Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[Grampy_Bone]

Everything backfires.

 

[Dungeon Lord]

Can I recharge the Gem of Power? So I will be able to give the power strike skill to more than one character.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Blitzing through rapax castle with my oriental beatdown party now.

I've just had a streak of 20 consecutive instakills.

This is hilarious.

 

[Orobis]

Darth Roxor and other Wizardry 8 pros: Do you guys play on expert difficulty or just normal? I tried playing an expert campaign for like a good 10 hours and it just felt more tedious than anything. The inner grognard in me demands expert only. What are the real benefits to playing expert as opposed to normal?

 

[Piotrovitz]

I did couple of Wiz 8 expert playthroughs, and the only noticable change I felt, comapring to normal, were the mobs resistances being cranked up a bit. It's just harder to land some debuffs, but other than that, I didn''t find it significantly harder/tedious than normal.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Alright, I'm getting back to Wiz 7 - tried it like decade ago, but got sidetracked by some life events pretty fast and never got far.

Never played anything other than Wiz 8, and from I've gathered, multiclassing is absolutely a must in earlier ones. Hence I need some advice on party build from some friendly grognards here.

I came up with following composition, and am wondering if the game is doable with this. I'd like to avoid situation when mid game this turns out to be unredeemable disaster that will make things unbearable:

Lizardmen fighter - don't have any ideas what to multi him to.
Rawulf fighter>lord
Human bard>mage
Felpurr thief>samurai
Human priest>valk
Faerie alchemist>ninja

Is this build viable, or do I have to throw some other classes here and there? If possible, I'd like to stick to 2 classes max for each char. Just for RPing purposes, I'd like to avoid having some clowns like thief/priest/ranger/ninja etc.

Are bishops any good in 7? In wiz 8 I always rolled with two of those, with complimentary schools, and along with bard they covered 100% of any magic use through the whole game.

HALP PLS

 

[aweigh]

spell backfiring is one of the objectively unpolished changes (among the many and unneeded) that bradley itnroduced in wiz 6 and 7. Wiz 8 kept his magic system out of legacy btu he had no dev or creative input whatsoever in wiz 8;

-- (which is why it is such a true indivdual RPG that transcends its Wizardry legacy trappings while achieving a wholly different and ultimately true to itself RPG gaming exprinc, somthing that CANNOT be said of WIZ 6 AND WIZ 7 where every single aspect of both of those games is fighting for attention amidsts a HUGE and obliterating remake of of all parts of the first 5 Wiz games foundations)--

later turn-based crawlers, ie most are called WIZ-CLONES but majority of the newer ones have now officially branded themselves as:

DRPGs (Dungeon RPGs).

Anyway yes later Wiz clones, not ust the recent ones like labyrinth of refrain and dungeon travelers and stranger of sword city to name but a few of a lot more; BUT ALSO the Wiz games that come out after Wiz 6-8 like the WIZ GAIDEN series and (in my personal exprinc) the WIZ EMPIRE series (the true last swan song of the Wiz series; its developers went on to continue making Wiz clones called ELMINAGE series and the ELMINAGE series has officially surpassed every facet of eveyr sigle previous Wizardry from previously, both the pre-Bradley ones AND the Bradley ones as they smartly, cherry picked his good decisions in wiz 6 and 7 like the new races, the ne spell schools the lets-get-the-fuck-out-a-10-floor-dungeon and go outside, the granular ay for the many Weapons to do more than just a simple regular ATK, etc etc)...

...right, my poinst was that Bradleys simplistic fancy to have spells lose individuality by making each one a modifier instead of an entity while by no means revolutionary it wasnt BAD, and the idea of using DNDs POWER ATTACK mechanic for spells is simply irresistibly LOGICAL

And yes you ALL know it is from exactly thr from DND Power Atk feat that he took it from.

the last bit though and where he over-designed his simple system change was in having spells employ the same type of dice roll miss percentile tied to the multiplier/modifier of the spells POWER LEVEL chosen which is then tied to the casting characters corresponding PRIMARY ATTRIBUTE from which the spell REALM (another change, an attempt at simplifyig and cosnolodizing the mystery and mystique of traditional Wizardrys HEBREW and KABBALAH-derived and inspired True Words of Power and Invocations (its magic spells)--

the later Wizardry games which i mentioned (and also ones comig out now or comig soon) solved Bradleys error quite simply by having spells no longer have a percentile misfire chance tied to the spells power level and instead tying it to the roll made against the receving Enemies corresponding resistances or AC or whatever applicable;

or even more smartly most Wizclone modern and older just use refined version of tradtional Wiz spells with cherry picked additions from the new spell schools Bradley introduced in 6 and 7 and simply completely obviate the Power Attack mechanic from DND and its foray into Bradleys coding

 

[aweigh]

I remembered I hadnt posted in this thread in a while and it was high time to remind all reading here to go play all of the Wizardry games because while wiz 6 and 7 are good, and Wiz 8 is brilliant (i love it), they simply are not real Wizardry


Not being real Wizardry is neither GOOD nor is it BAD; it is simply there, it is simply inmutable there. real Wizardry is actually not for everybody all I ask is that please dont be those people who played Fallout 3 and forget FO 1 and FO 2 existd.

YXes i said that, i made that coparison I dont type it with any real malice btu it is the truth. Dont be Fallout 3 fanboys who plan on maybe someday playing 1 and 2 in the far future (ugh those graphics!); this is what you are doing when you includ only WIZ 6 7 AND 8 in this thread.

 

[aweigh]

lastly (gotta have my partig shot)

for the above posters askig about wiz 8 difficulty rest easy it is a piss easy game anyone can finish it without having any deep understanding of anything of its mechanics, and no that is not an insult!!!

bt i realize it may be something ne for you posters (wiz 8 was actually my first Wiz too!) and it may seem scary and difficult btu dont it is not that hard it is actually incredibly forgiving in terms of letting you make whatever foolish party compositions you might possibly get up to; there will never be a poitn where you force your playthrough into early sudoku due to bad decisions0

 

[Piotrovitz]

bt i realize it may be something ne for you posters (wiz 8 was actually my first Wiz too!) and it may seem scary and difficult btu dont it is not that hard it is actually incredibly forgiving in terms of letting you make whatever foolish party compositions you might possibly get up to; there will never be a poitn where you force your playthrough into early sudoku due to bad decisions0

I think this is mainly due to awesome and rarely seen balance between classes and the way they compliment each other. Unless you're go with something silly like 6 priests etc, the game is doable with any common sense party compositions. Don't have any divinity caster? You probably have gadgeteer. Etc etc.

 

[aweigh]

previous wiz had better -- AND new wiz too

 

[Darth Roxor]

Darth Roxor and other Wizardry 8 pros: Do you guys play on expert difficulty or just normal? I tried playing an expert campaign for like a good 10 hours and it just felt more tedious than anything. The inner grognard in me demands expert only. What are the real benefits to playing expert as opposed to normal?

no idea tbh

i think i've only played on normal over all my playthrus

i considered expert for the current playthrough but i figured since it was a very gimmick party that might be unwise

so

dunno

LOL

 

[Piotrovitz]

previous wiz had better -- AND new wiz too

You're the ultimate Wiz geek here, so you;re probably right - my post above referred only to my personal exp with 8.

 

[aweigh]

I do agree wholehearted that yes Wiz 8 has excllnt party and class balance.

 

[aweigh]

Piotrovitz

fun thing to do early in wiz 8 town:

go steal the cursed berserker / fury katana from inside that vault buildig place and givei to a samurai and every LVL pump all points into his weapon skill and into his ability that has percentage of triggering many many atks i think its called LIGHTNING STRIKES

the sword i mention wont allow u to control the unit directly but eveyr turn he she will attack wildly with the berserker katana and the damage REALLY RACKS UP.

some like givig it to a class with beheading but personally in wiz 8 i think lightnig atks ar better

 

[V_K]

having spells no longer have a percentile misfire chance tied to the spells power level and instead tying it to the roll made against the receving Enemies corresponding resistances or AC or whatever applicable

But this makes very little sense. Resistance by definition is the enemy's ability to resist the (successfully) cast spell, whether it was successful at all or fucked up completely has nothing to do with it and everything - with how far beyond caster's abilities the spell was. That's from a simulationist perspective. From a mechanical perspective, the Bradley system creates an additional risk-and-reward desicion layer, which is lacking in the system you describe.

 

[Piotrovitz]

aweigh

Doesn't samurai's lightning strike ability works randomly, i.e you can't invest any points to buff it up? I'm pretty sure it works that way.
Anyway, agree that samurai with bloodlust sword is killing machine.

As for spell backfires - it's implemented in great way and as V_K said, it just adds up layer of complexity and is one of the things that make Wiz combat so damn good and interesting.

 

[aweigh]

V_K

about some 20 or so pages back durig one of my wiz postig sprees i posted the design docs with the formulas for Wiz 1-3. You are correct that Bradley itnroduced additional layers; however the meaningful itneraction of this is the crux of our diffrence of opinion.

i know you dislike me, but remember that extrapolation as in this exampl is a nEither incremental nor does it sway correlation of the variables in a way that achieves an obejective quality of addition;

for the actual player the granular accoutrements, to paraphrase your sentiment LAYERED over these magic spells are:

1) mathematically compmarable to the traditional wiz spell formulas (which keep improvig with every new wiz game, but for this exampl i am using dsign doc of IZ 3); a few more numbers are there because one of bradleys driving impetus durig the obliteration of wiz durig 6 and 7 was dismantling where he found elegance in conjunction and reassembling with apparnetly only the seeming goal of achieving addition and not of particular care to also achive parity or intrinsinc design

2) ah fuck my fiers are tired of typing

 

[aweigh]

it is an extra layr indd no argumnt hr i argu it is simply neither for the good nor for the bad; however if previous spell systems (and subsequent ones) achieved more elegant results with less of these -layers- then there is meal of fish to be served and dissected for those who will almost certtainly never ever ever play any an elminage or wiz empire or wiz gaiden or stranger of sword of city or any modern wiz clone or blobber so


for these people, even thoyugh the dark spire iz clone (nintendo ds) took ALL of bradleys granular attacks and polished and expandd thm to th utmost and logical end result as well as adaptig Bradleys OWN mini system of having granular attacks for givig modifiers dependig on the selection and USING THAT FOR SPELLS AS WELL completely supplantig and renderig obsolete Bradleys power spells up for no actual reason because when the numbers are done, player is actually better off statiscally alays using power level ONE

in summatioin:

i agree it is a new and additional layer

thats all.

 

[aweigh]

anyway i want to make it clear i do not wish to poop on anyones Wiz 8 exprinc !!! iz 8 is FANTASTIC and of 6 7 and 8 it is in game 8 where bradley had no input that his systems finally became meanigful

 

[aweigh]

i apologize for my keyboard half the keys are dead

 

[aweigh]

V_K

in the dark spire a rogue class character receives option to utilize ranged bows and crossbows for firing VOLLEYS which receive a Malus of Accuracy but gain benefit of targeting an entire ROW of enemies in same game a magician can choose to cast a spell QUICKLY (turn order is important so you want to trigger your HEALING SPELL _before_ the enemies attakc again)

btu at the risk of the spell FIZZLING OUT-- alternatively that same caster can choose to cast the spell SLOWLY with full INVOCATIONS and delay the spells casting turn order btu receive an big benefit in all relevant variables.

now do you see why i am so dismissive of the simplistic modifer Bradley used for poering up spells in addition to futur titles doig it better I also wish to clarify that I also find that Bradley obejectively simplfiied many of the spell system and spell ways of beig utlized (change to mana prime exampl but movig on to th SIMPLIFIED GROUPING of spells in hackneyed REALMS which serve as point dumps for no other reason than Bradleys inability to understand how and why skill points work and how and why they can equally easily be completely unnecessary--

--in true Wiz games a spell or an ability is earned and it can be utlizd without further need to spend myopic points on a chart, because classes are designed so that there is alays bigger and better evolutions of already known spells and abilities: an increase achieved continually without utilization of low-level point distribution that offers:

the illusion of choice, since those poits must go there theri s nohere else for them to go!

ok finally managed a legible post heh

 

[V_K]

n the dark spire a rogue class character receives option to utilize ranged bows and crossbows for firing VOLLEYS which receive a Malus of Accuracy but gain benefit of targeting an entire ROW of enemies in same game a magician can choose to cast a spell QUICKLY (turn order is important so you want to trigger your HEALING SPELL _before_ the enemies attakc again)

btu at the risk of the spell FIZZLING OUT-- alternatively that same caster can choose to cast the spell SLOWLY with full INVOCATIONS and delay the spells casting turn order btu receive an big benefit in all relevant variables.

Which is nice and neat, but has nothing to do with backfiring, which is a completely different system.

GROUPING of spells in hackneyed REALMS which serve as point dumps

They also serve as a resource management mechanic. Which, of course, would work better if there were more rest limitations, but that's a different story.

low-level point distribution that offers:

the illusion of choice, since those poits must go there theri s nohere else for them to go!

They can be distributed differently between different realms. It's called "specialization". And even beyond that there's still choice - a choice to fuck up your build.

 

[Ventidius]

n the dark spire a rogue class character receives option to utilize ranged bows and crossbows for firing VOLLEYS which receive a Malus of Accuracy but gain benefit of targeting an entire ROW of enemies in same game a magician can choose to cast a spell QUICKLY (turn order is important so you want to trigger your HEALING SPELL _before_ the enemies attakc again)

btu at the risk of the spell FIZZLING OUT-- alternatively that same caster can choose to cast the spell SLOWLY with full INVOCATIONS and delay the spells casting turn order btu receive an big benefit in all relevant variables.

Which is nice and neat, but has nothing to do with backfiring, which is a completely different system.

The problem is that if a backfire system like that of Bradley-Wiz was added to the old formula it would simply become unnecessarily punishing because those are games where you cannot simply save and rest anywhere, which means that a system like fizzling out would be a much more appropriate adaptation of that idea for that kind of game. The flip side of this is that the backfire system's contribution to the difficulty curve also becomes frivolous when you realize it is easy to save-scum until you maximize your spell damage output. This also neutralizes the value of whatever risk the backfire system brings into the equation, since the risk here is merely one of having to reload a recent save, whereas the stakes in old-Wiz games are overall much higher. To be fair, however, Dark Spire itself does allow one to save anywhere(though not to rest), so it is perhaps not the best example. The point still applies in general, however.

GROUPING of spells in hackneyed REALMS which serve as point dumps

They also serve as a resource management mechanic. Which, of course, would work better if there were more rest limitations, but that's a different story.

But individual subsystems like the realm and backfire mechanics need to be taken into the context of the overall design of the game in order to gauge how beneficial their introduction was, and the overall picture in the Bradley-Wiz games is one where resource management has been heavily simplified if not outright trivialized in comparison to old-Wiz. This makes any argument for the realms system that is grounded on their contribution to resource management inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, because the resource management is simply not very good to begin with.

low-level point distribution that offers:

the illusion of choice, since those poits must go there theri s nohere else for them to go!

They can be distributed differently between different realms. It's called "specialization". And even beyond that there's still choice - a choice to fuck up your build.

The ability to gimp builds is definitely one of the merits of granular character systems when compared to integrated ones, otherwise, however, there is really no difference between the two as both types of system ultimately require the same knowledge of the mechanics in order to plan and strategize builds in advance. However, this only makes a difference for newcomers, and for advanced players they are a source of tedium at best. Regardless of that, the character system and progression (again, let's take things into broader context) in Bradley-Wiz have problems beyond that particular discussion, such as the learn-by-doing system that has no place in highly abstract games of this sort(and which opened the gate for all sorts of exploits) and the botched progression that doesn't encourage multi-classing. Multi-classing was by far the most interesting aspect of party building in old-Wiz, the one that required the most knowledge of the mechanics, and thus the one that was of most interest to advanced players. The takeaway from all of this is that the changes Bradley introduced, at worst, made the games overall harder to learn, but easier to master, which is the opposite not only of the old-Wiz formula, but of good game design. At best, they only added more tedium in exchange for what was essentially the same as old system plus an exploitable and discordant learn-by-doing element.

 

[Darth Roxor]

backfires are p cool