Any game that does spell-casters right?

[Stalin]

necromancer is not what i meant.

 

[Azarkon]

It is if you have high Int.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Then there's the third kind, which doesn't actually exist but which people who don't play mages think exist: the type who'd enjoy being a liability with a lot of annoying upkeep such as spell regeants

Spell reagents add a lot of atmosphere and believability to usage of magic. They are awesome in Ultima games.

Besides that, they are no different from different kinds of ammo in Fallout and JA2 or even different kinds of bolts and arrows for fighters.

 

[Stalin]

It is if you have high Int.

from your semi retarded list it seems only ppl that will play mages are fags make believe women/drama queens and sexually frustrated males looking to hurt stuff. it says lot more about you than you should reveal dear

 

[DraQ]

An interesting way for designing mage gameplay would be coming back to the roots in some aspects. Do you guys know the etymology of the word "wizard"? It shares the core with "wise" and originally pretty much meant a sage.

How about instead of making wizards arcane equivalents of heavy weapon user from Fallout, make them more akin to the science dude?

A beginner wizard shouldn't be the guy capable of casting arcane-turned-mundane magic missile OR identify once a day. A beginner wizard should be a scholar, and due to spending time in ancient books, tomes, manuscripts or codices rather than tackling hard reality pretty much the most pathetic type of character in combat, and often a walking liability when the situation requires,say, high amounts of streetwise. His strengths should rely on knowledge of ancient, forgotten and often forbidden lore, reading some arcane signs and runes and so on, maybe some herbalism and other such skills - no power of their own.

Mid-level wizard should additionally have access to some actual... cantrips. They wouldn't be powerful, especially not in combat, but they would have a lot of highly situational uses that would make them extremely useful provided the user had the necessary ingenuity.

High level wizard would have access to some actual spells and enough knowledge to perform quite powerful rituals given time, resources and suitable location, for example some natural power nexus. High level wizard should also have enough power to face weaker supernatural foes or at least retread successfully from their presence - provided fortunate circumstances, of course.

Epic level wizard should be the one wielding more typical and immediate spells, capable of harnessing great powers if provided with the right place, resources and time for preparation (like disrupting weather over the large area, mind controlling someone from a long distance, summoning their own supernatural servants, teleportation, or steamrolling small army if some convenient place of power is nearby. Should have chance of facing powerful supernatural or otherwise superhuman beings without immediate death (think dragonlord in Le Guin's Earthsea - a person that has a chance of speaking with a dragon without getting immediately killed in a very casual manner) and stop (or cause) natural cataclysm, although this chance should still look rather bleak.

so, tl;dr:

A wizard shouldn't be mobile artillery emplacement disguised as an old fart in a bathrobe, a wizard should be the smart guy with endgame fireworks bonus.

Spell reagents add a lot of atmosphere and believability to usage of magic. They are awesome in Ultima games.

This. Spell reagents may serve a purose of limiting spell use (scarcity is best implemented when you can constrain party/PC's movement to an area where the desirable reagents aren't available, and making them impossible to stockpile in advance - for example by making them perishable in addition to being rare and valuable - this prevents party from ever having sizeable quantities of them without making them outright inaccessible and without preventing party from taking time if the circumstances don't dictate that), but their other purpose is to make spellcasting more interesting and complex.

It's far better and far more fun draw circles, and symbols, or to have to get a corpse, clean and bind together the skeleton, then use various occult ingredients and rituals to reanimate your servant than to wave your hands around and make a dozen of skeletons just pop out of the ground. It can also be good equalizer without actually limiting peak power of spellcasters and robbing them of their personal moments of awesomeness. Very high level mage may very well be allowed to incinerate an army with torrent of chain lightnings provided he has to do it while standing on a hill, in the middle of a power circle, on top of a nexus of primordial power and during a lightning storm he can channel and should have prepared in advance using complex and time consuming weather control rituals.

The problem isn't high level mage being an equivalent of a reusable nuke. The solution isn't taking this nuke away. The solution is to make this kind of power unusable in mundane situations like when you're traveling and get jumped with a bunch of ruffians with rusty daggers. If harnessing your arcane power requires more than just waving your hands about, this kind of situation will be much more dangerous to you than the aforementioned bowling session using an army, power circle and whole lot of electrity.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Fantasy RPGs should either be entirely about mages being demigods or about barbarians being huge, oiled and muscular manly men with mages being demigod boss fights.

Personally, I prefer my tabletop DnD as relatively high level all arcane spellcasters campaigns.

This. Well, not really. But this.

There are two kinds of people who play mages:

The first kind fancies himself the thinking type. He plays a mage because mages have high Int and, in his eyes, so does he. At the end of the day, though, the "thinker" is really just a story fag who wants more dialogue options to validate that he's a deep and sensitive man. He could do with less combat, and prefers simple auto-win spell chains that are "hard to figure out" (but aren't). When that doesn't work he whines on forums about how the game is poorly balanced and looks for a rest crack.

The second kind likes to blow shit up. The digital equivalent of the pyromaniac. Plays for the fancy spell graphics and feeling of raw cosmic pixel power. Shit blowing up on screen is a form of sexual release, especially if he caused it. Being a demi-god of destruction isn't just about killing stuff, though, it's about killing stuff with style. Prefers spells like "Rain of Fucking Chainsaws" and "Sphere of Annihilation." Will power game to maximize the explosions. A variant of this type: the Pokemon master, for whom you replace "blowing shit up" with "having a horde of minions that blow shit up for you" as you casually stroll through a level.

Then there's the third kind, which doesn't actually exist but which people who don't play mages think exist: the type who'd enjoy being a liability with a lot of annoying upkeep such as spell regeants and random misfires that cause you to reload because they get fucking old after the, oh, first two dozen times they happen.

Mages should be demi-gods of destruction, or they should be story fags with ezmode combat. Either way, making them overpowered is a decent first step, unless you're making a shitty MMO with "class balance," in which case you are beyond help.

Admittedly, I can't imagine any game where I wouldn't build my character precisely around selecting the ability to cast 'Rain of Fucking Chainsaws'. Even if the game was a Japanese dating sim.

 

[Claw]

This. Well, not really. But this.

There are two kinds of people who play mages:

No, no and no. Also, lots of words to say very little. (Obligatory knee-jerk reaction)

I just played the demo for that new "remade classic" RPG Underworld and it actually reminded me of what may have made mages my favourite RPG class. They always got the most options, especially in the early RPGs. Most games had no skills, feats or whatever. The fighter often did nothing but attack. Rogues got a stealth option and a few special abilities maybe but most of that was circumstantial.
The spellcasters get a list of spells to chose from, both in development and during combat. So while I just press (A) for most of my party, I get to make decisions with my casters every round.
I am missing that a bit when my decision is the colour of the effects that kill my opponents.

I like the idea of the "potentially powerful" caster but in most RPGs any attempt to balance their OP spells fails. Some games overdo it and "nerf" the casters so bad you end up whacking most enemies with a sword.

Starcraft is one game that comes to mind that handles casters pretty well. Very powerful but also very vulnerable, especially High Templar. PSI Storm also looks super cool in SC2. And feedback is so sweet.

 

[Azrael the cat]

This. Well, not really. But this.

There are two kinds of people who play mages:

No, no and no. Also, lots of words to say very little. (Obligatory knee-jerk reaction)

I just played the demo for that new "remade classic" RPG Underworld and it actually reminded me of what may have made mages my favourite RPG class. They always got the most options, especially in the early RPGs. Most games had no skills, feats or whatever. The fighter often did nothing but attack. Rogues got a stealth option and a few special abilities maybe but most of that was circumstantial.
The spellcasters get a list of spells to chose from, both in development and during combat. So while I just press (A) for most of my party, I get to make decisions with my casters every round.
I am missing that a bit when my decision is the colour of the effects that kill my opponents.

I like the idea of the "potentially powerful" caster but in most RPGs any attempt to balance their OP spells fails. Some games overdo it and "nerf" the casters so bad you end up whacking most enemies with a sword.

Starcraft is one game that comes to mind that handles casters pretty well. Very powerful but also very vulnerable, especially High Templar. PSI Storm also looks super cool in SC2. And feedback is so sweet.

Actually, that certainly conjures memories of my early rpg days. It's also part of the reason why mid-to-late-era crpgs like the Baldurs Gate games made fighting classes so simple. Fighters were always the 'simple mode' for people who were new to that kind of game. Very often, the instruction manual would actually say something to the effect of 'If you are new to rpgs, or just prefer to rush straight to the action, choose a fighter. Only experienced rpg gamers should select the mage class, or those who want a more challenging game.'

That would be despite the traditional massive overpowering of mages in the late-game - i.e. it was for reasons of complexity, not the actual difficulty of the game. From Wizardry through to Baldurs' Gate 2, fighters would be either 'press attack', or if the option was there, 'do I attack or parry?', and all the choices would concern the casters. When you started getting games like the mid-to-latter Ultimas and the infinity engine games, where an initial player character builds a party, even though you still had party control, it would just feel wrong if the 'main character' wasn't also the one that was central to your decision-making.

 

[DraQ]

They always got the most options, especially in the early RPGs.

That's actually one of the reasons why I love Morrowind. It's hardly balanced, and different forms of elemental damage are merely differently coloured particles checked against different resistances, but there is a lot of potential in extensive array of utility spells and a whole lot more when you start treating your spells like effect sequencers and try to arrange particularly useful combinations.

Sure, spellmaker could have had much more options, effects, modifiers and stuff, but I think it was a step in the right direction, along with the earlier one from Daggerfall. Too bad it was the last step.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Spell reagents, preparation all depends on the Game lore. If the lore is nice then why not? If not then better have spontaneous casting.

 

[commie]

I actually don't have a problem with the AD&D staple of weak pissy mage at the start and then uber killer at the end. What is a problem is the scale of progression. Elminster is regarded as a Gandalf like, almost immortal in the FR, wizened and sage with centuries of experience and arcane knowledge or the evil necromancer who has spent the last 1000 years learning the dark arts and is at the height of his powers, are easily bested in a few weeks or months in power by your character starting from scratch.

Mixing the ideas that DraQ put about mage being science dude and having several 'levels' of development why not in character creation you decide the age and initial 'level' of the mage? Of course the areas would need to be balanced, leveling wouldn't work the same or maybe the traditional concept of leveling would not apply in such a game, but you could have a weak mage in spellcasting but a more robust knowledge of other usual combat support skills or identification etc. or an older mage that has mastered more spells or the ability to cast them but as a result he is not as attuned to other things that he was in his youth when he was first starting out.

 

[Stalin]

or there should be a scale like trade off between utility and dps without the age thing

 

[commie]

or there should be a scale like trade off between utility and dps without the age thing

Yeah, that's fair. The 'age' thing was mainly so you'd get a lore representation of why a character is the way he is. It could be just purely cosmetic or it could take into account that a a more experienced mage would be older and thus less mobile, more fragile etc.

 

[deuxhero]

I actually don't have a problem with the AD&D staple of weak pissy mage at the start and then uber killer at the end. What is a problem is the scale of progression. Elminster is regarded as a Gandalf like, almost immortal in the FR, wizened and sage with centuries of experience and arcane knowledge or the evil necromancer who has spent the last 1000 years learning the dark arts and is at the height of his powers, are easily bested in a few weeks or months in power by your character starting from scratch.

To be fair, Elminster has levels in fighter and doesn't bother to attempt to be a gish despite having alreddy sunk all the costs associated with it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

He's got a level or two of thief and cleric too. Fucker can't powergame at all. Though I guess you don't need to when you live forever and get unique gifts from the god of magic. I think you're underrating how powerful he is compared to something like a level 20 wizard in say, KotC. A level 20 wizard in KotC is levelled stupidly fast, time wise. But they've also murdered over a dozen dragons by then to justify that, and their spell selection and loot is paltry for a level 20 character. It's like comparing some random guy with someone who wins Street Fighter tournaments. Just because the random guy learned how to beat singleplayer on hard in just a few weeks doesn't put him on nearly the same level. Elminster is level fuck all considering how old he is; but he's got enough friends, favours, and trinkets to end the world 50 times over. That's not even counting all the fucking treasure he knows about that he can easily get his hands on, that he doesn't even bother acquiring to personally own.

In game terms, this is the difference between a Sorceress in Diablo 2 that hit the level cap, and one that is fully decked out in top end rares and runewords with all the best charms and drops in the game, and enough friends with the same kind of gear to fill a game. On a hardcore PvP server. Level (And the number of fireballs you can throw in a day) isn't everything. I don't see a problem with fireball spamming being trivial for a PC when there are other spellcasters that can break open mountains and kill gods.