Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - turn-based Warhammer 40k RPG from Owlcat Games - now with Void Shadows DLC

[MerchantKing]

Players shouldn't be able to see enemy stats.

Players not being able to see enemy stats still doesn't solve the target prioritization advantage players can enjoy just by looking at the enemy party composition and making intelligent guesses regarding target strengths and weaknesses.

A player still has to make an intelligent guess. BTW, the AI is not a player. The AI exists to simulate the behaviors of non-player characters in combat. Given that this is an RPG, there is plenty of reason to suggest that making decisions like a player would even with limited information should not be done by denizens of the world. Mechanics can also be made by improving the behavior of line of sight to further limit player information such removing vision from an area behind an obstacle.

Too much information and designing a game around information a player should not have especially when a computer game can be programmed to further limit information is one of the real flaws. Not in programming AI to do the opposite of what it should be doing in an RPG, that is makign decisions based on game mechanics instead of simulating character behaviors. The biggest problem here is that developers do not implement enough simulation elements.

If the player can make intelligent guesses and prioritize targets based on weaknesses and threat level, so should the AI. Sadly, in an overwhelming majority of encounters,

Closest targets are often the most logical targets as I want the most threatening characters to be the closest to the enemies. I can let the caster die and burn a cheap scroll to revive him as I was already planning to.

enemies target mostly the closest targets with only scripted encounters changing enemy target prioritization.

Enemies will prioratize low AC characters in this game if they are close enough while initially attacking. I have seen this occur plenty of times without the additional behaviors. Sometimes I've even seen enemies change targets to attack low AC characters. This is even in non-scripted encounters. I think the problem is that you haven't played these games since Kingmaker and are extrapolating based on Kingmaker.

Line of sight, obstacles, etc.

Which means that the enemy archers shouldn't remain stationary and instead change position to hit easier targets. This is not some kind of otherworldly concept that requires alien tech, it's something that has already been implemented in countless TBT games

Most of them do not have a line of sight mechanics either.

and Japanese SRPGs.

None of them have line of sight mechanics. Especially in JRPGs, they move because they're programmed to move when they have a move action available. Not for any tactical reasons.

As far as line of sight mechanics are concerned, Rogue Trader does have one though.

Though in some cases, the enemies do target backliners in WotR.

Mostly scripted encounters where the enemies are coded to go for the MC after a cutscene who may or may not be in the back.

Not mostly scripted. Sometimes it occurs in random encounters. Moreover, you lack a lot of insight into the idea. A lack of line of light means that the enemy may not even know a character is there which means they shouldn't be maneuvering to attack a character does not see. Unlike in this game, line of sight is required and can be implemented with individualized fog of war.

That being said, if you know enemies were to target exclusive wizards whenever possible, you either learn to exploit it, i.e. in Kingmaker's AI mod where you get tons of free AoO against enemies charging the backline. With archers targeting bakcliners, a player would simply designed Wizards around the fact that they're going to be targeted by making the wizard as invincible as possible against the archers so that either the archers will be baited into wasting their shots or to no longer prioratize wizards and still waste their shots while the enemies are cleared.

First of all, enemies should practice smart target prioritization which means targeting the weakest defenses which may or may not be backliners, depending on their buffs.

They shouldn't know what the weakest defense are. Neither should the players. Nor should most non-magical characters know what buffs are on a target as they should not have the knowledge needed to identify them. "Smart prioratization" can be easily exploited, especially in a game with buffs. Most of the cases it is implemented, it makes the game easier since you can just exploit their behavior to make the game even easier than before.

Secondly, there is nothing wrong with active counterplay against enemy tactics as this is an expression of tactical depth - the need to adapt your tactics to specific situations and encounters.

Except the "tactical depth" in this game is just playing the caster the way you should already being playing it. If the counterplay is just playing the same way as normal, that is buffing everything, it's not really counterplay.

The problem with traps in this game is that they are player character exclusive.

That's actually not a problem inherently, such behavior can be explained by a simple notion of enemies being informed about the locations of their own traps and not stepping into them. It's a crude explanation and requires some suspension of disbelief, but it's good enough for gameplay purposes. The real solution to this would be just code enemy pathfinding to walk around their own traps, but that requires competence.

But they do step on them. The trigger for a trap is a large square or rectangle spanning an area and they stand right on top of the trigger without triggering it. Suspension of disbelief is cope in this case and a non-argument.

That being said, this is done quite a few times in WotR and even kingmaker as there are traps sometimes between you and nearby enemies.

Yes, there are encounters with traps positioned between the player and enemy units like those you find in Currantglen underground, but encounters like these are extremely rare.

They're not that rare if you exclude random encounters from consideration. Most areas have at least one or two places where there is a set of traps with enemies that engage you while you're in the proximity of the trap. There are probably four or five of these in Drezen alone during the siege.

Within the first system in Rogue Trader, I ran into about four or five ambushes as well. They didn't add anything to the difficulty though.

There are also quite a few random ambush encounters possible in WotR where your party starts with enemies surrounding you or behind you and the enemies have a suprise round.

Traps should be used far more liberally to create tactical depth (i.e. the need to adapt) and increase the usefulness of trickery skill in combat.

They are already used quite liberally.

This is done in a few encounters in WotR.

Yes, Babau Infiltrators do that, which is good (their presence, not their extreme rarity, which is very bad).

More than just the Babau inflitrators. There are quite a few invisible enemies other than that that try to sneak up on you to flank you.

Though the player just learns to put melees in the backline and to put "backliners" between characters. It doesn't add very much challenge in general.

It adds the need for active counterplay which is good and it also adds a strong element of danger when teleporting enemies use reach weapons

Teleportation in most cases requires access to at least 4th level spells within the 3e/pf ruleset. Usually this requires a standard action to implement. BTW, WotR already has enemies that do this like some of those Babau. But then your argument is that Owlcat is still all prebuffing?

and are capable of high burst damage that can chunk your vulnerable low AC characters in one flurry

Designing encounters just around killing backliners is also bad design. Why? Because all you have to do is leave the low AC characters at the entrance of the map while the high AC characters who also have high saves, high AB, and high damage, clean up everything as usual. No tactical depth required to beat this design. It just ends up making the caster characters and so on who are lower AC just not be used for anything but buffing the same way someone playing Kingmaker or Wrath "solo" would and the same way some of the caster classes are already used.

Not using a character is not skill expression btw as you can counter this by simply buffing the casters like you should already be doing and as was already done as far back as Kingmaker.

even if you surround them with martials.

Shouldn't happen in that case. It is incredible retarded to let characters with any weapon attack through obstacles whether than obstacle is a rock or another character. BTW, reach weapons are supposed to get penalties from cover in tabletop if there is a character between the target and the attacker.

Also, the combination of concealment+cover from surrounding characters would make the caster more likely to survive even with reach weapons. So they'd actually be less successful attacking those characters than if they just attacked the martials in the first place.

They use prebuffing in WotR.

Mostly used on bosses and some select end-game enemies. Prebuffing should be far more liberal and should be applied to enemies at any stage of the game to compensate for the loss of stat bloat relative to tabletop.

It's like you ignored all the Votaries and quite a few of the alchemist and caster normal enemies that start their fight by getting a dozen quickcasted buffs. There were even quite a few enemies in Kingmaker that weren't bosses that still buffed themselves heavily before and during fights. Enemy alchemists are also an example in Kingmaker. Owlcat already implemented this for quite a few enemies. Most of the enemies that prebuff are not bosses or select end-game enemies.

 

[MjKorz]

Given that this is an RPG, there is plenty of reason to suggest that making decisions like a player would even with limited information should not be done by denizens of the world.

AI not being able to prioritize targets based on their defenses and threat level due to having no information and thus no ability to estimate such concepts while the player can do so even while lacking precise information creates a massive disparity in tactical adaptability of both parties which heavily favors the player and creates the need to strengthen enemy units in order to compensate for suboptimal behavior. There are only two solutions to this problem: provide precise information to both parties which is fair or provide limited information to the AI while leaving the player guessing based on visual or some other (e.g. narrative) ques. Your statement that no information should be provided to either party is not based on any argumentation, it's based simply on your preference and that preference leads to dogshit design - compensation of stupid behavior via stat bloat.

Mechanics can also be made by improving the behavior of line of sight to further limit player information

Which solves nothing, because players can make intelligent guesses even with limited information. No matter how hard you gimp the player in terms of provided information, people will still exhibit intelligent target prioritization based on available ques. Deny this to the AI and you get an artificial idiot acting in a predictable manner and thus removing the need for tactical adaptability, i.e. removing the tactical depth from the game.

information a player should not have

This is not supported by anything other than your subjective preference. The need to have information provided to both parties is supported by the fact that this evens out the playing field (as much as it's possible with AI) in terms of intelligent target prioritization between the player and the AI.

Closest targets are often the most logical targets

No, they aren't. The most logical targets are those that are the most convenient to attack based on their defenses and threat level.

Enemies will prioratize low AC characters in this game if they are close enough while initially attacking.

Wrong and easily proven via archer behavior. Archers will attack mostly closest targets even if they have lower AC targets in sight. Target prioritization may or may not occur if melee enemies (usually with very long reach) have multiple targets in range, but this is never guaranteed even on unfair with super long reach characters like Deskari. If these same melee enemies start attacking one high AC character and then you move a lower AC character into their range, no target prioritization occurs unless the enemy keeps missing the target for many turns and only in RTwP mode. I have not observed this behavior in TB mode.

I think the problem is that you haven't played these games since Kingmaker and are extrapolating based on Kingmaker.

The problem is that you have no clue what you're talking about and keep getting game behavior wrong, caused by your lack of game experience.

Most of them do not have a line of sight mechanics either.

"Most" means nothing when there are plenty that do. JA2 and UFO games are considered as some of the best in the genre an they have both line of sight and friendly fire mechanics. Even newer TBT titles like Mordheim have line of sight mechanics as well.

None of them have line of sight mechanics.

Wrong. Japanese SRPGs as old as Hoshigami have both line of sight and friendly fire when firing bows.

Not for any tactical reasons.

The tactical reason is to maximize hit chance and avoid friendly fire.

Not mostly scripted. Sometimes it occurs in random encounters.

Precisely mostly scripted, precisely mostly after a cutscene when they are scripted to target the MC. Or in cases when specific enemies are scripted to attack a particular character like the Sarkorian Kinslayer attacking Ulbrig. Archer target prioritization is based mostly on proximity, the cases when for some unexplainable reason they choose to ignore the first closest target is presented to them are exceedingly rare and do not follow any pattern.

line of sight is required and can be implemented with individualized fog of war

Individualized fog of war cannot be implemented for the player who controls the entire party and has the visual information from every character. If you chose to implement individualized fog of war for the AI while the player sees everything (and the player will see everything unless you have different people controlling different characters and even then players could communicate), you're just gimping the AI, creating another instance for the need to compensate for suboptimal AI behavior via stat bloat.

Except the "tactical depth" in this game is just playing the caster the way you should already being playing it. If the counterplay is just playing the same way as normal, that is buffing everything, it's not really counterplay.

Wrong. Using spells of level 2 and 3 on protections such as Mirror Image, Communal Protection From Arrows and Displacement, when those same spell levels can be used for devastating AoE disabling spells such as Winter's Grasp, FavoriteSelective + FavoriteExtended Sound Burst and Stinking Cloud + Corruptor, in cases when you don't actually need those protections is a waste and suboptimal play. You lack the insight how to play a proper caster.

But they do step on them.

Yes, because Owlclowns are incapable of coding proper pathfinding. As I said, that would be the perfect solution. The only problem with traps stems from developer incompetence, enemies not triggering traps is not a problem, because in the hands of a competent developer they'd have the pathfinding to walk around them.

They're not that rare if you exclude random encounters from consideration. Most areas have at least one or two places where there is a set of traps with enemies that engage you while you're in the proximity of the trap.

Wrong. They are exceptionally rare. "Proximity of the trap" means nothing when the trap is out of the player's way used to approach the enemy. In-combat instances where traps are placed specifically on the only path players can use to approach the enemy are exceedingly rare. I already gave you an example: Currantglen underground on the 2nd visit where you need to approach a group of scavengers near the altar has a trap placed in a chokepoint that is unavoidable by a party moving in formation and can only be avoided by a single character carefully maneuvering around it. These are the traps that matter in combat, simple "proximity" means absolutely nothing as long as you can find the trap.

There are also quite a few random ambush encounters possible in WotR where your party starts with enemies surrounding you or behind you and the enemies have a suprise round.

Correct, and in those cases target prioritization still plays by the same proximity rules already covered above. Since the party members start surrounded, you get enemies targeting multiple party members based on their proximity.

They are already used quite liberally.

Wrong, they aren't. Traps that inevitably need to be maneuvered around in combat due to being placed on critical approach routes or in chokepoints are exceedingly rare.

invisible enemies

Have nothing to do with teleportation and are instantly spotted by any properly prebuffed party. Not even mind-blank will save them from echolocation.

Teleportation in most cases requires access to at least 4th level spells within the 3e/pf ruleset. Usually this requires a standard action to implement. BTW, WotR already has enemies that do this like some of those Babau. But then your argument is that Owlcat is still all prebuffing?

Access to teleportation is a question of enemy character builds, including access to scrolls (something Kuroisan the Acid Kensai tormented players with in BG2 Tactics two decades ago and still cannot be properly copied by professional devs) or wands via UMD. Casting dimension door as a spell via swift action is a question of access to quicken rods or metamagics. You can solve the "problem" of creating such enemies in various ways, including just letting them cast it as a standard action and not having them attack on the same round for a weaker version of an enemy archetype. Yes, there are babau Infiltrators that I have already mentioned, which are exceedingly rare and are only present in a couple of places in the game. I have nothing against prebuffing enemies with actual in-game legal buffs, but that's not what Owlclowns do: they bloat enemy stats relative to tabletop in a manner that cannot be countered via dispel and they do this specifically to compensate for their inability to design encounters in a smart manner.

Designing encounters just around killing backliners is also bad design. Why? Because all you have to do is leave the low AC characters at the entrance of the map while the high AC characters who also have high saves, high AB, and high damage, clean up everything as usual. No tactical depth required to beat this design.

Forcing the player to adapt to various tactical scenarios is good design, because it creates tactical depth. The goal is to not kill the player backliners, the goal is to force the player to adapt by switching up their tactics. If you leave your low AC characters behind, you have to fight with less characters which is a forced adaptation. Alternatively, you can just protect your low AC characters with multiple layers of defenses: mirror image + displacement or blink (in cases where enemies can negate or reroll your displacement). You have no clue how to set up defenses.

It just ends up making the caster characters and so on who are lower AC just not be used for anything but buffing

Absolute nonsense. Offensive casters are the strongest classes in any situation. If all else fails (which it shouldn't), a proper offensive caster can be set up to have unbeatable initiative and enough spell DC to disable entire encounters before they are threatened. As stated before, you lack insight on have to build casters.

Not using a character

Is your problem due to lack of game knowledge.

Shouldn't happen in that case.

That's exactly how it happens in WotR. If you advocate for implementing more advanced cover mechanics from TT, then I have nothing against it.

It's like you ignored all the Votaries and quite a few of the alchemist and caster normal enemies that start their fight by getting a dozen quickcasted buffs.

Like I said before: the vast majority of enemies in either Kingmaker or WotR are unbuffed (via legal in-game buffs) trash mobs. Of those exceptional few regular enemies that are buffed, most are buffed with only a few spells even in the endgame. The proper prebuffing treatment is granted almost exclusively to bosses and mini-bosses like the Desolating Gallu Stormcallers. Instead of bloating enemy stats in a way that cannot be dispelled, they should be buffed via legal in-game buffs. The resultant loss of encounter challenge should be compensated via improvements to AI and encounter design.

 

[Yosharian]

Those Stormcallers use Tsunami which filters so many players, I've seen tons of people saying they are impossible to beat lol

Well that and the fire spell I forget the name

The larger issue is Owlcat's tendency to create an interesting enemy (regardless of how you feel about how it's buffed) and then copy paste it 25 times throughout the map and call it a day

 

[Desiderius]

Seeing enemy stats required a somewhat challenging skill check in P:K, with the specific skill dependent on the type of enemy.

They turned off that check for the WotR Alpha/Beta and the existence of the Inspect ability was evidently such a revelation to so many players that they left it off on release.

Should be turned back on.

 

[Desiderius]

The ship has a lot of annoying/challenging trap set-ups in the middle of fights.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Lads, do You recommend starting another run in Rogue Trader right now, or maybe wait till both dlcs will make main campaign an uber long one?

 

[MjKorz]

Lads, do You recommend starting another run in Rogue Trader right now, or maybe wait till both dlcs will make main campaign an uber long one?

Wait for the DLC. They're making changes to archetype abilities and the new companion will be integrated into the game from early on.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Lads, do You recommend starting another run in Rogue Trader right now, or maybe wait till both dlcs will make main campaign an uber long one?

Wait for the DLC. They're making changes to archetype abilities and the new companion will be integrated into the game from early on.

Agreed in principle, although OTOH I also dread thinking about how buggy that new content will probably be.

 

[scytheavatar]

WotR is the game designed statbloat relative to tabletop became the norm as rather than fixing how mechanics are implemented, i.e. that Armor Enhancement increases an object's armor class and doesn't give the player an enhancement bonus or that most natural armor sources do not stack unless they are specified to either increase natural armor, i.e. mutagen natural armor and legendary proportions natural armor do not stack, or the flanking rules not being implemented.

Statbloat on everything comes from the ruleset.

But that would mean that the (falsely perceived) need for bloating enemy stats does not come from the ruleset, it comes from the incorrect implementation of the ruleset. If you implement the various stacking rules the way they should work in tabletop, you'd have less of a (falsely perceived) need to bloat enemy stats to compensate for the theoretical buff stacking the player can achieve.

Players being able to spam buffs on everything and for everythign is a feature of WotC 3e just like how MTG has been since +1/+1 counters were added to the game. It was present in NWN, NWN2, ToEE. If you look at the average NWN1+2 builds for example, you'll always find calculations for saves and AB where all these bonuses are applied to show you can get +50 AB, 60 AC, +30 saves, etc. or something else along those lines because that's what the WotC ruleset allowed. Pf1e just took it to new heights by adding more abilities to everything. If anything, the statbloat already occurred in tabletop as buffing everything was made incredibly easy. In comparison, in spite of its many faults, WotC 5e does this better as attributes tend to be lower and you really cannot stack a billion effects at once due to constraints like concentration for magic buffs.

Being able to stack numerous in-game legal buffs is actually not a problem, because you can use the same buffs to empower enemies during encounters. The problem lies with not wanting to use those in-game legal buffs on enemies and instead just giving every trash mob unexplainable +16 to all stats that cannot be dispelled. There wouldn't be much of a problem, if both the player and the enemies played by the same rules when it comes to (pre)buffing, the problem is that Owlclowns have a policy of buffing mostly just bosses and select end-game mobs while leaving the majority of trash unbuffed, even in cases where such buffs would make perfect sense due to enemies being accompanied by arcane/divine spellcasters.

Dispel this Dispel that gameplay which seems to be what you are advocating is the least fun form of combat one can have...... the fundamental problem is that buffs are a mistake and rather than to add tactical depth to the combat they actively subtract from it. Ideally you should be put in situations where you have to decide whether to cast Fireball or Haste, instead in D&D/PF you HAVE to cast Haste and can cast Fireball if you have leftover spell slots.

 

[MjKorz]

Lads, do You recommend starting another run in Rogue Trader right now, or maybe wait till both dlcs will make main campaign an uber long one?

Wait for the DLC. They're making changes to archetype abilities and the new companion will be integrated into the game from early on.

Agreed in principle, although OTOH I also dread thinking about how buggy that new content will probably be.

Yes, you can add half a year on top of their release dates, if you want a bearably bug-ridden experience instead of a catastrophically bug-ridden one like the one I had when I played Rogue Trader on launch.

WotR is the game designed statbloat relative to tabletop became the norm as rather than fixing how mechanics are implemented, i.e. that Armor Enhancement increases an object's armor class and doesn't give the player an enhancement bonus or that most natural armor sources do not stack unless they are specified to either increase natural armor, i.e. mutagen natural armor and legendary proportions natural armor do not stack, or the flanking rules not being implemented.

Statbloat on everything comes from the ruleset.

But that would mean that the (falsely perceived) need for bloating enemy stats does not come from the ruleset, it comes from the incorrect implementation of the ruleset. If you implement the various stacking rules the way they should work in tabletop, you'd have less of a (falsely perceived) need to bloat enemy stats to compensate for the theoretical buff stacking the player can achieve.

Players being able to spam buffs on everything and for everythign is a feature of WotC 3e just like how MTG has been since +1/+1 counters were added to the game. It was present in NWN, NWN2, ToEE. If you look at the average NWN1+2 builds for example, you'll always find calculations for saves and AB where all these bonuses are applied to show you can get +50 AB, 60 AC, +30 saves, etc. or something else along those lines because that's what the WotC ruleset allowed. Pf1e just took it to new heights by adding more abilities to everything. If anything, the statbloat already occurred in tabletop as buffing everything was made incredibly easy. In comparison, in spite of its many faults, WotC 5e does this better as attributes tend to be lower and you really cannot stack a billion effects at once due to constraints like concentration for magic buffs.

Being able to stack numerous in-game legal buffs is actually not a problem, because you can use the same buffs to empower enemies during encounters. The problem lies with not wanting to use those in-game legal buffs on enemies and instead just giving every trash mob unexplainable +16 to all stats that cannot be dispelled. There wouldn't be much of a problem, if both the player and the enemies played by the same rules when it comes to (pre)buffing, the problem is that Owlclowns have a policy of buffing mostly just bosses and select end-game mobs while leaving the majority of trash unbuffed, even in cases where such buffs would make perfect sense due to enemies being accompanied by arcane/divine spellcasters.

Dispel this Dispel that gameplay which seems to be what you are advocating is the least fun form of combat one can have...... the fundamental problem is that buffs are a mistake and rather than to add tactical depth to the combat they actively subtract from it. Ideally you should be put in situations where you have to decide whether to cast Fireball or Haste, instead in D&D/PF you HAVE to cast Haste and can cast Fireball if you have leftover spell slots.

You are right, allowing pre-buffing is a horrible design choice as it eliminates the action economy associated cost of buffs. Every buff cast should carry an action economy associated opportunity cost that forces the caster to adapt to the tactical situation and choose the most appropriate spell at the moment: be it a buff or an offensive spell. Pillars of Eternity solved this problem in a decisive manner by simply not allowing out of combat pre-buffing with most spells, you could only consume food. Rogue Trader follows this approach as well which is good.

However, we are talking about an already established ruleset where pre-buffing cannot be simply forbidden and you have to search for workarounds to reintroduce the action economy associated costs of buffing. Since the player is going to pre-buff and thus avoid expending actions mid-combat to buff anyway, you need to re-introduce this action cost of buffing in some other way and this is where dispel comes in: it allows enemies to strip player buffs mid-combat and potentially force the player to expend actions for re-buffing (e.g. fighting a dragon with a high DC Fear aura who dispels your Greater Heroism or Shield of Law and thus removes your Fear immunity). While dispelling also carries an action cost, it's not as important for the enemy as it is for the player since the number of enemies in encounters can be adjusted to take dispellers into account.

 

[Cryomancer]

About bloat, IMO the greatest problem of OwlCat is not even bloat.

Is that you can get a lot of powerful abilities consequence-free even when it makes no sense? For example, Cruoromancer is a necromancer wizard who uses his own blood to empower his spells. Cool, right? How da fuck can you use it while transformed into a lich? Talking about Lich, you can be a cleric of Pharasma and a Lich. It makes absolutely zero sense.

Rogue Trader is no different; they implemented the perils of the warp, but they stopped being a problem too quickly, and you can tone down the damage to the veil too much, to the point that I was spamming Molten Beam 24/7 consequence-free and never experienced anything bad after I picked some talents to restore the veil.

Pascal`s plasma weapons were more dangerous than hell/warpfire.

But OwlCat games > rest despite all flaws.

 

[Yosharian]

Pre-buffing presents serious problems to balance, not to mention that it can become extremely tiresome to buff before every fight with 300 spells.

Mods solve this issue by allowing automatic buff sequences with the press of a button. But buff sequences are still complex, and setting them up can be pretty tiresome too.

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat, but that potentially just shifts the aforementioned buff sequences to the start of every fucking fight, which doesn't solve the issue of: buffing is tiresome. I grew extremely tired of casting the same buff spells over and over in Deadfire. They also have extremely short durations which again is fucking tiresome.

5E's solution of tying buffs to concentration solves the problem neatly - you must choose which buffs to have active. But it has its own cost, since now all buffs must compete against one another for concentration, and usually one buff always wins, making the other buff obsolete. To be entirely fair, this isn't always the case and some buffs are situationally powerful rather than being universally so. But generally speaking there is one concentration spell that you simply must have, and the rest of your spell slots go to non-concentration spells.

There isn't an easy solution at all

 

[Cryomancer]

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat

Which is RIDICULOUS. And lead monsters to lose a lot of interesting abilities.

Imo if the party is in a undead crypt, spells like negative plane protection are a necessity. If is fine for a group to buy antidote before going into a poisonous swamp, why casting magical protection against poisons isn't fine? If you take it out from pcs, poison end up being less powerful as they can't protect themselves from it. You end up punishing preparation and makes no sense.

In wh40k Owlcat could have made having too much buffs from psyker being too dangerous to be worthy using endless buffs.

 

[scytheavatar]

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat

Which is RIDICULOUS. And lead monsters to lose a lot of interesting abilities.

Imo if the party is in a undead crypt, spells like negative plane protection are a necessity. If is fine for a group to buy antidote before going into a poisonous swamp, why casting magical protection against poisons isn't fine? If you take it out from pcs, poison end up being less powerful as they can't protect themselves from it. You end up punishing preparation and makes no sense.

In wh40k Owlcat could have made having too much buffs from psyker being too dangerous to be worthy using endless buffs.

In general, magic to solve poison or other staus is dogshit design and you might as well not have those status in the game if that's the case. You should be terrified of being poison, not be "LOL who cares about poison? I have delay poison communal".

 

[Desiderius]

There *is* a tradeoff on pre-buffs: spell slots. Giving up a Mythic Ability (or 3) to get Abundant Casting is in fact a massive opportunity cost, as is bringing along a caster who is otherwise weak for a good chunk of the game to cast them.

The tedium is the main problem, not the brokenness, as is the tunnel vision that thinks it has to bring them all when unnecessary. Many martials are good enough not to need all those buffs, as can be seen on fights where they're stripped or an ambush prevents getting them up. A well-designed offensive caster can also be great in those situations to apply debuffs/control instead. Nothing stopping you from using that as a general strategy.

It is in fact also nontrivial for most of the game to pass the Dispel checks needed for a Dispel strategy (and TTT nerfs Dispel, Greater to only remove one effect per 4 caster levels). Dispel, Greater doesn't show up until pretty late on Hybrid casters (Bard book gets it at spell lvl 5, others at lvl 6). Disenchanter Warpriest makes good use of regular Dispel for several levels in a way that doesn't unbalance the game, while serving as a solid tank with an activated in combat AoE ability to ward off enemy spells.

It is also good balance that the Mythic Paths with the best Dispels are those without Merging.

 

[MjKorz]

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat, but that potentially just shifts the aforementioned buff sequences to the start of every fucking fight, which doesn't solve the issue of: buffing is tiresome. I grew extremely tired of casting the same buff spells over and over in Deadfire. They also have extremely short durations which again is fucking tiresome.

5E's solution of tying buffs to concentration solves the problem neatly - you must choose which buffs to have active. But it has its own cost, since now all buffs must compete against one another for concentration, and usually one buff always wins, making the other buff obsolete. To be entirely fair, this isn't always the case and some buffs are situationally powerful rather than being universally so. But generally speaking there is one concentration spell that you simply must have, and the rest of your spell slots go to non-concentration spells.

There isn't an easy solution at all

PoE solves the problem at its root: implements action economy associated opportunity cost for every buff cast and ensures that the optimal way to buff is to use only the precise buffs you need in a specific encounter. You shouldn't be casting the same buffs every encounter, you should only be expending actions to cast precisely what is needed and using the rest of your actions on offense.

Concentration is a horrible mechanic, because it is used for both defensive (buffs) and offensive spells. At first, this may seem like a good idea since it makes the choice of which concentration spell to cast in an encounter more meaningful, but in practice it dramatically reduces the variety of spells a caster is going to use in any encounter.

For example, I've played BG3 as an Enchanter and even though Hold Person/Monster is an incredibly powerful spell (enables autocrits against held target), in many cases simply casting Haste on my melee champion was the more practical decision. Niche concentration spells that could be useful in certain tactical scenarios become useless since they simply cannot compete with the top general purpose ones like Haste. If concentration was removed, you could still cast those niche spells after using Haste, thus increasing the variety of spells used overall, but concentration makes their use impractical.

Another problem with concentration is that it catastrophically reduces the opportunities for spell synergy. For example, the combination of AoE immobilizing + AoE DoT spells (e.g. Web + Stinking Cloud) becomes impossible to execute by a single caster and using a second caster carries a dramatic opportunity cost of a party slot which in many cases is going to be too high. In other words, concentration reduces the opportunities to cleverly adapt combinations of spells to specific tactical encounters and thus reduces tactical depth.

 

[MjKorz]

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat

Which is RIDICULOUS. And lead monsters to lose a lot of interesting abilities.

Imo if the party is in a undead crypt, spells like negative plane protection are a necessity. If is fine for a group to buy antidote before going into a poisonous swamp, why casting magical protection against poisons isn't fine? If you take it out from pcs, poison end up being less powerful as they can't protect themselves from it. You end up punishing preparation and makes no sense.

In wh40k Owlcat could have made having too much buffs from psyker being too dangerous to be worthy using endless buffs.

It's not ridiculous when the buffs have short duration which they do in PoE. You want to cast them precisely at the moment they're needed to maximize their usefulness and avoid wasting any of their brief duration which is measured in dozens of seconds at best.

 

[MjKorz]

There *is* a tradeoff on pre-buffs: spell slots. Giving up a Mythic Ability (or 3) to get Abundant Casting is in fact a massive opportunity cost, as is bringing along a caster who is otherwise weak for a good chunk of the game to cast them.

The tedium is the main problem, not the brokenness, as is the tunnel vision that thinks it has to bring them all when unnecessary. Many martials are good enough not to need all those buffs, as can be seen on fights where they're stripped or an ambush prevents getting them up. A well-designed offensive caster can also be great in those situations to apply debuffs/control instead. Nothing stopping you from using that as a general strategy.

It is in fact also nontrivial for most of the game to pass the Dispel checks needed for a Dispel strategy (and TTT nerfs Dispel, Greater to only remove one effect per 4 caster levels). Dispel, Greater doesn't show up until pretty late on Hybrid casters (Bard book gets it at spell lvl 5, others at lvl 6). Disenchanter Warpriest makes good use of regular Dispel for several levels in a way that doesn't unbalance the game, while serving as a solid tank with an activated in combat AoE ability to ward off enemy spells.

It is also good balance that the Mythic Paths with the best Dispels are those without Merging.

Expending spell slots is not a trade-off, because in most dungeons you can just rest. It only becomes a trade-off in the endurance gauntlet dungeons I've mentioned earlier, except not really, because you're not going to cast buffs with your offensive caster anyway. Same applies to buffer casters: you're not going to cast offensive spells with them, because the game has only enough gear to properly support one offensive DC caster and one offensive ray caster.

Abundant Casting is indeed a massive opportunity cost, because same mythic abilities can be spent on favorite metamagics and other things like corruptor or ascendant element, which is why abundant casting is never taken by DC casters and is only taken by ray casters on their last three mythics when their build is already done.

The problem lies both in the tedium and the possibility to prebuff, because the game developers are "forced" to balance every encounter around the assumption that the player is going to prebuff. Remove prebuffing and you reduce the need to bloat enemy stats on top of increasing tactical depth by forcing the player to balance both buffs and offensive spells in an encounter.

 

[Desiderius]

You can’t rest the first four levels if you want to get everything before Defense triggers. You can’t rest in Garrison without losing Haste. If you’re not abusing reloads then blowing your wad on map locations risks getting ambushed on World Map until your Stealth is high enough to avoid.

Leper’s Smile and Lost Chapel require some rest management as does Drezen now that Corruption was turned back on. If you’re running an Arcane buffer *and* a DC caster that’s two slots that significantly cut into what else you can do. For Divine, Abundant(x2) is a lot stronger when you want to get Crusader’s Edge on team and/or use strong Divine self-buffs for fighting. Likewise getting Dispel, Greater up ASAP. Nenio Illusion control is great but also takes Abundant to apply to non-boss fights in midlevels.

And then there’s Barkskins, Alch sharing Personal, unique Bard spells, Pal Veils/Fear Immunity AoE/early Angelic, Greater, etc… It isn’t straightforward, especially with Lann, Wend, Reg, Ulb, and Greybor all non-casters.

 

[Desiderius]

PoE/Deadfire tries to solve this by only allowing buffs in combat

Which is RIDICULOUS. And lead monsters to lose a lot of interesting abilities.

Imo if the party is in a undead crypt, spells like negative plane protection are a necessity. If is fine for a group to buy antidote before going into a poisonous swamp, why casting magical protection against poisons isn't fine? If you take it out from pcs, poison end up being less powerful as they can't protect themselves from it. You end up punishing preparation and makes no sense.

In wh40k Owlcat could have made having too much buffs from psyker being too dangerous to be worthy using endless buffs.

It's not ridiculous when the buffs have short duration which they do in PoE. You want to cast them precisely at the moment they're needed to maximize their usefulness and avoid wasting any of their brief duration which is measured in dozens of seconds at best.

Too high a cost in action econ. Some interesting tactics involved in letting fight come to you but overall an overcorrect.

 

[Yosharian]

> You shouldn't be casting the same buffs every encounter, you should only be expending actions to cast precisely what is needed and using the rest of your actions on offense.

Did we even play the same game lol

> in practice it dramatically reduces the variety of spells a caster is going to use in any encounter

Well yes, that's basically what I said

 

[Cryomancer]

In general, magic to solve poison or other staus is dogshit design and you might as well not have those status in the game if that's the case. You should be terrified of being poison, not be "LOL who cares about poison? I have delay poison communal".

That depends a lot on the setting. For example, if the game is set in a dark low fantasy, a common venous snake must be much more dangerous than the same snake in Eberron.

> You shouldn't be casting the same buffs every encounter, you should only be expending actions to cast precisely what is needed and using the rest of your actions on offense.

Did we even play the same game lol

IMO in a WH40k game, buffs could be good but come with huge drawbacks.

For example warp speed. Could buff a lot the ally BUT each round subjected to the buff, the ally will have to do a toughtness check, each round becoming harder, if fails, he gets severe injuries in his/her legs. Stuff like complete limb regeneration could come with high risk of severe mutation and so on.

 

[Desiderius]

Making the Concentration limit a hard 1 in 5E is a missed opportunity.

Wiz could get a familiar/homunculus at lvl 6 that concentrates on one spell while the caster concentrates on another or you could upcast any concentration spell by 3 lvls to make it no longer require concentration or whatever.

 

[Haplo]

Making the Concentration limit a hard 1 in 5E is a missed opportunity.

Wiz could get a familiar/homunculus at lvl 6 that concentrates on one spell while the caster concentrates on another or you could upcast any concentration spell by 3 lvls to make it no longer require concentration or whatever.

Yeah, a hard limit of 1, without ways to expend it is a bit harsh.

Also greatly lowers the value of most Concentration spells - and makes the value of non-Concentration spells skyrocket.


Edit: I still think its a good direction, only some allowances should have been made - a feat and/or subclass (like Desiderius' suggestion) that increases the limit. Maybe even some item that can "hold" an active spell.
I think a top limit of about 3 Concentration spells active could be just about right overall.

 

[MjKorz]

You can’t rest the first four levels if you want to get everything before Defense triggers. You can’t rest in Garrison without losing Haste. If you’re not abusing reloads then blowing your wad on map locations risks getting ambushed on World Map until your Stealth is high enough to avoid.

Leper’s Smile and Lost Chapel require some rest management as does Drezen now that Corruption was turned back on. If you’re running an Arcane buffer *and* a DC caster that’s two slots that significantly cut into what else you can do. For Divine, Abundant(x2) is a lot stronger when you want to get Crusader’s Edge on team and/or use strong Divine self-buffs for fighting. Likewise getting Dispel, Greater up ASAP. Nenio Illusion control is great but also takes Abundant to apply to non-boss fights in midlevels.

And then there’s Barkskins, Alch sharing Personal, unique Bard spells, Pal Veils/Fear Immunity AoE/early Angelic, Greater, etc… It isn’t straightforward, especially with Lann, Wend, Reg, Ulb, and Greybor all non-casters.

You can rest an infinite amount of time in the maze, it doesn't matter. Outside of the maze, you will get a couple of rests before the tavern defense actually triggers and you don't need to do much combat in order to not miss anything: hit the tower of Estrod, resolve the conflict between Hulrun and Ramien and save the crusaders in the library (which can be done without fighting). Obviously get Ember and Woljif. You don't need to clear every single location on the map before tavern defense.

Early game offensive spellcasting is purely Grease + Glitterdust and you don't need to spam these spells: one spell per encounter where they are needed is enough when used by a proper DC caster.

Leper's Smile and Lost Chapel are far enough into the game that you will not have any problems with spell management as long as you're actually playing a properly built and properly supported DC caster (Evil Eye, Insightful Contemplation, Touch of Law support).

Using an arcane DC caster and an arcane buffer in the same party is not suboptimal, because a Witch can be an arcane buffer while also providing hex spam (Evil Eye, Protective Luck) that benefits the entire party. Witch + Shaman evil eyes stack and can be used to debuff boss saves, making them vulnerable to disables or instant death, so there's a reason to bring BOTH a Witch (arcane buffer) and a Shaman (divine/arcane buffer) in the same party along with a Cleric (domain user). Here's a one-round unfair vescavor queen kill to demonstrate the party synergy:

Spoiler

Note how it rolls precisely 11 on the save, because it's forced to roll precisely 11 via Touch of Law.

Abundant casting is absolutely worthless for divine casters for several reasons. First, Shamans don't need it, because they should get Enduring Spells ASAP instead as all of their spells should only be used for buffing (they have no Insightful Contemplation synergy due to being WIS-based and thus will always have pathetic spell DC). Secondly, Clerics don't need it either, because they should be focused on getting all the good domains (Law, Madness, Community, Good) as well as Domain Zealot online ASAP, then get Enduring Spells to make their buffs actually last. When using spells strictly for buffs, both Shaman and Cleric will have more than enough spellslots without Abundant Casting.

Crusader's Edge is completely irrelevant garbage on a divine caster due to garbage spell DC. It should only be used on a dedicated arcane transmuter with high transmutation spell DC, obtaining the spell requires Loremaster level(s).

Dispel is needed only on a single dedicated dispeller who should be your arcane DC caster, because arcane casters get bonus feats and can take the dispel-supporting feats (Dispel Focus, Greater Dispel Focus, Dispel Synergy, Destructive Dispel and possibly even Spell Specialization: Greater Dispel) without gimping their entire build due to such heavy feat investment. Moreover, making your DC caster a dedicated dispeller has extra synergy: Dispel Synergy debuffs saves only for the dispeller so the DC caster can actually benefit from it and Destructive Dispel DC scales with your main casting stat which is buffed via Insightful Contemplation in the case of a INT/CHA caster.

Yes, I know Oracles exist and technically can be made into offensive casters, but they are worthless garbage, because they have neither hexes, nor cleric domains and will always be at a spell DC disadvantage relative to arcane casters due to lack of unique class spell DC boosting abilities like Potent Magic, School Power, Foretell-Hinder, Aura of Despair, Fey Bloodline Arcana and Overwhelming Spell. Using them as pure buffers is a waste of a party slot, because Clerics/Shamans can buff AND provide domains/hexes.

Abundant spells are worthless on Nenio, because when properly built she will be reliably disabling even the hardest unfair encounters with one spell and you already get more than enough spells in chapter 3:

Spoiler

As a DC caster, Nenio should be using her Mythic Feats to stack 5 Expanded Arsenals for 5 different schools and her Mythic Abilities to get school-specific synergy (e.g. best Jokes for Enchantment, Corruptor for Conjuration) and Favorite Metamagics.