Weapons and Magic

I had a somewhat similar idea regarding materials.. mostly in regards to staves and wands. What if a particular type of wood/treatment were better for specific schools.

 

A ray of hope my friend

 

Disagreed. How is my having a staff an advantage to a mage with his spell book or bare hands? A staff, as a general rule, improves casting and adds the option to hit people on the head. Adding backfire and fizzle from having a staff makes no sense as a staff is a tool of a wizard. I do not want my staff to cast spells, I want it to enhance my spells.

 

Thank you.

This was my reply to Chris.

So yeah, they may come up with something great...but right now they're not speaking the language I'd like to hear.

 

Fair enough...but it's advantage. I can't bop someone on the head with bare hands the way I would with a staff. And if you're claiming a right to improve spells with your staff, doesn't that force me to use a staff to compete as a magic user?

 

At the end of the day, what I'm looking for is balance without making pure mages obsolete. I like your ideas about offensive and defensive casting bonuses, as well as penalties for using weapons of opposing schools. But overall I'd also personally like to see less magic encouraged than more.

I think there should be many viable paths to be a hybrid fighter mage. But I don't think any of those should trump what a pure mage can do. Likewise I don't think any fighter mage combination should trump what a pure (read no magic) fighter can do on the combat side of the fence.

 

Nope because a spell book would have a similar effect as would your bare hands.

Perhaps staff would improve the skills based on it's imbue, same as a spellbook...Perhaps faster casting with your bare hands...Balance?

 

But maybe they intend to make us all ran out of focus faster and mages would have a real advantage with more focus regen.

 

Bowen.. being something of a nerdy bookworm.. would occasionally fight by bopping people on the head with his book. Ok I never killed our resident dragon doing that but it was great for thumping little kobolds. Gave all new meaning to learning through osmosis.

Either way you look at it you're at a disadvantage in melee without some kind of weapon or means of physical defense. I'm not sure how you plan to overcome that unless there's some kind of unarmed skill. (Which I also advocate )

 

I offered something along the lines of that here in the other thread you mentioned... https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/weapons-and-magic.13347/#post-223892

 

Can I bonk someone on the head with my book? What if I don't have anything in my hands? Is it your expectation that a staff is BETTER than no staff or the same?

Faster casting with bare hands would be a nice feature for balance in my opinion. I would enjoy that.

 

Sure, they may have big plans that we don't know about.

I'm just trying to frame the conversation now verses later. It's way too hard to get developers to change things the way you want them to be...it's much easier to tell them before so they just bake it into the cake. That's what I'm trying to do here.

 

I'd say faster casting is a benefit over bonking someone on the head...I just play that way with my mages when possible. UO made it possible hehe.

 

Uhmmm, i think there is a lot of ways to bring balance to the equation. I would choose those that seems to be more enjoyable.

Example: We could use a spellbook item (maybe craftable) with only 1 kind of spell glyph and charges of that given glyph (lets say 10). It would be a one hand item. How to use it? When you equip the given spellbook a fixed glyph appears on one side of your deck that could be used directly or be combined on combos with another glyph of your deck. Advantage? The spellbook glyph not necessarily would be one of your developed glyph trees, so you could chain nasty combos that you could not chain another way. And you could cast it full power without reagents (used to inscribe the spell on the book).

 

Spell books are cool.

 

I think the way staffs and wands work in D&D is one of the worst design decisions ever made (charges, making them just replicate spells, etc)

I hope we see this rectified with this game.

 

Umm no. There is plenty enough causing fizzle and backfire in this game, and I don't feel we need an inch more thanks. In R8, you basically had to strip down to bra and panties to maximize being a mage and are already at a big hindrance because you have virtually no armor. Adding penalties for carrying a weapon would pretty much kill the idea of being a battle mage.

On the other hand, I agree with the part I highlighted.

 

There's no fizzle or backfire for mages wearing all cloth. There's no fizzle or backfire for players wearing FULL PLATE, if you're using combat sigil skills.

How could that possibly be too much fizzle and backfire? Unless you want to create a hybrid tank mage without fizzle and backfire. Which thankfully the devs have attempted to stop using fizzle, backfire, and slugs.

What I'm pointing out is that a naked mage or a person casting spells with all cloth who also wields a weapon is someone that wants no fizzle, backfire or slugs but wants the offensive capability of a non-caster. There's currently no balance there, it's a control gap.

 

Are we sure about that? When they discussed fizzle in the videos, they said spells would have an inherent fizzle chance that is multiplied by wearing armor. If they stick to that, then an unarmored wizard still has to worry about backfire.

I don't know if that was the case in r8 or not, but it's definitely what they proposed.

 

I had zero chance of backfire in R8 wearing all cloth and being naked.