Wizard 5th edition - possible in IE?
koteko
Member Posts: 179
Imagine a Sorcerer that can:
- scribe spells into the spellbook
- choose (or as they say, "prepare") a subset of those spells before resting
This means essentially a fusion between Wizard and Sorcerer. We can know many spells, we can only prepare a few before resting, but those prepared can be cast in any way we wish (until we finish the slots for each spell level).
Can this be done with modding? The difficult part would be the preparation I guess, since you cannot choose the same spell but it must be different.
PS: event more cool would the "spell slot" concept in 5E, as outlined in chapter 10 here, but I think it's much of a modification.
- scribe spells into the spellbook
- choose (or as they say, "prepare") a subset of those spells before resting
This means essentially a fusion between Wizard and Sorcerer. We can know many spells, we can only prepare a few before resting, but those prepared can be cast in any way we wish (until we finish the slots for each spell level).
Can this be done with modding? The difficult part would be the preparation I guess, since you cannot choose the same spell but it must be different.
PS: event more cool would the "spell slot" concept in 5E, as outlined in chapter 10 here, but I think it's much of a modification.
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Comments
I don't actually agree on the balance, here. I've always played a Mage, and you don't really need many spells if you do a full-party walkthrough (I almost never change the ones I cast.. so there isn't much difference with a Sorcerer already, for me).
The sorcerer is already as powerful as the 5E Mage would be, for the same reason: if you choose the spells wisely, you'll never feel the need to change them. Sorcerer is already OP.
The 5E mage would only add more colour and add incentive to try different spells for the hell of it
About the AI, would they need to be changed? They already have a set of spells "hardcoded", and those don't necessarily follow the spell progression.
Then again, you can penalise the kit if it's truly more powerful - reducing the number of spells that you can prepare and cast is the perfect target here.
Anyways, I'm really curious as to how you think it could be implemented!
The main reason I don't already have something like this in Tome and Blood is because of my concern that such a kit, no matter how aggressively penalized, would still be really powerful... It's not like sorcerers particularly need more versatility.
The pathfinder Arcanist (which is pretty similar to the 5E wizard) is balanced in part by the fact that the Arcanist can't nova during each encounter, or rest after each encounter. BG2 has no such restrictions unfortunately, so it would be a tough balancing act.
Many people like me have never even beaten the game with difficulty > Core, so how much can this really break balance for us? :P
Also, I've looked to Tome and blood.. and many of the kits seem much more powerful, with all the cool immunities and bonuses..
I don't know, am I the only one that does the following?
- only keeps "useful" spells before big encounters
- finishes all spells after those encounters, unless the monster dies before
and thus, would only get the following benefit from an "Arcanist" kit: a little more variety for normal encounters and fun.I think that there are two separate points that I should touch on for this: feasiblity and balance.
Yes, it is possible to set-up something that allows you to use this kind of spontaneous casting mixed with spell swapping.
However, I would not include it in a mod that I made unless I felt like it was at least marginally balanced, and right now I can't see a reason (even with penalties bordering on the absurd) to play a mage or sorcerer over an Arcanist.
Also @subtledoctor, interestingly, 5th edition actually splits the wizard and sorcerer spell lists, and thus sorcerers actually are less versatile within a 5e framework.
So, using the generalist mage number of spells would fit your bill, wouldn't it? Just advantage 1 and 2. Would actually make a good complement to the other two groups: arcanist (1/2), mage specialist (1/3) and sorcerer (2/3).
If still worried, you can even decrease the spell per level by 1. A bit like DD has less spells then sorcerer.
And once you're doing that you can basically blow the whole rulebook apart and rewrite it from scratch--replace rolling stats with point buy (I think 75 total points would be good to make players sweat at the character creation screen...no 18s for you unless you want to sacrifice something for them), replace WIS and CHA with stats that have more general utility for all classes, make INT affect weapon proficiency points and rogue skill points...and by that point your game is no more a Baldur's Gate game than Planescape Torment is.
Icewind Dale 2 uses D&D 3rd edition, and many people love it. So why not a hint of 5th? And that would be enough to justify a modification of a class in this direction (not that it would be the first - have you seen the mod we quoted here, Tome and Blood? It's way off from original BG class choices, allowing for example armoured arcane casting. Still, it's a very good mod).
But let's set that aside and take one step back. What does or does not "fit" BG, really? Does a class, as long as balanced with the others and true enough to FR lore, really "break" the BG-ness of the game? Say it to the additional classes and kits added from BG1 to BG2 to SoD, and to the plenty of mods out there.
"BG feel" has never been about this or that rule change. It is really about the storyline, the narrative style and the balance between roleplay capabilities and hack&slash action.
IWD is more on the latter axis, while Planescape:Torment is more on the former. BG has always been in the middle, and thus gathered a bigger following in both installments.
PS: This came out overly long and probably more polemic that I wanted it to be. Apologies in advance if I have offended you. It is just my opinion, of course.
But armored arcane casting was always a bit silly to me, as a sidenote. (Yeah, I’m talking about you, Arcane Warrior from Dragon Age: Origins!) How do you intend to balance the 5E rules for wizards in a game designed to be balanced around the 2E rules? The additional classes and kits in the official games (including SoD) were balanced using the 2E rules.
3rd party mods may not necessary be balanced, but it behooves a mod creator to not unbalance the game. “BG feel” would be broken if the balance of the game is broken. No, you hardly offended me. It’s good to have different points of view in this matter.
I guess my main thing is...how can you implement the 5E rules in a 2E-based game without upsetting the balanced of said game?
Clarification: the 3.5 rules are less likely to be impacted by adding in a 5E modification, since the 3.5E rules are much closer to the 5E rules. This is why I mentioned NWN2 above; it uses the 3.5 rules. 5E really is a simplification of the 3.5 rules, for the better, imho.
If I wanted to introduce, say, skills and feats, that are a very "third edition" thing, then I'd understand your point. But here we are talking to something similar to a Sorcerer or Mage kit. I think if you look at the actual rule we are talking about here, it's fully compatible with 2E.
In BG we currently have the Sorcerer that has a limited number of spells known, but more spells per day than a mage. Since the "useful spells" are very few in BG to beat the game bloody, the Sorcerer (as well as the Dragon Disciple) is the most OP single class.
We then have the mage specialist, that for some schools of specialisation is also very powerful (others are crappy, so they are under, if ever, used).
At the bottom we have the mage generalist, with less spells per day than a sorcerer or mage specialist but the ability to know all possible spells (still limited by intelligence, though, so you can never scribe ALL spells in the spellbook unless you pump intelligence up somehow).
What I am proposing is:
- the ability to choose which spell of each spell level to cast, after resting, like a Sorcerer
- the ability to scribe spells in the spellbook and memorise some (without duplicates) before resting, like a mage
- a reduction in spells-per-day adequate to the increased flexibility. This can be argued: I'd keep the spells per day equal to the mage generalist, because right now that doesn't have any advantage already. One might instead want to reduce it even further. This can be put as an alternative choice in a mod (like some class/kit mods have).
So the general gameplay would still be: go around, cast your spells-per-day. When finished, rest. Then start again. With a bit more flexibility allowing you to use, sometimes, less common spells instead of the usual "tried and tested".
PS: regarding the last bit you quoted (which would be too much for BG, as I've acknowledged), that's essentially an extremely simple, stripped down metamagic: like, casting magic missile as a level 2 spell instead of level 1. Metamagic was born in AD&D, too, not in 3rd, although it's there that bloomed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tome_of_Magic
Also, not to discourage you, but this is going to be hard to implement, error prone, and likely be hard to debug. Fair enough. Ok, now…the kicker is, which spells? Some 5E spells are easily going to be ridiculously overpowered in a 2E setting, I can tell you already. Others are particularly useless even in 5E (*cough* thaumaturgy *cough*).
I merely mean: spells that people don't use much in BG, because they are not worth a spell slot (for a Sorcerer) or to rest-memorise-cast and then go back to one's "favourite" memorised set.
Even just spells of the blue/white type, or less powerful summons that one might one to use once in a while.
If you can implement it and balance it and all that, go for it. You're in for a hell of a time! And I don't mean that in a bad way, necessarily. lol
Basically I would use my existing (in development) spell selection generator with a custom spell list and spells known progression. I would have my generator also allow you to swap spells of the same level in and out of your spell book (using some iterative checks for currently known spells). So, for example, if you already know the number of spells you're supposed to know, you can always select to trade one for another (e.g. Armor for Burning Hands...)
The ability that triggers this whole mess would only be usable out of combat, to prevent certain side effects; the ability requires that the caster be completely rested upon checking known spells (although I think that this might no longer be the case... pretty sure they added a new opcode).
This is probably incoherent but basically, I know exactly how I would do this, and maybe if I'm feeling innovative at some point in the near future, I'll throw something together to demonstrate how to do it.
I disagree, though I think there should be penalties involved in armored arcane casting. Armor in Pillars of Eternity slows down your casting, for instance, but there's also the issue that Pillars splits AC into Deflection (which works like AC in Baldur's Gate and depends mostly on stats and level) and Damage Reduction (which absorbs some incoming damage and depends on your armor). You can put a mage in plate armor if you want, but he's still not going to make it if a dragon gets all up in his grill because his Deflection will be terrible so the dragon will be able to get hits or crits with pretty much every attack and 20 DR is nothing against a monster that can exceed your DR four times over with a single hit.
AC is really kind of dumb. Does 5E still use AC? I hope not.
For armored casting in BG, I like the way the various tweak packs handle it--the miscast chance is prohibitive for anything beyond leather armor and really armor is just there as a crutch until you can get elven chainmail or a robe of the whatever archmagi.