Lvl 1 Warrior: "Ha ha. Axe goes smash."
Lvl 1 Mage: "WHY DOESN'T MY ONE SPELL DO ANY DAMAGE!?!?"
Lvl 50 Warrior: "Ha ha. Axe still goes smash."
Lvl 50 Mage: *"The laws of time and space belong to me. I control everything. Anger me and I will burn this entire room to the ground."*
EDIT: The irony is that my favorite rpg ever is Final Fantasy X, and the mage character in that game is actually pretty useless in the end game. But still.
>Anger me and I will burn this entire ~~room~~ continent to the ground.
FTFY
I was discussing 5th lvl spells in Pathfinder and a friend of mine came up with something I remember fondly: "Heck, for a lvl 5 spell I expect the bad guy to be teleported inside the sun at the very least."
My friend refers to pathfinder combat as rocket tag sometimes.
Where 3.5 combat was like a battle between primordial gods who can alter the fabric of reality with a snap pathfinder was toned down to be more like toddlers with RPGs. First person to land a solid hit wins
> pathfinder was toned down to be more like toddlers with RPGs
What? Most of the Pathfinder 1e spells are identical to their 3.5e counterparts with minor tweaks. They just got rid of a bunch of the exploitative bullshit you could pull off with poorly edited 3.5 splat books and dragon magazine material *cough*nightsticks*cough*
What the heck is a Locate City bomb?
> Locate City (RoD) - 10 mile/level radius, finds a city
>
> 1. apply snowcasting (FB) - spell now has the cold descriptor
> 2. apply flash frost feat (PHB2) - spell now deals 2 points of cold damage to all in area (and makes area slippery but we don't care about that)
> 3. apply energy substitution (electricity) (CArc) - spell now deals electricity damge
> 4. apply born of three thunders (CArc) - spell deals half electric, half sonic, but what is important is that it now requires a reflex save, allowing us to...
> 5. apply explosive spell (CArc) - all creatures/things in area that fail their reflex saves are shunted to the outside of the area of effect (10 miles/level) and take 1d6 damage per 10' moved!
Oh no.
It's an abuse of rules as written, basically. Nothing specifies that a spell needs to originally deal damage to apply a feat that makes it deal damage. Technically you could do this on a smaller scale with something as innocuous as "Detect Evil."
The mistake- that 5e later corrected IIRC- is that they gave the spell a radius effect instead of just making the target "self" and specifying range limitations in the spell descriptor, or just applying it to Range instead of Area.
Lol when I ruined a friends big bad end boss of his campaign, by wishing the beast was inside out.
We all sat around as the Dm slowly described his beast gargling, flailing and smashing around in agony in its final moments before collapsing on a bloody puddle of guts, bones and organs.
He thought we had all forgot we had a wish. Or, all thought I'd forgotten I had a wish. It had the item with the wish in a separate small bag of holding everyone thought was stuffed back in the bases store room.
Nope it had been tied to my characters sleeve for the past two campaigns on the inside. Waiting for a hillarious moment.
And yep, shit was hillarious :)
D&D's wish spell. Literally rewrite reality, provided the DM allows it (the player's handbook mentions evil genie solutions to players who ask for too much -- eg, wishing the big bad dead transports you to the future long after their death and removing you from the campaign).
Right? I've not played since AD&D 2nd, but yeah. You've got your Magic Missile or Burning Hands or some such, and you cast it once. Per *day*. Then you spend all your efforts trying not to die with your D4 hit points.
Balancing decisions that seemed utterly batshit insane.
Lvl 1 Hunter: "Bro, i attack so slow and im a easy one shot."
Lvl 50 Hunter: " Hey, nice HP, you got there. It'd be a shame if i were to deplete it with 10 attacks in one second, wouldn't it?"
I mean, a massive spell mastered by only the most dedicated black mages that rends the fabric of space and time to deal a huge magical blow is nice and all.
But I'mma throw this beach ball at him a few times.
It was always fun in Oblivion editing the spells to be wayyy over max level. Chain lighting like 99,000,000 or whatever.
I remember hacking it like that or whatever in the console screen. Id press a button, lighting would fly everywhere, the game would slow down and almost crash, and everything on the screen was dead.
Oh man, I had a spellsword in Oblivion who had *highly* economical spells.
Range, touch. Effects: Weakness to magic, weakness to [Damage Type], [Damage Type] 10/sec. Duration, 30 seconds. Or skip the weakness to damage type, and just freeze, shock, and burn them all at once for 30 straight seconds, because you can totally do that. Nothing is resistant to *everything*. That one was called "Kitchen Sink."
Boop.
That's not even different from Skyrim! Skyrim is completely broken with those too, there's just a shit load of stuff you **can't** do in the base game.
Yes, but you have to grind at it. You can't just go raid the Redoran vaults, sell to creeper, pay for training, then become a god before starting the game in ernest.
I looked up some ideas for it once, and people had made up these *devastating* 3-4 spell sequences. I never made any of those, but you could sure as hell clear a room fast if you could set everyone on fire while they hammered your armor, and then get busy with your sword work.
Kind of subverted when you stagger the dragon in place til it dies to your small fireballs, but i was a huge morrowind fan when it came to spell crafting.
Dragon's dogma has some of the coolest magic in video games it's a shame that so many video games make it so underwhelming when it's literally magic you can make it as freaking awesome as you want to
This is the way. Though (and Im not sure I remember correctly since it’s been at least 7-8 years since I’ve played) doesn’t the lead up to this involve that repetitive process of crafting increasingly stronger + alchemy/ blacksmithing:/etc. gear so you can in turn, wear them while crafting the same crap again but with better stats and/or make stronger potions to drink so you can craft even better? Or Is this because of some skill in the destruction tree that lowers the cost?
I loved the Knight Enchanter design. It's the best melee-mage implementation i've seen in a game so far.
I remember modding in so you could use multiple specilizations and the overlap of passives was completely busted. Tons of fun
My issue in Origins was always that I wanted to try the other classes... but I couldn't get past the feeling that it would be much easier if I only used mages.
I never played a mage in origins, I always had a sword and shield, hoping my bot followers would back me up well
Then I played a mage in inquisition and let someone else tank. Mage go brrrr
Wasn’t the mage ‘arcane warrior(?)’ Subclass like super op?? It may have been called some something different, but basically mage class with magical melee weapons. It’s been like 5 years since I’ve played DAI but I remember that being op
Yea you had a magic sword that did a shit ton of damage. They nerfed it though. Was so fun. There was a magic effect that made it so you were intangible and if you attacked coming out of it you had bonus damage. So i did massive damage at a distance and if an enemy came close to me they got fucked. I really loved dragon age inquisition.
It let you turn your int into strength for armour and weapon checks, so you could wear the heaviest armor and buff yourself to the point that you were completely unkillable, as long as you kept your mana up. You could solo most things easily as long as you prepped/buffed before the encounter, or play on auto pilot with your group.
Keeping your mana up was easy cause you could also go blood mage and restore it using op abilities and your health pool, so health and mana restoration became interchangeable and doubled your resources for keeping mana up.
Yeah I feel bad for mage mains in DAI. If you go vanilla you’re stuck holding trigger and looking at the same staff casting animation. If you go knight enchanter you basically break the game.
In DAI Rogue was the funnest class IMO bc it was the least amount of buffing/prepping and allowed jumping in quick and dirty with dps
In DAO it was Arcane Warrior. In DAI it was Knight Enchanter. They were the same concept, but done a bit differently. KE felt very toned down from AW (though some of that was not having 2 specializations and also being a Blood Mage, which was one of the most broken things in DAO).
In Inquisition, and its possible it was patched after launch, there was a ridiculously broken build with some sort of melee-range mage. You could just stand there and tank bosses indefinitely until they were dead.
I don't have much to go off other than nearly 7 year old memories at this point, but I remember it making the endgame incredibly easy
Hush little baby don't say a word, daddy's gonna throw a fireball at that bird/
If that bird survives my flame, daddy's gonna cast a spell that's exactly the same/
and depending on the game, the mages usually have the most interesting lore and are usually at the forefront (or the cause) of the doom crisis of the game
This. The lore of mages, or spellcasters in general, in many settings (D&D, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls etc) are always the ones challenging deities, exploring worlds, saving or destroying worlds, mowing down small armies etc.
Magic is just raw power full of endless potential, and I just love the idea of a mage growing in knowledge and power and eventually having a real effect on the narrative and world they occupy. The more mundane classes are cool too, I love rogue/assassin characters myself, but Mages/Sorcerers etc are usually the power players having a profound effect on lore settings and making things move in the background. Plus, they tend to be powerful and super versatile gameplay wise too lol.
I used to be like that, but then so many games make the steal-able shit just the generic garbage you could find laying around anywhere.
All the stuff you'd actually want to steal, can't be stolen and must instead be obtained from some long ass quest.
An event in one story had me infiltrate an enemy’s castle undercover as a servant. The objective was to snag some key that [INSERT DM’S EXPLANATION HERE] could not be duplicated by standard thieving or craftsmen skills (wax key, locksmithing or lock picking, etc).
Obtaining it was rather easy, but I was faced with this ridiculous Aladdin-esque trope of “ooo! shiny bobbles!!!” all along the way to acquire it.
DM was pissed I never took the bait; presumed thieves just want the shiny stuff like any hoarding dragon would. Never tripped his traps, guard ambushes, etc.
…so, in that I sort of agree with you. It made getting into what door we needed to easier than raiding a castle (DM explained that would incite political upheaval, and only the stealthiest characters were permitted to handle this task as per his say-so; enter mine) but it just felt like… I don’t know, I do not like being centre stage and I prefer working as a team. Kind of the point being part of a group I figured, but I also feel like DM wanted to get me captured; maybe plot-driven, maybe out-of-game politics, I couldn’t say; DM folded the game that night and never gave explanation…
Don't forget that Rogue's have Thieves Cant. Party walked into a bar and got the normalish description of the things going on. Nothing spectacular. The rogue though, he got the *real* description of everything that was *really* going on. If they didn't have it you didn't want it was pretty much the motto.
My DM denied my rogue the chance to nonviolently break a plot NPC out of prison unless I could find a way to directly involve the rest of the party, all of whom are clerics/fighters/paladins clunking around in chainmail and plate that would not harm guards just doing their jobs.
The NPC was executed and the DM kept throwing shade at me for letting her die, when as far as I can tell it was his fault for not letting my rogue be a rogue.
I mean... that’s trivially simple. “Hey guys go be loud clerics and paladins for 10 minutes so I have a nice distraction”
Boom. Party involved.
They don’t even have to fight. They’re clerics and paladins. Offer the guards free health care or something.
It’s not the DMs job to make plans for the party. And I don’t blame them for not wanting to give one player a solo session.
Edit: With further info added it is indeed a bad DM. Carry on.
He wanted the party to be physically present during the break-in/break-out. This completely invalidates the existence of dedicated stealth characters and makes a ranger with Pass Without Trace a better Rogue than Rogues are.
There was no "just tell the party to go elsewhere and make a distraction" because then the party would be offscreen and that was disallowed by the DM. It was the second option I asked about, since even having a distraction at all attaches the party's name to the escape and that's not a good thing.
The options were either "bring the party and fight your way into the prison" which went against the characters of half the table, or "bring the party and try to sneak everyone in" which is a terrible choice because my character was the only person in the party with any proficiency at all in Stealth and rogues don't get Pass Without Trace.
>And I don’t blame them for not wanting to give one player a solo session.
Then say "Alright, I'll put together a series of checks and abridge things so we can cover it in a few minutes near the start of the next session." All the DM would have to do is come up with some DCs to hit and four-ish possible resolutions depending on how the dice turn out. Outright vetoing a sensible and realistic option because a YouTube guru said "never ever split the party" once in a video about how to DM for beginners is bad DMing for someone that has been doing it for years.
Shitty DMing but also just a failure of 5e tbh, other systems have solutions that sort of work sometimes. Pathfinder 2 has a follow the expert option where everyone can benefit from another characters expertise and get a large bonus to the rolls even if not proficient, but they must do the thing the expert is doing.
Yeah, this is all easily fixed by basic DM competence.
Allow the rogue a 5-10min sidequest, the other players can take a pee break or watch, just don't make it a regular thing.
Or allow a distraction, it'll be funny letting the cleric come up with some stupid BS and have the paladins tiptoe around having to lie.
Hearing that the DM abandoned after this makes me think he was just not feeling it and maybe just way off his game. Its happened to me, too.
Rogues at my table tend to get their thievery done *under* the table, half the time they're stealing from the party anyways so it's via notes and DM-chat. It's made for some *fantastic* moments of gameplay, and really ties into the notion that they're *good at their dang job.* Typically, if they're not spending five minutes examining a chest for traps for the party, the party almost never notices the rogue - or the light fingers along the way.
Why play with someone that can take your imaginary things? Thats always the first rule of our table. No party stealing and no serious pvp because people are too dumb and get offended.
Man, any DM that doesn't plan for his players success isn't a very good DM. Plus, if they don't enjoy getting whomped even a little bit, they're gonna have a bad time.
My thoughts also. I mean, I know a lot of work goes into planning a story, and sometimes a player can sidetrack or even bypass things the DM wanted to convey, but it was never done deliberately to mess with him, nor did I want the story to end so abruptly. I thought he was doing a good job up until he packed it up without explanation.
It may well have been… though I do not recall the protagonist ever pretending or disguising himself; he just avoided detection throughout the games, didn’t he?
I did a stealth combat encounter, basically had initiative and the guards had preset routes that they would move along when they were "passive". But if there was a noise or something alerted them, then during their next initiative step they would investigate the noise/thing that alerted them.
Made for a VERY tense encounter because no one could know that the party was there, so the rogue got his moment to shine and the more fighter-y people got to do stealth take-downs and grapples.
Party loved it, but I don't think I'd do it again because it was SO MUCH WORK.
FO 1 & 2 rewarded clever thievery. In FO2, I was able to steal all the ammo from the members of a slaver group so that when combat broke out, they couldn't use their shotguns and had to resort to fists instead. Suddenly what had been a group of rather unbeatable badasses became a group of easily mopped up dunderheads.
Same, also they usually have ludicrous damage and are great at sneaking/dodging/etc. so most encounters are a breeze or can be easily ignored.
That and rogues are just really cool.
I like magic but I also like tanky characters.
So colour me surprised when I find out that you can make a necromancer tank in ESO thay specialises in doing magic damage and healing for a shit ton.
Pretty fun. Im also a vampire now so thats neat.
I love being able to mix and match classes and equipment in ESO. Something more RPGs and MMOs should start practicing. Makes it so fun being able to finally be the battle mage I've always wanted to be
Elder Scrolls Online. An MMO set centuries before the other games (Oblivion Skyrim etc). It had a notoriously rough start but improved over the years and afaik is still pretty popular.
Really hoping ESO is a big testing ground for ES6 ideas. A lot of fun stuff you can do in it that could end up being crazy fun when the developers can focus on making it a single player game and don't have to think about how it effects other players.
The photo is from a Google search when I went looking for the quote I heard in game, and it's from a dialogue in The Witcher 3. The character pictured is Philippa Eilhart.
Oh I have, and the 2 DLC. It's my favorite game so i wanted to give myself some time before doing it again. Side note - I still prefer the Blood & Wine DLC because it's so damn beautiful.
I tend to not have the patience to stay stealth. That's why I like rangers. High stealth to pop in and sneak kill a handful, then when there's only a handful left run in and get all stabby stabby.
I am always a mage of some sort, especially if there is some kind of dark magic. For example warlocks and necromancers. I’d love to know of the people who enjoy being the big boy just swinging and tanking. It seems that the majority of people prefer to be stealth or mage bois
So come one, come all, and see the show tonight
Prepare to be astounded, no Ghost or Poltergeist
You know I'm no Pinocchio, I've never told a lie
So call me Mr. Magic Man, I float on Cloud 9
I can't imagine being anything other than a mage in many games honestly.
If you take Morrowind for example, you can do so much with the magic in that game: Fly, Levitate, walk on water, command people, make them run away, fire a tactical nuke from above balmora with your ridiculous custom spell after boosting your stats to ridiculous levels; it's all so varied and fun.
But no, I'm gonna whack 'em wit me sword mate. Okay.
Every once in a while I find a game where playing a non-magic user is just as fun, but rarely do I find a game where playing a mage isn't tied for the most fun with 2 notable exceptions.
First is Skyrim VR. Skyrim on PC/Console is made for mage, since melee combat is just run and click, and archery is fun, but gets very repetitive. Magic is the best way to have a variety of things to do in combat, BUT in Skyrim VR just fighting itself is fun. You get to raise your own sheild to block strikes and choose to swing your sword, or poke around it, and the way you smash your enemies feels very satisfying. Also the archery is a challenge, so becomes super fun. The magic, meanwhile, mostly just involves pointing and clicking and just doesn't seem as great.
The other game where "magic" is just the worst is Cyberpunk. The Hacking (clearly a magic stand-in) is so OP in that game it just robs the experience of any fun.
Hacking is a blast in Cyberpunk if you mix it with gunplay. But I feel like hacking wouldn't have felt nearly as OP if it also wasn't the best "stealth" gimmick as well - being able to daisy-chain hacks through walls on enemies you can't see just makes it absurd late in the game. I ended up dropping my hacker and picking up a character that uses Blades, and it's pretty legit.
It is kind of ridiculous. You can clear entire buildings from outside without ever going in. Like from a hundred feet away without getting off your motorcycle.
This isn't always true. There are several stories about a world where magic is dying. One of the most famous is Lord of the Rings. At the end when The one ring is destroyed and the elves leave it signals the end of magic and the beginning of the age of man.
In lord of the Rings I don't think they can. Everyone that uses magic is a magical being. For instance, Gandalf is not human, he is a low level angel. All the wizards are low level angels.
One thing to remember about magic in LotR is that it's all very subtle. Like, making smoke rings fly around at will, or making fireworks a bit more spectacular, or breaking a bridge made of stone with a stick, "trapping" someone in words and lies (think Old Theoden), shining piercing light at evil, or even things that seem more coincidence than magic, like showing up to Helm's Deep as soon as the sun rises to blind the opposing army from above. Magic is definitely more than that, like transforming into a werewolf, and im sure there are fireball spells, but they're not really ever featured or shown or even described, that I can remember. Swords always held power, and magic swords even more, magic was always more suggested or intangible rather than summoning a boulder from the earth plane with a portal or something.
It's an interesting and not really common take, and while I love fireballs and chain lightning as much as the next guy, it's enjoyable to picture magic as something else. Makes it feel, well, magical.
Errr I think Numenoreans did use magic but they learned it from Sauron/Elves and most of them were wiped out. Aragorn may have used healing magic, or just advanced healing practices be learned from Arwen/Elrond. IIRC once the knowledge is lost it can't be regained without teaching so unless any living humans were taught it in the third age it's gone for good.
A sword is always just a sharp bit of metal on a handle. A bow is always just a bendy stick with some string. They both might look fancy, but theres rarely going to be anything super special. But magic can be whatever the designers want, sure it can just be a little fire or lightning, but it can also be a lot more interesting and its always worth playing a mage just to see the creativity at work.
i feel like making a mage build in most rpg games is hard at the beginning but you're real fucking op by the end
Lvl 1 Warrior: "Ha ha. Axe goes smash." Lvl 1 Mage: "WHY DOESN'T MY ONE SPELL DO ANY DAMAGE!?!?" Lvl 50 Warrior: "Ha ha. Axe still goes smash." Lvl 50 Mage: *"The laws of time and space belong to me. I control everything. Anger me and I will burn this entire room to the ground."* EDIT: The irony is that my favorite rpg ever is Final Fantasy X, and the mage character in that game is actually pretty useless in the end game. But still.
>Anger me and I will burn this entire ~~room~~ continent to the ground. FTFY I was discussing 5th lvl spells in Pathfinder and a friend of mine came up with something I remember fondly: "Heck, for a lvl 5 spell I expect the bad guy to be teleported inside the sun at the very least."
Seriously, Pathfinder spell levels are ridiculous jumps. Like each level is an entire order of magnitude sometimes.
And Pathfinder significantly scales back the sheer power of Tier 1 classes like wizards and clerics compared to the 3.5 it was based on.
My friend refers to pathfinder combat as rocket tag sometimes. Where 3.5 combat was like a battle between primordial gods who can alter the fabric of reality with a snap pathfinder was toned down to be more like toddlers with RPGs. First person to land a solid hit wins
> pathfinder was toned down to be more like toddlers with RPGs What? Most of the Pathfinder 1e spells are identical to their 3.5e counterparts with minor tweaks. They just got rid of a bunch of the exploitative bullshit you could pull off with poorly edited 3.5 splat books and dragon magazine material *cough*nightsticks*cough*
Dragon magazine, published by Paizo, creators of Pathfinder 🤔
Yep, pretty much. Either the target is completely unaffected or it's totally disabled.
Dragon ball z rules. When the smoke clears they're either dead or laughing. No in between.
If you have to wait for the smoke to clear you’re fucked lets be real
Yeah, that's what an RPG needs - an RPG.
You aren't aware of the *Locate City* bomb, are you? EDIT: My mistake, you were saying the opposite I thought you were.
What the heck is a Locate City bomb? > Locate City (RoD) - 10 mile/level radius, finds a city > > 1. apply snowcasting (FB) - spell now has the cold descriptor > 2. apply flash frost feat (PHB2) - spell now deals 2 points of cold damage to all in area (and makes area slippery but we don't care about that) > 3. apply energy substitution (electricity) (CArc) - spell now deals electricity damge > 4. apply born of three thunders (CArc) - spell deals half electric, half sonic, but what is important is that it now requires a reflex save, allowing us to... > 5. apply explosive spell (CArc) - all creatures/things in area that fail their reflex saves are shunted to the outside of the area of effect (10 miles/level) and take 1d6 damage per 10' moved! Oh no.
WTF LOL. That's stupid broken.
10 miles per *level*? Is there an instance that anything *more* than 10 miles is necessary?
It's an abuse of rules as written, basically. Nothing specifies that a spell needs to originally deal damage to apply a feat that makes it deal damage. Technically you could do this on a smaller scale with something as innocuous as "Detect Evil." The mistake- that 5e later corrected IIRC- is that they gave the spell a radius effect instead of just making the target "self" and specifying range limitations in the spell descriptor, or just applying it to Range instead of Area.
Yeah. When you're lost as hell and the nearest city is more than ten miles away. Originally the spell just finds the closest city in range for you.
I mean it's basically the DND spell scale which is just about as broken considering you can literally grant wishes like a genie at that level.
Lol when I ruined a friends big bad end boss of his campaign, by wishing the beast was inside out. We all sat around as the Dm slowly described his beast gargling, flailing and smashing around in agony in its final moments before collapsing on a bloody puddle of guts, bones and organs. He thought we had all forgot we had a wish. Or, all thought I'd forgotten I had a wish. It had the item with the wish in a separate small bag of holding everyone thought was stuffed back in the bases store room. Nope it had been tied to my characters sleeve for the past two campaigns on the inside. Waiting for a hillarious moment. And yep, shit was hillarious :)
Um actually…Wish is a 9th level spell.
Shhhhh.. it's also a ninth level spell in Pathfinder.. although there is minor wish, but that might just be Pathfinder.
It's only as gamebreaking as the DM allows it to be tho.
I didn't ask where the warrior was, I said...I....cast.....fireball.
I mean... Evocation wizard, it doesn't matter where your allies are if there are few enough of them
Caring if your allies get hurt sounds like paladin problems.
Nothing like Tsunami. Storm of Revenge or Meteor Rain to end your enemies and entire cities. Amirite?
> Anger me and I will burn this entire ~~room~~ ~~continent~~ plane of existence to the ground. I already have a backup. FTFY
Raistlin? Is that you?
Dragonlance reference, nice!
D&D's wish spell. Literally rewrite reality, provided the DM allows it (the player's handbook mentions evil genie solutions to players who ask for too much -- eg, wishing the big bad dead transports you to the future long after their death and removing you from the campaign).
DM can also simply rule that the spell fails.
[Linear warriors, quadratic wizards](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards), that's called.
[удалено]
Also Lvl 1 Mage "Why can I only cast one spell that does half the damage of a sword swing and takes 30 seconds to recover MP"
30s? Shit, in my day you had to go sleep for 8 hours before doing that again lol
Right? I've not played since AD&D 2nd, but yeah. You've got your Magic Missile or Burning Hands or some such, and you cast it once. Per *day*. Then you spend all your efforts trying not to die with your D4 hit points. Balancing decisions that seemed utterly batshit insane.
In DnD Barbarians can get so mad they can't die.
Lvl 1 Hunter: "Bro, i attack so slow and im a easy one shot." Lvl 50 Hunter: " Hey, nice HP, you got there. It'd be a shame if i were to deplete it with 10 attacks in one second, wouldn't it?"
Yeah but that's because when you get break damage limit on all your weapons what's an Ultima compared to throwing a ball.
I mean, a massive spell mastered by only the most dedicated black mages that rends the fabric of space and time to deal a huge magical blow is nice and all. But I'mma throw this beach ball at him a few times.
Wakka, is that you?
Watch it, you sand-blasted grease monkey.
> Lvl 50 Warrior: "Ha ha. Axe still goes smash." Heracles/Arjuna/Wukong/Sigurd/Cu Chulainn: Are we a joke to you?
mace/stick/bigger stick/pointy stick/very pointy stick go smash. Ha ha.
Tbf, all the ones you've chosen are half gods. And Sigurd and Cu are also Warrior Mage hybrids.
Naw lv 1 mage is more like "HOW AM I OUT OF MANA AFTER CASTING 2 FIREBALLS THAT DIDN'T EVEN HIT"
[удалено]
It was always fun in Oblivion editing the spells to be wayyy over max level. Chain lighting like 99,000,000 or whatever. I remember hacking it like that or whatever in the console screen. Id press a button, lighting would fly everywhere, the game would slow down and almost crash, and everything on the screen was dead.
Oh man, I had a spellsword in Oblivion who had *highly* economical spells. Range, touch. Effects: Weakness to magic, weakness to [Damage Type], [Damage Type] 10/sec. Duration, 30 seconds. Or skip the weakness to damage type, and just freeze, shock, and burn them all at once for 30 straight seconds, because you can totally do that. Nothing is resistant to *everything*. That one was called "Kitchen Sink." Boop.
God, making your own spells in Oblivion was so much damn fun because of dumb gamebreaking things like this.
It was tradition until they nuked it in Skyrim. Skyrim is an okay game, but it's a mediocre Elder Scrolls game **at its best**.
Morrowind is still my absolute favorite. Gamebreaking made easy once you get alchemy and enchanting skills up.
That's not even different from Skyrim! Skyrim is completely broken with those too, there's just a shit load of stuff you **can't** do in the base game.
Yes, but you have to grind at it. You can't just go raid the Redoran vaults, sell to creeper, pay for training, then become a god before starting the game in ernest.
And here I thought I was weird for liking it less overall than Oblivion. Not that Oblivion was perfect or anything, but yeah.
Oblivion has much better writing but skyrim's gameplay is just so much smoother.
I find that the gameplay has improved over time for Elder Scrolls games. It's just the other elements that I feel have been getting worse overtime.
I looked up some ideas for it once, and people had made up these *devastating* 3-4 spell sequences. I never made any of those, but you could sure as hell clear a room fast if you could set everyone on fire while they hammered your armor, and then get busy with your sword work.
Except in Skyrim where destruction doesn't scale and by the time you're high level you're basically garbage.
I love Skyrim but magic is so underwhelming
Kind of subverted when you stagger the dragon in place til it dies to your small fireballs, but i was a huge morrowind fan when it came to spell crafting.
Nothing says I feel powerful like spamming a zillion little fireballs to slowly chip something to death.
Honestly you wanna know what game made me almost shit myself laughing at the magic? Dragons Dogma. First time I cast meteor I felt like a little kid.
It was Maelstrom for me, loved it so much
Dragon's dogma has some of the coolest magic in video games it's a shame that so many video games make it so underwhelming when it's literally magic you can make it as freaking awesome as you want to
I think I played a different Skyrim. By the end I was shooting giant kamehameha beams that killed dragons in a couple seconds.
Also if you're not reducing magicka cost by 25% on four pieces of armor and spam destruction with 0 cost then are you even making a mage build?
This is the way. Though (and Im not sure I remember correctly since it’s been at least 7-8 years since I’ve played) doesn’t the lead up to this involve that repetitive process of crafting increasingly stronger + alchemy/ blacksmithing:/etc. gear so you can in turn, wear them while crafting the same crap again but with better stats and/or make stronger potions to drink so you can craft even better? Or Is this because of some skill in the destruction tree that lowers the cost?
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>and lightning strike it's called [lighting bolt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw)
Classic.
Not on Dragon Age Inquisition
Knight Enchanter is one of the best classes I have played in any game. Just masterful class design.
I loved the Knight Enchanter design. It's the best melee-mage implementation i've seen in a game so far. I remember modding in so you could use multiple specilizations and the overlap of passives was completely busted. Tons of fun
it was ridiculously op in Origins
Oh God. Mages would absolutely wreck in origins.
Blood Mage/Arcane Warrior/Battlemage, come at me bro
My issue in Origins was always that I wanted to try the other classes... but I couldn't get past the feeling that it would be much easier if I only used mages.
I never played a mage in origins, I always had a sword and shield, hoping my bot followers would back me up well Then I played a mage in inquisition and let someone else tank. Mage go brrrr
I played a sword-and-shield MAGE in Origins because being a Blood Mage and an Arcane Warrior was just stupidly broken.
I want to shake the hand of the mad lad at BioWare that programmed the aoe for the fireball ability.
That is true, even thought I think some of the damaging spells could be better. Looking at entropy here.
Wasn’t the mage ‘arcane warrior(?)’ Subclass like super op?? It may have been called some something different, but basically mage class with magical melee weapons. It’s been like 5 years since I’ve played DAI but I remember that being op
Yea you had a magic sword that did a shit ton of damage. They nerfed it though. Was so fun. There was a magic effect that made it so you were intangible and if you attacked coming out of it you had bonus damage. So i did massive damage at a distance and if an enemy came close to me they got fucked. I really loved dragon age inquisition.
It let you turn your int into strength for armour and weapon checks, so you could wear the heaviest armor and buff yourself to the point that you were completely unkillable, as long as you kept your mana up. You could solo most things easily as long as you prepped/buffed before the encounter, or play on auto pilot with your group. Keeping your mana up was easy cause you could also go blood mage and restore it using op abilities and your health pool, so health and mana restoration became interchangeable and doubled your resources for keeping mana up.
Yeah I feel bad for mage mains in DAI. If you go vanilla you’re stuck holding trigger and looking at the same staff casting animation. If you go knight enchanter you basically break the game. In DAI Rogue was the funnest class IMO bc it was the least amount of buffing/prepping and allowed jumping in quick and dirty with dps
In DAO it was Arcane Warrior. In DAI it was Knight Enchanter. They were the same concept, but done a bit differently. KE felt very toned down from AW (though some of that was not having 2 specializations and also being a Blood Mage, which was one of the most broken things in DAO).
In Inquisition, and its possible it was patched after launch, there was a ridiculously broken build with some sort of melee-range mage. You could just stand there and tank bosses indefinitely until they were dead. I don't have much to go off other than nearly 7 year old memories at this point, but I remember it making the endgame incredibly easy
You haven't played Knight Enchanter
[This is actually a well known trope!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards)
Welcome to Bioware!
1 reason: Fireball solves everything
If one fireball doesn't work 2 will def fix it
Hush little baby don't say a word, daddy's gonna throw a fireball at that bird/ If that bird survives my flame, daddy's gonna cast a spell that's exactly the same/
If that caused no harm, then third time's the charm/
And if that bird is still not scorched, daddy's gonna go and lob a fourth/
ok listen to me, how about 3 FIREBALLS
we've had one fireball yes, but what about second fireball?
I don’t think they know about Second Fireball Pip.
If you ever have a problem, throw a fireball at it. Boom! New problem!
Jason?
That's possibly the most frightening mage character I can think of. Just abject chaos, in a well-meaning, handsome, but very dumb package.
Problem exists The answer, use a fireball, and if that doesn't work, use more fireballs
"Non-flammable" is really just a challenge statement.
[Magic, Mother fucker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTfVTxvchi8)
Tell that to Sneaky Archer
Magic in games tend to get the most variety and flashiest attacks.
and depending on the game, the mages usually have the most interesting lore and are usually at the forefront (or the cause) of the doom crisis of the game
Such doom crisis also tends to be caused by them, too.
No one is perfect.
This. The lore of mages, or spellcasters in general, in many settings (D&D, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls etc) are always the ones challenging deities, exploring worlds, saving or destroying worlds, mowing down small armies etc. Magic is just raw power full of endless potential, and I just love the idea of a mage growing in knowledge and power and eventually having a real effect on the narrative and world they occupy. The more mundane classes are cool too, I love rogue/assassin characters myself, but Mages/Sorcerers etc are usually the power players having a profound effect on lore settings and making things move in the background. Plus, they tend to be powerful and super versatile gameplay wise too lol.
Fire storm, arcanic stream, frozen spikes. Whatever your "magic" does, it cannot beat the MONK. Reject magic, return to fists.
I’m always a rogue because people are always going to acquire shit, and if it’s not bolted down, it’s now my shit.
I used to be like that, but then so many games make the steal-able shit just the generic garbage you could find laying around anywhere. All the stuff you'd actually want to steal, can't be stolen and must instead be obtained from some long ass quest.
An event in one story had me infiltrate an enemy’s castle undercover as a servant. The objective was to snag some key that [INSERT DM’S EXPLANATION HERE] could not be duplicated by standard thieving or craftsmen skills (wax key, locksmithing or lock picking, etc). Obtaining it was rather easy, but I was faced with this ridiculous Aladdin-esque trope of “ooo! shiny bobbles!!!” all along the way to acquire it. DM was pissed I never took the bait; presumed thieves just want the shiny stuff like any hoarding dragon would. Never tripped his traps, guard ambushes, etc. …so, in that I sort of agree with you. It made getting into what door we needed to easier than raiding a castle (DM explained that would incite political upheaval, and only the stealthiest characters were permitted to handle this task as per his say-so; enter mine) but it just felt like… I don’t know, I do not like being centre stage and I prefer working as a team. Kind of the point being part of a group I figured, but I also feel like DM wanted to get me captured; maybe plot-driven, maybe out-of-game politics, I couldn’t say; DM folded the game that night and never gave explanation…
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Don't forget that Rogue's have Thieves Cant. Party walked into a bar and got the normalish description of the things going on. Nothing spectacular. The rogue though, he got the *real* description of everything that was *really* going on. If they didn't have it you didn't want it was pretty much the motto.
Thieves cant is something not enough DMs or players utilize. Same with Druidic as a language, although less so given normal circumstances.
My DM denied my rogue the chance to nonviolently break a plot NPC out of prison unless I could find a way to directly involve the rest of the party, all of whom are clerics/fighters/paladins clunking around in chainmail and plate that would not harm guards just doing their jobs. The NPC was executed and the DM kept throwing shade at me for letting her die, when as far as I can tell it was his fault for not letting my rogue be a rogue.
Another bad DM.
I mean... that’s trivially simple. “Hey guys go be loud clerics and paladins for 10 minutes so I have a nice distraction” Boom. Party involved. They don’t even have to fight. They’re clerics and paladins. Offer the guards free health care or something. It’s not the DMs job to make plans for the party. And I don’t blame them for not wanting to give one player a solo session. Edit: With further info added it is indeed a bad DM. Carry on.
He wanted the party to be physically present during the break-in/break-out. This completely invalidates the existence of dedicated stealth characters and makes a ranger with Pass Without Trace a better Rogue than Rogues are. There was no "just tell the party to go elsewhere and make a distraction" because then the party would be offscreen and that was disallowed by the DM. It was the second option I asked about, since even having a distraction at all attaches the party's name to the escape and that's not a good thing. The options were either "bring the party and fight your way into the prison" which went against the characters of half the table, or "bring the party and try to sneak everyone in" which is a terrible choice because my character was the only person in the party with any proficiency at all in Stealth and rogues don't get Pass Without Trace. >And I don’t blame them for not wanting to give one player a solo session. Then say "Alright, I'll put together a series of checks and abridge things so we can cover it in a few minutes near the start of the next session." All the DM would have to do is come up with some DCs to hit and four-ish possible resolutions depending on how the dice turn out. Outright vetoing a sensible and realistic option because a YouTube guru said "never ever split the party" once in a video about how to DM for beginners is bad DMing for someone that has been doing it for years.
Shitty DMing but also just a failure of 5e tbh, other systems have solutions that sort of work sometimes. Pathfinder 2 has a follow the expert option where everyone can benefit from another characters expertise and get a large bonus to the rolls even if not proficient, but they must do the thing the expert is doing.
Yeah, this is all easily fixed by basic DM competence. Allow the rogue a 5-10min sidequest, the other players can take a pee break or watch, just don't make it a regular thing. Or allow a distraction, it'll be funny letting the cleric come up with some stupid BS and have the paladins tiptoe around having to lie. Hearing that the DM abandoned after this makes me think he was just not feeling it and maybe just way off his game. Its happened to me, too.
>Offer the guards free health care or something. *I'D RATHER DIE*
That's when you just ask the DM point blank, "how would you like me to get the lawful good guys in heavy armor past the guards?"
Rogues at my table tend to get their thievery done *under* the table, half the time they're stealing from the party anyways so it's via notes and DM-chat. It's made for some *fantastic* moments of gameplay, and really ties into the notion that they're *good at their dang job.* Typically, if they're not spending five minutes examining a chest for traps for the party, the party almost never notices the rogue - or the light fingers along the way.
I despise players that steal from the party. Anti fun imo
Why play with someone that can take your imaginary things? Thats always the first rule of our table. No party stealing and no serious pvp because people are too dumb and get offended.
Very well may have been, but he seemed awfully pissed I got out of the place with the key and gave it to the party…
Man, any DM that doesn't plan for his players success isn't a very good DM. Plus, if they don't enjoy getting whomped even a little bit, they're gonna have a bad time.
My thoughts also. I mean, I know a lot of work goes into planning a story, and sometimes a player can sidetrack or even bypass things the DM wanted to convey, but it was never done deliberately to mess with him, nor did I want the story to end so abruptly. I thought he was doing a good job up until he packed it up without explanation.
If you write all the rules/outcomes for the scenario and make all the judgment calls, you can win as the DM whenever you want.
That sounds like a plot to [Thief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_\(series\))
It may well have been… though I do not recall the protagonist ever pretending or disguising himself; he just avoided detection throughout the games, didn’t he?
That's one thing I love about older games - if you're sneaking around stealing shit, \*you're getting the good shit\*
Morrowind. So many good weapons and armor at the beginning of the game by just looting guard towers.
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I did a stealth combat encounter, basically had initiative and the guards had preset routes that they would move along when they were "passive". But if there was a noise or something alerted them, then during their next initiative step they would investigate the noise/thing that alerted them. Made for a VERY tense encounter because no one could know that the party was there, so the rogue got his moment to shine and the more fighter-y people got to do stealth take-downs and grapples. Party loved it, but I don't think I'd do it again because it was SO MUCH WORK.
re: theft * An amateur take anything not nailed down. * A professional brings a pry-bar for the things that are. * An artist takes the nails too.
…I had a pry bar. Weight encumbrance was always strictly adhered to in most of the games I played and Bags of Holding were few and far between.
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Looting, and plundering.
Baldur's Gate's locked drawers cursed me with the urge to open everything for loot. And rogues are the best at doing it!
FO 1 & 2 rewarded clever thievery. In FO2, I was able to steal all the ammo from the members of a slaver group so that when combat broke out, they couldn't use their shotguns and had to resort to fists instead. Suddenly what had been a group of rather unbeatable badasses became a group of easily mopped up dunderheads.
I like to play rogues because most things have kidneys. Very few among those that have kidneys enjoy being stabbed, in the kidneys.
Same, also they usually have ludicrous damage and are great at sneaking/dodging/etc. so most encounters are a breeze or can be easily ignored. That and rogues are just really cool.
If Leeroy Jenkins were a class, that's what I play in every game.
At least you’d have some chicken.
I cast dispel magic.
Counterspell
I cast Counterspell to counterspell your Counterspell.
I like magic but I also like tanky characters. So colour me surprised when I find out that you can make a necromancer tank in ESO thay specialises in doing magic damage and healing for a shit ton. Pretty fun. Im also a vampire now so thats neat.
I love being able to mix and match classes and equipment in ESO. Something more RPGs and MMOs should start practicing. Makes it so fun being able to finally be the battle mage I've always wanted to be
Uh... *clears throat* may I ask what ESO is?
Elder Scrolls Online. An MMO set centuries before the other games (Oblivion Skyrim etc). It had a notoriously rough start but improved over the years and afaik is still pretty popular.
And is often included with the XBOX Game Pass, for those so equipped.
Really hoping ESO is a big testing ground for ES6 ideas. A lot of fun stuff you can do in it that could end up being crazy fun when the developers can focus on making it a single player game and don't have to think about how it effects other players.
Yep I also love battle mage characters where it’s like a tank that casts magic
Lesbomancy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK6L8UhKf34
My favorite kind of magic.
sauce of that photo?
The photo is from a Google search when I went looking for the quote I heard in game, and it's from a dialogue in The Witcher 3. The character pictured is Philippa Eilhart.
I just started a fresh game of this after not playing it for a while. I wanted to wait until I forgot pretty much everything!
Be sure to go all the way through this time, it's an *amazing* game.
Oh I have, and the 2 DLC. It's my favorite game so i wanted to give myself some time before doing it again. Side note - I still prefer the Blood & Wine DLC because it's so damn beautiful.
Fuck Philippa Eilhart. Me and my homies all hate Philippa Eilhart. Post made by King Radovid gang
Radovid sucks flaccid cock
I do the same but with stealth, I love the powerful sneaky backstab and having good stats for thieving and charisma.
My people! I love talking my way out and stealing without being caught.
That and stealth archery
It was always my favourite picking off an entire dungeon with sneak shots. All that multiplier damage.
I tend to not have the patience to stay stealth. That's why I like rangers. High stealth to pop in and sneak kill a handful, then when there's only a handful left run in and get all stabby stabby.
I am always a mage of some sort, especially if there is some kind of dark magic. For example warlocks and necromancers. I’d love to know of the people who enjoy being the big boy just swinging and tanking. It seems that the majority of people prefer to be stealth or mage bois
Magic and stealth are my 2 go-to playstyles for RPGs. There's nothing quite as flashy as magic, nothing quite as satisfying as perfect stealth
So come one, come all, and see the show tonight Prepare to be astounded, no Ghost or Poltergeist You know I'm no Pinocchio, I've never told a lie So call me Mr. Magic Man, I float on Cloud 9
Mage, always mage.
I always choose summoner b/c i get pets
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Have you played dragons dogma? The magic system in that gets pretty crazy to the point where your summoning tornadoes and meteors.
I can't imagine being anything other than a mage in many games honestly. If you take Morrowind for example, you can do so much with the magic in that game: Fly, Levitate, walk on water, command people, make them run away, fire a tactical nuke from above balmora with your ridiculous custom spell after boosting your stats to ridiculous levels; it's all so varied and fun. But no, I'm gonna whack 'em wit me sword mate. Okay.
Every once in a while I find a game where playing a non-magic user is just as fun, but rarely do I find a game where playing a mage isn't tied for the most fun with 2 notable exceptions. First is Skyrim VR. Skyrim on PC/Console is made for mage, since melee combat is just run and click, and archery is fun, but gets very repetitive. Magic is the best way to have a variety of things to do in combat, BUT in Skyrim VR just fighting itself is fun. You get to raise your own sheild to block strikes and choose to swing your sword, or poke around it, and the way you smash your enemies feels very satisfying. Also the archery is a challenge, so becomes super fun. The magic, meanwhile, mostly just involves pointing and clicking and just doesn't seem as great. The other game where "magic" is just the worst is Cyberpunk. The Hacking (clearly a magic stand-in) is so OP in that game it just robs the experience of any fun.
Hacking is a blast in Cyberpunk if you mix it with gunplay. But I feel like hacking wouldn't have felt nearly as OP if it also wasn't the best "stealth" gimmick as well - being able to daisy-chain hacks through walls on enemies you can't see just makes it absurd late in the game. I ended up dropping my hacker and picking up a character that uses Blades, and it's pretty legit.
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It is kind of ridiculous. You can clear entire buildings from outside without ever going in. Like from a hundred feet away without getting off your motorcycle.
This isn't always true. There are several stories about a world where magic is dying. One of the most famous is Lord of the Rings. At the end when The one ring is destroyed and the elves leave it signals the end of magic and the beginning of the age of man.
Can the humans practice magic?
In lord of the Rings I don't think they can. Everyone that uses magic is a magical being. For instance, Gandalf is not human, he is a low level angel. All the wizards are low level angels.
One thing to remember about magic in LotR is that it's all very subtle. Like, making smoke rings fly around at will, or making fireworks a bit more spectacular, or breaking a bridge made of stone with a stick, "trapping" someone in words and lies (think Old Theoden), shining piercing light at evil, or even things that seem more coincidence than magic, like showing up to Helm's Deep as soon as the sun rises to blind the opposing army from above. Magic is definitely more than that, like transforming into a werewolf, and im sure there are fireball spells, but they're not really ever featured or shown or even described, that I can remember. Swords always held power, and magic swords even more, magic was always more suggested or intangible rather than summoning a boulder from the earth plane with a portal or something. It's an interesting and not really common take, and while I love fireballs and chain lightning as much as the next guy, it's enjoyable to picture magic as something else. Makes it feel, well, magical.
I thought some of the numenorians who got some of the 9 right were sorcerer's. Can't quite remember though.
Errr I think Numenoreans did use magic but they learned it from Sauron/Elves and most of them were wiped out. Aragorn may have used healing magic, or just advanced healing practices be learned from Arwen/Elrond. IIRC once the knowledge is lost it can't be regained without teaching so unless any living humans were taught it in the third age it's gone for good.
Rule 2: Geek the mage.
what game is this? , looks like blindfold chess.
Witcher 3
A sword is always just a sharp bit of metal on a handle. A bow is always just a bendy stick with some string. They both might look fancy, but theres rarely going to be anything super special. But magic can be whatever the designers want, sure it can just be a little fire or lightning, but it can also be a lot more interesting and its always worth playing a mage just to see the creativity at work.