Decline I hate what has been done to video game mages/wizards because I play shitty action games

[Athelas]

I prefer to think of it more as an engineering problem. Like, knowing the formula for how a particular set of pulleys work isn't really useful, what matters is understanding the concept of how and why they work, so you can use them in appropriate ways. Though I suppose building a bomb would be a closer analogy. My image a a wizard is someone who knows how to build bombs from the bottom up, based on the physics and chemical properties, not someone who knows recipes for various bombs but has no idea how they work or how to make substitutions.

I actually think the latter explanation works better. If the magic formula's are in a language that humans can't fully comprehend (the language of creation or something), it makes sense that wizards only know bits and pieces and have to rely on very specific formula's. It would also explain why there is one specific 'Blindness' spell and why you can't just simply make your own blindness spell.

 

[Ninjerk]

Also, the design focus on combat skills to the detriment (or even ommission) of non-combat skills is a large culprit. When everything becomes about combat, Wizards suffer. They should have utility spells that keep the party safe from magical threats or overcome otherwise unsurmountable obstacles, but then be made of glass in a fight, aside from the emergency nuke spell.

When everything became about combat (or, conversely, the shift away from party mechanics to single character control), that's when the mage was transformed into a laser show archer. Bring back non-combat party skills to a game and you'll see the return of the logical wizard design.

Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the facts: there's nothing to bring back, there are literally no CPRGs that do non-combat magic any sort of justice. Even Quest for Glory games are rather underwhelming in their spell assortment.

There's the Friend spell or w/e in PST.

 

[Athelas]

Speak-with-dead is the better example. There is even one quest where you can use it on an urn to speak to the guys whose ashes are in it.

 

[Slow James]

Also, the design focus on combat skills to the detriment (or even ommission) of non-combat skills is a large culprit. When everything becomes about combat, Wizards suffer. They should have utility spells that keep the party safe from magical threats or overcome otherwise unsurmountable obstacles, but then be made of glass in a fight, aside from the emergency nuke spell.

When everything became about combat (or, conversely, the shift away from party mechanics to single character control), that's when the mage was transformed into a laser show archer. Bring back non-combat party skills to a game and you'll see the return of the logical wizard design.

Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the facts: there's nothing to bring back, there are literally no CPRGs that do non-combat magic any sort of justice. Even Quest for Glory games are rather underwhelming in their spell assortment.

Ah... quest for glory. Who would have thought a Sierra adventure game would get RPG Magic right in so many ways?

I disagree that they didn't do utility Magic right (having the Calm spell not only relax enemies, but also do other things like put out fires is a brilliant example of great utility Magic and encouraging innovative application), but I do agree it did still make Wizards equivalent to a rogue with blaster spells. Again - I think this is a result of single character play, where every class is expected to fight and kill every possible enemy in the game single handily. That's not even remotely possibly with a full party in DnD, even at high levels.

 

[mastroego]

It's worth noting that the squishy wizard in robes is to a large extent a Dungeons & Dragons thing, from where it trickled down everywhere else.

That's because it was the right thing to do.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Arcanum has a couple as well, no? Haven't played it in a long time, but it also has that raise spirit or something which allows you to speak with the dead.

Plus there's charm (not sure about the name) which I used to take control on an NPC I couldn't defeat and then proceeded to strip him of armor and then beat him up.
Which goes to show how giving more options to the players can make it much more fun. If that spell only allowed me to move the NPC and make him attack shit it wouldn't have been half as fun as allowing me to make him my sock puppet.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

I'd like to see CRPG magic use implemented as a form of Faustian pact. Where it offers incredible power, but at a serious price. The Call of Cthulhu PnP game is one example, where sanity is the price for magic use. Another example is draining lifeforce. This is the magician Koura at the start of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad:

Spoiler

... and this is him near the end of the movie after using maybe half a dozen spells.

Spoiler

Or, alternatively, the mage might have to bargain with treacherous demonic entities in order to use supernatural power. Or maybe the mage might run the risk of mutation, like the sorceress Zenobia in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger when she ended up with a bird's foot after an insufficient dosage of transformation potion.

 

[Slow James]

Arcanum has a couple as well, no? Haven't played it in a long time, but it also has that raise spirit or something which allows you to speak with the dead.

Plus there's charm (not sure about the name) which I used to take control on an NPC I couldn't defeat and then proceeded to strip him of armor and then beat him up.
Which goes to show how giving more options to the players can make it much more fun. If that spell only allowed me to move the NPC and make him attack shit it wouldn't have been half as fun as allowing me to make him my sock puppet.

True... of course, with great in-game freedom comes great glitch-isponsibility... Bugs for that game were through the roof starting out. Using those spells in unusually ways was great when they worked, but we're just as likely to CTD as not.

 

[V_K]

I wouldn't call a game having a couple non-combat spells doing it justice. 99% of the spells in both Arcanum and PST are strictly combat-related. I believe it's Morrowind that has the most utility effects: levitation, water-walking/breathing, detecting stuff, invisibility, teleports etc. - but here we come to the other problem with non-combat magic: quest and level design only rarely supports its use. The aforementioned "Conjure Spirit" spell from Arcanum was only useful in exactly two places (and one of them had a workaround) IIRC. But there's an even worse example: "Body of Water" spell gives you the ability to walk on water - but there isn't a single place in the whole game where you would need that.

 

[Slow James]

I wouldn't call a game having a couple non-combat spells doing it justice. 99% of the spells in both Arcanum and PST are strictly combat-related. I believe it's Morrowind that has the most utility effects: levitation, water-walking/breathing, detecting stuff, invisibility, teleports etc. - but here we come to the other problem with non-combat magic: quest and level design only rarely supports its use. The aforementioned "Conjure Spirit" spell from Arcanum was only useful in exactly two places (and one of them had a workaround) IIRC. But there's an even worse example: "Body of Water" spell gives you the ability to walk on water - but there isn't a single place in the whole game where you would need that.

I think this speaks to a real flaw in game design - game devs must create a system, design skills, create balance across enemies, weapons, effects, bonuses, etc., all while creating content. The writers can create stories for quests, but without knowing what types of abilities a party may have at a given time, it can be impossible for them to incorporate this in. Same with level or combat designers.

I'm not sure there is an easy fix, per se... outside of using an existing, established and refined system, that is. Games that use DnD like Baldur's Gate, for example, knew what different spells a level 5 wizard would have, or know of whas the player can heal themselves if there isn't a cleric in the group. They know how strong a kobold is and they know putting an enemy with -15 THAC0 in the first hour of your game is treacherous.

Not to say all games should conform to DnD, but there are a myriad of systems out there that a developer could pick up and use, inserting lore-specific stats or enemies, but by and large working within an established framework of how abilities and characters interact. Otherwise, half of the game's content could be finalized before the spell list is even hammered down, which means utility spells are going to be hard to apply, let alone plan in-depth application for.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I prefer to think of it more as an engineering problem. Like, knowing the formula for how a particular set of pulleys work isn't really useful, what matters is understanding the concept of how and why they work, so you can use them in appropriate ways. Though I suppose building a bomb would be a closer analogy. My image a a wizard is someone who knows how to build bombs from the bottom up, based on the physics and chemical properties, not someone who knows recipes for various bombs but has no idea how they work or how to make substitutions.

I actually think the latter explanation works better. If the magic formula's are in a language that humans can't fully comprehend (the language of creation or something), it makes sense that wizards only know bits and pieces and have to rely on very specific formula's. It would also explain why there is one specific 'Blindness' spell and why you can't just simply make your own blindness spell.

This just rubs me the wrong way though. Part of the appeal of wizards to me is the idea that they do at least partially understand the fabric of the universe, and seek to learn more about it. They should have knowledge of other planes of existence and be able to theorize about spells that should be possible. I tend to prefer settings where there isn't just one blindness spell too; though that obviously doesn't lend itself well to games. Actually, I prefer that spells not be strict things to begin with, but something customized for the situation at hand. Even lighting a campfire ought to use a different incantation if it's in a different spot than the last time.

The one setting where I did think it was kind of neat where magic did work simply via incantations the characters didn't understand, they were invoking the systems of a godlike machine that controlled their world. They had no idea this machine existed, mind you. But they could conjure up forcefields and thunderbolts and other shit.

 

[Mastermind]

Your problem is that you play shit games like Dragon Age. Play something more like Eador Genesis or Shadowrun Returns.

While dragon age/dragon age 2 spellcasting is pretty much all combat, the amount of "magic laser" type spells is fairly small. There are a lot of utility spells with tactical benefits and in both games you can build effective mages that don't serve as fireball machineguns.

 

[Karellen]

It's worth noting that the squishy wizard in robes is to a large extent a Dungeons & Dragons thing, from where it trickled down everywhere else. In a whole lot of myth and literature, magic is largely used by the same people who do any sort of heroic or villainous things, and anthropologically speaking, in societies that believed in magic, the people considered to have magic powers tended to be big, powerful and charismatic people - certainly not the guys who were picked last in gym class.

Physically weak wizards are logical if you consider they spent most of their time sniffing glue in libraries and meditating. Having next to no physical activities or learning related skills takes a toll. In RL a person like that can't just grab a sword and start swinging (also trying to punch someone would result in a broken hand).

Well, to begin with that starts from the assumption that magic requires a whole lot of book-learning, which in itself is largely a D&D trope (taken from Jack Vance, admittedly). But even then, historically the kind of monastic and ascetic people that were ascribed with magical powers and did do a lot of meditating and book-learning often did a whole lot of physical training as well. That's somewhat an Asian stereotype, but even in Europe, monks - for instance - did much physical labour, and actually one of the few existing medieval fencing manuals derives from a German monastery and depicts priests and *gasp* women in the technical drawings of combat wards.

D&D wizards are appealing from the perspective of character diversity, but practically speaking it makes very little sense for people who regularly participate in combat and need to endure a lot of physical hardships just from traveling by foot around the world adventuring to be physically weak and have no combat skills. It's another thing if either casting spells literally enfeebles spellcasters (which actually makes some degree of sense) or if wizards are so awesomely powerful that they can curbstomp everything without even bothering with any of that nasty fighting, but neither of those things is really true of adventuring low-level D&D wizards. So in the end it's more of a gameplay contrivance. In real life, if I were a wizard running out of spells, I sure as hell would rather have a sword to defend myself with than some pesky dagger, no matter how much that breaks character class conventions.

 

[Perkel]

who cares about mages when you have mage knights !:

On serious note imo i think mages should do same role as Thiefs in AD&D2. Basically options instead of main attack power. I always hate when mages are either walking gods or just ranged malee.

 

[Gregz]

I agree with the OP

 

[Slow James]

Your problem is that you play shit games like Dragon Age. Play something more like Eador Genesis or Shadowrun Returns.

While dragon age/dragon age 2 spellcasting is pretty much all combat, the amount of "magic laser" type spells is fairly small. There are a lot of utility spells with tactical benefits and in both games you can build effective mages that don't serve as fireball machineguns.

I think you may misunderstand the term utility spell.

An "open Magic lock" spell is a utility spell. You can't unlock an enemy in battle. A buff that helps the whole party heal faster while fighting is not a utility spell - it is a combat spell.

Dragon Age has never used any utility spells.

 

[Damned Registrations]

DnD wizards are only really bookish in comparison to other PC classes though. Compared to a farmer, a level 4 wizard has way more hp and better melee skills. Though DnD in general is really awful at modelling the differences between different professions at the commoner level. A farmer has the same kind of stat array as a tailor or a merchant, which is rather silly. Even if you line up the highs and lows of the arrays appropriately, there's still way too small a difference between stats in a lot of areas. But, well, such is the tradeoff for having a system simple enough that you can stat out a character within a minute or two.

 

[k0syak]

It's worth noting that the squishy wizard in robes is to a large extent a Dungeons & Dragons thing, from where it trickled down everywhere else. In a whole lot of myth and literature, magic is largely used by the same people who do any sort of heroic or villainous things, and anthropologically speaking, in societies that believed in magic, the people considered to have magic powers tended to be big, powerful and charismatic people - certainly not the guys who were picked last in gym class.

Physically weak wizards are logical if you consider they spent most of their time sniffing glue in libraries and meditating. Having next to no physical activities or learning related skills takes a toll. In RL a person like that can't just grab a sword and start swinging (also trying to punch someone would result in a broken hand).

Well, to begin with that starts from the assumption that magic requires a whole lot of book-learning, which in itself is largely a D&D trope (taken from Jack Vance, admittedly). But even then, historically the kind of monastic and ascetic people that were ascribed with magical powers and did do a lot of meditating and book-learning often did a whole lot of physical training as well. That's somewhat an Asian stereotype, but even in Europe, monks - for instance - did much physical labour, and actually one of the few existing medieval fencing manuals derives from a German monastery and depicts priests and *gasp* women in the technical drawings of combat wards.

D&D wizards are appealing from the perspective of character diversity, but practically speaking it makes very little sense for people who regularly participate in combat and need to endure a lot of physical hardships just from traveling by foot around the world adventuring to be physically weak and have no combat skills. It's another thing if either casting spells literally enfeebles spellcasters (which actually makes some degree of sense) or if wizards are so awesomely powerful that they can curbstomp everything without even bothering with any of that nasty fighting, but neither of those things is really true of adventuring low-level D&D wizards. So in the end it's more of a gameplay contrivance. In real life, if I were a wizard running out of spells, I sure as hell would rather have a sword to defend myself with than some pesky dagger, no matter how much that breaks character class conventions.

About RL monks doing stuff - that's why we get clerics with maces in heavy armor in RPGs Mythical magic users that are also potent fighters can't be bothered hunting rats and kobolds, you can only have them as PCs in high-level adventures.
It would be super cool to have more systems that depict casters in a different way, there are some nice ideas (besides what was already mentioned here): Witcher (witchers with limited spellcasting/alchemy/mutations, mages are fucking overpowered though), Dark Sun (preservers/defilers draining flora and dragons using lifeforce, psionics as a concept could have been used in much more games), Ultima 8 (having to arrange reagents in Pentagrams IIRC).
Everything comes down to WHY WE CAN'T HAVE MORE GOOD STUFF???

 

[Mastermind]

Your problem is that you play shit games like Dragon Age. Play something more like Eador Genesis or Shadowrun Returns.

While dragon age/dragon age 2 spellcasting is pretty much all combat, the amount of "magic laser" type spells is fairly small. There are a lot of utility spells with tactical benefits and in both games you can build effective mages that don't serve as fireball machineguns.

I think you may misunderstand the term utility spell.

An "open Magic lock" spell is a utility spell. You can't unlock an enemy in battle. A buff that helps the whole party heal faster while fighting is not a utility spell - it is a combat spell.

Dragon Age has never used any utility spells.

No, I know what it usually means, I just didn't have a better word for it, and assumed people would understand what I meant from the context, since I already noted all their spells were combat spells.

 

[V_K]

Not to say all games should conform to DnD, but there are a myriad of systems out there that a developer could pick up and use, inserting lore-specific stats or enemies, but by and large working within an established framework of how abilities and characters interact. Otherwise, half of the game's content could be finalized before the spell list is even hammered down, which means utility spells are going to be hard to apply, let alone plan in-depth application for.

Even that doesn't guarantee anything. Realms of Arkania series copied TDE spell list rather faithfully, and in TDE mages focus on utility rather than combat. It was remarkable in that there were like 5 damage-dealing spells in total out of 60-something. And even RoA had more than a dozen of spells that either had purely flavour effects or were useful once or twice throughout the whole trilogy.
Still it did better in that regard than most other CRPGs.

 

[Nihiliste]

Your problem is that you play shit games like Dragon Age. Play something more like Eador Genesis or Shadowrun Returns.

We've been getting a lot of this colored fireballs shit since 3E games. Sounds like PoE is pretty much going be the same banal shit too

 

[Johannes]

The worst thing is they've all been deprived of their pimpin' clothes.

Too true.

They don't make games like this anymore...

 

[Night Goat]

The worst thing is PnP players who play wizards like shitty action game characters. The wizard in my D&D group just spams fireballs and lightning bolts, and refuses to even learn haste.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

The worst thing is they've all been deprived of their pimpin' clothes.

Too true.

They don't make games like this anymore...

Is that Rage of Mages? Man, haven't played that game in years.

 

[pakoito]

All I'm reading in this thread is Dark Souls 1 did it right again.

The worst thing is PnP players who play wizards like shitty action game characters. The wizard in my D&D group just spams fireballs and lightning bolts, and refuses to even learn haste.

My favorite D&D game ever was my priest/monk toolbox getting Book of Vile Darkness level demons (devils?) trapped inside a Circle Against Evil after roleplaying a setup for it, effectively destroying the storyline my friend had spent weeks preparing.

And that's what you get when your DM decides to play.