Feedback

[Jarno Mikkola]

Am I the only one that would find "strange" a party friendly Fireball even if cast by a 21th lvl mage?

Well, if we were to make the spell partially party friendly a high levels, I wouldn't mind say at level 10 it's damage to be 100% party hitting, while at level 20: if it hits a party member they would only suffer 75% of the damage full damage... and at level 50: only be 25% of full damage is suffered by the party members(+ saves of course to reduce more).

[Shaitan]

I don't like the overall idea, that a wizards level decides wether a spell is party friendly or not.

[Salk]

Am I the only one that would find "strange" a party friendly Fireball even if cast by a 21th lvl mage?

Well, if we were to make the spell partially party friendly a high levels, I wouldn't mind say at level 10 it's damage to be 100% party hitting, while at level 20: if it hits a party member they would only suffer 75% of the damage full damage... and at level 50: only be 25% of full damage is suffered by the party members(+ saves of course to reduce more).

 

 

And why should it be like that? What kind of reason would there be behind such an illogical behaviour? The party friendliness of a spell should not depend on the expertise of the caster, in my opinion. And that's because it's up to those affected by the spell that should try and defend against it. Or should we think that a fireball cast by a high level mage could just present itself with some holes here and there conveniently created by the skilled mage in order to spare his companions from the effects of the spell?

[Demivrgvs]

The party friendliness of a spell should not depend on the expertise of the caster, in my opinion. And that's because it's up to those affected by the spell that should try and defend against it. Or should we think that a fireball cast by a high level mage could just present itself with some holes here and there conveniently created by the skilled mage in order to spare his companions from the effects of the spell?

That's exactly how a party friendly Fireball is supposed to work in PnP when cast by an Archmage with the Mastery of Shaping feat. It doesn't make much sense indeed though.

[urdjur]

The party friendliness of a spell should not depend on the expertise of the caster, in my opinion. And that's because it's up to those affected by the spell that should try and defend against it. Or should we think that a fireball cast by a high level mage could just present itself with some holes here and there conveniently created by the skilled mage in order to spare his companions from the effects of the spell?

That's exactly how a party friendly Fireball is supposed to work in PnP when cast by an Archmage with the Mastery of Shaping feat. It doesn't make much sense indeed though.

 

I consider the SR version of Flame Arrow to be something of a party friendly AoE spell. To me, it was more valuable (i.e. broken) when you could direct the entire power of the spell at a single target rather than spread it out. But it sure is a nice option to finish off a few injured/weaker opponents in the heat of battle for the support caster.

 

Party-friendliness is only one parameter that affects the level of the spell - you also have to consider damage potential, range, tactical applications etc. I think all the SR spells at level 3 are balanced from this perspective. If you want large area, long range, decent damage, take Fireball. If you want something more party friendly but with less damage, pick Flame Arrow etc. Re: Sunfire, I must confess I haven't tried the SR version, and so forgot to consider the changed AoE and casting time.

 

For a sorceror though, all earlier options of fire based AoEs suffer from the great competition of Dragon's Breath. Much like Skull Trap adds a "delayed blast" component, making it interesting even after ADHW is acquired, I think the low level options should have some selling point over even DB - though obviously not being as powerful overall (for example short casting time, as with Sunfire).

 

What would making 10th level spells innate abilities entail, Demi? Would they still consume 9th level slots? What would the practical difference be? Uninterruptable? As it stands now, 9th level spells is a more rare commodity for a sorceror than 10th level spells, since the latter are acquired more quickly, you have less to choose from, and eventually get them all anyway. And both use the same resource: 9th level slots. This means that you won't ever have to pick Gate, because you can have Summon Planetar at no opportunity cost - the same with Meteor Swarm vs. Dragon's Breath etc. Don't know if your innate ideas will fix this somehow, I'm just throwing the observation out there.

[Jarno Mikkola]

It doesn't make much sense indeed though.

Ouh, so no fireworks shows for you then... as that's the closest relative to this kind of magic.

 

And why should it be like that?

Why not, and it's just a though.

[Ardanis]

Spells with an outright AoE animation should be non-friendly imo. I've been playing Hellgate London last couple of days, and although a diablo game it is, still took me some time to realize I'm in no danger when walking over burning napalm I've been firing around.

 

What would making 10th level spells innate abilities entail, Demi? Would they still consume 9th level slots? What would the practical difference be? Uninterruptable?

In NWN epic spells weren't consuming any slots. Same here - you pick an epic spell, it appears in your innate bar, while all 9th slots are used for memorizing 9th only spells.

[DavidW]

What would making 10th level spells innate abilities entail, Demi? Would they still consume 9th level slots? What would the practical difference be? Uninterruptable?

In NWN epic spells weren't consuming any slots. Same here - you pick an epic spell, it appears in your innate bar, while all 9th slots are used for memorizing 9th only spells.

 

Careful with this change. Wizards could end up with a lot more high-level spells, and they're arguably powerful enough as it is.

[Ardanis]

So far as my last playthrough shows, most of my high-level slots are filled with anti-wizard spells, leaving very little room for dealing with a crowd of grunts.

[phordicus]

without hundreds of lines of AI code, enemy wizards will never be as precise with unfriendly AoE as the player is. i can target a shielded enemy mage with a fireball and get their cleric and a few guys in melee with the blast and leave my own guys unharmed besides some singed eyebrows. the AI will never do that. aesthetically, AI-friendly AoE looks bad but if you're playing this game for accurate renderings of actions then my pity for you is unending (and RPGs aren't really your genre). i consider it a small price to pay rather than eliminating an entire range of extremely useful and common spells just because accurate and appropriate targeting is nearly impossible to achieve.

 

@ DW: w/o a physics-based engine, can we use triggers like Range and Num to get close? we could spawn very short-lived invisible observers at X,Y offsets around each enemy with range checks for enemies and allies and increment/decrement a "good target" variable with a minimum score to fire.

Edited January 20, 2011 by phordicus

[Demivrgvs]

What would making 10th level spells innate abilities entail, Demi? Would they still consume 9th level slots? What would the practical difference be? Uninterruptable?

In NWN epic spells weren't consuming any slots. Same here - you pick an epic spell, it appears in your innate bar, while all 9th slots are used for memorizing 9th only spells.

Careful with this change. Wizards could end up with a lot more high-level spells, and they're arguably powerful enough as it is.

Well, the fact is that such change belongs as much to SR as to KR. With a revised HLA table (or even Refinements one) we're not going to cause any absurd increase of power at all. Mages within KR will have various non-spells HLAs to consider like additional spell slots (this may take 2-3 HLAs - note that within KR I won't use the "unnerfed" spell table), scribe scrolls (unless we do prefer aVENGER's solution) or innate permanent features, and in a normal game a single class mage has only 6-7 HLAs choices.

 

Even without KR few additional high lvl spells per day aren't game breaking imo, even more so with things like aVENGER's PnP scribe scroll tweak which can grant mages much more high lvl spells than a bunch of HLA choices. It's not crucial how many spells per day a mage can cast imo, because during important battles you cannot rely only on slow high lvl spells that take an eternity to cast and the first 3-4 rounds generally decide the fate of a duel between two archmages, thus having four 9th lvl spells is more than enough to cover the them even if we assume that mages cast only them (which is not true imo - things like RRoR and Breach are too much important).

 

If you ask me, the change will simply allow players to finally use some 9th lvl spells they never used like Energy Drain, Spellstrike (especially with SCS), Absolute Immunity, and so on. Mages will be slightly more effective yes, mainly because they could have a more different spells at once, but I don't see them becoming more dominant then they already are. I could be wrong though.

Edited January 20, 2011 by Demivrgvs

[Ardanis]

can we use triggers like Range and Num to get close? we could spawn very short-lived invisible observers at X,Y offsets around each enemy with range checks for enemies and allies and increment/decrement a "good target" variable with a minimum score to fire.

Yep, it's doable in theory - check Big Picture, it uses invisible target for similar purpose. I've also been considering using a number of ground scripts to calculate the position. But in both cases it's never close to tolerable imo.

[phordicus]

i'm disinclined to put much time into testing because i suspect there will be a noticeable ~hiccup~ when enough AI's get in sync spawning and checking the multiple observers -- or will they? one observer isn't enough; no idea what BP does unless it just averages the position of the PCs and targets the observer/ground; not what i had in mind.

[urdjur]

Just noticed Mordenkainen's Sword is missing from the summons documentation here on the forum - it would be nice if it was added for completeness and ease of comparison. Thanks.

 

Also, I noticed planetars hit as +3 which seems a bit weak considering Mord Swords and demons hit as +4. I also wonder if neutral mages can choose to summon both planetar types (more useful now with the greater variety between the two in SR), or if you pick one and have to stick with it.

[DavidW]

If you ask me, the change will simply allow players to finally use some 9th lvl spells they never used like Energy Drain, Spellstrike (especially with SCS), Absolute Immunity, and so on. Mages will be slightly more effective yes, mainly because they could have a more different spells at once, but I don't see them becoming more dominant then they already are. I could be wrong though.

 

I'm not so worried about players becoming more effective. But I think this will be seriously useful to enemy wizards. 9th level spell slots are a fairly significant constraint on my scripting. (That's only an issue as and when I take SR properly into account, but doing so has got most of the way to the top of my to-do list.)