Scrolls for sorcerers
chimeric
Member Posts: 1,163
As you might have heard, I am making some spells - magic-user spells (arcane) for now, and eventually priest spells (divine). For wizards I can put the spells on scrolls - get them and scribe them. For priests I can create a talking item or a special ability that will make them learn all of the spells appropriate to their level. I am doing it this way so I can completely bypass spell tables, such as SPELL.IDS, for all the different Infinity Engine games and their compatibility problems. I want the broadest application. All of my spells will be learned directly, and most of the scrolls, in the case of wizards, will not be sold at Thalantyr's or at Sorcerous Sundries or similar stores in other games. This is Dungeons&Dragons, not Cash&Carry. You will have to go out and find them.
But what about sorcerers? These poor bastard children of the Vancian memorization system and the reluctance of TSR/Wizards to abandon it are supposed to sacrifice range for flexibility for some reason. I want them to have access to my spells too, if they decide to add them to the repertoire. And since I leave alone IDS spell tables, they will not get my spells to pick when they level up. Good, all the more adventuring to do. Although a sorcerer does not want to clutter the interface with spells of limited usability - notice how this purely a question of interface, there is no reason why a sorcerer would want fewer powers in a imaginary, pen-and-paper game - I want the scribing to work for them so they can pick and choose. The only question is, how to accomplish that? All of the functions and distinctions in the toolset lump wizards and sorcerers together, what is usable by the goose is good for the gander, except that scribing is not there!
But what about sorcerers? These poor bastard children of the Vancian memorization system and the reluctance of TSR/Wizards to abandon it are supposed to sacrifice range for flexibility for some reason. I want them to have access to my spells too, if they decide to add them to the repertoire. And since I leave alone IDS spell tables, they will not get my spells to pick when they level up. Good, all the more adventuring to do. Although a sorcerer does not want to clutter the interface with spells of limited usability - notice how this purely a question of interface, there is no reason why a sorcerer would want fewer powers in a imaginary, pen-and-paper game - I want the scribing to work for them so they can pick and choose. The only question is, how to accomplish that? All of the functions and distinctions in the toolset lump wizards and sorcerers together, what is usable by the goose is good for the gander, except that scribing is not there!
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To @GrimLefourbe : yes, that is possible. The Learn Spell option from scrolls doesn't work for sorcerers, but if you make a separate item with a power that makes them learn a spell directly when the item is used, it goes into their spell books. And it looks just the same from within the toolset: Item Ability; Learn Spell. Only there is no nice inventory button for scribing. Is there something special about scrolls, I wonder?
Currently, sorcerers get more spells per day than wizards and they cast spontaneously. In exchange, they get a smaller spellbook (and slightly delayed progression: one level behind wizards for spell levels 2-5).
Letting sorcerers learn from scrolls takes away their most important disadvantage vs. wizards, the breadth of their spellbook. You'd just make sorcerers better than wizards in every way.
That's the AD&D idea of magic for you. I've seen much better representations of wizards, sorcerers, enchanters - magic-users - in many fantasy novels and settings. In Howard's Hyboria, for example, Stygian Black Circlers and the like hunt for new knowledge, but they are also limited by fatigue, commitment to supernaturals, origins, traditions, just the scope of what magic can accomplish. There is no single system and no problem of measuring whether they are quite powerful enough or not exactly. AD&D, being a game, hammered a medley of fantasy magic flat into a system of numbers, made worse by an arbitrary, uninspiring division into classes and schools - and with the IE games we are stuck with an even flatter version. This is what I have to play too, if anything. But that's no reason for me to accept limitations when and if I can make more powerful, vital, original characters, more interaction and mystery - and allow others to do that as well. And that begins with showing that less is not more and that one can *both* talent and knowledge.
Since the release of BG2 the Sorcerer has been considered the most powerful class in the game.
He is overpowered, because he overpowers all the other classes.
The reason? It can select the same spells as the Mage on level up, doesn't need to spend gold to find the spells and has no chance to fail to learn them. They also have no main casting stat (they should).
You could EEKeeper a Sorcerer with all 1s in stats and he could still steamroll through the games in a naked run.
All the Sorcerer needs to survive are his spells and he gets them with no penalty or failure, he just gets them.
And really, the whole mechanic of "learning new spells" is already implemented. It's called leveling up.
They learn new spells on their own as they get more experienced with their powers and practice it.
Their spells almost become one with their being, this is why they cannot change it (or at least as easily in 3E).
They literally force the spells out of themselves with their powers of personality, they don't learn them or study them, they force them out.
It's why in 3E the Sorcerer uses Charisma (Force of Personality) instead of Intelligence.
Their spells is not something they carry with them or study, it's something that they are.
Anyway in 3E, a Sorcerer that studies and learns from others new spells is called a Wizard multiclass.
Or an Ultimate Magus PrC. http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20061010a&page=3
Someone that has both spontaneous magic and prepared, studied, learned magic.
It's your mod so do what you want with it. But it's basically combining the Sorcerer's and Mage's advantages with none of their disadvantages, because they're mutually exclusive, to create... well, the Ultimate Mage.
Taking a Powerful Class with another Powerful Class to create Powerful Class squared.
Personally, as a player, I'd rather play with and see a new class that is interesting (Warlock, Dread Necromancer, Psion etc) instead of an Uber Mage.
Though it can be fun for a while to steamroll over everything, though God Mode is also fun.
And I'm a firm believer that balance is the responsibility of the creator, not the player.
People will play the game as it allows them and as they find it.
If you're given a +50 weapon in the beginning of the game, of course most people will use it.
It's the responsibility of the creator to not give them such a powerful weapon for no reason and expect them to just ignore it.
If new spells are created and made available to the wizards (so new magic is introduced in the game's lore) why don't let also the Sorcerers learn those spells?
One reason can be to balance better a class that in vanilla is unbalanced, a good reason, but some players are fine with the Sorcerers. One solution can be giving the option when the mod is installed to chose if the sorcs can learn them. So simple and everybody is happy, who think that the balance is a developer related problem and who like me think that is player related.
As I don't know what the new spells will do I don't know if they will make all the arcane casters more OP (as a mage is or can be even more powerful using metagame) or just add variety.
The real problem of the Sorcerer is that as he learns the spells for an innate ability he should not be able to chose which spells he learn. But this is a different problem, if a new spell is introduced in the CRPG lore and is an arcane one, not reserved to a special kit like the Wild Mage's ones, why he should not learn it. He can chose what to learn from all the arcane spells and the new ones become part of the lore as thy are introduced. the problem is technical, not a balance or lore problem, the OP want to use the scrolls for a technical reason, if is possible to find a way that preserve the max number of spells x level I don't see the problem.
Making the scroll erase a certain spell and making it available just before he level up can be a way. Scrolls different from the ones that normal mages use, not hidden in some place but obtained like the clerical rings. Leveling up the sorc find in the inventory the scrolls with the new spells, but using them he erases forever a known spell. I am not a modder to tell if this is possible.
About the Sorcerer that uses the scrolls to cast I disagree. Is true that he does not learn by study but as an innate ability, but he uses the mana just as any other mage. And the mana is the key, what is written on the scroll is not relevant, otherwise it would be like an arcane manual, no reason to have it destroyed in the casting or learning use. The scroll is magic for the mana embedded, mana that a mage can use to learn or to cast, a sorc only to cast as he is naturally able to move and use the mana, but he learn in other ways.
The way I figured out give an almost perfect simulation of adding the new scrolls to SPELL.IDS.
As I told the scrolls must be Sorcerer only and magically given when he levels up, the mages have normal scrolls that the sorc can not use as normal. The way he gets new spells without having to learn them from normal scrolls is replicated, now we have to fix the number of spells per level.
Lets imagine that the OP has created 2 new lev 1 spells named spellA and spellB. At the creation, as he gets his first level, both the special scrolls are given to him. Each scroll state that using it a conventional spell, let's say infravision, is erased and spellA or spellB is added, the scroll can be only activated if infravision is in the spellbook. The Sorc can learn infravision and trade it for one of the new spells, if he want he can learn infravision again when he level up an other time and get also the second new spell. If he want he can learn infravision a 3rd time and keep it, being the conventional spell that is erased for that level doesn't prevent from having it in the end. Or he can chose to learn normal lev1 spells and never activate the special scrolls. Same for each other level. This way the number of the spells learned is the same of the vanilla sorc at each point of the leveling curve.
The whole behavior of the normal way that the sorc gets his spells is replicated, without touching what the OP don't want to touch.
I think the problem that we're looking to work around here is as such :
What OP wants to do : Add new spells that are more powerful than basic spells.
How he intends to balance it : Making them obtainable through adventuring so the more powerful spells are rewards for the more difficult quests.
Problem : Without any trick, either the sorcerers don't get access at all, or they get access through leveling up which removes the intended balanced.
Yes, sorcerers are op, but this thought process doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Sure, sorcerers are op, but making scrolls that would replace spells in the sorcerer spellbook does not make them more op compared to mages, it makes them stronger than mages just as much as they are in vanilla.
Of course, I will be reasonable about not making fights and such too easy. Making scrolls work for sorcerers is just my way of giving players access to my spells, just as they would be able to pick them at level-up, without getting into IDS files and a compatibility mess. But if this broader variety of options changes some people's perspective a little bit, if they begin to ask "Well, why DO we have to choose from these handicaps? Why can't we be strong AND versatile? And, now that all this magic is at my fingertips, how does it work? Where does it come from?" If they ask this, I'll be accomplishing what I set out to do. Maybe it will motivate some of them to make quests for mages, come up with theories - everything empowered people begin to do.
Then again, whenever you introduce some original option, e.g. of winning a fight, then the familiar idea of balance is going to be changed. Think about these games without, say, Fireball. It'd be a completely different... ball game, I guess. Magic Missile and swords would rule. Then, if the designers introduced Fireball in a very official expansion pack or patch, people would begin to use it, and at first it would seem overpowered, because it can sweep up a whole battlefield. And some players would just boycott it. But others would use it, and their ideas of normal power level and balance would also shift, until they wouldn't be able to imagine the game without Fireball - like we can't imagine it. So it is with everything else - we can't imagine a new normal until we've done it. Ideas change, what matters is whether they leave players smiling, freer and with a clearer brow than before, or herded into categories, depressed, bickering about whether something should do d6 instead of d4. That's what I want to change - get us a bit out of the rut.
And that's why I prefer to hide the scrolls away in dungeons and make scrolls useful to sorcerers - so that they too take another look at themselves. Right now they have a very well worked-out, obvious list of must-have spells. Baeloth, for example, comes with Fireball, Haste, Spook, Mirror Image... all the best picks. Now how would it be if there were more good spells? What would sorcerers think, if they recognized that their Personality doesn't contain all that they would like, can't hold as much as a good old grimoire? Would the limitation of their class concept begin to be more acutely felt? (And what if wizards could be made to feel the need for a flexible magic? But that's more difficult.) Well, let sorcerers be even more powerful than before, if that's what they want, let them expand in breadth for the first time. Get out of the narrow "I'm happy with my Fireball" mindset. Actually, I have a perspicacious inkling that a sorcerer with more spells will actually be weaker than one with fewer, more uncertain. Isn't that fun?
Also, I said that they force them out through their power of personality. Magic doesn't come through it if it's not already there.
They will it out of their own souls and beings, with conviction and confidence in their own abilities but also practice.
Most if not all innate abilities are based on Charisma in 3.5E. Sorcerers come from 3E, they don't exist in 2E lore only as a synonym to Mage, as well with Warlock.
Charisma's description in 3.5E:
"Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting."
But I'll let the 3.5E Player's Handbook give you the fluff of the sorcerer's lore.
"Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories—just raw power that they direct at will. ..."
"The typical sorcerer adventures in order to improve his abilities. Only by testing his limits can he expand them. A sorcerer’s power is inborn—part of his soul. ..."
"Sorcerers cast spells through innate power rather than through careful training and study. Their magic is intuitive rather than logical. ..."
"For a sorcerer, magic is an intuitive art, not a science. ..."
"Sorcerers develop rudimentary powers at puberty. Their first spells are incomplete, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and sometimes dangerous Eventually, the young sorcerer understands the power that he has been wielding unintentionally.
From that point on, he can begin practicing and improving his powers. ..."
In short, magic comes naturally to Sorcerers, on its own. They don't go out and seek it.
Mages/Wizards go out and seek magic. Sorcerers already have it, they just need to get more experienced with it and practice.
Their lore is anything but lazy. The whole concept of "that power was inside you all along but you had to practice it" is what they're based on.
And the source of their power could be because of dragon blood or some other outsider or force.
In any case, once again, I'd rather not see or play (as a player) as a new mage class that is better than the Mage and the Sorcerer combined. I wasn't talking about lore or fluff, but mechanics.
The class you're suggesting renders both of the above inferior.
It's suggesting something similar like making a "new" class that has both the Druid's and Cleric's spells and abilities, without being a multiclass, while having none of their downsides.
What's the point of having the above classes in the game, if your new class combines both of them?
Because giving the Mage's variety of spells to the Sorcerer's casting is suggesting that.
To make it even simpler:
Chimeric's Magician > Mage + Sorcerer combined.
This is why I disagree with this concept. It's not a different or new class.
It's the equivalent of basically EEKeeper-ing all the arcane spells into the Sorcerer's list.
It doesn't bring anything new to the table, it brings more power, to the arguably most powerful class in the game by making it a separate class.
Now, if it had it's own list of powers and/or spell-list, I could get behind that.
Like the Warlock or Psion etc. Or even Dread Necromancer. http://alcyius.com/dndtools/classes/dread-necromancer/index.html
Dread Necromancers are spontaneous Cha-based casters with necromancy spells mainly but they can add a very limited number of spells to their spell-list.
Before I go on responding, and lest I veer off topic: I'd like to emphasize that my mod will NOT change the classes. It may appear that way, if you jump in the middle of this thread. But the wizard and the sorcerer will remain just as before. Only sorcerers will get to learn the new spells from scrolls. The mod does nothing but add new spells, period. Now, to what Archaos says... Oh. Fluff is the perfect word for all this. People who write these manuals must really be envious part-timers from porn, always standing there, wondering how those gorgeous people have it so easy. Magic is done the way a poet creates poems, eh? The designers have no idea how a poet creates poems, if they think it's about finding a rhyme in your soul and then just exposing the unfortunates around to it until a Robert Frost emerges. I'd recommend they look into Poe's essay on how he wrote "The Raven," to dispense with illusions that art is something that appears "naturally." There is no *point* to having both druids and clerics, but there is a *reason* why they exist separately. The reason is, they worship completely different gods and have different agendas. The cleric "of any mythos" is a catch-all servant of the gods of civilization, culture. In Greece he could be, for example, a servant of Zeus, Apollo, Ares - war is a human invention too. In the same country a "druid" would be a servant of Artemis, a nymph, a river god or another wild, dangerous deity of the outside world. But we get a better parallel if we juxtapose Christianity with resilient folk worship of fertility gods in Europe and elsewhere: big stone houses, crosses and kings in cities, sacred groves and animal sacrifice in the woods and fields. AD&D sharpens this conflict, originally of power, with modern environmental themes, but basically it is this opposition that we have in the game. That's why the cleric and the druid are distinct - not for any reasons of game mechanics. They have a different story.
With magicians - in antiquity, in ancient Israel, in medieval Europe, in Muslim countries and farther out in Asia, in Africa, everywhere - there is always and only the same story. Magicians are instantly recognizable. no matter what culture or period you look into; it is almost as if they really have an invisible sign on their faces, as in C.S. Lewis' "The Magician's Nephew." Read that book to know most of all there is to know about magicians. They are the people who delve into secrets commoners are too fearful to investigate in search of power. What they do with that power or just where they get it from, magicians' role and reputation, their standing vis-a-vis monotheism can differ greatly between cultures.
If we had to make one distinction within this class of people, it would be to oppose the witch doctor to the sorcerer, the white magician to the black one. One heals, the other kills. One cures with herbs by day, the other lurks in hyena form at night. Then there also different initiation traditions, societies, shamans, who may or may not be identified with magicians. It's complicated. But you can be sure that *everybody* gets their knowledge by hard work - by hard-worked therapeutic theater, in shamans' case. It is always exploration, discovery, a quest or a trade-off. And that is exactly how it is in any good fantasy literature. Even if one starts out with some inborn powers in fantasy, they continue to expand and explore to get better.
Then what about those quotes from 3.5E, the power of Personality and so on? Can't you just be born cool? Wasn't Elvis from outer space?
No. All of that is bull shit, anywhere in that continuum of reality that the observable world and imagination are the different continents of. Bull shit has no place anywhere, and nobody gets anything easy.
Unless! Unless you are not human. That's possible. Pixies fly, demons... dem, Gandalf was an angel. Sure, why not. Why not have dragon blood that gives you special powers? Kind of too many sex-crazy lizards around, if that's what accounts for it, but okay. Only those powers are not going to be magic. They will be just that, powers. This kind of mutant may develop them to a point - Though how much more is there to flying, once you've learned to flap the wings? Do a few barrels, dive, that's the end, you've graduated - I say, there may be a little development of those inborn abilities, but one should never be able to learn anything new this way. A mole doesn't get any more mole-ish with the years, an eagle is just an eagle, and if you have a dragon's powers, well, there aren't so many.
You can't have it both ways - be powerful AND lazy. You want real magic, to grow - find a Merlin, call on Satan and learn.
I'd like to underscore again that this mod of mine will not do anything to the classes. The scrolls will be just convenience items, use them or not, as you will. Try them before you judge, anyway. But in principle, of course, it is true that a proper representation of the magician, as that figure exists in the mind and life of humanity, would eliminate the wizard and the sorcerer, those AD&D cripples, in favor of a normal, free, powerful class. If mages must have limitations, and, of course, they have them, those ought to come from elsewhere - from their dubious social standing, from the draining or damning nature of their powers or other things.
And that's my call, one I spent many words on here - and I hope they reached a few right ears: stop treating magicians from the point of view of pure mechanics. Think deeper and broader into the fantasy, and remember the reality of culture and myth. Stop discussing mages as a type of walking cannon, more or less powerful than another type. AD&D has many flaws, imperfectly thought-out classes, but it is a Role Playing Game, not an engineers' college.
People who mod the game is aware of what is doing, there are players happy with Item Revision and others happy with Item Upgrade, but everyone knows perfectly what he will introduce in his game installing mods.
People will first play the vanilla game as it allows them and then mod it according to their own preferences and, on average, they are well informed and they will have also some vanilla game mileage and an opinion on what is the balance they like in their own games, if they want a balance at all. That is the only thing on which I disagree, if you, as creator, feel the balance, your idea of balance, so important then your mods will be great as many times seeds in which we believe so strongly give good fruits. That is wonderful.
But the player will install or not install your mods in an informed way, your responsibility is to do something in witch you believe, the better that you can. And it will be great for those who share your same feelings or similar ones. But the responsibility of which modifications are installed on a game he owns, run and modify on his own computer is of the player.
Exactly. The sorcerer has its own lore, mechanics and makes sense within the Realms.
Other source outside of DnD or Forgotten Realms is irrelevant to this argument.
For example, I think that Vancian magic (Mage/Wizard/Cleric/Druid casting = prepare/memorize and forget) is just silly and I disagree with it. But it is what it is and it's lore-accurate.
And I believe @chimeric wants to either create a new class, leaving Mage and Sorcerer intact, or modify the existing Sorcerer by giving him the versatility of the Mage.
Which is what I disagree with. It's making the most powerful class in the game, more powerful by making its disadvantages disappear and making the Mage objectively inferior.
Always talking mechanics-wise. Not concept or lore or philosophically speaking of what is or should be a Mage.
If Mage is A and Sorcerer is B, then what is proposed is making it A+B.
That's objectively better and stronger. It's beyond debate. It's an objective fact.
If you want to create such a class for fun, go ahead.
What I'm saying is to not think that this class wouldn't render both of the mentioned classes inferior and useless in comparison.
It's a Power Class. Like giving the Cleric all of the spells of the Druid but keeping the Druid the same.
It became Super Cleric. Objectively better.
Just like this mod is about making the Sorcerer into Super Sorcerer.
Super Sorcerer > Mage + Sorcerer combined.
By virtue of simple math.
I wrote more than one time that I find it a good idea (even if I think that it will need some rethinking) and that my intention is only to help you.
Until now you have planned two changes, introducing a 1 sec pause of casting after a cantrip and moving a spell to lev 2 instead of nerf it, both the problems was firs addressed by me. My contribution was useful, I don't work against your mod.
At now we still disagree about the impact on balance that your mod will have even with those 2 changes, I brought some numbers to explain my reasons, very vague numbers as I talk about the average number of spell slots x day and rounds of combat x day of an average mage in an average played party.
But this does not mean that I am against your mod, and I also wrote in the related topic that if you are happy with it I am also happy. Anyway who will ply the mod will find out if my fears are real or just an overestimation.
Sorry for the OT.
Custom lore and personal philosophy is one thing. But mechanics are another.
BGEE is not a book or a setting. It's a game with mechanics, that includes races/classes/spells.
I agree with @subtledoctor on this one. This isn't some class overhaul that replaces the classes with new and custom ones, based on your philosophy.
This is simply giving the sorcerer more power. The experience isn't that different.
It's the equivalent of EEKeepering all the spells into the Sorcerer and calling it something new, as I said above.
We're not arguing what the Sorcerer or Mage should be based on other books or whatever.
We're arguing what the Sorcerer is, whether people like it or not and what it will turn into with his change, in mechanics.
This whole thread boils down to: "I want to give just the Sorcerer even more power and justify it with my own custom lore based on non-DnD lore."
What you're describing isn't a problem with the D&D concept of a sorcerer, it's about how the game awards experience points. The computer doesn't say "Hey Bob's character sat in the corner all game and guzzled Mountain Dew and scarfed pizza. He shouldn't get any experience points." It just awards experience points to all characters in the party no matter if they fight enemies, cast spells, or sit in the corner throwing poop at the wall.