Battles last long. Even with faster XP gain giving longer duration Haste. Any battle worth using Haste in will last longer than the duration of Haste. And it really doesn't matter how many times your characters are attacking if your summons drop dead enemies are in your party's face.
Haste might matter in Core Rules, but so do Fireball and Skull Trap. Sure you can Haste your party, or you can take away a huge portion of monster HP and let unhasted attacks handle what's left.
Oh and P&P and Haste?
You didn't really need haste in 2E P&P if your goal was to cheese the game.
Just use Darts, which in 2E P&P meant STR bonus.
Who needs Haste when every Fighter can wield a machine gun.
Also if your P&P campaign reached Level 10+, the DM has to specifically counter spellcasters if the player with one really starts getting creative with their spells.
The way Mages spam Haste in IE games is child's play compared to the stuff P&P Magic Users can do.
I can't comment on HoF mode as I've never played it. I am mainly commenting on players who follow the following routine EVERY TIME they have an encounter. (1) Haste party (2) fight/indiscriminately unload entire spell books on opponents, be it goblins or dragons (3) REST (4) haste party (5) see 2 (6) see 3, etc etc.
This... For me the whole game was:
Protection from evil 9 radius haste (then 6x improved haste) the lvl 4 mage buffs (can't remember the name, hope and emotion or something like that) the litanies from cleric ironskin
Finish with invisibility 9"
Pull with the tank.
Use kai, defensive armony, DuHM
Kill all the mobs till haste/improved haste go down.
I can't comment on HoF mode as I've never played it. I am mainly commenting on players who follow the following routine EVERY TIME they have an encounter.
So what? What else can players do? It's not like they can actually do tha many significant things in the IE games except fight. How do you progress the story? Fight another battle. How do you accomplish the next quest that isn't just a fetch quest? Most likely it's by fighting another battle. The options for doing something other than fight a battle is horrendously low in IE games.
Most dialogue options lead towards the same outcome. Oh you can use dialogue to squeeze a bit more gold or XP but the end result is still fight that battle everyone else playing the game is going to fight.
BG and IWD are just glorified hack and slash games that use AD&D 2E rules to resolve combat. Not actual P&P adventures where players have actual choices other than "grrrr let's reduce the bad guy's HP to 0 with our swords and spells" on how to tackle their adventure.
So you wonder why people use the same tactics over and over? Because the game is all about fighting battles. If there were less battles or other ways to actually solve major quests that didn't involve swords and spells it doesn't matter what penalties Haste has or not.
Battles last long. Even with faster XP gain giving longer duration Haste. Any battle worth using Haste in will last longer than the duration of Haste. And it really doesn't matter how many times your characters are attacking if your summons drop dead enemies are in your party's face.
I think the point here is that casting haste will at least do massive amounts of damage. Even if it doesn't last till the end of the combat, at least it has done damage. While true this can also be done by Fireball and Skulltrap, depending on who your front liners happen to be Haste can do significantly more damage. 5D6 does an average of 15 with a potential save for half, across however many opponents you are facing. Three or four decent front liners, particularly with big damage weapons all hasted can easily out-damage that.
And a party with less front liners will spam Skull Trap and Fireball. So what's the difference?
There will always be that one spell, ability, tactic players will spam. If it's called Haste, Fireball, Skull Trap, Wilting, Contingency or whatever doesn't matter. Nor does whatever that spell ability was in the source material if casting it aged parties by 1 year or some other thing because the source material wasn't all about fighting one battle after the other. And spellcasters could pull even more ridiculous things in AD&D anyway because when you use spells, even low level ones like Charm or Blindness outside of battle it can really change how an entire adventure is played out.
Battles last long. Even with faster XP gain giving longer duration Haste. Any battle worth using Haste in will last longer than the duration of Haste. And it really doesn't matter how many times your characters are attacking if your summons drop dead enemies are in your party's face.
I think the point here is that casting haste will at least do massive amounts of damage. Even if it doesn't last till the end of the combat, at least it has done damage. While true this can also be done by Fireball and Skulltrap, depending on who your front liners happen to be Haste can do significantly more damage. 5D6 does an average of 15 with a potential save for half, across however many opponents you are facing. Three or four decent front liners, particularly with big damage weapons all hasted can easily out-damage that.
Big difference. For a caster, even if you have Vecna, AOP and AI you are still only getting off one spell a round.
Skull Trap and Fireball and Haste and whatever are just win more conditions. For Haste to actually matter the battle has to be unwinnable without it. So spamming Haste is just a win more condition.
Besides it's not like enemies have so much HP that the initial damage of Skull Trap and Fireball will be so far behind what Haste contributes. It might matter in HoF. But dealing more damage is secondary to ensuring the party doesn't die in HoF for spellcasters. Spells like Slow and Invisibility 10' Radius would take precedence over Haste.
Skull Trap and Fireball and Haste and whatever are just win more conditions. For Haste to actually matter the battle has to be unwinnable without it. So spamming Haste is just a win more condition.
While I agree that Haste isn't very great in IWD, by your definition you don't need any spells whatsoever because you can just win any battle by beating on the enemy until they fall over. Sure it might takes ages but it's not an "unwinnable" battle. Most people would probably approach this not by asking whether it's POSSIBLE to do without Haste, but whether it would be BETTER to go with it or without it (and how much better, given the opportunity cost).
For Haste to be a win condition it has to be integral to preventing a game over/loss. Take for example a HoF battle where the player summons something to tank mobs, then casts Haste. If Haste wasn't cast would the party have an easier time dying instead of just a longer time winning the battle? If it's not the first then it's not a win condition. And if the second applies then it's win more.
If summons weren't cast, same question. If the first applies then it's a win condition.
Sure there are other ways for the party to win. But unless one of them actually needs Haste than Haste merely speeding the process up, it's not a win condition and it doesn't really matter if players spam it.
it only might be essential in order to position your party to protect your weak characters (if you have them) when enemies spawn on-screen or approach from bad angles - that to minimize a chance of one of your characters dying.
but with stoneskin and iron skins that's kinda moot too.
@Zyzzogeton I'm not disagreeing with you, Haste is strictly speaking a "win more" for sure - as is, by that definition, any other spell and ability except attacks, because you don't NEED them to win. You can make a party of 6 fighters and roll through the game without ever doing anything but attack - it'll take longer and it'll be harder, but it can be done. As such, EVERYTHING can be called a "win-more", and that makes it a not-so useful argument, in my opinion.
You do realize if the game becomes significantly harder then that means the chances for a game over goes up which means whatever actually lowers the difficulty is a win condition.
But this doesn't include anything that purely makes a battle play out slower or faster, as neither of these means harder or easier in terms of difficulty.
If the battle is already a fairly sure thing, and all casting Haste does is make it go by faster, then it's a win more. If a battle is not a sure thing and casting a spell makes it a sure thing then that spell is a win condition.
Actually, a battle ending faster DOES get easier, as there is less incoming damage you need to deal with, less chances for enemies to use annoying abilities/get annoying procs (like touch attacks) etc.
Either way, you didn't say anything about difficulty when you talked about "win more" just about fights you were "winning anyway". So do you think then that anything that doesn't serve to get your chances of victory to EXACTLY 100% is useless? And how do you even measure that? Where does your assessment as to what serves as a "win more" and what just a mere "win" come from?
Actually, a battle ending faster DOES get easier, as there is less incoming damage you need to deal with, less chances for enemies to use annoying abilities/get annoying procs (like touch attacks) etc.
Bar ridiculous RNG screws, the chances of winning a battle without Haste and winning a battle with Haste are roughly equal
Either way, you didn't say anything about difficulty when you talked about "win more" just about fights you were "winning anyway"
You do realize a battle you will assuredly win means a high chance of victory, which means low difficulty.
So do you think then that anything that doesn't serve to get your chances of victory to EXACTLY 100% is useless?
No, but to make it out like people spamming a spell that merely increases the chance of winning a battle from say 98% to 99% is bad is ridiculous.
And how do you even measure that? Where does your assessment as to what serves as a "win more" and what just a mere "win" come from?
If I am reasonably assured that I can win a battle, anything I do to increase my chances is just win more.
If I'm fighting 1 goblin with a party, my party has no other damage option than swinging weapons, sure with really bad RNG the goblin could actually beat my party. I could roll 1's and the goblin can roll 20's. It's possible. But highly unlikely
So if I cast Haste it will increase the number of rolls my characters make for each roll the Goblin, reducing the chances they get the immensely high number of 20's they need to roll and increasing the chances my party rolling a single non 1. But none of that matters unless the RNG decides to screw with me.
So Haste is a win more in that situation because it has next to nonexistent chance of bailing my party out.
While not every battle is 1 party vs 1 goblin with only weapons for damage, it's not like there are so many battles in this game or the BG games where a min-maxed party (Because if a player is going to limit themselves, they might as well limit Haste if it becomes broken) is going to benefit greatly from Haste to the point that the spell becomes a game winner for them.
Bottom line
Haste doesn't warrant a 1 year penalty nor will implementing a 1 year penalty, and making that penalty really mean something, change anything (other than potentially slowing some of the mindless walking and battles that players will already have a good chance of winning) because there are already so many ways to min max and cheese the hell out of this game that 1 spell that doesn't seriously contribute to winning getting a serious penalty will just mean players will find another spell or ability to spam.
It didn't even warrant a penalty in P&P and that 1 year blah blah was really just dumb flavor text turned in-game mechanics. If we were going to talk about appropriate penalties, if Haste = 1 year then Charm Person = 5 years because of how much that spell could be abused in P&P
@Zyzzogeton It seems to me like you're confusing your argumentative points - you don't seem to object to Haste in itself, but to the COST of Haste (which I completely agree with).
As for your "win more" argument, by that exact same logic you could argue that you don't need any more powerful weapons beyond the enchantment level required to hit something. Why deal more damage? All it does is end the fight more quickly which, according to you, is a win-more. The same goes for all the buff spells etc. Since most fights in IWD are fairly basic in terms of strategy, actual win vs. lose scenarios are fairly rare, and as a consequence you should, by your logic, only ever go with the bare minimum required to kill something - no powerful weapons, no buff spells, no nothing. Just sit there and grind it out, because let's face it those ten skeletons are not going to kill you even if it takes 40 rounds to kill them instead of 10.
Speaking of outcome... You gave me an example with that goblin, but that doesn't tell me much about the WHY and HOW behind your assessment of a fight's outcome. Considering Haste's fairly significant increase in DPT (+1 APR is about a ~30% increase for fighters, if not more) I think it's not an easy issue to decide on just like that, on fights where it actually matters (like boss fights etc.).
You're also assuming that time is just worth nothing, and that it's totally fine to take forever to kill someone as long as you don't lose the fight. In terms of efficiency, that is of course not true. In an extreme example, you could even go as far as to take a significant risk of losing the fight, if it comes at a large enough reduction of fight length - statistically, you'd still come up ahead in overall efficiency even if you happened to need to reload a few times (excluding specific rule sets like "no-reload challenge" of course). But all that aside, most people actually VALUE their time, and not having to spend extra time killing pointless mobs can be quite the upside for them, even if it's not a win/lose situation by any means.
All that being said, I can only restate that I completely agree about Haste's opportunity cost being somewhat detrimental to its efficacy, particularly when a Sorcerer is involved. I don't generally pick it on a Sorc, but I do learn it on my Bard and pop it every now and then, just to speed things along. But I do not agree with your "win more" argument, and I think it's the wrong way to approach the issue because it doesn't adequately deal with the cost side of things, which for many people will be the actually relevant part. And depending on how much you value your time etc., it may in fact be enough to justify the cost of picking up Haste.
I'm talking about how Haste not having a penalty in this game doesn't matter. Because it isn't essential to winning. People aren't going to win a significantly less amount of battles if they couldn't use Haste.
the cost side of things,
Which doesn't matter. If people want to speed the battle up, sure. But that still has nothing to do with Haste becoming this cheesy spell because it didn't carry over the penalty from P&P and people spam it.
If all it does is make people get wins faster in battles that they're already going to win irregardless, then there's nothing to penalize there. Hence win more.
in my opinion, what the devs could have done is making haste a higher level spell after they realized that it's p&p downside can't be included in the game. it's just the current appearance of cheesiness which is a little off. also, they should have made enemies use haste too. wonder why enemies almost never use haste in any of the games. after all you can dispel it or counteract it with slow, both pretty basic spells.
edit: also, instead of fatigued, the expiration of the spell should have made characters winded. seems somehow more appropriate too.
wonder why enemies almost never use haste in any of the games. after all you can dispel it or counteract it with slow, both pretty basic spells.
Sadly, the AI in the games is not very smart in that respect, and hardly ever makes use of the gazillion possibilities at its disposal Mods like SCS counteract that to some degree, though. There's enemies using Haste (and Improved Haste!) there, and popping various buff potions/spells etc. Makes things a lot more interesting to be sure! We can only hope to see something similar to SCS for IWD... ([insert shameless plug for Ten Towns Tactics, the only name appropriate]).
in my opinion, what the devs could have done is making haste a higher level spell after they realized that it's p&p downside can't be included in the game
For what?
All it does is cause your party to get one more APR per round for a few rounds then slams them with fatigue penalties. Skull Trap does LevelD6 damage to a bunch of enemies but doesn't cause Fatigue.
Enemies in the game (using core rules) don't have so much HP that Haste is going to end up dealing dozens of more damage than Skull Trap.
Just because the P&P penalty can't be applied? It was a dumb penalty to begin with. 1 year for 1 more attack per round is overdoing it. A temporary penalty to rolls makes much more sense and is actually appropriate, relative to benefits of the spell.
+1 apr and 2x movement speed is much more powerful than a single skulltrap. fatigue is stupid and people just spam rest.
Against most enemies in Core difficulty a Single Skull trap shaves off a good portion of their HP pool. So it doesn't matter if Haste gives more damage in the long run because enemies don't have enough HP for the extra damage from Haste to pile up.
So no, as far as the regular difficulty of the game goes, Haste isn't significantly better than Skull Trap to actually warrant special consideration.
Also all 2x speed is really useful for is cutting the time walking from one point to another.
And I was talking about how Fatigue made a more sensible penalty in P&P than the 1 year BS. In IE games, which are way more hack and slash than P&P, Haste shouldn't even have a penalty to begin with, much less have both a fatigue penalty and a higher level.
even in scs haste is pretty rare. i remember seeing it somewhere though, maybe the underdark...
It's rare because it's only useful for a spellcaster if they're in a party, and my automatic spell-assigning algorithms can't tell whether a spellcaster is in a party or not. So mostly creatures only get it if I assign it manually, and I haven't done that too often.
Comments
This... For me the whole game was:
Protection from evil 9 radius
haste (then 6x improved haste)
the lvl 4 mage buffs (can't remember the name, hope and emotion or something like that)
the litanies from cleric
ironskin
Finish with invisibility 9"
Pull with the tank.
Use kai, defensive armony, DuHM
Kill all the mobs till haste/improved haste go down.
Rest.
Repeat.
Most dialogue options lead towards the same outcome. Oh you can use dialogue to squeeze a bit more gold or XP but the end result is still fight that battle everyone else playing the game is going to fight.
BG and IWD are just glorified hack and slash games that use AD&D 2E rules to resolve combat. Not actual P&P adventures where players have actual choices other than "grrrr let's reduce the bad guy's HP to 0 with our swords and spells" on how to tackle their adventure.
So you wonder why people use the same tactics over and over? Because the game is all about fighting battles. If there were less battles or other ways to actually solve major quests that didn't involve swords and spells it doesn't matter what penalties Haste has or not.
There will always be that one spell, ability, tactic players will spam. If it's called Haste, Fireball, Skull Trap, Wilting, Contingency or whatever doesn't matter. Nor does whatever that spell ability was in the source material if casting it aged parties by 1 year or some other thing because the source material wasn't all about fighting one battle after the other. And spellcasters could pull even more ridiculous things in AD&D anyway because when you use spells, even low level ones like Charm or Blindness outside of battle it can really change how an entire adventure is played out.
Skull Trap and Fireball and Haste and whatever are just win more conditions. For Haste to actually matter the battle has to be unwinnable without it. So spamming Haste is just a win more condition.
Besides it's not like enemies have so much HP that the initial damage of Skull Trap and Fireball will be so far behind what Haste contributes. It might matter in HoF. But dealing more damage is secondary to ensuring the party doesn't die in HoF for spellcasters. Spells like Slow and Invisibility 10' Radius would take precedence over Haste.
For Haste to be a win condition it has to be integral to preventing a game over/loss. Take for example a HoF battle where the player summons something to tank mobs, then casts Haste. If Haste wasn't cast would the party have an easier time dying instead of just a longer time winning the battle? If it's not the first then it's not a win condition. And if the second applies then it's win more.
If summons weren't cast, same question. If the first applies then it's a win condition.
Sure there are other ways for the party to win. But unless one of them actually needs Haste than Haste merely speeding the process up, it's not a win condition and it doesn't really matter if players spam it.
it only might be essential in order to position your party to protect your weak characters (if you have them) when enemies spawn on-screen or approach from bad angles - that to minimize a chance of one of your characters dying.
but with stoneskin and iron skins that's kinda moot too.
But this doesn't include anything that purely makes a battle play out slower or faster, as neither of these means harder or easier in terms of difficulty.
If the battle is already a fairly sure thing, and all casting Haste does is make it go by faster, then it's a win more. If a battle is not a sure thing and casting a spell makes it a sure thing then that spell is a win condition.
Either way, you didn't say anything about difficulty when you talked about "win more" just about fights you were "winning anyway". So do you think then that anything that doesn't serve to get your chances of victory to EXACTLY 100% is useless? And how do you even measure that? Where does your assessment as to what serves as a "win more" and what just a mere "win" come from?
If I'm fighting 1 goblin with a party, my party has no other damage option than swinging weapons, sure with really bad RNG the goblin could actually beat my party. I could roll 1's and the goblin can roll 20's. It's possible. But highly unlikely
So if I cast Haste it will increase the number of rolls my characters make for each roll the Goblin, reducing the chances they get the immensely high number of 20's they need to roll and increasing the chances my party rolling a single non 1. But none of that matters unless the RNG decides to screw with me.
So Haste is a win more in that situation because it has next to nonexistent chance of bailing my party out.
While not every battle is 1 party vs 1 goblin with only weapons for damage, it's not like there are so many battles in this game or the BG games where a min-maxed party (Because if a player is going to limit themselves, they might as well limit Haste if it becomes broken) is going to benefit greatly from Haste to the point that the spell becomes a game winner for them.
Bottom line
Haste doesn't warrant a 1 year penalty nor will implementing a 1 year penalty, and making that penalty really mean something, change anything (other than potentially slowing some of the mindless walking and battles that players will already have a good chance of winning) because there are already so many ways to min max and cheese the hell out of this game that 1 spell that doesn't seriously contribute to winning getting a serious penalty will just mean players will find another spell or ability to spam.
It didn't even warrant a penalty in P&P and that 1 year blah blah was really just dumb flavor text turned in-game mechanics. If we were going to talk about appropriate penalties, if Haste = 1 year then Charm Person = 5 years because of how much that spell could be abused in P&P
As for your "win more" argument, by that exact same logic you could argue that you don't need any more powerful weapons beyond the enchantment level required to hit something. Why deal more damage? All it does is end the fight more quickly which, according to you, is a win-more. The same goes for all the buff spells etc. Since most fights in IWD are fairly basic in terms of strategy, actual win vs. lose scenarios are fairly rare, and as a consequence you should, by your logic, only ever go with the bare minimum required to kill something - no powerful weapons, no buff spells, no nothing. Just sit there and grind it out, because let's face it those ten skeletons are not going to kill you even if it takes 40 rounds to kill them instead of 10.
Speaking of outcome... You gave me an example with that goblin, but that doesn't tell me much about the WHY and HOW behind your assessment of a fight's outcome. Considering Haste's fairly significant increase in DPT (+1 APR is about a ~30% increase for fighters, if not more) I think it's not an easy issue to decide on just like that, on fights where it actually matters (like boss fights etc.).
You're also assuming that time is just worth nothing, and that it's totally fine to take forever to kill someone as long as you don't lose the fight. In terms of efficiency, that is of course not true. In an extreme example, you could even go as far as to take a significant risk of losing the fight, if it comes at a large enough reduction of fight length - statistically, you'd still come up ahead in overall efficiency even if you happened to need to reload a few times (excluding specific rule sets like "no-reload challenge" of course). But all that aside, most people actually VALUE their time, and not having to spend extra time killing pointless mobs can be quite the upside for them, even if it's not a win/lose situation by any means.
All that being said, I can only restate that I completely agree about Haste's opportunity cost being somewhat detrimental to its efficacy, particularly when a Sorcerer is involved. I don't generally pick it on a Sorc, but I do learn it on my Bard and pop it every now and then, just to speed things along. But I do not agree with your "win more" argument, and I think it's the wrong way to approach the issue because it doesn't adequately deal with the cost side of things, which for many people will be the actually relevant part. And depending on how much you value your time etc., it may in fact be enough to justify the cost of picking up Haste.
If all it does is make people get wins faster in battles that they're already going to win irregardless, then there's nothing to penalize there. Hence win more.
wonder why enemies almost never use haste in any of the games. after all you can dispel it or counteract it with slow, both pretty basic spells.
edit: also, instead of fatigued, the expiration of the spell should have made characters winded. seems somehow more appropriate too.
All it does is cause your party to get one more APR per round for a few rounds then slams them with fatigue penalties. Skull Trap does LevelD6 damage to a bunch of enemies but doesn't cause Fatigue.
Enemies in the game (using core rules) don't have so much HP that Haste is going to end up dealing dozens of more damage than Skull Trap.
Just because the P&P penalty can't be applied? It was a dumb penalty to begin with. 1 year for 1 more attack per round is overdoing it. A temporary penalty to rolls makes much more sense and is actually appropriate, relative to benefits of the spell.
So no, as far as the regular difficulty of the game goes, Haste isn't significantly better than Skull Trap to actually warrant special consideration.
Also all 2x speed is really useful for is cutting the time walking from one point to another.
And I was talking about how Fatigue made a more sensible penalty in P&P than the 1 year BS. In IE games, which are way more hack and slash than P&P, Haste shouldn't even have a penalty to begin with, much less have both a fatigue penalty and a higher level.