To Pre-Buff or Not to Pre-Buff: THAT is the Question

[Lyric Suite]

Pre-buffing is the way.

Would be great if game gave you clues what you are about to face through lore, investigation, character exposition or even character skill (you can get some info on an area with the ranger skill in IWD. It's mostly fluff but i thought that was neat).

 

[Harthwain]

Yes of course, but so far this kind of solution hasn't been implemented in any of the games I've played.

Well, the technical possibility is there. It's just that the developers didn't think of it.

Imagine doing this, but through an user-friendly in-game UI:

Spoiler

 

[Jigby]

No prebuffing linearizes fights, where at the start of the fight you cast that one must have buff (usually haste) without any divergence. You don't cast that many other buffs since that would take time out of productive smashing things into unproductive standing in a place and casting bless. With prebuffing, you are no longer constrained by time (well, almost), therefore you can afford to cast more unorthodox quirkier buff combinations rather than just going for braindead haste. Important setpiece boss battles should also be given the benefit of having prebuffs IE-style. Buffing should be programmable into templates, so instead of painfully casting 10 buffs you just activate a template and from a technical standpoint the game should have a time compression mechanic (some simple speedhack) that would make it quick.

 

[Savecummer]

It used to be that I needed no prebuffing at all. I was ready for action in seconds.
But now I have to prebuff for a bit before we go at it, otherwise I would start still in a soft state...

 

[gurugeorge]

I like pre-buffing, to me it's quite immersive that your mage or whatever will do a special protection spell that's long-lasting and specific to the encounter to come.

The problem is that CRPGs don't integrate well enough two important aspects of what would be necessary in a more simulationist or "realistic" scenario: scouting and lore/divination.

If you're going to have Vancian type magic (which you must, because it allows magic to be clutch and spectacular while keeping it within reasonable limits, without having to have shitty cooldowns or shitty poundshop superheroes - i.e. sorcerers *koff koff"), then you need a) a scout/scouts who are able to "ken" the mob types ahead, and/or b) someone in the party who has lore about the monster types. CRPGs just don't do either of those things very well.

PF:K had a good stab at it with the increasing knowledge characters have of enemies as they fight them, but you need to be able to a) have some of that lore already (for the simpler, earlier mob types - the types where the lore about them is common knowledge) and b) have a means of discovering lore from books, etc., for the more bookwormy lore masters, or c) more developed forms of Divination (e.g. picture your scouts sneakily pinching some artifacts from the forthcoming dungeon area, taking them back to the party, and a skilled diviner being able to ken the mobs that way).

PF:K and Solasta show the way in making CRPGs a fuller representation of PnP - to progress, CRPGs need to integrate this side of things more, make it more interesting.

 

[gurugeorge]

It used to be that I needed no prebuffing at all. I was ready for action in seconds.
But now I have to prebuff for a bit before we go at it, otherwise I would start still in a soft state...

I think you're talking about pre-fluffing, not pre-buffing

 

[Rafidur]

Yes of course, but so far this kind of solution hasn't been implemented in any of the games I've played.

FF12 has gambits, NWN2 had a rod of buffing mod, Siralim 3 has macros, etc.

I think the game I've played that handles prebuffing the best was tome4. Some buffs take no turns - you can automate them "on enemy sighted" or "on enemy in melee range" if you want to avoid the hassle of casting them manually. Some buffs take a whole turn, and would be ill-advised in combat - but then that rewards trees that let you gather information, like far sight or mage eyes or telepathy or tracking or splitting time in two and sending your future self to scout ahead or whatever. At this point, you've invested into scouting abilities and you can reap your reward by being able to cast the appropriate buff, position the right way, open up with a fireball to hit around the corner, or just GTFO if you can't take on that Corruptor Necromancer Gunslinger bee randboss and its level 17 tessellation cloak.

And since it's a roguelike, you can't just look up everything in a guide ahead of time or savescum.

 

[Butter]

The inability to pre-buff is retarded. Important buffs taking multiple rounds to cast is retarded. The ability to rest anywhere anytime is retarded.

I think that about covers it.

 

[copebot]

Prebuffing is good. Think about how PoE and PoE2 did it: they replaced a single session of buffing at the beginning of the day's encounter with having a character or two be a buffbot for every single encounter. That isn't an improvement.

Here is an easy way to do it: create a simple scripting / macro feature. Allow the player to accelerate time if it's a real time game or to otherwise bypass turns in a turn based game. Press one button and rapidly do the party's buffs and/or use consumables. The bigger issue with buffing and player resources is just coming up with more interesting attrition mechanics. It's hard to have interesting attrition mechanics if the game is just designed around delving linear dungeons with set encounters that do not react to what the player does. Food and supplies are a boring mechanic if it just means you have to remember to buy it every time you quick travel. If travel is more complex and part of the gameplay is planning out the logistics of the expedition, the choice of how fast to go or how hard to push in the dungeon is more relevant. Perhaps casting divine spells requires certain reagents, and getting those reagents requires either exploring in the world, building a faction relationship, paying a high price, or delving into ancient ruined temples to get their caches of rare incense.

When the game is focused on linear progression through a canned plot, such elements have to be deemphasized because they're distracting.

 

[laclongquan]

You dont want autocast buff after rest. not in any game with serious combat portion.

Generally buff has duration, short duration. So you want to cast it before battle. Right after rest is rarely battle time.

In case buff has long duration, there's still also the issue of approriate for situation in that map or not. If not, you waste a buff slot. Like protection from evil but that specific map has mostly good-alignment enemies (guards, monastery clerics, etc...)

And in serious combat, sometimes you want more firepower instead of more buffs if the type of enemies call for it. Like there's a summoner that you want to kill it dead with 4 magic missile that you are prepared to forgo the usual prebuffing.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

The ability to prepare needs to be intact. Pre-buffing is literal preparation, so it should be possible. Let's not confuse the subject. The question of pre-buffing is actually one of spell/game design. If pre-buffing is necessary, then you have an encounter design question. If pre-buffing is tedious, then you have a game design issue. D&D games, in particular, have handled this poorly due to D&D's design. The volume of combat in a cRPG vastly outpaces original design. As others have noted, 5E has done much to improve this.

 

[SoupNazi]

Personally, I prefer games here pre-buffs aren't necessary in "standard" encounters (doesn't mean I want trash mobs), and where the action economy is rich enough to allow for casting clutch buffs mid-encounter as well. And for stronger enemies, they allow a time and space to choose and pre-buff. But no automatic buffs, no forever-buffs, that's cheap and they lose the point - might as well have them as permanent stat bonuses, or not have them at all and balance the encounters as if you didn't have them, because why have them at all? It also needs to have limits, either "buff slots", or a short time limit so that you can't just activate every buff before every fight but have to choose what you need. For that reason, the buffs should be distinctive as well. Maybe one or two that are generic enough that if you don't know, you might use them just because, but most hould be tailor made.

I always liked how DOS2 handles this. You have a bunch of buffs - changing your elemental damage on your arrows, giving you some extra AP, upping you damage, defenses, giving you bonuses to dodge, or even some of the more creative stuff like Erratic Wisp that makes you teleport randomly when you get hit. And for all the criticism aimed at its armor system, you could also decide to buff your physical, or magical armor depending on the enemy composition you'd be facing. That, along with positioning actually mattering, and the environmental effects, made the pre-battle planning the best part of the game, and better than any other RPG (except for JA2) I've played. Even if the combat itself isn't the best, it had the best planning.

 

[Darth Canoli]

the gentleman's choice is to cast day of sorcery and be done with pre-buffing for the next 24 hours

Well, i'm mostly against pre-buffing because it's tedious and it makes some fights too easy.
Xeen and later M&M games makes it easier and the open-world allows you to hunt for higher level enemies if you want to take advantage of the buffs.

Yes of course, but so far this kind of solution hasn't been implemented in any of the games I've played.

KoTC 2 allows auto-casting after rest and you can pick which spells you want to auto-cast for each spell-caster, as long as they're allowed outside of combat but there's a couple of them, enough to justify the feature.

Still, you pre-buff, enemy mages pre-buff, everyone pre-buffs, why not not pre-buffs at all or just a limited amount so you can't cheese for common fights and it's less tedious overall?

 

[Tacgnol]

a) a scout/scouts who are able to "ken" the mob types ahead, and/or b) someone in the party who has lore about the monster types. CRPGs just don't do either of those things very well.

CRPGs are generally useless at implementing knowledge skills. There are some exceptions, but most of them relegate knowledge checks purely to dialogue or very rare environmental encounters.

In proper play there are so many uses for knowledge skills whether that be combat, exploration or dialogue. Hell, iding a monster in the middle of combat is a free action and can give you invaluable info about their defences and weaknesses.

 

[Pink Eye]

the gentleman's choice is to cast day of sorcery and be done with pre-buffing for the next 24 hours

Well, i'm mostly against pre-buffing because it's tedious and it makes some fights too easy.
Xeen and later M&M games makes it easier and the open-world allows you to hunt for higher level enemies if you want to take advantage of the buffs.

Yes of course, but so far this kind of solution hasn't been implemented in any of the games I've played.

KoTC 2 allows auto-casting after rest and you can pick which spells you want to auto-cast for each spell-caster, as long as they're allowed outside of combat but there's a couple of them, enough to justify the feature.

Still, you pre-buff, enemy mages pre-buff, everyone pre-buffs, why not not pre-buffs at all or just a limited amount so you can't cheese for common fights and it's less tedious overall?

My favorite part about Chalice 2. Is even the Devil Lords pre-buff too. That's why they're so freaking hard. I really like Chalice 2's approach to the whole pre-buffing thing. I think pre-buffing is a mindless exercise without much interaction between player. In Chalice there is at least some action economy going on there. Do you spend turn to cast bless? Or do you throw an offensive spell at the enemy? Engagement, that's what it encourages. It's a lot more stimulating then wasting ten minutes casting spells with no risk.

 

[JarlFrank]

Pre-buffing kinda sucks because it's a non-choice.

If you design your encounters in a way that requires pre-buffing before each major encounter, there's no tactical choices to be made. You pre-buff. That's what you do. It turns into busywork.
It especially sucks if buffs have a short duration. It means you have to repeat the process before each encounter. Boring busywork.
If not pre-buffing means you don't stand a chance, then doing it is a requirement for success, so there's no choice between "either I pre-buff or I just those spell slots for something else". You just do it and deal with the fact that you're now out of a couple spell slots.
It's especially annoying if you have different durations for different buffs and you have to cast them in the proper sequence with the longest-lasting first and the shortest last. It becomes a routine. Fucking lame.

If you make pre-buffing a thing, at least respect the player's time and offer a super-buff spell like Might and Magic's Day of Sorcery and Day of Protection that combines most buff spells into one - but at a much higher cost - and it lasts until the next morning. IIRC Day of Sorcery in World of Xeen costs more to cast than doing all the buffs individually, but it saves you so much busywork - one click of the mouse instead of a dozen.

I love challenging encounters. Heck, I enjoyed most of Knights of the Chalice 2 with all the ridiculously OP shit that gets thrown at you! But I don't think pre-buffing is a very interesting tactic, especially if encounters are designed in a way that requires it (like giving the enemy mind-breaking spells that can ONLY be resisted by pre-buffing your party with a mind resistance spell... that means you HAVE to use one very specific buff before entering combat, which removes any element of tactical choice: there is only ONE way to deal with it, so you have to do it this way; it becomes about meta-knowledge of which pre-buffs to apply before which encounter, instead of thinking about the encounter as you are fighting it).

Tactical choices are things like: do I use the fireball for direct damage, or grease to make the enemies fall down, or entangle to stick them in place? Do I focus on eliminating the enemy mage first, or the archers, or the beefy melee guy who hits hard? Depending on your party composition, the layout of the level, and the situation your party is currently in, any of these choices might be the correct one. There's no clear "always do this one specific thing" choice here.

With pre-buffing, and encounters designed to be tackled in a pre-buffed state, the answer to the question "Do I pre-buff?" is always "Yes."

If there is only one answer to the question, why even ask the question?

 

[Deadyawn]

Excessive need for pre-buffing was what killed my enthusiasm for Swordflight somewhere in the middle of chapter 3

 

[King Crispy]

Does anyone else get anxiety in IE games when you're in-between castings of certain pre-buffs and you're waiting for the next casting animation to start but you're worried the previous spell's duration will run out?

 

[Pink Eye]

Had that happen bunch in Kingmaker. Though for the wrong reason. If you cast buff, then try to cast another buff, while the character is in middle of animation. You can accidentally interrupt your own buff. It became something of a skill in that game to memorize that *exact* timing of when the animation ended. So you can start the next buff immediately after. All so you can maximize the durations of your buffs. It didn't even matter anyways. In high level durations would last for ten plus minutes. But it mattered in early game!

 

[Old Hans]

pre buffing is for LOSERS and CHEATERS and people who abuse steroids to get ahead in life.

 

[JarlFrank]

There are some games that do pre-buffing well by making it a tradeoff and hassle-free.

I remember some game (forgot which one tho) where you could permanently activate some buff-spells, but they would occupy a certain amount of your mana pool.
The buff would always be active, but 20 mana from your pool would always be locked as long as the spell is active, so if you have 100 mana you now have a maximum of 80 to use, and no amount of potions is going to push it above that.

I think it might have been Titan Quest?

You could do a similar thing with D&D's Vancian magic system by having a buff spell permanently active, and permanently occupying one spell slot of that spell level.
KotC2's auto-cast on rest kinda works like that, and it's pretty cool that way.

 

[Pink Eye]

Auto casting spells is such a nice quality of life. I'd rather spend time playing the game, instead of playing buff simulator - no one wants to play buff simulator; we only do it because we *have* to do it. Games that enforce it only bring cause for tedium.

 

[Old Hans]

I think it might have been Titan Quest?

I know Grim Dawn does it and that is made by the same folks.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I've had this conversation many times but i need to remind you that buffing is based on a real archetype: blessing before a battle was actually a thing in the middle ages.

It's not just about the mechanic its also about the world building, but it seems i'm the only one who cares about that here, but most early RPG systems were well aware of that stuff and that includes D&D.

Video games ruined everything in that respect.

 

[Jigby]

Still, you pre-buff, enemy mages pre-buff, everyone pre-buffs, why not not pre-buffs at all or just a limited amount so you can't cheese for common fights and it's less tedious overall?

I think this kind of dichotomy is only true if you're playing standardish all-rounder parties - 2 clerics/2 arcane casters /2 frontliners etc. If you however play unbalanced parties, this does not apply. You might be playing a noncaster party, that can't prebuff by the virtue of being noncaster. This party will still face opposition that will be prebuffing, so you're entering an asymmetric territory. Or maybe one char will be a caster, let's say a druid. The kind of prebuffing available to 1druid/5noncaster will be very different than what's available to 2 clerics/2 arcane/2 non casters. Or you might be soloing the game - no party. Or the gameworld is highly open and nonlinear and you will be going through it with a party of stealthy thieves using an offbeat metaknowledge path which will result in a very different distribution of precombat variables in terms of exp/weapons/consumables etc. than in your standard all-rounder party.

Point being, this kind of rationale of - if you don't need prebuffs don't put them in the game/if you need to prebuff all the time it's all braindead gameplay anyway so better not put it in the game as well - I think that's true only for median parties with median equipment using median path through the game. If you unbalance the game, it's all scrambled and you're no longer in this simplistic binary territory and having prebuffs gives you more options to unbalance it than if you didn't have them.