Casting magic should cost gold
In D&D you need certain materials to cast certain spells. (diamond dust for stone skin for example)
However, BG series removed this all together resulting in ridiculous ownage by mages. A level 20 mage can toy around with level 50 fighter using a timestop, and a level 30 mage can kill 2~3 level 50 fighters alone with a timestop and chain contingency. and spells are literally infinite since you can rest as often as you like without time constraints.
I suggest we emulate D&D magic material requirement by requiring gold to cast magic, depending on its level.
a practical formula could be something like gold spent for casting: 10 * square of spell level.
So level 1 spell will cost 10 gold each time its casted, level 5 spell 250 gold, and level 9 spell will cost 810 gold each.
This will enable players to use magic without throwing 10 high-level spells in each fight.
The game doesn't make much sense in a way that you are casting rare magic spells way too often rather than saving them up for tough fights. What's the point of encounters against weak monsters if each time you just throw a horrid wilting and the fight is over in 1 sec?
If this is to be implemented, cleric spells will have to use gold as well for balancing reasons. They will cost less(since they only have up to level 7) though.
With a mage you don't need a tank. Solo mage can beat the entire game(from BG2 start) without taking 1 hp damage. A mage can replace rogues with protection from energy, elements + stoneskin and magic deflection which will ignore all traps(even better than a rogue, IMO!) I can simply run through traps without taking any damages at all. A mage can also become an insane DPS *warrior* with tensir's change + vampiric touch + dark blade+haste which will grant the mage 2 times attack per round with 250HP and 30~40 damage per hit.
A mage is potentially better stealth, tank, warrior, rogue than specialized classes..... that's just plain wrong.
I play a mage/sorc most of the time and if you know how to use them they are gamebreakingly powerful.
This power should come at a cost.
However, BG series removed this all together resulting in ridiculous ownage by mages. A level 20 mage can toy around with level 50 fighter using a timestop, and a level 30 mage can kill 2~3 level 50 fighters alone with a timestop and chain contingency. and spells are literally infinite since you can rest as often as you like without time constraints.
I suggest we emulate D&D magic material requirement by requiring gold to cast magic, depending on its level.
a practical formula could be something like gold spent for casting: 10 * square of spell level.
So level 1 spell will cost 10 gold each time its casted, level 5 spell 250 gold, and level 9 spell will cost 810 gold each.
This will enable players to use magic without throwing 10 high-level spells in each fight.
The game doesn't make much sense in a way that you are casting rare magic spells way too often rather than saving them up for tough fights. What's the point of encounters against weak monsters if each time you just throw a horrid wilting and the fight is over in 1 sec?
If this is to be implemented, cleric spells will have to use gold as well for balancing reasons. They will cost less(since they only have up to level 7) though.
With a mage you don't need a tank. Solo mage can beat the entire game(from BG2 start) without taking 1 hp damage. A mage can replace rogues with protection from energy, elements + stoneskin and magic deflection which will ignore all traps(even better than a rogue, IMO!) I can simply run through traps without taking any damages at all. A mage can also become an insane DPS *warrior* with tensir's change + vampiric touch + dark blade+haste which will grant the mage 2 times attack per round with 250HP and 30~40 damage per hit.
A mage is potentially better stealth, tank, warrior, rogue than specialized classes..... that's just plain wrong.
I play a mage/sorc most of the time and if you know how to use them they are gamebreakingly powerful.
This power should come at a cost.
Post edited by IntoTheDarkness on
2
Comments
My point is, if you want to simulate the difficulty that was lost when spell components were eliminated, it makes no sense to charge 90 GP for a spell that only requires components worth less than 1GP. It would only make sense to charge for spells that actually had spell components that were WORTH something. It's easy to look at the source material, it will usually show a monetary value for components that actually HAVE monetary value, the rest is more just for flavor. For example, Raise Dead requires diamonds, worth 1,000 GP. Stoneskin, which you mentioned earlier, requires 250 GP's worth of diamond dust. Restoration also uses diamond dust, but only requires 100 GP's worth.
Implementing a system that charges more than ACTUAL D&D is only tacking on false difficulty and just being plain annoying and inconvenient, ESPECIALLY at the earlier levels when mages are fairly weak and money is hard to come by. Most higher-level spells, the ones that REALLY unbalance the game, do require components and I wouldn't object to seeing that implemented. But if they're gonna do it, they'd better keep it true to the source material. I don't want to be paying out the freaking ears for spells that are only supposed to require stuff like a wave of the hand, a pinch of dust, or a ball of bat poop.
Early level mages are tough to play, but if you are playing with a party your mages will be protected so their vulnerability won't matter and if you are soloing they will reach a high level very quickly anyway. In my eyes mage/sorc seem flawless and definitely overpowered. <= from someone who played BG blind with sorc and finished every fight in TOB(... including the final boss fight) in 1 sec with multiple chain contingencies fired in volley.
I agree that the game can be easily manipulated as a solo mage if you go all out in every battle and then rest directly afterwards (especially if you're in a dungeon or other area where there are enemies nearby). But just because you CAN do something in the game doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.
Don't you only get to rest once per day in D&D? I think something like 1 rest per 24 hours won't be too far-fetched, but I will take your advice for my next playthrough.
There is a cost to the power, though - a d4 hitpoints, and etc.
It's not a mistake, or an imbalance, that a 20th level fighter is probably doomed against an Archmage. But the Archmage still needs a group to survive. The fighter has to be there to fight off the horde of demons while the wizard casts, and protect him when he rests, which is more than 8 hours, I think by 1st edition anyway...
also, I doubt that solo mage in BG2/ToB is a cakewalk, especially if you go no-reloads, make the character stick with they're % to know spell, etc.
There is a cost to the power, though - a d4 hitpoints, and etc.
It's not a mistake, or an imbalance, that a 20th level fighter is probably doomed against an Archmage. But the Archmage still needs a group to survive. The fighter has to be there to fight off the horde of demons while the wizard casts, and protect him when he rests, which is more than 8 hours, I think by 1st edition anyway...
How does HP matter when you are virtually immune to all damages with protection spells? Even if you don't pre-buff, stoneskin and contingencies can buy you time to cast a timestop. once timestop is fired, the battle is over. a fully effective level 50th fighter(with exp remover and unnerfed thac0, saving throw table) will be slaughtered by a level 20 sorc, no matter the circumstances. Give me a sorc who can cast 9th level and I can kill as many fighters, regardless of their level, as the number of timestop available. (a little exaggeration. but no doubt they are immensely powerful in high levels
Warcraft had a reagent system for casters, which was gradually minimized and in some cases eliminated, because reagents end up being a HUGE pain in the butt for players. They're not fun, and don't create any meaningful restrictions on mages.
I agree that BG's rest system is borked, and BG2's rest-until-healed is even worse. Because they're easily exploited, they make a caster's single biggest limitation -- spells per "day" -- totally meaningless. Any caster at any level has, functionally, unlimited access.
If you're looking to curb late game power, I'd start there.
If you don't like how it works now, don't abuse the magic system. Or find a mod that does what you want and just "fix" your own game.
Isn't it enough that you can play by your own rules? Do you have to force everyone to play by them as well?
You are like a man who moves into a town where the speed limit is 35mph. It is well known for it's low speed limit and the fact the children play in the streets. And then trying to get the speed limit raised and balls outlawed to get the town to conform to his wishes.
You cannot swing a sword with the same amount of power that my fireball will hit your face with, there is no need to change what works brilliantly.
If you find mages too powerful and want them nerfed, then a better solution would be not to play a mage, and not to take mages on your group.
By saying you would need these restrictions 'forced upon you', ask yourself why is that? Obviously you enjoy playing mages so much in BG that you can't even force yourself to stop using OP spell combinations on them. Another solution is to play a sorcerer and pick no NPC arcane casters. On your sorcerer only take gimped spells and buffs.
I don't think we should interpret the collective failure of developers and writers to scale caster power as "oh, yeah, working as intended." That's a bit too easy a rationalization.
As for your example: Not necessarily. You can normalize the damage. Eg: Fighters can hit a single target for 10 damage, while a Mage can hit five targets for two damage each.
But while a Mage can hit multiple targets and never miss while a Fighter can't, that doesn't quite feel like enough compensation to justify the Mage's traditional weaknesses, ie lack physical defenses and hard limits on casting (either through a mana system or 'memorization.')
It gets tricky when you try and create classes that are more or less balanced so that no one class is clearly more attractive or superior than any other, and then further scale that balance up and up and up to high levels.
The reason why it keeps on coming up is because most gamers are @#£%£&() and whinge and whine any time that their melee or ranged character is weaker than the spellcaster. You know there's a reason why mages are called nukers? There's a reason for why Gandalf was so much more powerful than ordinary men in LOTR? Because he had magic.
In the context of BG, because of bad scaling, a lot of high level fights must always be prefaced by a few rounds of stripping away spell protections and lowering enemy saving throws. That's not sexy, fun, or powerful. It's just tedious. The only reason it's necessary is because Mage scaling sucks.
There is nothing boring about the gameplay of BG, if it was so boring then why are there still all these fans of the game here today? None of your balanced games have stood up to the test of time as well as BG has.
What would balance the combat in BG would be more challenging enemies, not nerfing the magic. Even better would be a PVP system with one player controlled mage battling another player controlled mage. That would be pure mayhem and fun.
As much as you want to try to convince us otherwise, you secretely love the spells and mages in BG, that's why you can't stop playing them or the game.
I'm sorry to disagree with you, but to me the single most fun and amazing thing about BG is the mage vs mage battles. The strategy and planning involved behind such battles is comparable to a game of chess to me, and I wouldn't want it to be done any other way. I would find it incredibly boring to simply run through the entire game by doing nothing other than poking everything dead with a stick. Any nerfs that you make to mages will nerf the difficulty of the game tremendously, because enemy mages are the games most powerful enemies.
If you genuinely hate the power creep and mage power in BG, then no one is forcing you to play the game that way. Create a custom team of gimps with no arcane casters, turn the difficulty up to full and enjoy playing how you desire.
Interesting idea, but I'm not sure rather this is too restrictive.
Here's a better solution - play a hardcore run on the highest difficulty with no reloads allowed apart from when you exit the game. If you die then you have to start again from the start.