosphere. By not pushing the technology and design forward, you can just focus on delivering good content. Even something as simple as the interface is better in older games because it shows more information in a more efficient way, for example. I'm not a nostalgiafag, my experience with cRPGs comes all from abandonware and trying old-school cRPGs after playing the modern shit in mid 2000s.

Mages not being constantly useful earlier in the game was not a giant problem. Infinitron remembering it sucking in retrospect after Josh pointed out the problem doesn't really count. It's not like BG1 itself was really that exciting early game. Shit, it's not like fucking Fallout games themselves were exciting early on. But you know what, Fallout didn't give you some shitty energy pistol outside of the vault just so you can feel better about yourself for tagging that skill.

 

[Telengard]

The main problem in DnD is the fact that these spells scale in power. Why should they? Early spells should become trivially easy to cast but remain trivially weak. Magic missile doesn't need to be a deadly fucking spell in the hands of a level 15 wizard, but he ought to be able to cast it more than a few times a day.

PnP legacy issues. Memorizing and tracking usage of 30-some individual spells on paper is already pretty near to busywork. Make that 90 individual spells, and you're at dullness personified, and that's for the whole group who are all sitting there waiting for you to choose all 90 each and every gameday.

Which, of course, shouldn't be a problem in a crpg. A couple tweaks to the dnd spell system, and away you go. (But then it wouldn't be dnd! the fanbois scream.)

 

[buzz]

btw guise we gotta buff this guy
I mean, he's sitting out 95% of the entire game and barely engages in anything. That is just NOT tactically interesting

Can't we just give him a mid-range straight and diagonal attack, like a shittier queen or something?

 

[Jaesun]

To be fair the thought that every class needs something similarly useful to do all the time leads to stuff like 4th edition. And I prefer a stone slinging wizard over that, even tho it might not be the perfect solution. Magic should feel special, powerful and frighteningly dangerous. If you start casting spells every round from 1st level on it loses some of it's, well... magic.

 

[Lhynn]

I'm barely paying attention to this banal magic discussion but from what I've skimmed it's a bunch of grognards complaining about the possibility of wizards being able to use magic too much before alt-tabbing into D:OS discussion and sucking more Larian cock. Fuck all of you, you don't know what you want.

You take the cake for retardation in this thread roguey.

The mood of D:OS is simply different, silly and lighthearted, and it is done well enough, and the mechanics do a lot to reinforce that, they are adquate. But neither AD&D nor the IE games aim to be that, they take themselves (and ask you to take them) seriously enough that going against the traditional ethos of each class dimishines the enjoyement you get from the game itself. Flavour is a very important thing in an RPG, and people are somewhat afraid that PoE is going to shit the bed when it comes to that.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Give me god of death archers that crumble if closed with and fighters that dread the open field over the happy playground you envision where everyone gets a medal every game.

I've played through BG1 a bunch of times, and each time I did, I went by the book. The typical D&D party. Two fighters, two clerics/druids, a thief and a mage. I totally bought into the fantasy, and I tried to make it work.

And you know what, in retrospect, I look back at all those kobold fights where I dragged along my hapless mage along, and I realize: THAT KIND OF SUCKED. My mages could have had

Which BG1 were you playing again? Because in my game, my low-level wizard was pretty darned useful. Color spray to put enemies to sleep, cromatic orb to stun them, magic missle to deliver a final blow with certainty or one-hit-kill a kobold archer, spook to make them run etc. edit: sleep was a win button btw.

Also, the main reason mages weren't needed for the truly low level fights isn't because mages have nothing to do at low levels, it's because those very low level fights are designed to be easier in order to accustom players to the game. At least in a video game. Otherwise you'd see dozen of folks complaining about how they "spent 3 hours on the first fight" just like you do with AoD and D:OS.

A mage is a high risk high reward type character in BG that starts out weaker than a schoolgirl and ends up throwing fireballs and shooting death rays everywhere - yes, even in BG1. If you want him to be doing something all the time, he needs to be gimped for balance. Screw that. The game plays fine as it is. Maybe differently from more "modern" games like DA:O or NWN with their popamole cooldown BS, but differently and IMHO, better.

 

[Lhynn]

NWN didnt have cooldowns.
D:OS cooldown mechanics are alright.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

NWN didnt have cooldowns.
D:OS cooldown mechanics are alright.

Honestly, it's been a while since I've picked up NWN1 or 2 as I despise both of them. I was talking about Dragon Age: Origins. D:OS' cooldowns are fine. Different game, different system.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wizards needed a ranged weapon in IE games because the AI couldn't be trusted for anything and it was just a way to make sure they would keep their distance from the enemy.

Personally, i liked the way Wizards were employed in those games. I liked the idea of Wizards shining only in moments of need. It is the whole Gandalf thing. I even avoided sleeping as much as possible precisely to stretch things out even more. In fact, it was pretty much the only way for me to enjoy combat in those games. I really don't understand what the problem with that is. I fucking hate pew pew Wizards and i hate the MMO system. D&D was fine as it fucking was, it just needed to be implemented better.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

side note:

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Blast

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Implement#Implements

Whenever a wizard uses an implement (a wand, a rod or a sceptre) they generate a "Blast" on their target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a small area around the target but does not affect the target itself.

Am I the only one who thinks this makes no sense? *sigh* Never mind.

 

[Rake]

If you want him to be doing something all the time, he needs to be gimped for balance. Screw that.

Bingo. And that's the main reason i disagree with Sawyer's 'balance" Screw low level combat. My worry is for the late stages of PE and for expansion/PoE2. In Sawyer's design, there is no room for the magic to be..."magical". The High magic in PoE will be less interesting than IE magic was. There will be no Time Stop, no insta-death spells, no PS:T High level ones, no summons.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's fucking gay. Fuck you Sawyer.

 

[Mangoose]

It's just what happens when you autoattack while holding a wand. It's passive. No different from a IE Wizard with a sling. (Except the AOE damage is weird)

 

[Mangoose]

Also,

• 1st Level Wizard Spells – Wizards can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they need to rest to recover the spells. They can cast any combination of their known spells up to that fixed limit.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Wizard

Not sure what you guys are complaining about.

no summons.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Essential_Phantom

Summons a ghostly double of the caster thatfights with its bare hands, doing Shock damage. Other than the appearance of the caster, it shares no other properties.[1]

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

the AOE damage is weird

That's my point. And it is different from a sling based on what I bolded. Between this and the INT barbarians, I really don't like the trend of designing a ruleset using only numbers and theories on what might be "balanced", but without a view to verisimilitude we're seeing. :/

A pet peeve of my that's already been covered to an extent though. I will wait for the game to make any definate judgments beyond: "wtf is that?"

 

[Mangoose]

the AOE damage is weird

That's my point. Between this and the INT barbarians

I think the major reason that INT (and other attributes) affect all classes the same way is to keep the system simple so it's easier to balance, easier to code, and easier to debug. I'm sure if they had time they'd add more complexity, but I think there are higher priorities in the game - things that actually affect gameplay quality - than making attributes have realistic effects.

 

[Zombra]

side note:

Whenever a wizard uses an implement (a wand, a rod or a sceptre) they generate a "Blast" on their target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a small area around the target but does not affect the target itself.

Am I the only one who thinks this makes no sense? *sigh* Never mind.

So your wizard shoots a dood with a wand. The hit does 10 points damage to the main target. The Blast does 4 points damage to additional targets.
Then your fighter shoots a dood with the same wand. The hit does 10 points damage to the main target. No Blast because he doesn't have that ability.
Either way, the main target is taking full damage. Wizards just get some extra AOE frosting.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

things that actually affect gameplay quality - than making attributes have realistic effects.

Again, another weak justification on this that only proves my point by admitting that it's not realistic. Btw, I'm sure it'd take TONS of time to program attributes that make sense. I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with Sawyer's personal ideas for game systems that he's been talking about for years. Been over this ground with a backhoe though, so whatever.

So your wizard shoots a dood with a wand. The hit does 10 points damage to the main target. The Blast does 4 points damage to additional targets.
Then your fighter shoots a dood with the same wand. The hit does 10 points damage to the main target. No Blast because he doesn't have that ability.
Either way, the main target is taking full damage. Wizards just get some extra AOE.

Ah, I see. When I read it, I assumed that the blast was the entire attack, hence, it'd be beyond retarded that the main target would take no damage. Phew. Ok, carry on.

 

[Delterius]

side note:

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Blast

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Implement#Implements

Whenever a wizard uses an implement (a wand, a rod or a sceptre) they generate a "Blast" on their target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a small area around the target but does not affect the target itself.

Am I the only one who thinks this makes no sense? *sigh* Never mind.

Maybe its a weird way to say that Blast isn't a bonus to damage as far as single target damage is concerned.

 

[Mangoose]

things that actually affect gameplay quality - than making attributes have realistic effects.

Again, another weak justification on this that only proves my point by admitting that it's not realistic. Btw, I'm sure it'd take TONS of time to program attributes that make sense.

Have you ever programmed? I have. Every little thing you add is just another bug waiting to be found. And good luck not taking hours to find that bug. It is funny, though, that you only mention coding time when I mentioned extra time balancing, and extra time debugging.

Ah, I see. When I read it, I assumed that the blast was the entire attack, hence, it'd be beyond retarded that the main target would take no damage. Phew. Ok, carry on.

I assumed the same thing, it's not very clear. Time to fix it :D

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That's right. But the wording makes it seem like the blast is the attack itself, not a mage-exclusive bonus (so you'd be using the targeted enemy to "bounce" spells at the other enemies).

edit: meant to Delterius