PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,182
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.
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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