Goblin Squad Member
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Generally speaking I am a big fan of what I have read about what GW is doing with the MMO. However, recently I read one of the blog entries that makes me concerned about the way magic is going to be handled.
If a character has a spellbook equipped, it can go into one of these slots; activating the spellbook turns all weapon slots into spell slots determined by the spellbook. Wizards will have to find and equip different spellbooks to get access to different spells, with some books being more valuable or rare than others.
Does this mean that if I were to play a arcane caster, I couldn't select my own spells? Rather I am going to be stuck with preconfigured spellbooks?
This more or less is a dealbreaker for me in playing a mage. One of the things I love about tabletop games over MMO's, and one of the reasons I enjoy playing a caster in DDO and not WoW, is the spell selection. I like playing a wizard over a sorceror because I like the versatility in spell selection. If I am going to be forced to use the Spellbook of Noobium, and have say, Color Spray; Magic Missile, and Sleep; or instead use the Spellbook of the Novice with Ray of Enfeeblement, Mage Armor; and True Strike, I don't think I could play a mage in this game.
Which isn't to say I still don't look forward to it, but as someone who almost exclusively plays full casters in pnp, this seems highly disappointing. MMO's have almost never gotten casters right, making them into glass cannons instead of the amazingly versatile classes they can be. I don't know that is what will happen here, but it screams of cookie cutter casters with minimal spell customization; an odd note for what is otherwise looking to be a very promising and open sandbox game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Does this mean that if I were to play a arcane caster, I couldn't select my own spells? Rather I am going to be stuck with preconfigured spellbooks?
Lee Hammock's input would be welcome here.
But I don't think that's the way it will work. I believe Spellbooks will allow Wizards (not Sorcerers) to have additional spells available above and beyond the spells they can normally prepare.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way it is described though makes it seem like some spells will be rare loot in these spellbooks, which is concerning.
I have played enough MMO's to get the feeling this is how they are going to balance spellcasters. Spell X is great, so it'll only be available in a spellbook with 5 other subpar spells. Or perhaps as a method to control and define them in pvp/pve, so you have to choose between the glass cannon spellbook, or the control spellbook, or the summoning spellbook. They can all fall into neatly preconfigured roles.
Maybe I am reading too much into it, but i'll be very disappointed if they choose to mmo-ify casters in this game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well one thing worth factoring in, as a general rule of thumb, gear drops, if present at all, will be subpar to crafted gear. A possible idea that GW can do, is spells be worth X points, an (Insert name) spellbook, can hold spells with a total value of Y. Yes inevitably some 10 spells will wind up being seen as "the best", and in order to keep wizards interesting, spellbooks should not be encouraging us to wind up with 2 generic sets of spells that every wizard uses.
But with crafted spellbooks, it is very easy to work around say every spellbook of fireball etc... Though there could be specialty spellbooks in which say, grant bonuses to fire spells within them etc...
Also remember one thing GW has stated, you won't be restricted to one spellbook. The advantage of wizards, is they can carry multiple spellbooks, and swap them out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From Goblinworks Blog: A Three-Headed Hydra:
So while a wizard may only have 1-3 spells per level available in a given fight, he can have far more than that if he wants to carry around some extras.
This makes it clear to me that the Spellbooks are additional spells, above and beyond those your Known or Prepared spells.
I also seem to remember someone saying you'd be able to learn a spell from a spellbook, but I can't find a quote right now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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would also help to fix the huge disparity in ease of play between a mage and, say, a barbarian at early levels
When I tried DDO after Eberron Unltd came out, I first rolled a sorceror and quickly got tired of dying every encounter. Proceeded to roll a barb and steamroll through everything.
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Goblin Squad Member
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would also help to fix the huge disparity in ease of play between a mage and, say, a barbarian at early levels
When I tried DDO after Eberron Unltd came out, I first rolled a sorceror and quickly got tired of dying every encounter. Proceeded to roll a barb and steamroll through everything.
It has been a while since I have played DDO, but early levels in that game, some class types just had better 'solo'/'survivability' than other classes. Actually that is typical to some PnP classes too.
I don't see that being much difference with PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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would also help to fix the huge disparity in ease of play between a mage and, say, a barbarian at early levels
When I tried DDO after Eberron Unltd came out, I first rolled a sorceror and quickly got tired of dying every encounter. Proceeded to roll a barb and steamroll through everything.
It has been a while since I have played DDO, but early levels in that game, some class types just had better 'solo'/'survivability' than other classes. Actually that is typical to some PnP classes too.
I don't see that being much difference with PFO.
Indeed, in the timeframe I played I believe the general viewpoint on wiz/sorc was
weak 1-4. OK 4-8, INSANELY STRONG 9-16, worthless 17-20
Namely they got really strong via the firewall spell, of which a tank could either have an enemy stand in the middle of, or the caster could just run around back and forth through (No friendly fire).
Then you reach the raiding levels, in which darn near everything was immune to fire to prevent firewall from trivializing, as well bosses were just about immune to everything a wizard could do other than direct damage spell, of which the melee classes could very easily out damage a caster in raw single target damage.
Now from what I heard, there were several balance adjustments since I stopped playing, I vaguely recall hearing something of casters being more viable with other updates, the cap was also raised above 20, so I really know nothing about the game post that point.
Anyway, that does share in with P&P as well, only in P&P 3.5 the general style is
Wizards
Pathetic 1-2
Slightly weak 3-4
Competent 5-7
Good 8-9
Woah darn good 10-12
14+ OMG broken
18+ Gods.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you couldn't custom build spell books to have the spells you want I would be very disappointed.
Also I don't expect Sorcerers to work the way we see them in the PnP. The limited spell selection in the PnP seems like it would clash with the freedom of character development promised by the skill advancement system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you couldn't custom build spell books to have the spells you want I would be very disappointed.
Also I don't expect Sorcerers to work the way we see them in the PnP. The limited spell selection in the PnP seems like it would clash with the freedom of character development promised by the skill advancement system.
Agreed there, but perhaps limits on when and where you can equip them, could be a huge difference. IE a wizard could have 5 spellbooks on hand, with 5 different sets of spells. While a sorcerer could set his spells from town, but actually have to make return trips out of the wilderness to set them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I actually have no problem with rare loot spells. That's how they started out in UO, then scribes could just copy them.
I would be surprised if you couldn't choose what spells go into a spell book when you write it.
I'm also hoping there are enough magical specialisations (like with schools) that you don't see just one type of spell book churned out because it's the best for whatever situation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed there, but perhaps limits on when and where you can equip them, could be a huge difference. IE a wizard could have 5 spellbooks on hand, with 5 different sets of spells. While a sorcerer could set his spells from town, but actually have to make return trips out of the wilderness to set them.
As I recalled one of the blogs detailed the limitations of when you can change what you have equipped as a balancing point for the game. So, I don't think switching spellbooks will be an issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I kinda liked the skill/magic system for EQ2. You learn stuff but its at a base level and you have to find/make/buy the more powerful books on said skill/spell to make them more powerful. You could solo as a wizard if you took the time to get spell upgrades.
Sorcerers in PF are a bit specialized due to their bloodline abilities. Hope they take that over to PFO sense I really like that about sorcerer's. Would sure be great to see a high level sorcerer with a draconic bloodline walk thru town, mistake him for a monster. It was the scales, claws, and fangs man you understand right. Sure would make for some interesting visual effects on PCs. x3
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed there, but perhaps limits on when and where you can equip them, could be a huge difference. IE a wizard could have 5 spellbooks on hand, with 5 different sets of spells. While a sorcerer could set his spells from town, but actually have to make return trips out of the wilderness to set them.As I recalled one of the blogs detailed the limitations of when you can change what you have equipped as a balancing point for the game. So, I don't think switching spellbooks will be an issue.
Actually most of lee's later statements seem pretty certain that there will indeed be multiple weapons
Characters can have up to three weapon sets and switch between them in combat, so a cleric could switch between her mace with shield and her holy symbol with shield. Lower-level characters will have fewer weapon sets; this flexibility comes with character experience.
I recall they at one point specified that it would take about 2 seconds to switch weapon sets, but I've grown too lazy to go quote digging to find that exact statement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well yeah, but adding extra spell books would limit your options in other ways. Off the top of my head he said something like 4 weapon slots, but if you wanted to use something other than those 4 you would need some actual down time.
Aye, I said multiple spell books, not infinite. As well they did kind of mention that each spell book carried of course is an extra liability in being stolen etc... and yeah, to some extent getting some other benefits may take other weapons etc...
That still doesn't change the fact that the wizard, does have the option to bring with him, 3 spellbooks to be more versatile in magic, at the cost of versatility out side of magic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've played a utility wizard on the tabletop before, and I think I had five or six spellbooks, broken up by categories? It's been half a decade, but he had really, really bad issues with needing everything organized. Having four spellbooks accessible in combat would be exactly what he needs. But I imagine your evocation specialists will need fewer spells, maybe only 2-3 books? Maybe, if they're really focused, just the one.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Our intention is that Wizards will all have access to craft skills to disassemble and reassemble spellbooks (likely based on the Spellcraft skill, naturally). So if you loot a few spellbooks that each have one or two spells you want and several you don't, you can take them apart (into individual spells) and then create a new book with just the ones you like (and sell the rest or save them for later). There will likely be "research wizards" that find a niche making cool books for other wizards that don't want to fiddle with the crafting system.
We're still discussing the more fine-grained mechanics internally, and we may have additional permutations on the system once we get a better idea of how spells will be balanced.
Our intention is that Wizards will all have access to craft skills to disassemble and reassemble spellbooks (likely based on the Spellcraft skill, naturally). So if you loot a few spellbooks that each have one or two spells you want and several you don't, you can take them apart (into individual spells) and then create a new book with just the ones you like (and sell the rest or save them for later). There will likely be "research wizards" that find a niche making cool books for other wizards that don't want to fiddle with the crafting system.
We're still discussing the more fine-grained mechanics internally, and we may have additional permutations on the system once we get a better idea of how spells will be balanced.
Thank you for this tid bit of info. Very excited to see how this develops.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Our intention is that Wizards will all have access to craft skills to disassemble and reassemble spellbooks (likely based on the Spellcraft skill, naturally). So if you loot a few spellbooks that each have one or two spells you want and several you don't, you can take them apart (into individual spells) and then create a new book with just the ones you like (and sell the rest or save them for later). There will likely be "research wizards" that find a niche making cool books for other wizards that don't want to fiddle with the crafting system.
We're still discussing the more fine-grained mechanics internally, and we may have additional permutations on the system once we get a better idea of how spells will be balanced.
This is exactly what I was thinking earlier when someone mentioned crafting spellbooks and another mentioned copying scrolls.
Perf finds a scroll and happens to be really terrible at copying other wizards stuff into his spellbook, but he really wants that Detect Poison spell. So, he goes into Domum Mercator (city of the Pax Mercatorum) and talks to Xananiphia, who is a scholar. She charges him X gold to add the scroll to a spell book for him (in the PnP game he would pay her to copy the spell to her own book then teach him the spell).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perf finds a scroll and happens to be really terrible at copying other wizards stuff into his spellbook, but he really wants that Detect Poison spell. So, he goes into Domum Mercator (city of the Pax Mercatorum) and talks to Xananiphia, who is a scholar. She charges him X gold to add the scroll to a spell book for him (in the PnP game he would pay her to copy the spell to her own book then teach him the spell).
I'd love to see this mechanic in game. As someone intending for his Alt to be a research-focused Wizard, this would be a lot of fun - and a way to pay for my spell components.
Perf finds a scroll and happens to be really terrible at copying other wizards stuff into his spellbook, but he really wants that Detect Poison spell.
^ Journeyquest reference? IT'S NOT HIS FAULT! <3
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perf finds a scroll and happens to be really terrible at copying other wizards stuff into his spellbook, but he really wants that Detect Poison spell. So, he goes into Domum Mercator (city of the Pax Mercatorum) and talks to Xananiphia, who is a scholar. She charges him X gold to add the scroll to a spell book for him (in the PnP game he would pay her to copy the spell to her own book then teach him the spell).I'd love to see this mechanic in game. As someone intending for his Alt to be a research-focused Wizard, this would be a lot of fun - and a way to pay for my spell components.
Perf finds a scroll and happens to be really terrible at copying other wizards stuff into his spellbook, but he really wants that Detect Poison spell.^ Journeyquest reference? IT'S NOT HIS FAULT! <3
As would I! It would add considerable depth to the game. Of course, like in the real world, I imagine that such niche roles will not be viable until the player population reaches a certain critical mass.
Perf rules!
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Goblin Squad Member
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As would I! It would add considerable depth to the game. Of course, like in the real world, I imagine that such niche roles will not be viable until the player population reaches a certain critical mass.
The tendency of any economy is to start out diverse - everyone mastering some level of skills for survival - and to progress into specialization. At a certain point, it doesn't make sense for me to farm and mine and smith and hunt and trade and write spells and clear dungeons and fight armies and and and...
More money, better results from specialization - but like you said, after we hit that critical mass. Or if you're starting with a group that together can meet those needs.
<3 Perf. I threw down for Journeyquest's Kickstarter and Geek Seekers. Love Dead Gentlemen/ZOE. Their model for media distribution + Paizo/GW's models for gaming = a very, very happy me. I'd rather pay more for quality content ahead of time than worry about it getting made and renewed by outside sources or whatever. I love having a hand in the process, even if it's just a drop in the ocean.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As would I! It would add considerable depth to the game. Of course, like in the real world, I imagine that such niche roles will not be viable until the player population reaches a certain critical mass.The tendency of any economy is to start out diverse - everyone mastering some level of skills for survival - and to progress into specialization. At a certain point, it doesn't make sense for me to farm and mine and smith and hunt and trade and write spells and clear dungeons and fight armies and and and...
More money, better results from specialization - but like you said, after we hit that critical mass. Or if you're starting with a group that together can meet those needs.
<3 Perf. I threw down for Journeyquest's Kickstarter and Geek Seekers. Love Dead Gentlemen/ZOE. Their model for media distribution + Paizo/GW's models for gaming = a very, very happy me. I'd rather pay more for quality content ahead of time than worry about it getting made and renewed by outside sources or whatever. I love having a hand in the process, even if it's just a drop in the ocean.
The Pax Mercatorum hopes to engender such economic activity early on and create a place where specialists can gather.
I <3 Perf too, he's pretty great. They are so cruel to Carrow...
I'm looking forward to the signed DVDs i'll be getting from those campaigns.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Our intention is that Wizards will all have access to craft skills to disassemble and reassemble spellbooks (likely based on the Spellcraft skill, naturally). So if you loot a few spellbooks that each have one or two spells you want and several you don't, you can take them apart (into individual spells) and then create a new book with just the ones you like (and sell the rest or save them for later). There will likely be "research wizards" that find a niche making cool books for other wizards that don't want to fiddle with the crafting system.
We're still discussing the more fine-grained mechanics internally, and we may have additional permutations on the system once we get a better idea of how spells will be balanced.
Thanks for addressing this. Sounds like it will be a fun route for my caster to go in terms of crafting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Our intention is that Wizards will all have access to craft skills to disassemble and reassemble spellbooks (likely based on the Spellcraft skill, naturally). So if you loot a few spellbooks that each have one or two spells you want and several you don't, you can take them apart (into individual spells) and then create a new book with just the ones you like (and sell the rest or save them for later). There will likely be "research wizards" that find a niche making cool books for other wizards that don't want to fiddle with the crafting system.
We're still discussing the more fine-grained mechanics internally, and we may have additional permutations on the system once we get a better idea of how spells will be balanced.
Do you know if there's any plans for wizards to learn to scribe fresh spells, instead of just rearranging spellbooks?
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Thanks, Stephen. Any chance we could get you to comment on the difference (if any) between "Known" spells and the spells in a spellbook?
Do you know if there's any plans for wizards to learn to scribe fresh spells, instead of just rearranging spellbooks?
We need to get further on designing Sorcerer and other casters before we can say anything definitive about either of those questions, as they'll potentially have a lot of impact on balance/desirability between casting roles.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Any chance you can use a 'use economy' to determine the cost of spells? Basically, spell casting costs (mana, magic points, slots, or whatever the controlling casting unit is)vary by how often that particular spell is used. If something is used all the time, then it costs increasingly more until the usage drops off.
The basic idea is that spell costs would be balanced naturally by the utility economy...they will go up in cost to cast until they aren't the 'best choice' anymore. Likewise for weak spells...they drop in cost to cast until they are 'viable' as an option.
Just an idea about how to manage the inevitable spell balancing issues.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Any chance you can use a 'use economy' to determine the cost of spells? Basically, spell casting costs (mana, magic points, slots, or whatever the controlling casting unit is)vary by how often that particular spell is used. If something is used all the time, then it costs increasingly more until the usage drops off.
The basic idea is that spell costs would be balanced naturally by the utility economy...they will go up in cost to cast until they aren't the 'best choice' anymore. Likewise for weak spells...they drop in cost to cast until they are 'viable' as an option.
Just an idea about how to manage the inevitable spell balancing issues.
I would really dislike that system design. That would cripple focused spellcasters. Adventuring spellcasters would find their battle spells to be costing them more and more, as you choose only effective spells or those based on the weakness of the enemy.
There is a reason why certain spells are used alot and others tossed to the wayside. Some spells simply work with a wide range while others have a more narrow range but are highly effective or have certain uses. Crafters will make use of nearly every spell while adventures will stick to the ones that work in battle.
Spells are chosen on which role is being played by the spellcaster. A diplomat or spy for example will make use of more sly magic. While a battle mage will use spells that cause the most destruction. Its kinda counter productive to be forced outside your chosen role simply to reduce the cost of the spells you commonly make use of.
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would also help to fix the huge disparity in ease of play between a mage and, say, a barbarian at early levels
When I tried DDO after Eberron Unltd came out, I first rolled a sorceror and quickly got tired of dying every encounter. Proceeded to roll a barb and steamroll through everything.
I survived easily, it's all in how you put it together.
I chose spells to help me survive, then wore some light armor (seriously 10% ASF is not that bad) and took some survival skills, like stealth, and got feats like dodge. It's all about focusing in a group, or generalizing when solo.
If you solo as a specialist, expect to die.
Heck I got so good with my sorcerer, I eventually quit because I would solo a dungeon on highest difficulty without dying until I hit the boss 12 lvls higher then me, with 4 LTs 6 lvls higher then me.
Also, splashing other classes helps as well, I made a wizard/rogue and would take on that kobald army quest alone.
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What I am hoping for is the ability to specialize when I'm grouping (rare thing) or generalize while solo and win from smart play not just power play. Also hoping for better boss concepts then just having a super epic lvls.
The question becomes how "known" spells will be accessed. A high lvl caster would normally have more then 20 spells available, and since we only have 20 bar slots and those are divided by type, I'm thinking that useing known spells should come from having an "item/ability" on your bar that switches your weapons slots to known spells, and will cycle through 3(well depending on lvl/caster type/etc) sets each time it's activated, then a spellbook can provide one set of additional spells.
A wizard would have fewer innate spell slots, but could make better use of spellbook spells, while the sorcerer could have more innate spell slots but spellbook spells might cost more/be more difficult to cast/cast at -1 CL/etc.
The cycling makes order of preping spells important too because of how long it would take to reach the third set.
Just a thought.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you know if there's any plans for wizards to learn to scribe fresh spells, instead of just rearranging spellbooks?
Just another thought that occurred to me on this. This might be a great use for a system similar to TOR's reverse-engineering. Adventuring party finds ancient spellbook in a dungeon, it has some rare and awesome spell in it.
You can:
a) Use the spellbook as is.
B) Rearrange things to slot the spell into your favorite spellbook.
C) Attempt to scribe the spell into your research log. The spell is destroyed and you have X% chance (determined by your spellcraft skill, and the difficulty should be known ahead of time) to add it to your list of craftable spells. You would then have to gather the materials appropriate to the power and complexity of the spell to craft it again if you wanted to use it.
If you find an awesome spell too high above your crafting ability, you can use it for a while and then try scribing it when you feel more confident.
Edit to add: As another thought, if spellbooks can only be rearranged, this can make them much more difficult to replace than other gear, as well as making the best gear for them dropped rather than crafted, and seems to go against the general trend of things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Does this mean that if I were to play a arcane caster, I couldn't select my own spells? Rather I am going to be stuck with preconfigured spellbooks?
No. You will not be stuck with pre-configured spell books.
I can't say for sure if you will be able to slot all spells from all schools in a single spell book. I can say for sure the book doesn't come pre-loaded with a set of spells that can't be changed. You choose which spells go into the book. If you use 3 spell books, (6 slots each) 3 refresh spells, and 2 utility spells that leaves you with 23 spells you can have equipped at any given time and you get to choose every single one of them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would really dislike that system design. That would cripple focused spellcasters. Adventuring spellcasters would find their battle spells to be costing them more and more, as you choose only effective spells or those based on the weakness of the enemy.
....
Its kinda counter productive to be forced outside your chosen role simply to reduce the cost of the spells you commonly make use of.
I can't imagine the benefits of a system that rewards repeatedly casting the least useful spells prior to the actual engagement.
I'm not advocating for it strongly, but I think it is worth stretching our imagination a bit to consider the possibilities of solving the long-running MMO latest-build problem. I'm pretty sure it would not cripple anyone...it would just account for how useful a spell really is in play, as opposed to how a designer guessed months or years before the game made contact with creative players.
The way I imagine it, the change in cost would be something that slowly shifted over the course of months of game time (weeks of real time.) It could be a weighted moving average of global usage, and might be limited to some small scalar per month (say, 5% increase/decrease as an example.)
With tens of thousands (eventually millions) of players, any one player or group of players will not be able to game the system. With hundreds of thousands of castings monthly for any spell, it just won't be worth the time to try to make a spell cost more.
Rather than 'crippling' adventuring spell casters, I think it would reward creative casters who know how to build interesting combinations from unusual spells. If everyone jumps on the 'spell of the month', we should see the cost slowly climb until it is no longer the best tactic.
I think the biggest weaknesses of the system is how it affects sorcs. They don't get to choose their spells as things change, so it might be possible that they get hurt more by it than wizards or clerics. Maybe it only applies to those who have to build a magical construct rather than those who cast it innately.
Oh, and the 'story' behind it is easy, let's just say that the magical construct (the spell) that pulls the energy out of the ether-pool builds up resistance the more often it is used in a given time period.
Just imagining how it might work...I doubt they'll try something as radical as this in the game!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Definitely second the ability to do spell research. That's an entirely viable and desirable mechanic for discovering spells vs just finding spell books and breaking them down. It also fits, I think, with the general tone of this game (player content/action vs getting everything from the environment).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Micco
Sorry but that system would pretty much make adventures and such avoid the wizard class if it was limited to them. If you build a sorcerer right they dont need those big selection of spells. Or rely on items for the rare times they need something not known.
Their is no spell of the month, spells are not gear. They do not change and can not be changed at their base. The same spells are used because they work, no other reason. They have a certain ability that does not shift. While you can be flexible in a table top game that is not true in a MMO. Because in a MMO your dealing with a program and not a GM which controls everything not just one small part. You interact with a monster and you generate threat which means it comes rushing at you. It knows where you are (barring any ability to erase said threat generated) and will chase you a certain distance as per its program. Their is no creative tactic, you kill it as quickly as you can otherwise it kills you.
Fighters dont have to pay to swing their sword so I dont expect casters to have to pay to cast their spells. Unless you want to propose a system that causes fighter skills to take up more energy the more often they are used as well.
Somethings just do not translate to MMO's and different game mediums. Thats why PFO stated that their world would be different from PF in a number of ways.
@Dakcenturi
I agree with the spell research. That would be a good reason to have rare component hunters as well. ;)