Why is magic so strong in most RPGs?

[anvi]

In 2E, you also have the magical resistance problem.

EQ was awesome like that. Your spells could get resisted by stuff, they could just fizzle completely and not cast and still uses a bit of mana, and they could be interrupted by you taking damage or stunned and there was a concentration check on the damage. They could even be reflected by some enemies. But a lot of times I died without even landing a spell. I cast Root which is supposed to hold the enemy in place, but it gets resisted. I cast again and it's resisted again. Now it's beating my face, I cast again, fizzle. Again, and it interrupts my casting, now I'm dead. It's kinda bs to die like that but it was mostly avoidable and the game was better for having so much depth and challenges and mishaps. Future games thought they were clever by removing every mishap one by one. Now their games are boring crap.

 

[Cryomancer]

Does EQ has ways to bypass MR?

I honestly never liked much mmos. DDO I liked a bit but because there are 1001 utilities for spells outside of combat. And quests and dungeons there are amazing.

 

[anvi]

Yeah about half the classes have something, Magicians and Shaman have spells called Malosinia that lowers fire/cold/magic/poison, and Enchanters have Tashania which lowers magic resists and was unresistable itself. Bards have something similar, Necros too. I think CHArisma can help some classes land their spells, but not all spells. Level advantage really helps you land spells too, fighting stuff that is same level or higher is risky. It has tons of spells for outside combat too. It's amazing, or it was before they noobified it all.

 

[Ninjerk]

From what I understood, Bards are awesome until raiding in EQ. Their song lists look awesome, though--only game(s) that I think come close are the N64 Legend of Zelda games (in terms of music being a game mechanic).

 

[anvi]

Bards are awesome, it was my first character, really fun and unique. It's the only class that can use magic while moving, all the spell casters have to stop to cast spells. Bard can run fast and use songs at the same time so it was exciting to play. They could do cool things too. They could kill stuff solo in 3 or 4 completely different ways, I made huge progress using the Charm song. But they also had a fear song, plus snare and haste for yourself, let you hack down big enemies by yourself while they ran in fear. And the craziest way was to run around at high speed and do tiny amounts of damage to all enemies nearby. More and more enemies bunched up behind you in a chase and you had to stay out of reach or die instantly. It took a while but your song would chip away and you could kill hundreds of enemies in one go.

But they way it was supposed to be played was in a group. You are supposed to fit into any group and make them better. So like if you find yourself in a group with lots of melees, then you could sing an anthem that gave you all haste and another song that boosted everyones strength and dex. But if you were in a group full of casters then you could just focus on the mana song and such. I used to help out with melee most of the time, but if the group had good melee players then I would put my weapons away and use an instrument which gave a big buff to the rest of the group. Bard could even sleep enemies which only a few classes could do. They had a lot of other good tricks too.

The Bard in Vanguard (spiritual sequel to EQ) was amazing too. More advanced design with song construction and stuff. Not sure if it was as fun to play in reality though. It probably was.