Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios - Early Access announcement on June 13th

Why a fire magician is too exhausted to cast a fireball but he can cast fire rain or fire storm? It makes no sense; is like saying "i need to rest, lifting 50kg is too tiresome, so while resting i will lift 500kg"

Wrong. If i an completely exhausted to do a tiresome activity A, why i can do the tiresome activity B? There are mechanics for fatigued and exhausted on pathfinder kingmaker and if my spell makes enemy exhausted, he can't rage or charge for eg.

 

I am pretty sure i addressed that point.

 

Short rests are now per encounter. If I was actually going to ever play this game I would be pretty disappointed. Since I'm not, I'll just tack it on as another reason the game will be shit.

"But we never even like short rests anyways" - Larian shills

It's amazing how everything they totally never even liked perfectly matches up with everything Larian doesn't include or is shit at.

 

The alternative is to force unnecessary camping mechanics which is why isolating it to long rests is a good compromise between game flow and rule adherence. As you are reading this your autism meter is rising and you can't wait to bring up Pathfinder's excellent resource management but deep down you know that became obsolete after a few hours of amassing camping supplies.

 

Everything looks perfect now.

That's actually a pretty good point. How do you memorize the same thing twice?

All the other system are inferior to the good, old mana system. It's simple, it's flexible, it's self-explanatory, it's logical and it can do things other systems cannot easily do. Like sucking-up magical energy, or recovering it mid-battle. That's why I'm arguing in favor of it against other systems. It's only downside is dumb designers showering players with mana potions, rendering the entire thing useless.

 

Imagine thinking that enjoying games makes you a shill.

Why even spend time in this thread if Larian triggers you so hard?

 

With vancian casting the "magic words" disappear from the wizard's head after every spell cast. The spellbook itself is just all the spells they've encountered and copied during their adventures.

When a wizard rests, they don't just sleep they spend a few hours reading their spellbook memorising spells and making preparations for the next day. Fireball would only be recorded once in the spellbook itself.

 

No, your analogy doesn't represent cooldown, exhaustion would prevent a character from doing any "harsh" activity, not just a single one. And you can't find a analogy to represent cooldown except in few things like for eg, a machine gun that can overheat; do you know why? Because cooldowns doesn't exist outside of gaming. And even in the case of a MG42 overheating, the soldier can change the barrel and keep firing. Or fire and risk jamming the gun.

As DraQ said, games with it becomes every time

Nuke 1, Nuke 2, Nuke 3, filler spell 1, filler spell 2 (...) filler spell N, nuke 1, nuke 2(...)

 

It's amazing how you keep making up arguments and then convince yourself that somebody other than you came up with that (somebody who apparently is a Larian shill even if, mind you, he doesn't fucking exist).

Then, since that's not enough, you also come up with clever answers to those same arguments you invented a few seconds before.

Yeah, those arguments are stupid. But that shouldn't be a big surprise, since they came directly from you.

 

Yes, but imagine have 2 slots for third level spells. You memorize fireball twice to later cast it twice. How do you memorize something twice, and later forget it once but still remember it.

 

The words are magic and finite, think of it as them physically taking up space in the wizards mind. They have space for two third level spells, every time they cast one of those words memorised words disappears from memory.

In some of the flavour texts it's said to require extreme mental endurance to hold onto the spells throughout the day. Hence why they get more spells as they become more experienced and presumably gain better willpower and mental control.

 

Am I the only one who doesn’t care about lore reasons explaining magic mechanics? It’s a game, it’s ok for some things to be game-y. Re-attempting dialogue checks is game-y, as are dialogue checks in the first place. It’s all game-y. AC and THACO are game-y.

 

Except it does. You have a separate metaphorical "muscle" for every single spell that is used exactly for this single spell and nothing else. When you learn a new spell you get a new "muscle". And only this single "muscle" is exhausted when you cast that spell, leaving all other muscles ready. With this you have a lame but consistent explanation for cooldowns. This is a fairly straightforward extension of normal exhaustion in the sense that you can train your biceps without straining your glutes. Its not one to one but close enough to reality so that anyone should be able to relate to it unless he is obstinate on purpose. Now, if i was a some fancy writer i could make up a nicer sounding explanation, invent fancy terms, write some books, whatever. I think it doesn't take a stretch of imagination to see that you could build fluff that explains cooldowns, just like you have fluff that explains the vancian system.

 

Wouldn't that explanation also work for cooldowns? Instead of 8 hours they can do it in a few seconds or minutes. The big issue to justifying cooldowns is when we speak about physical skills. Of course you can make some simple explanation like saying that fighters use hidden vital energy reserves that allows them reality breaking feats in different ways, but need to recover this energy, so they develop a fighting system where they combine regular fighting (regular attacks, blocking, stances, etc) with "super powers" like creating weaves by hitting the ground, being able to jump several meters high, launching a force blast, etc.

Not necessarily true, it is more a matter of spell selections and game mechanics. When spells and skill aren't just "big nukes", and have multiple uses, and enemies have different ways of countering them, it becomes more of a game of "when" to use it. D:OS 2 makes a pretty decent job with some of its skills. Warfare, for example, specially starting out, have skills like Battering Ram, which rush you forward, hitting enemies along the way, and knocking down those that don't have physical armor. In this case, you can use it for AoE damage, to gain a new position, avoiding AoO, or to CC enemies, but when and why you use it depends on how combat is going. The same with Battle Stomp, which can be use to CC, clean elemental areas, or AoE damage, and even to reach far away targets in a pinch. Because of cooldowns when to use them is really important, and they work together with the other system to make you value when is the right moment to do so. The focus on combos of spells and skill and environmental interactions works together to make skill usage being more tactical.

The greatness of P:KM and D&D magic comes more because of their spell selection than the vanician system itself. Or would you say that, if the spells were like some lame jrpg where you gain Fire, Fire II and Fire III, and status effects are weak, that the Vanician would suddenly make the system better? If anything, what Vanician and Resource system have as an edge are the inclusion of managing how many spells you have until the end of the dungeon, with the resource system (mana, mp, etc) having a bit of an edge in my opinion because it is more flexible when it comes to create systems (potions, camping, draining enemies MP, meditating, etc).

 

I don't think it matters a great deal, I was just offering an explanation. The lore does however explain why magic works the way it does in D&D/Pathfinder for people who don't know a lot about the settings.

 

Why there is a 7 page discussion about sorcerervictor magical fetish?

 

Does the lore explain why low level spells can't be learned in high level spell slots ? Or is this a restriction that the video games introduced ?

 

I'm working my way through Durlag's Tower for the first time, and advance scouting by Imoen has proven invaluable (I think it may have even broken some of the fights, see: Davaeorn). Even though some of the spells I elected to use ended up not being quite as useful as they could be (I'm mainly thinking of Kirinhale, whose Magic Resistance I don't remember from my 2nd Ed.-playing days, who resisted my Invisibility Purge and just so happened to not teleport near my skull trap). I don't think I ended up going outside to rest for any specific encounters so far, but they have made me think about what to do with my sometimes-limited time in combat. The problem with Baldur's Gate is that resting never runs up against any resistance--but then do you want to "water chip" your player and have them whine about their perceived lack of time?

 

But how can one word of magic disappear from your mind but still be there. It makes sense for me to explain why different spells dissimilar. If I imagine a spell as a long string of letters I have trouble keeping in my mind, which disappears after I cast the spell it's clear. But how can one memorized word disappear from mu mind and still be there. I have 2 fireballs memorized, I cast one it disappears but I can still cast it once. It boggles my mind.

I don't know how it works earlier, but in 5th edition you are explicitly allowed to memorize lower-level spells in higher level slots. In most cases it makes the spell stronger and is the only way to make low-level spells more powerful, since they often don't scale with wizard's level.

 

You definitely can do this in Pathfinder (though not Kingmaker), pretty sure it was possible in 3e as well.

Obviously upcasting is slightly easier for Sorcerers as they don't have to prepare anything in advance.

 

There are no good in-universe explanation of how it works. As it is a consequence of a Goddess intervention to limit access to the Weave of the world and limit magic, is just some reality breaking fuckery that is beyond our comprehension. I haven't read the original Dying Earth novels, but perhaps the answer of how it supposedly works lies in there. i may end up reading them.

Because there aren't no news about the game, and gotta say the thread has been quite effectively derailed multiple times.

Question for those that know more about 5e. How "fun" will martial classes be in a CRPG? WoTC seems to have a incredible hate for non-casters and doesn't provide them with mechanics to have fun. What I mean is, once I reach higher levels, does a fighter have something more interesting than full attacks or a single specialized maneuver (like trip, dirty fighting) to do in combat? I see that Larian has made some efforts adding actions like throwing, pushing, jumping, etc, but I worry it may not be enough, specially for solo runs or when playing multiplayer. D:OS 2 actually made martial fun, if too samey to casters.

 

dont quote me on this but in the fluff dnd spells can be pages long, especially the higher lvl ones.
guess once you have said it once you can remember some of it but not all? and since if you spell it wrong shit can happen you need to rest somewhere and recant it.

 

I am aware of that, typically via feats that increase the spell level. But i am wondering if the limitation of the old infinity engine games is lore based or not ?

 

No idea about AD&D 2e. With Pathfinder (and 3e iirc) you don't need metamagic/feats:

"A spellcaster always has the option to fill a higher-level spell slot with a lower-level spell."

It's just something ignored in CRPGs to avoid complexity I think.

 

"It's just a [insert any work of art] dude, it's not real, chillax!"

What does that even mean. That game-y/artificial gimmicks shouldn't be avoided?
Not all of them can be avoided, but imagine every artist, writer, 3d modeler, designer etc, thinking like that. Many already do, one of the reasons why there are so many sub-par games out there. "What's wrong with a kid ghoul stuck in a fridge for 200 years dude, it's just a game, why would that even bother you".