Goblin Squad Member
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Invisibility is my favorite spell. So many fun and naughty things you can do with it.
Can't remember the name of the spell, but my gnome illusionist once started a truly epic bar brawl by casting a spell that made some thug from the thieves guild's beer taste like urine. Our orc barbarian was tossing table tops like frisbees, the rogue was tossing knives from the shadows, and I was throwing out flashing lights into people's eyes to feed the frenzy! Oh...so fun and so wrong...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Magic trivializes a lot of things, and I'm unsure how people feel about that. An example of this would be Mending, which would remove the need for repairs (a common money-sink in most MMOs).
How do you feel about these flavour spells? Do you agree? Is it a waste of developer time that could rather be spent on combat, crafting, (insert your favourite aspect here)?
I'm generally in favor of more options for players, so yeah, some dev time should be spent on it. I don't know if magic should be powerful, plentiful, and at the same time, preferable to mundane solutions in all cases.
My favorite magic stories are those where magic can do many things that mundane cannot, but at a cost. So wise wizards use mundane experts or their own mundane abilities in most cases, to preserve their magical strength for when they need it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well with a skill based none linear world they have more opportunity to allow for that kind of thing, not needing to balance every little thing around the idea that you'll be either PVPing, Raiding or in the case of SWTOR being really bored. ;)
I'd love to see spells be very utility, even to the point of using like message and sending for chat! Hahahah!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Invisibility is my favorite spell. So many fun and naughty things you can do with it.
Can't remember the name of the spell, but my gnome illusionist once started a truly epic bar brawl by casting a spell that made some thug from the thieves guild's beer taste like urine. Our orc barbarian was tossing table tops like frisbees, the rogue was tossing knives from the shadows, and I was throwing out flashing lights into people's eyes to feed the frenzy! Oh...so fun and so wrong...
Truly an iconic spell with many uses, one I would enjoy. In addition, I would would like to add Elemental Body or Telekinesis. These have several offensive, defensive abilities that can be used in numerous conditions. One can dream these can be implemented some how. =)
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Goblin Squad Member
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How about the ones that change your shape to a different race allowing you to interact with otherwise hostile people or get past guards that don't like you because of faction? It would be fun if the appearance was random also. Shrink and speedy feet spells are great also. I would like to see those effects be part of the crafting scene as well.
I'm firmly of the opinion that the wider the variety of options, the better. There should be as many ways as you can imagine to deal with a situation, and there doesn't need to be any way to guarantee that each is as efficient or effective as the others. Balance means giving everyone all the options they can imagine using, rather than reducing options to the lowest common denominator of popularity.
I hope that fighters and the like will have analogues to magic when appropriate. A mending spell would have the same effect of a fighter using a repair skill, for example
Actually, that sounds way to much like D&D4E for my taste, with "skills" and "magic" having the same game effect but just slapping a different name on it to appease a class style. Magic should be... magical. It should be wondrous and fantastic, and offer advantages that cannot be attained without it. While a crafter may be able to repair an item as quickly as a "Mending" spell, it should require more time, specialized tools, and so forth. On the other hand, Mending should only fix minor damage... good for maintenance and minor repairs on the road, but not useful for severely damaged items, or fabrication of items (which may be done with more powerful magic, but still require a craft skill to do competently).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope that fighters and the like will have analogues to magic when appropriate. A mending spell would have the same effect of a fighter using a repair skill, for exampleActually, that sounds way to much like D&D4E for my taste, with "skills" and "magic" having the same game effect but just slapping a different name on it to appease a class style. Magic should be... magical. It should be wondrous and fantastic, and offer advantages that cannot be attained without it. While a crafter may be able to repair an item as quickly as a "Mending" spell, it should require more time, specialized tools, and so forth. On the other hand, Mending should only fix minor damage... good for maintenance and minor repairs on the road, but not useful for severely damaged items, or fabrication of items (which may be done with more powerful magic, but still require a craft skill to do competently).
The problem with this as it applies to a MMO is it replaces a wide variety of options with a narrow band of efficient options and a host of unused sub-par options. Magic should be magical, but at the same time not everyone wants to be a mage. The efficacy of one shouldn't trump the other just to fulfill a flavor expectation. Also this discussions seems to have a lot of bleed over from the table, and I'm not really sure the skill systems for PFO will accommodate all that extra liquid.
That being said, in my home games We've used control weather as a veritable act of terrorism and nothing beats a well combo'd use of Spiked Pit and Grease
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, that sounds way to much like D&D4E for my taste, with "skills" and "magic" having the same game effect but just slapping a different name on it to appease a class style. Magic should be... magical. It should be wondrous and fantastic, and offer advantages that cannot be attained without it. While a crafter may be able to repair an item as quickly as a "Mending" spell, it should require more time, specialized tools, and so forth. On the other hand, Mending should only fix minor damage... good for maintenance and minor repairs on the road, but not useful for severely damaged items, or fabrication of items (which may be done with more powerful magic, but still require a craft skill to do competently).
Magic should be magical, but I, as a fighter, would feel out of place in an MMO environment where a mage could do what I could do an more and more quickly because he has magic. Sure, I could survive a direct hit from a giant, but I'd want more flavor and utility when I'm spending many hours with a character.
Mages /should/ have a great deal of utility and I wouldn't mind if they had a selection of spells that would be better than my skills. What I would want is a good number of equivalent skills, when appropriate, so I don't feel like my only role in the game is to click my swing sword button.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Delbin, I'm trying to understand what you're asking for.
I think Starhammer thought you were asking for mages and fighters to both be able to cause all the same effects, but in different ways based on their class.
I see a whole lot of distinction wrapped up in you saying "when appropriate".
In general, I think it should be more costly for a mage to learn how to do something with magic than for a fighter-type to learn to do the same thing physically. The benefit is that the mage would be able to apply his Int bonus, or Spellcraft bonus, instead of having to use his Str bonus, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hmm. I'm trying to say that non-magic classes need to have enough utility and flavor to stay interesting. Magic classes are largely based on utility and doing fantastic things with magic, but in an MMO setting this could be very unfair. If a magic user can do a whole lot of things to make his life easier that my fighter character can't do, I would be annoyed and feel like I have to put in a lot more clicks/time/effort to do what I want. Assuming combat is balanced, I'd soon want to ditch my fighter and start a mage. I'd have the same killing ability, but I would have all the utility as well. It's just as bad to balance the fighter to be really really good at killing things and leave the mage behind because he has so much utility.
Imagine if a mage can haste, levitate, turn invisible, create food/water, mend, and summon elementals. Some of these are clearly magical and it would be dumb to give a fighter an analogous ability, but it would be unfair to give the fighter none of this utility.
By appropriate, I mean translating magical effects in a way that makes sense thematically. Summoning elementals, invisibility, and levitation? Purely magical. But what about haste? How about a short-term adrenaline rush that allows the fighter to close distance and have an extra attack for a short time. Mending is the same kind of thing. Allow the fighter to do the same thing, but have it take a bit more time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In general, I think it should be more costly for a mage to learn how to do something with magic than for a fighter-type to learn to do the same thing physically. The benefit is that the mage would be able to apply his Int bonus, or Spellcraft bonus, instead of having to use his Str bonus, etc.
In myth and stories, with rare exceptions, the magic users sacrifice a lot to gain their power.
It depends on how the training system works. I could imagine that if a magic user decides to have the broadest spectrum of powers, abilities, and cantrips, he has no time in his first 2 1/2 years of the game to train anything besides spells.
On the other hand, I'd imagine that to get the magic user merit badges and advance to capstone won't require more than a handful of spells at each spell level.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Pathfinder already has Mending and Field Repair.
There are also things like Whirlwind Blitz that provide a non-magical effect similar to Haste, although at much higher level.
I expect you won't be disappointed in the final results :)
To make everything perfectly fair and balanced, we have to give everything the same stats, same capabilities, and same capacity for graphic appeal... then it's just a contest of ping rates.
I think the inherent nature of traditional hit point systems makes many folks forget that the durability of fighters is a capability that mages often lack. There are also potentially areas and individual curses that can disrupt, inhibit, or completely disable magic.
Magic, in most systems, is also limited to short bursts of great power, whether it's a limited number of memorized spells in a Vancian system, a pool of spell points, or some sort of occult feedback that causes the casting of spells to risk harming yourself and making you unlikely to use magic except when it's most needed. Magic Users often run out of spells, Swordsmen rarely run out of sword. (For the purposes of a game however, I do greatly prefer the Pathfinder rules over D&D regarding level 0 spells having unlimited use. I hate to see a character become completely useless with his chosen profession at any point)
I would like to see the means by which magic is learned be difficult and inconvenient enough that only the most dedicated can truly master it, but I'd like to see that dedication rewarded with the capacity for acts that would seem miraculous to everybody else (I especially feel this way about magic healing, but that's for another topic). I would like to see most people "settle" for a lesser effect that can be gained more easily from a mundane source.
This does not mean that I want non-magical combatants to be just a slew of spear-catchers that march to their inevitable doom. Highly skilled fighters and rogues should be capable of acts that are similarly heroic, but not unbelievably outside the capacity of mundane realism. Think James Bond or Ethan Hunt, or Conan... These characters are vastly more capable than their rank and file contemporaries, and reflect a level of training and talent that most will never achieve... but their not breathing fire or shooting lightning bolts from their backsides either.
There is an inherent balance between high level mages and warriors. It's just not always expressed well in every circumstance, and you will always have a propensity for seeing something someone else can do that you can't and being jealous, thinking they have some unfair advantage. Just try to remember that unless they are suffused with overwhelming arrogance, they're probably looking at you and thinking the same thing.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Imagine if a mage can haste, levitate, turn invisible, create food/water, mend, and summon elementals. Some of these are clearly magical and it would be dumb to give a fighter an analogous ability, but it would be unfair to give the fighter none of this utility.
But a fighter can sprint, jump, hide, forage, repair, and hit things. The difference is that the PF PnP game allows the wizard to do most of those things at the same time, and better than the fighter, at a low cost.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The balance between martial and magical Starhammer is referencing is really not likely to be applicable to an MMO, as the table top game's magical resources are based around a limited time frame of adventuring as well as significant time dilation. In an MMO you can't base one class on exceptional but brief periods of efficacy while everyone else gets to be comparatively mediocre all the rest of the time. When a game is in real time, and available most of the day, everyone should be allowed to play however they want, when they want.
As it may, however there is a good reason to differentiate between the styles both in form and in function.I don't think any one is advocating normalization across all methods, just balancing them so everyone can feel effective.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The balance between martial and magical Starhammer is referencing is really not likely to be applicable to an MMO, as the table top game's magical resources are based around a limited time frame of adventuring as well as significant time dilation. In an MMO you can't base one class on exceptional but brief periods of efficacy while everyone else gets to be comparatively mediocre all the rest of the time. When a game is in real time, and available most of the day, everyone should be allowed to play however they want, when they want.
As it may, however there is a good reason to differentiate between the styles both in form and in function.I don't think any one is advocating normalization across all methods, just balancing them so everyone can feel effective.
Right- you can have a levitate ability and a climb ability without either making them the same or making one supplant the other in all cases.
In an MMO you can't base one class on exceptional but brief periods of efficacy while everyone else gets to be comparatively mediocre all the rest of the time.
As I understand it, the system being designed will not be using traditional "classes". Everybody will have potentially equal access to any variety of skills they desire.
as the table top game's magical resources are based around a limited time frame of adventuring as well as significant time dilation.
Depends on how you want to implement the learning and use of magic. If learning a spell is nothing more complex or time consuming than selecting a new spell from a list, then spamming it till you run out of spell points like a blaster in CoH or a Wizard in WoW... then yeah. In that case you just have to balance "Magic" as being pretty much equal to Archery with different graphics.
I would hope for a much more robust and innovative system however, where spellcasting and spellcrafting are dealt with in some manner other than Fire and Forget (Vancian, not Smart-Missile). I'd like to see a magic system where the crafting mechanics are as important to spell use as they are to sword swinging (though perhaps implemented differently) and where skill level can improve efficiency (reducing expenditure of SP or whatever) or increase puissance or utility. Something of a cross between Elder Scrolls spellcrafting and GURPS casting technique (where cast time and fatigue cost were reduced for each 5 skill levels).
Something like the Ars Magica spell system would be really amazing to play with also, where you don't necessarly learn "spells" like in most other games, but you level up skills for different Sources (Fire, life, earth, etc) and Technique (Move, destroy, create, and so forth), then combine two aspects to get a spell effect. Probably one of the best overall magic systems I've seen in any game.