Attention Mages - Melee Fighting

[Frendh]

xXDenizeNXx - 2/9/2006  6:09 AM

I have no idea how to code or program etc, so forgive me if this sounds ignorant but why not just have a simple solution.... while in Tensers or polymorhed they gain no XP. Think about it, how would it further your career as a mage to think like a troll for 2 hours?

Mages do not get lower intelligence than their base intelligence. If a wizard
has 20 in INT without buffs and equipment, the wizard will have at least 20
in INT after the transformation.

btw, goes for all abilities.

So basing a XP penalty on that reasoning would be completely wrong.

[Frendh]

I agree with Ghost on most points. Think something along his lines will be
the best solution.

A transmuter should be allowed to be good at what he does, like all
the other schools.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Ghost, there is one thing, I think, missing from your comparison of the PnP mage prep issues and the NWN mage, and that's the sheer number of baddies, encounters, whatever you want to call them.  In a normal PnP game, the characters normally only deal with, on average, two combat encounters (at least in my experience, and it varies on the type of situations).  An average PnP games lasts 4-5 hours.  In that 4 hours, the characters may traverse only a few hours in the day, or entire weeks.  Time on Layo is muddled for a variety of obvious reasons.  

Usually, in PnP, assuming those combate encounters occur in the same day, and are tailored to the party level, the mage has plenty of spells to handle those two encounters.  Not to mention, PnP encounters have faaaar fewer enemies to face at one time (once again, speaking on the average here).  NWN, on the other hand, in order to facilitate the time it takes to really develop a character, must raise the bar of the encounters, while lowering the experience.  This means, A)  The encounters require far more spells usage, and B)  The mage has a good chance of dealing with more than two encounters between rest periods, even given they are just ten minuute spans.

As it is, if the party is small, yet being thoughtful, planning their actions and working together, I have found we run at about the two encounters per rest that PnP normally incurs.  When the party gets to be more than four members, we can quickly find ourselves going after five or more encounters in one ten minute span, or having to stop and wait around until we can rest again, after which, the monsters respawn in the middle of rebuffing.  

Once the encounters go beyond 2 or maybe 3, the caster is useless unless he/she can go melee.  That is, their spells will be all or mostly used up by the end of the second or third encounter, either from buffing the 10 person party, or from launching massive arial assaults.  This means, that either, during the rest of the encounters before he/she can rest, they simply rely on the fighters they buffed, or get in the thick of it.  Right, and all this appears stupidly obvious, but here's the deal:  in PnP, you don't have monster "respawn,"  you seldom have to deal with more than two significant fights per rest period, the number of enemies and overall strength of encounters are reduced.  

By increasing the rest timer, one of two things will happen:  

A)  the caster becomes a "buff and follow" caster or  resorts to becoming a melee caster

B) parties stop after the second encounter, find a safe place, and rest up until the casters are ready to go again.  That is, fight for four minutes, then sit for anywhere from 6-16 more minutes.

What I believe you want to see, Ghost, is the latter, option B, which is so much more like PnP.  However, what I believe will happen is more along the lines of option A, as that's how it is already.  The ten person party will take their two mage-types, have them buff the party, then march along through ten encounters.  Sure, the buffs won't last through all encounters, but with recasting, they will last through most.  More importantly, the caster will be so bloody useless as anything but a buffer or melee mage unless the party is content with the mage helping with spells on the first two encounters, then just following along invisibly useless the rest of the time.  

I'm sorry, Ghost, but I have to respectfully disagree that increasing the rest timer for casters is the answer.  I see what you are wanting to pursue, and I just don't see that it will happen.  Impatience and greed run amuck, and very few will ever just sit around and wait on the caster to recover spells, even if it means the difference between life and death.  Increasing the rest timer, I believe, will do just the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.  Mages will turn even more into melee characters and toss out all but those spells that help them become melee.


Oh, and yeah, this is the discussion I prviously mentioned (in my last long post in this thread) that I could go into.... I guess it was inevitable that I would.

[Force_of_Will_]

If they add the chance of failure to the spell and I may become a Penguin.I might have to start using the spell.
I think With Sin the only time I used Polymorph was to carry a load of Wood home or Ore.

I can see it now Sin'Dolin the great Penguin Wizard.
*laughs* Sin'dolin The wizard cow who nourishes all the Children of Hlint with Milk.

[GhostWhoWalks]

Adding a chance to turn into a penguin or whatever doesn't make sense. The spells aren't unstable. This isn't wild magic we're dealing with. It would be like saying, fireballs are pretty strong, lets add a chance to have the fireballs come out rose petals.  That kind of balancing logic doesn't really make sense. It leads to an illogical system of balance. No one wants that.


"What I believe you want to see, Ghost, is the latter, option B, which is so much more like PnP. However, what I believe will happen is more along the lines of option A, as that's how it is already. The ten person party will take their two mage-types, have them buff the party, then march along through ten encounters. Sure, the buffs won't last through all encounters, but with recasting, they will last through most. More importantly, the caster will be so bloody useless as anything but a buffer or melee mage unless the party is content with the mage helping with spells on the first two encounters, then just following along invisibly useless the rest of the time.

I'm sorry, Ghost, but I have to respectfully disagree that increasing the rest timer for casters is the answer. I see what you are wanting to pursue, and I just don't see that it will happen. Impatience and greed run amuck, and very few will ever just sit around and wait on the caster to recover spells, even if it means the difference between life and death. Increasing the rest timer, I believe, will do just the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish. Mages will turn even more into melee characters and toss out all but those spells that help them become melee."

The difference will be minutes, but what it will do is slow down the speed a mage can solo and defeat his enemies. If a party wants to wait around the extra 5-10 minutes for a high level mage to rest, that's what they are going to do. Do they need to? No.

Mages aren't a crutch. Magic isn't a crutch. There are some spells in some cases are very important, greater magic weapon for example. But for the most part, parties can survive without most spells for an encounter or two. So if they wanted to wait every time a mage blew his list, that would be a choice. Like so many other things in the game.

It's that crutch effect that Layonara should be trying to avoid. Spacing out the resting slightly will teach that to the smart player. Some may instead wait to refresh the spell lists, but many will learn to prosper without. And that's the trick of balancing in many cases. Planning for the averages. For the general not the specific.

No one makes a mage cast a particular spell. No one makes a mage memorize it. Mages cast what they feel is right when they feel it's right. The party can request spells. Spells that may help the furtherment of the party, but they don't dictate what is cast. If a mage is in a party and chooses to learn nothing but direct damage spells for that day and no buffs, that's what the mage is going to do. If the mage is going to memorize buffs, that's what the mage is going to do. It doesn't really matter for the discussion.

We're dealing with a fairly constant number of spells at each level. If you increase the duration between refreshes of that constant, you'll have simple result. Which spells the mages memorize are irrelivant to the discussion in the end. Be it 30 fireballs or 10 tensors transformations and 10 hastes and 10 whatevers. It doesn't matter.

The melee spells aren't the real issue. They never were.

It's that they can rinse and repeat so quickly in a short span of time.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Sure, they can prepare whatever spells, but when a mage is choosing spells, the fundamental issue is the nature of the spells thesmelves and how efficent they'll be in winning a battle.  So, yes, which spells a mage memorizes is relevant, and very much so.

Mages can only "rinse and repeat" with buffs.  Damage spells, direct attck spells, all are used and are gone.  One shot wonders.   A mage that uses such spells will find themselves utterly useless to the average NWN adventurer should the rest timer be increased.  This has major implications on the number of mages played, as well as on the variety of mages we'll see.  The duration of buff spells and transformation spells makes their usefulness ten times that of a direct damage spell, and it will become twenty times so should the rest timer be set higher.  Spell variety becomes retarded, and all mages become "cookie cutter."  

10 tensers with 10 hastes are worth 300 fireballs.  

-------"Mages aren't a crutch. Magic isn't a crutch. There are some spells in some cases are very important, greater magic weapon for example. But for the most part, parties can survive without most spells for an encounter or two. So if they wanted to wait every time a mage blew his list, that would be a choice. Like so many other things in the game.

It's that crutch effect that Layonara should be trying to avoid. Spacing out the resting slightly will teach that to the smart player. Some may instead wait to refresh the spell lists, but many will learn to prosper without. And that's the trick of balancing in many cases. Planning for the averages. For the general not the specific."-------

It's true, you don't always need mages along.  But how rare do you want mages to be?  And do you want their roles totally defined by the power of their buff spells?  Bards will rule the caster class, *snickers*  as they can buff so much more often than a mage or cleric, thanks to a song and dance.  Mages will always multiclass, because the true power of their magic is stripped down to just the buff spells.

Again, unless you want to severely limit mages on the whole, in both number and variety, I must respectfully disagree.

[blonde]

Excellent posts Ghost. When travelling with a party, you often go way beyond the rest timer between rests, but if you were soloing, you would certainly have to rest much more frequently. Mages are, if any, the class that can turn the tide of a battle. The party mage might run invisible behind the party for several encounters, and then when the party really gets in trouble, the mages quickly fires off some of his spells and saves the day. There are many ways to play a mage, but the type i most prefer is a crowd controller. If you want to be firing spells off right and left, you probably should be a sorcerer. I like the idea, and find it to be completely in the spirit of the wizard...at least my idea of a wizard.

That being said, i think the adjustment to the rest timer might help the issue, but it should be followed up by some other changes as well. Particularly making more spell progressions like stoneskin's. Makes much more sense in a world with such varying levels. As part of this, i could also see some of the damage spells getting beefed up a little to accomodate for the higher levels. I think a longer rest timer would balance this out fine, and bring something back to the high lvl mages, and invokers in particular.

[lonnarin]

Low Magic Server + Magic Class = Powerful Class

High Magic Server + More Magic Enemies -> Balance

Fighter With Increased Magic Items + Wizard in Polymorph = Dead Wizard

Monsters Heavily Beefed with magic?  Priceless

Allow the Mobs to shapeshift.


Mages too well prepared?

Randomize Encounters

[D Blaze]

Some enemies have already been known to shapeshift, you just have to know where to find them.

[errk]

I’d have to agree with milton.  Increasing the timer won’t really address the problem.
You will still have powerplayers that have mastered the solo art with their spells.  And will have an optimal build for a few extra spellslots to allow tensers a couple more of times than average.

In party, I generally buff, and save a couple of firebrands for kicks..  they soften one or two encounters, but deplete very fast.  If I couldn’t rest with the rest of the group, I’d start feeling even more useless then I already do.

A buffed wizard in NWN can be invincible (in some places). With damage reduction, various shields, concealment, elemental and spell protection. Add a little haste and invis. he can run away from most.  (However a wizard who’s buffs have faded is a high candidate to be killed by the closest monster, unlike fighters.)

And my guess is this is what is being seen.  Increasing the rest for wiz/sorc. to say 20min would not affect this much.  The same problem would exist with a mage being more effective in melee.(in the short term..)
---
I play wizard and personally wouldn’t mind Tensers removed/’nerf:ed’.  But I play a wizard because of the variety it allows..  if yet another spell is reduced, you force me into the role of a buff monkey even more.

So..  er.. I agree with AR7 suggestion of making more spells progressive..   I think that was the best suggestion yet.
(It is interesting that the spell with progression is one for targets.. not solo.)

If you decide to weaken mages, perhaps some strengths can be added to make them more mage like.
Strengthen the offensive spells, weaken the self defensive.
I wish the DC for some lower spells where a little higher, so you actually had a chance of casting sleep/blindness/slow once in a while even on Dregar. It seems most monsters have higher saves then most players (could be an incorrect observation).
Perhaps introduce a few more items for pure casters like the teleport tomb.. maybe staffs that depending on your school would give a little spice.  Say, 'polymorph other staff/1 charge day' for a transmuter.

[Serissa]

A % chance of wandering monsters interrupting sleep sounds fair to me.  It would discourage a wide range of soloing characters, not just mages.  At the very least, one learns to be very choosy about strategically defensible sleeping places.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

"And having said all this, I am in favor of bringing back some of the power to the mass damage spells. Fighters are supposed to be most efficient one on one, while mages are supposed to be most efficient against mass enemies. Capping the duration on things that make caster's into fighters makes it much more applicable to give them some of their mass damage back."

Cap duration for the super-buffs like Tenser's, and give back the 10d6 fireballs. It's not as if the spell Fireball is all that powerful, at high levels; even if you Maximize AND Enhance it, what monster at CR 16 has fewer than 90hp? Not many. At least, not too many that I put in the campaigns I run (PnP DM).

Some spells are simply unfit for an MMORPG setting like NWN, when you compare their usefulness in PnP and NWN. In PnP around mid-levels, you'd have your Rogue Sneak Attack, then your mage would Fireball the baddies before they ran up, and then it would be a meat grinder of fighters, clerics, and Sneak Attacks, while the mage occasionally tossed in a few offensive spells. I had never even thought of a Buff/Masher mage until I started reading this thread, which totally blew me away. I've played on some powergame servers before, as a mage (I really just wanted to throw five Magic Missiles), but kept getting slaughtered because I gamed like PnP sorcerers will. Some of the Buffs, like Tenser's (the PnP description of which can be found here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/transformation.htm ), seem to be much more powerful in NWN than they'd be in PnP, while I've only seen three - count 'em, THREE - Fireballs ever cast; two by the same person in the same session (er... Party adventure).

I've always considered the Wizard to be one of the most easily-customizable classes, right next to Rogue, with Fighter trailing just behind. Your spell list relates to the entire character concept - A sly, charismatic Wiz with a Rogueish idea of how to kill things would likely have some Illusion, Enchantment, and Evokation spells, while a studious, paragonal Wiz would likely have a nice distribution over all the schools, with moderately few in Transmutation (if I were to build it, he'd likely have a healthy number of Divination, Evokation, and Abjuration spells).

Every build should have the same merits, if not in the same ways. Transmuters and Evokers should be the Be-All-End-All of combat mages, as solo and backup, respectively. Who doesn't remember the Evil Queen in Sleeping Beauty who cast Polymorph Self [Adult Dragon, Black]? How 'bout Dr. Jeckyll, who was admittedly an Alchemist, but who was essentially nothing more than a specialist Transmuter turning himself into a powerhouse Hyde? The archetypal Fireball-tossing mage, laying great sweeps of weaker opponents to the ground, while thier stronger fellows stood again to charge once more, only to have lightning rained down upon them moments later. The terrifying spellcaster who sends out spectres too horrible for the mind to comprehend (Phantasmal Killer)? The mage whose Avatar (Tenser's, anyone?) was more than a match for all but the strongest of warriors...

Have some archetypes, children; they're nummy.

And while there should totally be caps against abuse (duration on buffs, damage advancement on damage spells, that sort of thing), there should for no reason be a limit to the eventual effectiveness of the spells themselves. A 5-8d6 fireball for a lvl 10 Wiz doesn't seem unreasonable; it's comparable to Sneak Attack. Even a 10d6... At 5th level, when a Wizard gets his first 3rd level spell, 5d6 is pretty nice; at 10th, when it's up to 10d6, and the caster has at least 6 fireballs a day, it's still not bad, but it's not exactly something a Wizard can go out and take on equivalent CRs with. At level 11, when a Wizard can get Tenser's, the +11/+6/+1 BAB is bloody useful in a pinch, while the +4 STR, CON, DEX is only a +2 to each respective modifier, and the weapon proficiencies are only so incredible if you HAVE a weapon... In PnP, at least. In NWN, I understand you get a +2 Flaming Longsword? That's a bit nuts. Perhaps our few powergamers wouldn't be so pleased with the spell if they had to carry around thier own longsword, eh?

[Frendh]

Stephen_Zuckerman - 2/10/2006  5:38 PM
and give back the 10d6 fireballs.

At level 11, when a Wizard can get Tenser's, the +11/+6/+1 BAB is bloody useful in a pinch, while the +4 STR, CON, DEX is only a +2 to each respective modifier, and the weapon proficiencies are only so incredible if you HAVE a weapon... In PnP, at least. In NWN, I understand you get a +2 Flaming Longsword?

Pretty sure the fireball has been capped at 10d6 for like at least a year
(Most likely been at 10d6 since layo was created). It was still 10d6 when
I last logged on.

Tenser's blade is a +3 weapon. You got the BAB all wrong as well I believe.
The ability modifier you mentioned is probably also wrong.

[miltonyorkcastle]

*chuckles*  As far as I know, Fireball in Layo is just like in PnP.  PnP fireballs only go to 10d6.  It's delayed blast fireball that goes beyond 10d6, up to 20d6 (or is it d8?  never can recall).  However, the Tenser's in NWN is nothing like the Tenser's in PnP.

[ZeroVega]

Nope Milty, you're wrong. Delayed is only 15d6... hmm... or 15d8. Not 20dX though.

[miltonyorkcastle]

oi, heh, then delayed blast fireball is unlike PnP here as well.