Games where being a mage is harder

[Cryomancer]

In most fantasy RPGs, mages are too powerful and relative easy to play. This thread is about games where magic is harder to play than martial classes. Some examples :

• GOTHIC 1/2 NoTR

In Gothic 1/2, you start the game equivalent to a lv 0 commoner in D&D and getting access to magic requires a relative long questline, while doing this questline, is necessary to save LP to invest into mana and magical circles/new spells. Sadly G2 only allows fire mages and in order to become one, you need 1k gold(hard to get in early game) and a sheep to enter the monastery of Innos, do the chores to get access to the library, demand a trial of fire, do the 3 tasks and after it, learn the first circle and the firebolt rune. After a couple of hours, you will only be able to cast firebolt like 2 times till you ran out of mana.

Being a mage/warrior using ice prison + summons is easy. But being a pure mage in G2 is quite hard till the end game, where you have money to buy endless supply of mana potions.

• GOTHIC 2 - RETURNING

Returning makes everything much harder than base Gothic 2. And mage is not different. The major changes to the casting system are :

• The quest to become a fire mage is a bit harder
• Necromancers under Xardas apprenticeship and water mages are now joinable
• Each mage guild has its own spell line, you no longer can learn army of darkness in Innos monastery. It reduces exponentially the versatility of a mage.
• Becoming a mage requires grinding INT which is raised by doing intellectual stuff like learning new languages, making runes, alchemy, reading books and so on.
• Summons have a mana upkeep per second
• Bosses can banish all low and mid tier summons

In returning, my first run was as an necromancer and took about 14 hours for me to become a mere circle 1 necromancer. Now I prefer water mages guild and think that my past worship of Beliar was wrong and realized the all might Adanos which own the endless war between Innos X Beliar without even fighting. My end game water mage :

• HELLPOINT

A Souls like game where the PC starts as a deprived and even getting even the most basic catalyst is hard, White Prophet Hand can only be obtained during the "black hole hour" and require a lot of parking. Also is melee only for a long time. The energy is too low even spending a lot of points on in and you will have to go on melee many times in the game, TBH rifles are much better than occult insturments/catalyst in this game.

I'm a diehard magefag and ended respecting in hellpoint meleeing some of the harder bosses. Other huge problem of the game is that takes a very long time to get a weapon which scales with foresight.

• MORROWIND

Is the same case of Gothic 1/2. Being a hybrid caster is easy. Being a pure caster is hard. Mainly when you are dealing with enemies that can reflect spells in the expansion areas. I tried to play Morrowind as a pure mage many times and always ended being a hybrid caster using my enchanted axe more than my spells. My char bellow

• TITAN QUEST

Casters aren't weak in TQ, the problem is just that they are too squishy, in normal, they are very powerful but in the hardest difficulties, they will die a lot without time to react. Except druids. Druids can have decent resistances + a powerful nymph casting defensive spells and almost 2x the hp of a normal caster. I played TQ as a Thunderer(Storm/Rune) and as a Druid(Storm/Nature) and had a really hard time in higher difficulties as a Thunderer but din't had the same problems as a Druid.

 

[S.torch]

Mages are harder or nerfed in most games already. Since dumb people don't appreciate the class or don't know how to play it they strip it of everything cool.

 

[Dadd]

In Grimoire, mages are powerful but less self-sufficient and less adept at killing things than melee classes. Mages usually go last, and by the time the mage is ready to cast spells, most of the enemies are dead if you level and multiclass melee-oriented characters properly.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands -- magic/psi is very important, but hybrid builds work just as well without being as squishy.
Ultima 7 -- fastidiously collect reagents or simply whack your enemies with early accessible magical weapons? The choices... Some utility spells are very useful, though.
Elex -- was it that bad or was it just really boring? can't remember.

 

[Norfleet]

Lionfart: You will literally run out of mana and be sitting there AFK for real-life hours waiting for it to recharge.

 

[Nano]

In most fantasy RPGs, mages are too powerful and relative easy to play.

Who are you and what have you done with Cryomancer?

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Drakensang or more generally the Dark Eye games. Mages serve mostly as support and can't do that much on their own. They are useful but never turn into god-like killing machines like high level d&d mages.

 

[Cryomancer]

Who are you and what have you done with Cryomancer?

LOL. I always said that magic should fit the setting. In D&D, playing as a mage in Netherese must be easy than playing as one in Dark Sun, as magic is ridiculous abundant and strong in one and hated, dependent upon external forces, rare and feared in other.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands -- magic/psi is very important, but hybrid builds work just as well without being as squishy.

In Wake of the Ravager, magic becomes much more powerful as they can cast 7th tier spells.

But if both Dark Sun games where more consistent with Dark Sun lore :

• Preparing spells would be harder, as you need to gather energy
• You would't be able to cast flashy spells like fireball as most people hate magic and magic must be disguised otherwise, you will end up ostracized, hunted down and so on
• No gaining spells on leveling up. You must find scrolls and scrolls in Athas are incredible rare, expensive and hard to obtain
• Certain "kits" in 2E which uses outsider forces like "the Grey" and "the Black" rolls randomly for energy checks, like in Defilers & Preservers: The Wizards of Athas sourcebook - page 61. I will not detail everything, but he has good chances of not preparing spells and also has to do a CON check when accessing "the black".

There are also food/water/fatigue/heat problems which affect casting and both Dark Sun games ignore. Both games would be far more harder for casters if they implemented this rules.

 

[wishbonetail]

• TITAN QUEST

Casters aren't weak in TQ, the problem is just that they are too squishy, in normal, they are very powerful but in the hardest difficulties, they will die a lot without time to react. Except druids. Druids can have decent resistances + a powerful nymph casting defensive spells and almost 2x the hp of a normal caster. I played TQ as a Thunderer(Storm/Rune) and as a Druid(Storm/Nature) and had a really hard time in higher difficulties as a Thunderer but din't had the same problems as a Druid.

Casters being squishy is not the only problem. Tha main downside of magic is that it cannot inflict status effects from weapons, which means no lifesteal, mana leech or reducing resistances. Also retarded anniversary edition introduced further retarded nerfing of casters by caping cooldowns to 90%, so you cannot spam lightning or fireballs anymore. Not that magic was incredibly powerful before. Not to mention that without any means of life or mana leech mages need thousands of potion bottles, which turns everything into a slog and busywork.
If you compare that to Archer or Staves or dual melee builds which do not requre mana, have tons of resistances, can lifesteal and can mow down hordes of enemies, it is not even funny.

 

[wishbonetail]

• MORROWIND

Is the same case of Gothic 1/2. Being a hybrid caster is easy. Being a pure caster is hard. Mainly when you are dealing with enemies that can reflect spells in the expansion areas. I tried to play Morrowind as a pure mage many times and always ended being a hybrid caster using my enchanted axe more than my spells.

I always run around with a collection of enchanted cephalopod helms and pretend that i am a pure caster. Helms have capacity of 100, easy to acquire and regenerate charges insanely fast so you can cook up pretty much any spell imaginable without being proficient in respective spheres of magic.

 

[Cryomancer]

Two Worlds 1 and 2

Disagreed. Just be a bit creative with magic usage. Is possible to dish a lot of damage and you can have a horde of servants

 

[mondblut]

Wizardry IV.

 

[Desiderius]

Who are you and what have you done with Cryomancer?

LOL. I always said that magic should fit the setting. In D&D, playing as a mage in Netherese must be easy than playing as one in Dark Sun, as magic is ridiculous abundant and strong in one and hated, dependent upon external forces, rare and feared in other.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands -- magic/psi is very important, but hybrid builds work just as well without being as squishy.

In Wake of the Ravager, magic becomes much more powerful as they can cast 7th tier spells.

But if both Dark Sun games where more consistent with Dark Sun lore :

• Preparing spells would be harder, as you need to gather energy
• You would't be able to cast flashy spells like fireball as most people hate magic and magic must be disguised otherwise, you will end up ostracized, hunted down and so on
• No gaining spells on leveling up. You must find scrolls and scrolls in Athas are incredible rare, expensive and hard to obtain
• Certain "kits" in 2E which uses outsider forces like "the Grey" and "the Black" rolls randomly for energy checks, like in Defilers & Preservers: The Wizards of Athas sourcebook - page 61. I will not detail everything, but he has good chances of not preparing spells and also has to do a CON check when accessing "the black".

There are also food/water/fatigue/heat problems which affect casting and both Dark Sun games ignore. Both games would be far more harder for casters if they implemented this rules.

That font! The spacing! So many good memories.

 

[Dadd]

One is always harder as a mage.

 

[somerandomdude]

In most fantasy RPGs, mages are too powerful and relative easy to play. This thread is about games where magic is harder to play than martial classes. Some examples :

• TITAN QUEST

Casters aren't weak in TQ, the problem is just that they are too squishy, in normal, they are very powerful but in the hardest difficulties, they will die a lot without time to react. Except druids. Druids can have decent resistances + a powerful nymph casting defensive spells and almost 2x the hp of a normal caster. I played TQ as a Thunderer(Storm/Rune) and as a Druid(Storm/Nature) and had a really hard time in higher difficulties as a Thunderer but din't had the same problems as a Druid.

Soothsayer is really good (Spirit + Nature). You got wolves + lich, and ternion attack with a staff, and pretty good debuffing moves. Soothsayer can also tank up a bit and go sword & board if they want, and it works well because you got debuffs like deathchill aura. There's a few weapons that work really well for that type of play like https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/sapros-the-corrupter.

 

[buffalo bill]

Infra arcana

 

[Lhynn]

Two Worlds 1 and 2

Not only melee is more powerfull but magic system in those games is just horrible ( improving magic requires extreme vendor grinding )

Stop pretending to be Exci, you are horribly retarded and always wrong.

 

[Sykar]

Realms of Arkania. Mana is tight and regeneration is slow and restricted to resting, so no in combat regeneration apart from very limited mana potions.

 

[V_K]

This thread is about games that are not fun

[/thread]

 

[Cryomancer]

This thread is about games that are not fun

[/thread]

LOL. There are lots of ways to have harder magic and a fun game.

That font! The spacing! So many good memories.

Yep. Sadly we will no longer get great AD&D adaptations, only shit in PF2e and 5E...

 

[Jrpgfan]

I've always found mages to be harder to play in most RPGs, especially at lower levels. So the notion that it is easier doesn't really make sense to me.

 

[Lambach]

How was being a full Mage in Morrowind hard? High Elf with the Apprentice sign is a breeze. Yes, technically it is true that this combo means you die if someone so much as throws a lit match at you, but there are many ways to avoid getting hit by spells altogether. Hiding behind your Conjuration summons, for starters. That also happens to be the solution for enemies that reflect magic.

And that's even without Alchemy abuse.

 

[NecroLord]

Mages are nearly always like this.
They start off very weak but eventually turn themselves into spellcasting demigods.
Have a game where the Mage faces many magic resistant foes or where casting spells is very physically and mentally taxing on the mage's body.
To gain access to the higher tiers of magic you must make some sacrifices. By sacrifices I mean either turning yourself into an undead abomination(or worse) or evil human sacrifices which leave their mark on your soul.
How about that?

 

[InSight]

Pathfinder Kingmaker. The experience is based on 2 playthrough. one with a fighter and one with a caster.

Time limit makes the method of existing a room with enemies than resting to recharge the spells with no/little consequences/danger/counterattack as can be done in NeverWinterNighter or Balduer's Gate 2. Its strives/encourages to be more optimal/efficient with spell usage.

Encounters that are more difficult compared to Warrior class who can stand face to face on their own.
In the start/tutorial a mage class can be defeated by the starting enemy in the room, if no combat pet is available.
There is an instance/encounter where due to giving the player character name, would result in an enemy that can only be attacked by it. The enemy does not seem to be damaged by pet/summons/Eidolons of the PC caster despite the assumption of them being their extension. Caster being usually weak in melee combat, can make the situation impossible or difficult to resolve.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Blackguards is the perfect example, as mentioned earlier for Dark Eyes games.

• Decent but not abundant single target spells.
• Mediocre Buffs and debuffs.
• Buggy Aoe (cone) spells inexplicably stopped if there's a pebble "blocking" the way.

Still useful but during missions with respawning enemies, they're sitting ducks.

Realms of Arkania HD!
Joke aside, as far as I can tell, it's hard to mage in RoA, maybe it's stronger later.

Lords of Xulima.
Stronger than in the previous examples but magic is not overpowered and you have to waste time using mana potions during long fights.