Casting spells without reagents = BAD

No, right now you can be a naked mage and be great!

But yeah, a pure fighter right now is at a huge disadvantage. One of the reasons for this is because they can't block anything (roots, stuns, fireballs, you name it they're getting hit with it). I can't wait to see Chris's post about balance.

 

I hope that is the case. I would really like there to be a benefit to being a "pure mage" vs mastering the fire skill tree but having a bunch of warrior skills. If a guy wielding a two handed sword with master level skill can also cast fireballs just as powerful as a pure mage that seems like a problem.

Sure the pure mage might have more spells, but more spells don't necessarily mean much when you are trying to keep your deck as small and efficient as possible.

There has got to be something that makes the pure mage a better caster than the hybrid. Maybe cross school spell combinations is the key to that?

Where as the pure fighter has all kinds of skills to chop the mage in half if they don't get that spell off in time. Also the pure fighter would be better as a pure melee fighter than a hybrid fighter/mage. Although the hybrid would have some ranged skills so that evens things out a bit i guess.

 

Then the question is, will a staff be considered a polarm or a bludgeon? Then again a wand really doesn't have much offensive ability in combat unless you poke somebody in the eye with it.

 

Good questions. I'd like seeing a staff as a polearm and a wand as a very weak bludgeon that breaks almost immediately when you use it as a weapon.

But more importantly to me, why don't weapons including staves and wands add to fizzle and backfire chance?

 

But really, I think this whole discussion is one extended troll. R8 was a first cut at PvP with no great effort given to balance. Most of the trees were sparse, and some of them were barren entirely. Lets get a couple of subsequent releases under our belt before we start cutting our own throats, M'Kay?

 

I really hope magic isn't the only way to go. In fact I don't want to see warriors always having to be well armored and fighting fairly either. I'm hoping for stealth and a sneak attack skill, some poison, and follow that up with a couple of standard blade strikes to finish the job.

Right now a person who hides and catches a person off guard has an advantage. A rogue would be wearing light armor, and be as vulnerable as a mage except they won't have the magic to rely on. So surprise is the best option, and the ability to sprint away. A real low class, cheap shot type character type.

I'm fine hashing out mages for now though. Think about rogues later.

 

I would think by the very nature of the wand or staff that they would work nicely with spells. Channeling spell power is what they are designed to do. Other weapons might not have that same design in mind though. Maybe certain types of magic function more poorly with different types of weapons.

What if earth and life magic works better with bludgeons, and air and lunar work better with blades... or something like that. So each style type of weapon might have a different fizzle. I haven't given that much thought though, I'm just throwing that out there.

 

There is still a lot of disagreement among the devs on what staves and wands are good for. Chris goes by the Harry Potter school of them being a focus device. Starr Long and RG think of them as in UO, an item with charges. They'll have to thrash that out first.

 

There's an entire thread started for this conversation, here.

 

I'm on Starr and RG's side for this...I don't mind Chris's point of view, so long as two conditions are met. 1) Weapons (including staves and wands) carry some kind of penalty in fizzle and backfire. 2) Players that use only their bare hands have the best chance to get a spell off.

 

I support weakened spells without reagents. Mages can have a weakness with lighter armor. When they run out of reagents, that weakness is compounded further. While there should be a trade off for the range and power of spells, I am not certain that requiring the mages to go without spells at all in a situation where that may destroy not just the fun of them, but of a group, is the right balance. I am not sure that the fun a mage can have in battle should be entirely directly proportional to the time they spend collecting reagents, when other classes do not have that same level of down time. It is about how game mechanics require people to spend their time in game. There needs to be a balance.

 

ok, how is this then, either they have wands and stave's that can shoot fireballs and lightning, Or, they can have really weak no reagent spells. But not both.

 

I kind of like the wands and staves as melee focus weapons honestly.

Maybe there could be rare versions that do things that no spell can do, that would be really interesting,

kind of like how knights would collect powerful swords...

 

I must agree with Owain on this Baron, almost always your threads are interesting and constructive, but on this one you only threw some incendiary statements (its bad for blah blah blah, discuss) and then argued about other people comments. I is a shame because finally, 5 pages later and i dont see your arguments about all of the points you address. And i am interested on your opinion about them, why not to write it on the OP ?.

 

That's good feedback. I'm having a bad day today, and it definitely impacted this post.

I've been a little lazy with my argument in the OP. I usually go into great detail but often find the result to be that no one reads what I say and they argue just the same. So I apologize for my poor craftsmanship of this thread.

 

Hehe, i thought that maybe that was your intention, and you succeeded on getting posts (i dont get many on mines). But the most important thing is lacking xD: your arguments .

 

I agree with no regents myself, but I don't see a problem with regent-less casting being very weak. Even to the point where you can only cast certain low level spells.

The thing I'm a bit worried about is making gathering regents to go out and explore or quest becoming a huge drudgery. I don't mind having to find/buy/grow my regents at all...Love that concept. I just don't want a regent that I need for my main spells like fireball/lightning/hailstorm to require a regent that is only found 1x per month during 3 am in the morning in the middle of a pvp zone. That would be drudgery in my book.

Also, I still will fight for my mage staff being a valid mage weapon that does not destroy or hinder my ability to cast spells. Also, there are many different types of mages all of who can be considered pure mages. They could even go so far as to put a type of pure mage based on the mage weapon you carry...Spellbook=Wizard, Staff=Warlock, Wand=Archmage, Hands-Free=Sorceror...Just as a sampler. Perhaps each could have a certain bonus or benefit...

 

I'm mostly a PvE player, but I will partake in PvP if necessary (i.e., a rare resource or item I desire happens to be in a PvP area). As far as being in a fair fight goes, that is certainly something I strive for My main character is an honorable fellow and would not resort to underhanded tactics simply to win (Yes, you can actually win battles in PvP that way )

 

Who said anything about underhanded? Concentration of force and use of overwhelming force are fundamental principles of combat.

If you plan to wander about a combat zone solo, expect to be overwhelmed.

 

One thing I'll point out about magic and being a mage is that I think it's completely overused. I get it, slinging spells around is fun. But if magic is so common that everyone in the game is just casting fireballs at everything, rats, cows, sheep, Nob the Stable boy...that's not fun. In fact it's pretty stupid, and when I hear people talking about the convenience and availability of spell reagents, that's immediately what I think of. People just don't want to do the work involved with being good at something. They just want it to be available to them.

The thing about a player economy like the one that the devs have hinted at so far, is that buyers and sellers will always come together. So if you find something dull you're not going to have to go do it - you're just going to have to pay someone else to do it. But here's the kicker, if you're not willing to pay in-game for spell reagents, then maybe you'll have a skill or a trade that you can barter for. If you're still not willing to do anything for reagents, I'm not sure that's a fair expectation. In fact, in my mind it's a waste of time playing the game because what you're asking for is a hand out.

Magic isn't supposed to be available to everyone...it's special. It should require a basic level of dedication to obtain.