Changing the Magic System

[tungprc]

For Book II-I'd really like to see the benefits/damage from Mage and Cleric spells be based on the character's intelligence or wisdom stat. This would stop the built in ceiling on spells. Weapon damage doesn't have a ceiling, you can add strength and speed and do more damage on even the highest level weapon. A 12 intelligence mage will do as much damage as a 30 intelligence mage. A 30 strength swordsman will do 9 more damage/hit than a 12 strength swordsman. Not balanced at all.

[Loriac]

For Book II-I'd really like to see the benefits/damage from Mage and Cleric spells be based on the character's intelligence or wisdom stat. This would stop the built in ceiling on spells. Weapon damage doesn't have a ceiling, you can add strength and speed and do more damage on even the highest level weapon. A 12 intelligence mage will do as much damage as a 30 intelligence mage. A 30 strength swordsman will do 9 more damage/hit than a 12 strength swordsman. Not balanced at all.

I thought it was +1 damage / to hit per 5 points of an attribute, not per 2 points? Your point is still valid, just not as bad as made out in your post.

I do agree that adding damage based on the spellcasting stat is a decent idea, however I'm not sure what the implementation would be - would you scale this per spell tier (i.e. spells with a base cost of 2 shouldn't get as much benefit as spells with a base cost of 10 points)? Also, +1 per 5 points of int / wis doesn't seem to scale all that well with spells' base damage capacity, so this might need to be raised.

How would stat boosters and utility spells be affected by this change?

[tungprc]

You could be right, Loriac. I bought the Witcher and have started playing it. I'm kinda waiting for a balance patch from BW before I try to finish any of my characters. I like playing mages best but they're gimped compared to fighters. If my level 13 mage took on my level 11 paladin, the mage would die in a few rounds The paladin has a ton of hp and hits MUCH harder than the mage.

[Rune_74]

The funny thing is Magic used to be overly powerful to the point a new character could kill salamander with one hit, so Basilisk scaled it back. The problem with balancing is that its hard to find a perfect balance between cost and reward. What I'm seeing personally is that the higher level spells really just need the tweaking since the lower level ones basically work the way they should am I right?

[GSV3MiaC]

I think you are right. The low level spells are fine. If you think back to AD&D though 'magic arrow' (the grand-daddy of all mage offensive spells) gets one more arrow per 2 levels of magery .. no more mana consumed, iirc.

The 'magic damage done per mana point' should be much better for a high level mage than for a stupid one, not just 'the high level mage can cast 6 magic arrows all at once for 6x the mana cost', which is how it works now.

All magic is currently good for is buffing and healing your fighter/ranger, IMO, (Ok, and opening locks and suchlike too).

[Claw]

I don't really want skill-dependant spell power other than what we already have, i.e. higher skill needed to cast spells at higher levels.
I'd rather see the current system refined, and the proposed changes would require an overhaul of the system.
I would be satisfied if high-level damage spells were more efficient, so mages have a greater incentive to use them and thus to increase their magic skill.

My character was never planned as a pure caster, but at levels over ten I have all but stopped using damage spells at all. My main reasons for increasing my magic skill now is so I can cast Lock Melt and Portal at higher levels.
And that isn't a strong incentive. I can probably live with two portal anchors, and when I can open doors with a 15% chance of success while breaking only two picks, why use Lock Melt at all?

[Rune_74]

What about different skills for higher level spells as your base skill increases you gain access t o other mage "schools" that you can select?

[Claw]

That would be interesting if there are several schools with different spells. Even a pure caster could hardly learn them all so you'd have to choose.

[Rune_74]

You would have to choose your path so that no two magick(tm) users would be different depending on the progression you choose....

I really like this idea, not much not to like really...think how they did it back in bards tale.

[Necromis]

this would also give you the ability to limit non-pure casters to certain mage schools. Just as you could limit pure casters to certain weapons, too. Let cleric class get certain magic schools, mage class certain magic schools, rouge......etc. Then you can easily balance w/o too much difficulty. It is a great add on to the current solutions.

[confused1]

IMHO, I really don't care about the damage the spells do. I just want a better hotkey system! Because you can only have 9 different spells set to hotkeys, while I have more than 9 spells, not to mention the different levels of spells. I think they should have a hotkey for each spell and by pressing that hotkey repeatedly it changes the spell level from 1, the lowest, to whatever your highest spell level is for that particular spell.

[Nakayar]

Am I the only one who didn't use any magic whatsoever? Heh, I've always preferred fighter types.

[Krafen]

this would also give you the ability to limit non-pure casters to certain mage schools. Just as you could limit pure casters to certain weapons, too. Let cleric class get certain magic schools, mage class certain magic schools, rouge......etc. Then you can easily balance w/o too much difficulty. It is a great add on to the current solutions.

For me, this is moving too much to a class-based system. I much prefer a skill-based system and was pleased to discover Eschalon is almost entirely skill-based. The "class" chosen in character creation has minimal effect on the rest of the game and I like it that way.

[JozenOne]

I'd like to see spell eficiency incresed with power level, not just 1:1 damage increase.

Take fleshboil or flame arrow that does 1-4/power rank

1 1-4
2 2-8 +1
3 3-12 +3
4 4-16 +5
5 5-20 +7
6 6-24 +9