Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/431494289055313164

I had a debate about the Grimoier Slam. I've been told that "The idea that a wizard would use his most prized possession he/she/it is helpless without to slam big, ugly and green fuckers in the face is self-evidently ridiculous." Do you agree with this?

If grimoires were fragile objects, sure. They are not fragile objects. Grimoires are all enchanted capacitors of soul energy that happen to be made in the shape of a large book. Every time a wizard casts a spell, he or she gathers and channels soul energy through the grimoire before releasing it. Even without the wizard using it, a grimoire is a magic item.

If a wizard uses Grimoire Slam, he or she is not just swatting the target with the weight of a large book, but hitting the enemy with a magical capacitor. It happens faster than most spells are cast and, if it hits, can knock the enemy back. In a melee situation, that's why a wizard would use it.

It's also an optional class-restricted Talent, not a core class Ability. If you don't like the flavor of Grimoire Slam, don't buy it. You'll have spells you can cast with more traditional magic effects that could accomplish similar things, but they will require you to cast a spell to do so.

 

[hiver]

Gee i wonder will those magic capacitors have any other use in that world. Sure sounds like they WOULD, since they are magical capacitors without even a wizard using them.
Cane we throw them too? No? Why not? Magical grimoire artillery? Siege defense?
or, as CappenVarra noted - a castle, fortress, wall, city made out of grimoirs?

It just gets stupider the more you think about it but at least its an option.

Fucking magical books... spit!

 

[Infinitron]

Gee i wonder will those magic capacitors have any other use in that world. Sure sounds like they WOULD, since they are magical capacitors without even a wizard using them.
Cane we throw them too? No? Why not? Magical grimoire artillery? Siege defense?
or, as CappenVarra noted - a castle, fortress, wall, city made out of grimoirs?

It just gets stupider the more you think about it but at least its an option.

Fucking magical books... spit!

Go ahead, hiver. You have a Formspring account - ask him in the comments.

 

[tuluse]

Gee i wonder will those magic capacitors have any other use in that world. Sure sounds like they WOULD, since they are magical capacitors without even a wizard using them.
Cane we throw them too? No? Why not? Magical grimoire artillery? Siege defense?
or, as CappenVarra noted - a castle, fortress, wall, city made out of grimoirs?

It just gets stupider the more you think about it but at least its an option.

Fucking magical books... spit!

My guess that the in-game explanation is that the wizard has to be in physical contact with the grimoire. So throwing is out.

 

[Infinitron]

I had a debate about the Grimoier Slam. I've been told that "The idea that a wizard would use his most prized possession he/she/it is helpless without to slam big, ugly and green fuckers in the face is self-evidently ridiculous." Do you agree with this?

If grimoires were fragile objects, sure. They are not fragile objects. Grimoires are all enchanted capacitors of soul energy that happen to be made in the shape of a large book. Every time a wizard casts a spell, he or she gathers and channels soul energy through the grimoire before releasing it. Even without the wizard using it, a grimoire is a magic item.

If a wizard uses Grimoire Slam, he or she is not just swatting the target with the weight of a large book, but hitting the enemy with a magical capacitor. It happens faster than most spells are cast and, if it hits, can knock the enemy back. In a melee situation, that's why a wizard would use it.

It's also an optional class-restricted Talent, not a core class Ability. If you don't like the flavor of Grimoire Slam, don't buy it. You'll have spells you can cast with more traditional magic effects that could accomplish similar things, but they will require you to cast a spell to do so.

This is probably some of the best/worst asspulls ever I have heard regarding computer games. Dude, you want a cool looking/sounding ability just say that it is for that reason and not supposed to be realistic. Don't try to actually justify it.

Eh, who knows, maybe they have plans to develop that concept of soul capacitors further in the game's lore.

 

[Kosmonaut]

Wouldn't be better to enchant a more suitable object for this capacitor of soul thing? Even with Sawyer explanation, the image of a wizard hitting a monster's ass an leg with bright, electric humongous books seems absurd.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Multiheaded electric *ahem* Grimoire.

 

[Kosmonaut]

Why not a staff slam, or familiar slam, or pointy hat slam?

 

[Captain Shrek]

Why not a staff slam, or familiar slam, or pointy hat slam?

"Nerd-rage" with Grimoires.

 

[Arkeus]

Wouldn't be better to enchant a more suitable object for this capacitor of soul thing? Even with Sawyer explanation, the image of a wizard hitting a monster's ass an leg with bright, electric humongous books seems absurd.

It's less 'enchant' and more "Grimoire are used in order to refine and create spells". Basically, the wizard is going to use his grimoire every days in order to learn and control his spell, and it being a capacitor is a side-effect of being constantly used as a medium for spellcasting/control/creation.

 

[Kosmonaut]

It's less 'enchant' and more "Grimoire are used in order to refine and create spells". Basically, the wizard is going to use his grimoire every days in order to learn and control his spell, and it being a capacitor is a side-effect of being constantly used as a medium for spellcasting/control/creation.

But what if the grimoire decapitates an orc and the spilled blood stains the book pages?

 

[Arkeus]

But what if the grimoire decapitates an orc and the spilled blood stains the book pages?

That could be fun- and if the wizard is using his grimoire to get out of a tight situation, the grimoire losing power and maybe a spell being erased would be a acceptable price to save his life :p

 

[hiver]

Go ahead, hiver. You have a Formspring account - ask him in the comments.

Im not sure i can in two sentences formspring allows.
If one hopes to change the mind of a dev you cant just post objections and rants, there should be a suggestion of alternative better solution there.
Or atleast well thought out presentation of additional unintended bad consequences.


Its only an extension of primary bad idea of fucking magic books.
You have those then the question comes up: "hey, why cant we use these books for anything else?" right?
And then you come up with something else to give it another "use".

And i sure cant persuade them to ditch the whole fucking "magic book" concept.

My guess that the in-game explanation is that the wizard has to be in physical contact with the grimoire. So throwing is out.

They just said:

Even without the wizard using it, a grimoire is a magic item.

and

hitting the enemy with a magical capacitor

None of that has any physical contact in consideration.

I suppose, theoretically you could use something like it to give this thing a bit more reasonable background which could be used to provide an explanation why these magic capacitors cannot be used for anything else except wizard hitting someone with them.
First would be the need to have the wizard in contact with it - holding it.
But when you ask yourself why does the contact have such an influence on this thing - another additional angle presents itself.

"Each wizard is personally connected and invested in his grimoire, - each grimoire is connected directly to a particular wizard and only him and his soul energies which it shares. When a wizard dies his grimoire dissipates, self destructs, vanishes, desintegrates (looses all power, energy, whatever)"

- kind of thing.

 

[tuluse]

A +1 longsword is a magic item, you still need someone who knows how to use it to hit something.

Likewise, I think while the Grimoire is a magic item on it's own to charge the capacitor, the wizard needs proximity to it.

 

[DraQ]

DraQ: Well, it is. on the same level, that is. System design and the consequent design of combat is easily as vast as the complexity of interwoven quest design.

You just don't get it, do you?

Quest design and world design, especially in regards to player's freedom are closely intertwined. The same quest that will work excellent in railroaded biowarean interactive movie, will fall apart or require far more work in open world RPG. The amount of quests also correlates closely with size of the gameworld.

Combat system, OTOH, can be exactly the same regardless whether you're following cutscene punctuated corridor to its conclusion, or roaming a huge open world.

I can expect good gameplay systems in open world RPG at least as much as in story driven one. OTOH expecting the same level of quest design in both is simply unrealistic, assuming similar quality of work.

That's generally the biggest issue, how to balance things out so both things happen. In Warband multi there are sometimes quite hilarious situations when an armored knight meets an archer with some letter opener as the backup weapon and that archer eventually kicks knights ass because the knight player is a newbie and the archer is a seasoned melee player who just plays as a ranged.

Fortunately we can dismiss this issue by assuming that AI plays optimally.

In that game you can block a swing of any weapon with any weapon of yours, so you can block a two-handed sword with wooden stick, and you can keep doing so indefinitely if you're good enough (as a player).

So the the capital issue showed here is how to balance it out: if you could crush-through the block when blocking guy has not enough strenght (archer class is weaker and slower than melee oriented) - then the knight player wins because he has a superior character even though he's in fact worse (so he doesn't get "murdered horribly by low level mooks" even though he's commanded poorly). In other words, game mechanics wins the fight for him.

Well, no.

For starters, your "superb" player playing archer wouldn't be playing well because he would put himself at disadvantage by getting into situation where he would be put at serious disadvantage.

Situational foresight is no less important as player skill than basic mechanical mastery. Getting into melee combat with character that sucks at melee is usually a result of bad decision on part of player and as such should be punished.

So the game mechanics didn't win the battle for knight, the other player did by effectively throwing himself on knight's sword.

Yeah, it might not always be the case in MP game featuring huge battles, as you may then lose through no fault of your own, but in your typical RPG you generally have a lot more freedom than some poor fuck on the battlefield who can only fight and kiss his ass goodbye if his allies fuck-up.

Picking your fights is important and going toe-to-toe with far superior melee combatant in terms of stats or gear just means you've picked your fight poorly and get free respec to dead meat.

 

[Excidium]

A +1 longsword is a magic item, you still need someone who knows how to use it to hit something.

Not necessarily.

 

[Captain Shrek]

A +1 longsword is a magic item, you still need someone who knows how to use it to hit something.

Likewise, I think while the Grimoire is a magic item on it's own to charge the capacitor, the wizard needs proximity to it.

I think this is still all bullshit.

It is completely within their hands to alter it at any point as we have been clearly taught by experience. The question is whether they realize it or not in time.

 

[tuluse]

A +1 longsword is a magic item, you still need someone who knows how to use it to hit something.

Likewise, I think while the Grimoire is a magic item on it's own to charge the capacitor, the wizard needs proximity to it.

I think this is still all bullshit.

It is completely within their hands to alter it at any point as we have been clearly taught by experience. The question is whether they realize it or not in time.

It's just an ability for wizards to get out of AoO. Yes, hitting people with a book is on the absurd side of things, but it's hardly world-logic breaking.

 

[Jasede]

Hitting things with charged books seems very Final Fantasy 3 (the NES one).
I guess if you want to feel better about it you can pretend you're hitting them with the glowing tomes from Ultima 8, that you can buy from Mithrandir.

 

[Captain Shrek]

It's just an ability for wizards to get out of AoO. Yes, hitting people with a book is on the absurd side of things, but it's hardly world-logic breaking.

Which is fine as long as it is not being justified. But seriously. What happened to five foot steps. Oh wait. not a TB game. That's why the fighter has to have sticky ability. Alright. I think anyone can find better solutions even without being developers. How about changing that blink ability of the rogues for Wizards? And giving the rogues something like distract ability? That would at least fit the characters for starters than this bull.

 

[Infinitron]

This Grimoire Smash uproar made me think:

If AD&D didn't exist, and Josh Sawyer had just invented the concept of Vancian magic on his own, with spell memorization and spells that disappear from your memory after one casting - you guys would be totally bashing him for it.

Vancian magic is almost as ridiculous as smacking somebody with a spellbook. It's very "gamist" and not really "plausible" at all.

 

[Infinitron]

In an alternate world were Vancian magic never became popular, most RPGs would probably use some kind of mana-based approach to magic, and the idea of having to prepare individual spells again and again would have been considered ridiculously contrived. Which it is.

 

[Infinitron]

If you want to make enemies...try to change something.

 

[Murk]

In an alternate world were Vancian magic never became popular, most RPGs would probably use some kind of mana-based approach to magic, and the idea of having to prepare individual spells again and again would have been considered ridiculously contrived. Which it is.

Dudebro, all concepts of magic are absolutely stupid -- some are, subjectively to each person, more conducive to certain gameplay styles than others. If we accept that people can fart fireballs and flick lightning then they can magic-book or whatever the fuck.

This 'unique to each class' interaction of breaking engagement is one of few positive (to me) things about the game's combat I've heard so far.

Makes more sense to charge a book with magic than a stick anyway.

 

[Excidium]

Vancian magic is almost as ridiculous as smacking somebody with a spellbook. It's very "gamist" and not really "plausible" at all.

Not at all. It's obviously arbitrary as hell but it is explained in a magical sense. It's plausible within the fiction.

Spoiler

(revised 2E PHB)