Goblin Squad Member
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This is a major issue I've seen come up several times on these forums now. A lot of people are very against stun abilities, or abilities that leave you character helpless and unable to move but still able to take damage. Even more people hate being stun-locked, or being rendered entirely helpless by a chain of stuns while your opponents tear you apart.
So would we like to see any stuns in PFO, and if so what form would we like to see them take?
To me, I think stuns have a place but they are very poorly implemented in many games. A few of the problems are:
1. They are too common, every class tends to have at least one stun in many games.
2. They are too easy, most stuns only require you be within range with a clear line of sight.
Personally, I would like to see stuns, but only attached to counter / protection abilities. In other words if you are actively attacking / casting spells etc. you are exposing yourself to a possible stun. If you are trying to disengage from combat or sitting there already stunned there is no way to apply a stun to you.
I also would like to see them a lot less common and generally attached to lower damage weapons. So an unarmed monk may get a nice selection of stuns but a ranger firing broadhead arrows or a barbarian armed with a sword or axe will likely have no access to them at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps a Stun attack assaults the Stamina bar? This could interrupt a user's "rotation flow" requiring them to change up but not render them utterly helpless. The Stamina damage should be enough that it might limit the ability to use bigger and more powerful moves, but not so much that more standard and light attacks will not get victim through to their next stamina refresh.
Interrupts would also be a cool stun effect.
Ultimately, stuns should not be about rendering a user unable to act, but should require them to act less efficiently.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also would like to see them a lot less common and generally attached to lower damage weapons. So an unarmed monk may get a nice selection of stuns but a ranger firing broadhead arrows or a barbarian armed with a sword or axe will likely have no access to them at all.
I think Damage Type is more relevant to stuns than damage about. Blunt Weapons makes the most sense and lower level electricity spells, perhaps. Swords and Axes could hit someone with the "flat of the blade" for a stun-like attack, but in turn should have very little damage associated with it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's highly likely that something like Hold Person will be in the game.
I could see something like a hold person, where the wizard needs to maintain the link to keep the victim held. Effectively the wizard would need to be channeling to maintain the hold (thus casting nothing else), with the victim having some chance to break it.
It's not exactly like a hold person, but might better suit an MMO. I'd expect a lot of spells will be modified as they change from once-a-day effects to being used more often.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Damage Type is more relevant to stuns than damage about. Blunt Weapons makes the most sense and lower level electricity spells, perhaps. Swords and Axes could hit someone with the "flat of the blade" for a stun-like attack, but in turn should have very little damage associated with it.
I also would like to see them a lot less common and generally attached to lower damage weapons. So an unarmed monk may get a nice selection of stuns but a ranger firing broadhead arrows or a barbarian armed with a sword or axe will likely have no access to them at all.
I'd actually like to see it so the keywords that enable the highest damage abilities cannot be used on the same weapon as one that grants stuns, and there won't be any good damage keywords available for the best stun keyword weapons.
I'm thinking of it a lot like a Magic The Gathering deck. A blue deck will have great control abilities but even the most offensive blue deck won't cause as much destruction as a good offensive red deck. But that red deck will have little to nothing in the way of control.
If you run a blue/red deck you can get a bit of both but not to the extent a mono-color deck would.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Damage Type is more relevant to stuns than damage about. Blunt Weapons makes the most sense and lower level electricity spells, perhaps. Swords and Axes could hit someone with the "flat of the blade" for a stun-like attack, but in turn should have very little damage associated with it.
I also would like to see them a lot less common and generally attached to lower damage weapons. So an unarmed monk may get a nice selection of stuns but a ranger firing broadhead arrows or a barbarian armed with a sword or axe will likely have no access to them at all.
I'd actually like to see it so the keywords that enable the highest damage abilities cannot be used on the same weapon as one that grants stuns, and there won't be any good damage keywords available for the best stun keyword weapons.
I'm thinking of it a lot like a Magic The Gathering deck. A blue deck will have great control abilities but even the most offensive blue deck won't cause as much destruction as a good offensive red deck. But that red deck will have little to nothing in the way of control.
If you run a blue/red deck you can get a bit of both but not to the extent a mono-color deck would.
This! It makes sense logically and would fit in with the proposed system very well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the great things PG:RPG has going for it are the myriad status conditions in it. I know in PFO we are using a completely different system, but I would love to see analogues of stunned, staggered, shaken, sickened, nauseated, and paralyzed at minimum.
From a simple sleep spell to hold person to a monk's stunning fist to the dirty trick maneuver, there are many ways to apply status effects to enemies in tabletop that I want to see in game.
I just don't want there to be a way to chain the various effects indefinitely, and I want there to be a way to focus on raising out "saving throws" to become less vulnerable or immune to them with training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Since it's a game where running with multiple people is greatly encouraged, I'd like to see more status effects that are most effective with multiple people. Things like locking yourself down for a channeled heavy debuff on your enemy, or applying an effect which will improve your allies' damage for a short while.
Also, I like diminishing returns on stuns, or any effect that removes your ability to control your character. To me such things should be very short-term, used to interrupt or claim better positioning, instead of just preventing your character from fighting back. I know that goes against TT's standards with save-or-crap spells, but I feel it's much better for a PvP environment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It has been suggested that someone who specializes as a monster hunter in PvE escalations might be at a disadvantage compared to someone who specialized as a PvP soldier in PvP. With that in mind, why not allow full stuns and conditions into the game, but make any condition that make you unable to attack less effective vs players. Lets make it so Stuns can be chained against critters and bosses, but not vs other players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It has been suggested that someone who specializes as a monster hunter in PvE escalations might be at a disadvantage compared to someone who specialized as a PvP soldier in PvP. With that in mind, why not allow full stuns and conditions into the game, but make any condition that make you unable to attack less effective vs players. Lets make it so Stuns can be chained against critters and bosses, but not vs other players.
I really hate the very common trend to PvE and PvP being different sets of mechanics or statistics or gear. I would much rather see parity such as that a Sneak Attack or Whirlwind or Color Spray is treated the same regardless of Player or NPC. If you decide that 'Humanoid Races' are stun resistant and recover from stuns more quickly than other races, that should apply to NPCs as well as PCs.
It has been suggested that someone who specializes as a monster hunter in PvE escalations might be at a disadvantage compared to someone who specialized as a PvP soldier in PvP. With that in mind, why not allow full stuns and conditions into the game, but make any condition that make you unable to attack less effective vs players. Lets make it so Stuns can be chained against critters and bosses, but not vs other players.I really hate the very common trend to PvE and PvP being different sets of mechanics or statistics or gear. I would much rather see parity such as that a Sneak Attack or Whirlwind or Color Spray is treated the same regardless of Player or NPC. If you decide that 'Humanoid Races' are stun resistant and recover from stuns more quickly than other races, that should apply to NPCs as well as PCs.
I don't like it either really, but it solves a rather difficult problem.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Besides, players are already rising from the dead left and right and npcs are not. The Mark of Pharasma is an easy in-game explanation for any mechanic that affects players differently than npcs.
Excellent point, and I think that could provide an explanation for why death effects treat PCs differently.
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Or, instead of making up all these shaky explanations for things, we could just say "Hey, it's a game, and sometimes certain things need to be done to improve game mechanics".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let me throw this out there, is there a reason we need to be able to stun-lock NPCs?
It could be necessary for monster escalations. Being able to keep hard hitting mobs out of the fight while focusing on taking down the "boss" of the escalation could be a key to successfully ending a full blown escalation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's generally done with effects that break on damage instead if stuns.
Yeah, but it's not really in lore for Pathfinder. The only break on damage CC in the Tabletop game is Sleep, and anything that isn't very low level is immune to sleep. I'd rather see those types of crowd control covered by Paralysis(holds), entanglement(immobs), or stuns.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My understanding is that the general gameplay is similar between fighting a normal mob and a player but mob diversity will increase over time which is monster-slayer-specialization path where more suited gear and so on will be deemed necessary to tackle them, which may not be as suited (& booted) to PCs (Humans, Elves and Dwarfs to begin with).
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's generally done with effects that break on damage instead if stuns.Yeah, but it's not really in lore for Pathfinder. The only break on damage CC in the Tabletop game is Sleep, and anything that isn't very low level is immune to sleep. I'd rather see those types of crowd control covered by Paralysis(holds), entanglement(immobs), or stuns.
That's just ridiculously overpowered, even for PVE. That doesn't allow you to temporarily take mobs out of the fight. It allows you to render them entirely helpless while you slaughter them.
Remember this though. There is no party size limit and escalations are probably not inside instances. The better way to deal with trash mobs while you focus on the big guys is to not limit who can come. Newbs armed with throw away gear can help keep trash mobs off the vets taking down the big stuff as effectively as any form of CC. And it's more fun. ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's generally done with effects that break on damage instead if stuns.Yeah, but it's not really in lore for Pathfinder. The only break on damage CC in the Tabletop game is Sleep, and anything that isn't very low level is immune to sleep. I'd rather see those types of crowd control covered by Paralysis(holds), entanglement(immobs), or stuns.That's just ridiculously overpowered, even for PVE. That doesn't allow you to temporarily take mobs out of the fight. It allows you to render them entirely helpless while you slaughter them.
Remember this though. There is no party size limit and escalations are probably not inside instances. The better way to deal with trash mobs while you focus on the big guys is to not limit who can come. Newbs armed with throw away gear can help keep trash mobs off the vets taking down the big stuff as effectively as any form of CC. And it's more fun. ;)
The plea is more towards remaining true to the feeling and spirit of playing the tabletop game en-masse. A ghoul without its signature paralysis seems unusual. And if the monster has the ability, then why does no Wizard in the River Kingdoms know even the most basic of Hold spells?
Ultimately, we need to come to realize that a good amount of magic from the lore will not make the transition, simply because it does not translate well to either a video game or an MMO video game, particularly one that pits players against other players which is also counter to the spirit of D&D/Pathfinder. Some spells just can't be programmed well, and others (Save or Suck) do not fit in a PvP MMO unless you wish to risk everyone using them all the time. If that happened, combat would not be an exciting thing, it would be a factor of who sees who first and then standing there dazed until you die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Saw all the other new ones coming out and decided to see if any were "less used". This did not have a lot of popularity. And seeing as I am typically not exceptional at PvP battles, I figured the battered, war-weary injured look would be most appropriate for my long term experience of the game. ;)
I like to think he wound up like that standing in the way of brigands trying to assault a traveling merchant family. He wound up a bit worse for wear, but bought those folks enough time to get their kids out of danger.
Let me throw this out there, is there a reason we need to be able to stun-lock NPCs?
We don't need to, but stun-locking things is fun when you're on the giving side and not the receiving end. Particularly stun-locking players is fun but admittedly, is does ruin the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let me throw this out there, is there a reason we need to be able to stun-lock NPCs?We don't need to, but stun-locking things is fun when you're on the giving side and not the receiving end. Particularly stun-locking players is fun but admittedly, is does ruin the game.
The receiving end is what a lot of the design principles are trying to make more tolerable without ruining the game for the giving end. Which is what makes the game enticing, because let's face it, the givers are still going to enjoy dishing out any amount of punishment they can. Just because stun-locks are off the menu doesn't mean they will not still enjoy the main course.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Stun locks are fun in the same way cheat codes are fun. It's fun to absolutely obliterate opponents who are powerless to resist... for a few minutes. Ultimately you come off that "UNLIMITED POWWWEEER!!!" high pretty quick unless there is a real sense of danger.
I don't think stun locks will be greatly missed by anyone if they are replaced by other features that leave your opponents less powerless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You are looking at it in the wrong light. Stuns and sleeps are fine as long as there are counter abilities that the player and the player's allies can use to help break or lessen the effects of said stun. If there is absolutely no counter and no reason for team work then yes stuns are annoying. I'm pretty sure Goblinworks will be proactive in this matter and supply the necessary counters to promote teamwork and strategy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really hate the very common trend to PvE and PvP being different sets of mechanics or statistics or gear. I would much rather see parity such as that a Sneak Attack or Whirlwind or Color Spray is treated the same regardless of Player or NPC. If you decide that 'Humanoid Races' are stun resistant and recover from stuns more quickly than other races, that should apply to NPCs as well as PCs.
Agreed.
...is there a reason we need to be able to stun-lock NPCs?
I would prefer GW give us standard tools and we, each, be free to decide how we utilize them best.
I've seen two real systems of stuns.
1.) One where stuns are relatively common but with long cooldowns and powerful effects. Developers usually give the victim resistance or immunity to subsequent stuns.
2.) Stun effects that last for a short period of time and have long cooldowns. No resistance or immunity needed since they're made to be situational tools, not something you spam for a quick kill.
I prefer #2. Make stuns situational tools with longer cooldowns that you use to set-up other abilities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think stuns have a place in combat, actually more so than roots (unless you are talking about magic based roots; or traps).
Stuns should also be more possible based on weapon type (blunt usually equals higher chance).
Stuns should be short term and should break easily when taking additional damage.
Stuns are useful in breaking spell casting concentration, although any significant damage received should have a chance of doing that.
Stuns don't always have to produce the same effect. Some might blur your vision; make you dizzy; muffle your hearing; knock you almost completely senseless; knock you off your feet; or some combination of many effects.
I realize it is not fun to be stunned, and to be rendered helpless, but that is a reality of getting stunned in combat. Stuns stack, and they become more and more effective with additional stunning blows. As someone who has been in matches with pugil sticks, I've been stunned and nearly knocked out on several occasions. Each hit to the head, became progressively closer to knocking me out. The stunning effects were also progressive and did not fade until the hitting stopped.
I have also been on the better side of that scenario as well. It is very easy to see when the advantage shifts in your favor, and you can measure your hits to have a stunning impact. An opponent that is even partially stunned is pretty much at your mercy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think things like Stunning Fist, Improved Trip, grappling, and bull rush go a long way toward making a monk more than just a fighter who 'forgot his sword today'. They are great at being tactical scrappers, and one of the reasons the class is less favoured in the tabletop PFRPG is because combat maneuvers are still poorly understood. With a computer to handle the mechanics, that simplifies things for the non- or low-damaging but tactically-useful attacks.
I like Lifedragn's suggestion that these effects be handled via attacking the stamina bar, because that allows for a range of severity and recovery times.
To go with that, I'd also like to suggest that rather than making stamina a static timer, it could be handled as a quickly-regenerating combat resource. Instead of sitting dead for 5 seconds and then refreshing entirely on the sixth, it could be set so that it refreshes over time at a speed which would take it from zero to full in six seconds.
In this model of regenerating (as contrasted with resetting) stamina, every non-free action would cost stamina.
Free actions like chat cost zero stamina (they're just not part of the stamina system).
A low-exertion action like walking (while not encumbered) incurs a cost low enough that stamina regenerates faster than it's spent.
Median-exertion actions, like jogging-speed movement (30'/round for humans in tabletop) or default/basic attacks have a stamina cost which is roughly equivalent to the regeneration speed. (I think that's referred to as 'cap stable' in Eve? I haven't played it.)
High-exertion actions like sprinting or more powerful attacks would have various costs, but all of them would drain your stamina faster than its regeneration rate if used constantly.
This regeneration model of stamina means stuns, trips, and other combat manoeuvres could not only knock off a chink of stamina upon striking, but could also apply a timed debuff to the target's sta-regen speed. There are a lot of ways to set those two effects. For example, Improved Trip might knock off a huge chunk of the target's stamina (they have to get up), but only apply a tiny debuff to regeneration speed, while Stunning Fist might knock off a small amount of stamina up front, but apply a more serious regeneration debuff. The amounts of stamina these abilities cost their user should be set that stunning someone would also drain the user to the point that they can't make it a lock, and the limitations of debuff-stacking & diminishing returns would help reduce the chance that multiple stunners could completely lock a target.
It would also limit the ability for combatants to constantly hop around in combat, since jumping would incur stamina drain that could have been used for attacks or movement.
Likewise, the circle-strafe tactic would not be a free way to attack with ranged weapons while not actually at range. On the other hand, there could be movement/stamina debuffs that apply to certain types of shots, so archery is actually a useful option, unlike in games where you must have a taunting pet or a 'root' ability to do anything but 'pull' with your bow.
Making movement have a cost means that there is a reason to walk, jog, or sprint, depending on the contest rather than everyone running at all times as they tend to do in many games. Various amounts of encumbrance would adjust the stamina drain of movement in proportional ways, but the Slow and Steady dwarf racial trait (and similar skills) would provide significant discounts to this effect of encumbrance.
Okay, I think this and my suggestions on the naming conventions thread are enough crowdforging from me for one night!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the ideas of a Stamina drain, but I don't think it should necessarily be automatic. In the example of Trip and improved Trip, I don't think there should be any stamina drain attached to the attack, rather I think the attack if successful will actually knock the character prone. While prone the character would have the option of standing back up (Consuming stamina at that point) or fighting from prone with penalties to accuracy and defenses.
Of course, this would be harder to implement, as there would need to be ground fighting animations for every attack.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the ideas of a Stamina drain, but I don't think it should necessarily be automatic. In the example of Trip and improved Trip, I don't think there should be any stamina drain attached to the attack, rather I think the attack if successful will actually knock the character prone. While prone the character would have the option of standing back up (Consuming stamina at that point) or fighting from prone with penalties to accuracy and defenses.
Of course, this would be harder to implement, as there would need to be ground fighting animations for every attack.
Well of course they'd animate the falling prone, and the loss of stamina represents the time lost in getting back up, but I don't think they're likely to animate ground-fighting. How many players would use it? Probably a subset of monks, but they could just as easily train something like 'Kip Up' to get on their feet more quickly and with less stamina loss.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While not a huge fan of completely stun locking a player out of a fight, I do play a critical based fighter in PnP that uses stun criticals (as well as bleed) as often as possible. It is possible to lock the opposition out of hitting you back in combat, but it is extremely unlikely. I had to sink a heap of feats into my character to achieve this and have subsequently sacrificed utility in other areas. There are also a plethora of monsters immune to criticals, and there are ways for NPCs the get similar immunity.
A stamina drain seems to be the logical way to deal with this. Perhaps with a maximum drain of half the oppositions stamina in any give round? Something to allow them to fight back, but at a disadvantage due to the skills used against them.
I think the bigger issue comes from sleep/hold/command type spells that give the opposition little chance to retaliate (if a save is failed). I do not want to see this in game at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the bigger issue comes from sleep/hold/command type spells that give the opposition little chance to retaliate (if a save is failed). I do not want to see this in game at all.
There are a lot of things that could be cut from the game. We could dump a hundred players into a field with a pile of sticks & stones and call that an open PvP game about fighting for limited resources. That's essentially what Rust is.
However, Golarion isn't a post-technological apocalyptic setting, it's fantasy, and magic is what defines the genre of fantasy itself.
Treat the spells as ways to sap stamina (which is essentially a realtime translation of the action economy of tabletop) and inflict debuffs to stamina regen. Just like the physical combatant is sinking resources into learning how to stun, obtaining the weapons to do so, and taking the opportunity cost of spending time/stamina to use them, the spellcasting combatant would be doing the same. Maybe a hold spell requires maintenance, so the caster is spending stamina in order to continue sapping the target's stamina.
Stuns of either type would be a way to disrupt the attack chain of the target or change movement possibilities. Any stun effect powerful enough to become a lock should produce a stalemate where the attacker is spending about as much time/stamina as the target is losing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh, I agree completely, Keovar. I don't want to see the removal of those types of spells from the game, I just do not wish to see them so powerful that any opposition has little (or no) chance of retaliation.
Similar to the stamina drain idea from weapon criticals, I could see spells working in a like fashion
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are a lot of things that could be cut from the game. We could dump a hundred players into a field with a pile of sticks & stones and call that an open PvP game about fighting for limited resources. That's essentially what Rust is.
However, Golarion isn't a post-technological apocalyptic setting, it's fantasy, and magic is what defines the genre of fantasy itself.
This is a needlessly aggressive and dismissive misrepresentation of the opposing point of view.
I am all for giving players a lot of options in combat. I just don't think an ability that allows you to run straight up and render your opponent unable to move or take any form of action should be one of them.
It may exist in the PnP but it's one of the number one reasons cited that people hate PvP, and I would have to state that the games where I've been most satisfied with PvP don't have abilities that entirely lock down an opponent's capability to do anything.
Fun > Realism
Fun > Fidelity to the Tabletop
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the issues that PFO is likely to have to do with magic is the reduction in its power.
In tabletop games one of the balance mechanics is that wizards (et al) have a limited number of spells that they can cast without resorting to magical assistance. Sleep is a very powerful spell but a first level mage can only cast it a couple of times in a session; whereas, a warrior can smack you with his two-hander as often as they want.
For this reason, unless they are going to make mages run out of spell power really quickly, they will have to massively reduce the overall power of each spell. It's either that or mages keep the power of the spells but are going to be sitting out of combat an awful lot of the time (bring your own chair).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am all for giving players a lot of options in combat. I just don't think an ability that allows you to run straight up and render your opponent unable to move or take any form of action should be one of them.
It may exist in the PnP but it's one of the number one reasons cited that people hate PvP, and I would have to state that the games where I've been most satisfied with PvP don't have abilities that entirely lock down an opponent's capability to do anything.
Fun > Realism
Fun > Fidelity to the Tabletop
This is a needlessly aggressive and dismissive misrepresentation of the opposing point of view.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the issues that PFO is likely to have to do with magic is the reduction in its power.
In tabletop games one of the balance mechanics is that wizards (et al) have a limited number of spells that they can cast without resorting to magical assistance. Sleep is a very powerful spell but a first level mage can only cast it a couple of times in a session; whereas, a warrior can smack you with his two-hander as often as they want.
For this reason, unless they are going to make mages run out of spell power really quickly, they will have to massively reduce the overall power of each spell. It's either that or mages keep the power of the spells but are going to be sitting out of combat an awful lot of the time (bring your own chair).
It's okay, I'm caring less all the time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the issues that PFO is likely to have to do with magic is the reduction in its power.
In tabletop games one of the balance mechanics is that wizards (et al) have a limited number of spells that they can cast without resorting to magical assistance. Sleep is a very powerful spell but a first level mage can only cast it a couple of times in a session; whereas, a warrior can smack you with his two-hander as often as they want.
For this reason, unless they are going to make mages run out of spell power really quickly, they will have to massively reduce the overall power of each spell. It's either that or mages keep the power of the spells but are going to be sitting out of combat an awful lot of the time (bring your own chair).
Which depends on the magic system. Is it a Vancian/level type system like PnP, or is it mana/power based like most MMOs. It's probably been covered somewhere in the blogs, but given I have zero interest in being a finger wiggling mage, I'm not familiar with it at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Crowd control belongs in this type of game as does its counters. Yes, a lot of people have issues but daresay those negative assumptions come from games with a poor implementation of a crowd control system. It can (and has) been done very well in many games and its presence promotes strategy and decision making.
Please have crowd control Goblinworks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which depends on the magic system. Is it a Vancian/level type system like PnP, or is it mana/power based like most MMOs. It's probably been covered somewhere in the blogs, but given I have zero interest in being a finger wiggling mage, I'm not familiar with it at all.
A "finger wiggling mage" isn't the only spellcaster; there's also the sermon-droning priest. Even the klepto-monkey rogues can pick up some minor magic.
Just as you can perform a variety of weapon attacks if you have the appropriate training and a weapon with the appropriate keyword, it sounds like spells are the keywords you put in your casting item (a book for wizards, holy symbol for clerics, etc.) There will probably be minor things you could do constantly (standard weapon swing, cantrip, orison) and some that are more powerful but require more stamina, more animation time, specific conditions, etc. which have to be used more judiciously. GW wants people to drive the economy by trading and fighting, so only the basics necessary to get started are likely to be 'free'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the issues that PFO is likely to have to do with magic is the reduction in its power.
In tabletop games one of the balance mechanics is that wizards (et al) have a limited number of spells that they can cast without resorting to magical assistance. Sleep is a very powerful spell but a first level mage can only cast it a couple of times in a session; whereas, a warrior can smack you with his two-hander as often as they want.
For this reason, unless they are going to make mages run out of spell power really quickly, they will have to massively reduce the overall power of each spell. It's either that or mages keep the power of the spells but are going to be sitting out of combat an awful lot of the time (bring your own chair).
It's probably worth re-reading I Put a Spell on You:
The bread and butter attacks for most arcane spellcasters will be Cantrips, which are very similar to weapon attacks for non-magical classes. They're particularly similar to attacks for bows... These attacks... consume charges in a way that's similar to bows using up arrows...
Spells... represent big and impressive effects based on the level 1-9 spell lists. You'll only get to use a handful of them per Refresh, but they're potent enough to really change the momentum of a fight when you whip them out. (And because we haven't mentioned it in the blog in a while, a "Refresh" is something you can do a limited number of times per day while out of combat that resets your Refresh feats.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is a needlessly aggressive and dismissive misrepresentation of the opposing point of view.
Not really. If it does anything other than render you entirely helpless but still open to damage it's not a stun. It's a daze, a root, a resource drain, a debuff, a slowdown, or something else. I'm not opposed to any of those things though I prefer slowdowns to roots. So if you're not arguing in favor of stuns as the term has come to mean in MMOs (as well as table tops) then you aren't of the opposing viewpoint.
If that is the case you should explain that rather than accusing people of wanting to fight with sticks and rocks.