Wands and staves

With the emphasis on combat I was hoping that wand and staves might have a more useful role in battle. The damage on the stave, for a two handed weapon, is pretty dismal when compared to melee weapons. it only does 6 damage and has a critical of 1. And it doesn't get any kind of bonus. I understand that how they will be used is still up for grabs, but until then how about throwing users of wands and staves a bone.

 

Where do you think the balance is?

Are you talking about a staff or a wand casting a fireball? Or are you talking about using them in melee? I plan to play a mage and I would be rather upset if I learned that a wand or a staff did "real weapon" type damage in combat.

 

First of all I think it would be a mistake to not treat a staff.. magical or otherwise.. as a viable melee weapon.

As for how they are used by mages.. as a charged weapon or another effect.. I say.. is it too much to ask for both? Use different materials and different enchantments. Have the staff/wand either function one way or the other.. but not both.

The question I would have to ask though in terms of charged items.. is can they be used by a non-magic user or will they require a certain level of skill in any particular school of magic?

 

I really want to be able to use ANYTHING as a focus, not just staves and wands. That has been done before to many times and is boring. This game is supposed to be a REAL ROLE playing game with the freedom to pick your role. Just split the skills to use an item as a magical focus, from its use as a normal weapon. That way a mage who wanted to role play as a spell sword could use a sword as there focus or an arcane archer could use a bow as there focus but they wouldn't have any advantage using these items as a sword or a bow without also spending points on that. You could also have a priest roleplaying that his hammer was a gift from his god and the source of his magical power. Even if you wanted to focus ONLY on magic spells and no real weapon skill you could still cast through the sword or the bow or whatever without using it as a weapon. You could also chose to use non combat items as a focus, hell you could even chose to use a plate or a mirror or a broom if thats what you chose to do.

 

My personal preference, being a run around mage when that damn melee is whacking my ass, is to have it as a ranged weapon. I'm to squishy, the way the deck needs to be set up for a ranged mage, to be running up beside them and start beating on some plate wearer. Maybe there needs to be two different staves, a melee type and a range type.

Oh and I was referring to auto attack not anything fancy.

 

I would like you to be able to do that too...but I don't think it's reasonable to expect to have a sword, have another guy with a staff and another guy with nothing and they all cast spells perfectly and equally effective. The reason this is a bad idea is because of the balance issues it creates. If you have a sword that you can swing and hurt people with and oh yeah you can also cast spells without any trouble...now you're impacting my choice to play a mage that doesn't use any weapons at all.

Again, I hope the devs consider allowing you to cast spells with a sword or whatever...but they also balance the game so that it comes at a price.

 

Yes, a staff should be able to be used as a melee weapon. I do not need any more charged spells...I am a mage. I need something to get the melee attacks off of me. A staff is a mage's general way to do that. It should be able to knock back, knock out, stun etc...I want to be a pure mage not a mage with a sword. Staves to me are a part of the mage.

 

not really, I would have to spend points on the sword skills if I actually want it to do anything other than look pretty. Think about it like in David Eddings's The Elenium. In that book Sephrenia uses one of the knights swords to focus her spell at one point but you think if she was in a fight WITH the sword she would do anything but get cut down?

As it stands even if they only implement staves then your at a disadvantage bare handed, if however you do what I would like then your actually not because staff, sword or bare hand if you all focus exclusively on magic your going to have spells and no non magical attack skills.

That said I WOULD like focuses to do SOMETHING otherwise why have them, so maybe if your going to go bare handed maybe you should have a spell book which acts as your focus

 

I really just feel like every game that comes out swords get so favored... the other weapons all get gimped and there's barely reason to use them, too slow, can't use a shield, etc.

We currently have that situation again. Pikes and Halberds were feared weapons ! Let's try to make them feared in the game !

 

I think you're using dangerous logic. I keep telling the devs the same thing I'm going to tell you. If you're trying to balance combat, you can't say "well it's ok that you're dead because that guy had to spend a lot of extra points on his skill tree to carry a sword and cast magic interchangably." That's not how you balance combat, that's how you unbalance it.

I don't understand your story reference though, I've never read that book series. I think that many people want to be fighter mages so they can have their cake and eat it too...and I don't mind having fighter mages, but if you're going to be one then I think you need to be not as good a fighter as a pure fighter and not as good a mage as a pure mage. Not because I favor one playing style over another, but because that's only fair to people that are not fighter mages.

If they implement staves and wands or anything else, the base for casting magic should be bare hands. From bare hands you can stagger your system any way you want to...but the root of all spell casting should be bare hands. Meaning that the most efficient way to cast spells without having fizzle or backfire and while losing the LEAST amount of focus is to have bare hands. Once you add a weapon or a staff or whatever, that changes things and you should take on more penaties the more you add offensive and defensive capability. This shouldn't even be questioned in my opinion. But I'm happy to explain my point of view.

Would I still be bare handed with a book in my hand?

 

They focused on blades so they could have a baseline...that's it, that's the only reason that blades are OP right now.

I'd love to have chaos and lunar magic but they focsued on fire magic. No big deal, it will all get here in time.

 

I also would suggest that if they do not want to make Staves a viable melee weapon for a mage that they make pure mage spells more powerful. For instance...any points spent in melee skills will weaken your magic.