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Dragon Age: Origins magic system

Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
Playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time (yeah I am a little late to the party, unlike most of you BioWhores), haven't really made up my mind about the game yet (seems much better than NWN/NWN2 but too early to tell if it can reach the heights of actually good RPGs), but I have to say, I am really enjoying the Magic System now.

At first, I hated it, because:
1) Like any RPG veteran I went for the big guns in Primal School, Fireball, Cone of Cold, Inferno, Blizzard, etc, all those nice sounding names that conjured warm memories from games of the past. That school is mostly on the shit side however, as most damaging spells in it are over time rather than actual nukes which I love, and AOE with friendly damage, making them of somewhat limited use unless heavily micromanaging party members and cc. Fireball was kinda ok, but overall, I wasn't impressed at all.
2) Some of the spells seemed completely retarded at first glance, for example, Mana Clash. A spell that burns all of the hostile mage(s) mana and does damage proportionate to that, a highest nuke in the game against anyone with mana. This just seemed really inelegant and gimmicky to me.
3) I didn't understand most of the game's underlying mechanics, and unlike other games from the modern era, this one actually had mechanics of non-trivial complexity. Not understanding them fully, I wound up building a mage that was getting his ass kicked in many situations.

So I went ahead and actually read the game's wonderful wiki, including all the spell descriptions and the combat mechanics, and holy shit did I learn a lot. So now, I've created my 2nd mage, a completely different spec focusing instead on the entropy school for most of his damage, with spells in spirit and arcane school for utility and defense. Just loving this playthrough so far, including things like:

1) Spell combos - really cool thing where spells don't just benefit from other spells based on mechanics, but gain additional (and fairly logical) effects in certain combinations. Cast a snow storm and a lightning storm together while being magically empowered, you get the "storm of the century", dealing additonal damage! Cast a death cloud on someone with a death hex, and they will take a massive nuke from "entropic death". Cast a horror on someone under the effect of sleep, and they will take massive nightmare damage. Hit a frozen target with a stone projectile, and shatter them. I love this shit, and it makes the whole system much more interesting.
2) At first I thought the whole system was too "one-shottish", whoever gets the first cc or nuke in wins, as opposed to the more complex Baldur's Gate type D&D magic where you had spell absorption and shields and counter spells. But DA:O has this as well, at least in the mechanics, not sure how the AI uses it yet, as I haven't encountered many mages yet. There are some good mechanics built into it with stuff like Spell Shield and its mechanics (you can build up perfect 100% spell resistance with 25% from items, where it will drain mana instead), so this creates interesting mechanics where you would have to cast high mana spells at it to drain the enemy's shield (and mana) before unleashing your real nukes. And a spell that at first glimpse seems broken like Mana Clash actually is much weaker given those mechanics (assuming AI can use them at all), because you can't cast it while Spell Shield is up, but once Spell Shield is worn down, there is no mana, hence no damage. I love this kind of interplay. There are also all kinds of defensive abilities against melee (arcane spell shield, defense aura, defense ward, various forms of cc), to give you a lot of toys to play with as a mage.

What did everyone else think about this system? Am I being too optimistic about AI using it? Is it complete shit?

P.S. I also love the whole cooldown approach to spells. I loved the D&D approach in BG games with memorizing spells while you sleep, from the lore side of things, it's much cooler, but in practice, it was a bit of a hassle always having to sleep to get spells back and being limited that way, and always having to save your good spells in case someone bad showed up. With this way, you can just cast without worrying about any of that, and encounters can be designed around that, and not spell attrition. Flame away.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Feb 13, 2013
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I'll quote my recent comment from my blog:

I'm a huge fan of Vancian Magic IF there are strict rest restrictions imposed and the itemization is tailored to suit. That way, you can have the tactical encounters AND the overall dungeon strategy. This is where Swordflight succeeds and the Infinity Engine RPGs, including Siege of Dragonspear, utterly fail. If not, just give me cooldowns and tactical battles without any overall dungeon strategy, a la Dragon Age: Origins, because I find the combat to be more fun in Origins, especially with mods that give you lengthy encounters instead of a series of trivial mobs to kill, with mana/health/stamina regen inbetween each one.

This is the setup I use.
 

Jick Magger

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The AI never really grows, nor do the trash encounters really ever change or escalate beyond increasing numbers, to adapt to a magic-using player, especially once you start taking the specialization classes like Arcane Warrior into account (Arcane Warrior + Shimmering Shield = barely even need a party anymore). Mana Clash + AOE stun spell of your choice is just as much of a room-clearing nuke at end-game as it is when you first start using it. Did like the game's magic system, but thought the devs made mages way too overpowered, especially since you could get as many of three of them in your party, and could tank better and dish out more damage to more enemies much faster than your dedicated front-line fighters could with relative ease.

Then again, this isn't really an issue exclusive to Dragon Age: Origins, so I can't complain too much.
 
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Herrick

Novice
Joined
Jun 4, 2016
Messages
4
So that explains why I kept dying on Hard difficulty. I played as a straight up Mage with a mixture of Ice, Fire, & Lightning spells. The Branka fight was my breaking point. I lowered the difficulty to Normal and beat her. But I was so goddamn fatigued and bored with the game at this point that I lowered it to Easy to plowed my way through the rest of the game. Ah well.
 

madrigal

Augur
Joined
Oct 23, 2012
Messages
249
Cone of Cold is shit? What? It is one of the most powerful spells in the game.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Feb 13, 2013
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Cone of Cold remained very powerful post-patch, yeah. Even Winter's Grasp is quite powerful, since the early game offers solid +% cold dmg items.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 10, 2015
Messages
1,772
For all the dicks who say D&D is shit, it seems there hasn't been a better (read: more fun) system. DA's system certainly isn't. Many trash mobs and several combats of raised difficulty.

D&D is old as frak, but it's more or less well thought out.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
D&D magic is pretty good compared to what else is out there in video game land. But that might not say much. I think it's time for RPGs to change magic from archery with purdy effects to something different. For example:

- make magic more meta, used not for combat where it takes too much time and effort to use effectively, but for important out-of-combat actions (enchanting a powerful ring that corrupts kings who wear it, summoning an evil spirit to assassinate Renly, starting a powerful earthquake, that sort of thing)

- make magic completely different from other disciplines (combat, stealth) by requiring actuall in-game research, reading, experimentation, puzzle solving, and then rewarding the player with more power than others paths, but perhaps also at a greater cost (losing humanity, having to sacrifice things, etc)
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 10, 2015
Messages
1,772
D&D magic is pretty good compared to what else is out there in video game land. But that might not say much. I think it's time for RPGs to change magic from archery with purdy effects to something different. For example:

- make magic more meta, used not for combat where it takes too much time and effort to use effectively, but for important out-of-combat actions (enchanting a powerful ring that corrupts kings who wear it, summoning an evil spirit to assassinate Renly, starting a powerful earthquake, that sort of thing)

- make magic completely different from other disciplines (combat, stealth) by requiring actuall in-game research, reading, experimentation, puzzle solving, and then rewarding the player with more power than others paths, but perhaps also at a greater cost (losing humanity, having to sacrifice things, etc)

I guess we can blame it on the hateful Action RPG approach. Apparently people are now so dumb they can't think any strategy, or bother mastering their characters.
 

kmonster

Augur
Joined
May 24, 2010
Messages
316
The magic in DA:O is better than in the D&D games. There are so many options showed working by enemy casters that I have a hard time picking spells at level up.

In the D&D games you have many different spells to cast in theory but in the end almost all are useless and you memorize always the same few and since you have to memorize one day before casting you can't try out anything spontaneously.

It would be interesting to have the DA:O spellcasting system ported into the BG turn-based enviroment, I'm quite sure it would work better than the BG spellcasting system in DA:O.
 
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Yeah. The combat system in Dragon Age: Origins was fun to use, and it helped that "advanced class" trees were obtained through in-game exploration. Made interacting with the environment feel worthwhile.

I would hesitate to say it is *better* than Neverwinter Nights 2 (more like competitive) but I am an OC apologist.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
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Oct 10, 2015
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Not really kmonster, the different schools of magic in D&D allowed for a variety of solutions to encounters, and the usual complaint that "a mage can have the solution to anything".

For example, for those really pesky guards outside the Cloakwood Mines -you could beat them with brute force, which should be hard, or you can make them fight between them with a couple Enchantment spells. Every school can be successfully exploited.

Also talking about inserting one system into the other game doesn't get us anywhere. What if the BGs were redone today, with present technology, and a more modern set of D&D rules? Of course that's beyond the capabilities of a shitty company like Beammod, but if done seriously, those remakes could totally kick ass. In fact, there's hope someone somehow makes a modern day BG, as in a really decent D&D game, but to begin with, D&D is pretty much in the wrong hands, and in one of its lowest points in popularity.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
I would hesitate to say it is *better* than Neverwinter Nights 2 (more like competitive) but I am an OC apologist.

The Origins campaign shits all over the NWN2 OC, imo. The flipside is that NWN2 gave us MotB, which shits on Origins/Awakening. And as poor as NWN2 mods are in comparison to NWN, they shit on Origins mods.

I dunno what it is about Origins, I was really excited about it at first, and everything in it seems to be of good quality at first glance (good background lore, good combat system, good character development, good writing, good graphics, etc), but since I started playing it, I've actually completed several other RPGs, and have about zero pull to return to Origins. It's kinda like what Grunker said about it in the top 70 list, decent all around, but nothing that really makes you excited about it.
 

pippin

Guest
Origins itself is shit.
There's more fun in Awakenings actually. Less faggotry and more gameplay. You even have stronghold management.
 

GarfunkeL

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Nov 7, 2008
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Don't get your hopes up. The game never fully takes advantage of the system. Which is, at the end of the day, not that amazing. Get the mod that opens the hood and lets you see the math underneath. The problem in DAO isn't the system, though it could of course be improved, but the utterly trite encounter design. One problem is the limited variety of enemies because DARKSPAWN, another is the enemy AI because SCRIPTING IS HARD, and last is that increasing difficult merely buffs enemy HP. There are some decent-to-good encounters but you can basically count them with the fingers of one hand. 96% of combat is filler trash.
 

Crospy

Learned
Joined
Aug 9, 2014
Messages
130
Even the strongest wizards can be dealt with by a single spell. On the highest level of difficulty with its massively inflated HP.

Mana Clash on Gaxkang killing him in one shot on nightmare difficulty. It's unbelievable that he was meant to be a reference to Kangaxx in BG2.

Because DAO's developers never put any thought in enemy design, resistances, immunity. It makes the standard BG2 caster scripts that cast various protections on encounter shine, despite them being vastly inferior to what the SCS modders ended up doing.
DAO's combat is a trite repetition of motion, you end up doing the same things whether you fight a bandit group or a group of darkspawns because they're mechanically the same.
 

Raziel

Educated
Joined
Jun 18, 2016
Messages
80
Yeah, mana clash is dumb. But what are you trying to say? Literally any RPG has a dumb ability/spell/whatever that shines in certain cases. Wizard eye beats irenicus dungeon w/ tactics and on max difficulty(some luck / save scumming required).

I think golems of amgarrak had some pretty good encounters, harvester wasn't all that easy the first time around.

One of the worst things about DA:O as well as many other RPGs is that there's literally no utility spells available ever. Aside from the standard light|invisibility|teleport|..whatever. IE games have this advantage. Sure, most of the utility spells are probably garbage but they add flavor and something more than a modification of range|aoe|dmg|speed|direction|. Contigency, (limited)wish, alignment based spells, familiar, sequencer, etc. And while some of these are deeply steeped in the DND setting there's no reason to not create eqiuvalent spells that would fit in their corresponding setting.
 

pippin

Guest
You could kill Kangaxx and most if not all of the dragons in BG2 with like two or three spells as well. The flaw is, as Raziel said, that most of the magic is only useful for damage and combat purposes. But the whole game is designed to be a combat experience, though.
 

Raziel

Educated
Joined
Jun 18, 2016
Messages
80
Funnily enough one of the best examples of spells having impact outside combat is an encounter in Icewind Dale. There's some OP armor you can only get by using the spell "contact other plane", talking to the summoned helper, getting the info you need and using it to trick the demon holding the armor into subservience.

It was a small thing, but it made me realize how much more potential magic could've had outside combat in the IE games.
 
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vivec

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Oct 20, 2014
Messages
1,149
Funnily enough one of the best examples of spells having impact outside combat is an encounter in Icewind Dale. There's some OP armor you can only get by using the spell "contact other plane", talking to the summoned helper, getting the info you need and using it to trick the demon holding the armor into subservience.

It was a small thing, but it made me realize how much more potential magic could've had outside combat in the IE games.

It was a tragic thing. I returned to brofist you after logging out. This is the real potential of D&D, totally wasted in all the D&D based computer games, except in these few instances.
 

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