MagicalMaster wrote...
FunkySwerve wrote...
If you want to see a fully balanced caster, you need to supply them with meaningful choices, which means making enough spells useful in your pw/mod, as well as bringing all spells into a rough power alignment by level.
How are you differentiating "fully balanced" as opposed to "balanced?"
Think plain english meaning, both here and below, in the context of the post. As in, balanced in multiple dimensions - as it relates to all the various monster attributes I mention, and all the spells - balanced against the opposition, and the other spell alternatives competing for the slot. You could also speak in terms of balanced for PvP purposes, but that piles on even more difficulty (and is where, frankly, HG is the weakest - we have a widget that applies some pretty severe penalties to ac, and more moderate ones to saves, for PvP purposes, but then, we were never aimed at being a PvP server). My comment stressing 'fully' balanced casters aimed to contrast previous remarks in the thread, which were extremely one-dimensional in outlook. To rephrase, I was pointing out that the problem of caster balance is much more complex than it might appear at first blush.
You could make a mod where every mob was immune to every wizard/sorcerer spell except Ice Storm and IGMS after level 20 or something (Ice Storm for AoE and IGMS for single target). That's a whopping two spells available but it still offers more of a meaningful choice than many places and could be balanced. You might argue that it would be rather boring to have one AoE button and one single target button, but that is not directly related to power balance.
Actually, it IS directly related to balance, and this bears on a remark you make below, so I'll elaborate. One- (or two-) trick-ponies are inherent balance problems, preceisely because they are either overpowered or useless, depending on the area - even a very focused class, like our
Bloodfire Mage. Neither is particularly fun for players as a group, because players of underpowered characters don't feel like they're contributing, and players of partymemebers in a party with an overpowered character feel like they're just along for the ride. Rephrased, some breadth of ability is critical to overall balance of a class setup.
This is a problem we've had to deal with extensively when setting up our quasiclasses, like the aforementioned Bloodfire Mage. Previous incarnations of the BFM quasi were extremely powerful in some areas, and useless in others - creating a severe balance issue. We fixed this by toning down the overpowered abilities and adding in some additional ones. The quasi is currently quite unpopular as a result, as many of the people who enjoyed playing it have a hard time adjusting to the new power level, despite the additions. This is also a pretty common phenomenon with nerfs - we've had players leave over similar nerfs, even ones which were plain-on-their-face-necessary, like a nerf to our Turner subclass (think
redone turning mechanics). This is yet another of the aforementioned dimensions of balance - player psychology (and probably the biggest pain in the rear). Put a speed cap on your porsche and it's suddenly not so fun, even if it can still drive the same speed as the other cars in the race.
FunkySwerve wrote...
At the same time, it also means ensuring that any one tactic, be it damage spam, death spam, summon spam, etc, is never consistently rewarded.
Define "rewarded."
To elaborate, a player should not be able to rinse, wash, repeat the same tactic everywhere with a high degree of success. Such play is boring in the extreme, removing all semblance of tactical play, and requires little to no skill. Games should have some learning curve if you want to engage players for more than a short time - but that's diverting from balance to broader game design theory. I'm just trying to point out some of the reasons WHY balance is important.
To me, the idea of being able to use damage spells, death magic spells, and summons equally effectively everywhere (or as close to it as possible) sounds like the definition of balance (if it's achievable).
. This is the one-dimensional approach to balance I was taking issue with. Making all classes viable and/or balanced is not the same as making them all equally successful in every area. Balanced does not imply nor require homogeneity. In fact, you can't do much in terms of class diversity with this approach, because classes of a more limited scope MUST be better at some things only some of the time. That's a bit nebulous-sounding, so let me offer a more concrete example.
If we were, per your notion of 'balance', to make death magic equally effective everywhere, we could no longer have undead - OR turners, both because you would no longer have undead (or indeed other racial distinctions, as a secondary consequence), and because you could not sustain classes of more narrow scope. Phrasing that last bit a different way, to the extent you adhere to 'balance' qua homogeniety, you narrow class diversity to almost nil. As a corrollary to that, you also might as well name all your creatures 'Pablum' (or 'Khao', with a nod to Hangover2
'> ) from a tactical/gameplay perspective. You make all classes equal by making them all the same. Yes, this is balance, but at the cost of all meaningful distinction - all combat would be equally effective for all, but all would be playing essentially the same class.
If that sounds extreme, it's true not just in theory, but in practice, and not just when talking about casters. Consider, by way of example, the desire to make all melee weapons equally effective against all foes. You would have to ensure that all creatures have equal amounts of resistance to B, P, and S - bye bye skeletons, oozes, plants, etc. Further, you could not use varied amounts of resistance, because this would favor either dex or str builds. You would either have to calculate the precise mix of immunity and resistance required to make dex builds and str builds have equal dps (resistance is far more hurtful to dexers, obviously, and without further tweaks or offsets, you wouldn't be able to use it all), or you'd have to toss out the str/dex distinction. It's worth noting that this way isn't easier than the more holistic approach I'm suggesting, despite the simplicity, as you have to utterly remove all distinguishing class/build characteristics, in the end.
The trick with melee weapons doesn't stop there, either. Unless you equalize all crit ranges and damage amounts, you're going to have disparate outcomes there as well. Worse still are things like dual weilding vs two-handing vs shields. If you want to allow more damage output for use of a second weapon, you must penalize defense to offset build power, but that results in more disparate outcomes, since more attacks per round will fare better againt monsters that have trouble hitting the player - otherwise, the shield is more valuable. Wanting equal outcomes there means we have to kill monster ab distinctions. And, of course, dualers would hit more often against lower-ac critters (they have a lower net ab bc of offhand bonuses), so you would etiher have to set all critters at a level-adjusted ac that yeilded roughly equivalent dps, or you would have to toss out 2-hander vs dualing vs sword-and-board, and force all characters to use the same setup.
And, before you suggest that all this talk about melee weapons is inapposite to the discussion of casters, consider that many summons are melee-oriented. All of these balance considerations are inextricably linked, often in very complex ways. Instead of aiming for equal outcomes for every type of attack in every area, you should simply aim for roughly equivalent build power overall. This approach allows for diversity in a way that yours simply does not, as I hope I've amply demonstrated above.
I'll phrase it one more way to drive the point home. So long as we want variance in ac, ab, resistance, saves, and the myriad other traits that make creatures distinctive in combat, and have since the basic boxed sets in one way or another, we must allow for certain attacks to be more or less effective against them. And, even if we try to balance the various class options across each area, there are simply far too many factors to consider to arrive at a perfect balance for all. Instead, we must allow some classes to do better in some areas. Of course, this also opens up a whole host of new build diversity. Generalist powers are by definition more powerful than specialist powers, so we can increase the power of a specialist's ability to offset. This applies to formulation of entire builds and quasiclasses, as well. If we're making a quasi that's got a wide range of abilities that apply to a broad spectrum of foes, they must of necessity be less powerful than the abilities of a class that is more limited in number or targetability of abilities. We can't go too broad or too narrow, either - there's a happy medium with a limiited range. Thus, we can have both both generalist and specialist. By contrast, to the extent that you adhere to the homogeneitous version of 'balance' you suggest above, you cannot.
That regardless of which route you go and what style of spellcasting you prefer, you're not at a disadvantage OR advantage. An evoker is roughly equivalent to a necromancer is roughly equivalent to a conjurer is roughly equivalent to a person using the full spectrum of spells.
These two sentences highlight the confusion I'm seeing. 'Roughly equivalent' is more what I'm advocating, but it's a far cry from styles of spellcasting not creating dis/advantange. That is to say, I'm advocating for 'roughly equivalent' across the mod as a whole, not within each area, which is simply unworkable/undesirable for the reasons I higlight above.
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it seems to me like you seem to be saying a person who likes using Evocation spells should be rendered nigh worthless in some areas and incredibly powerful in others.
Replace 'likes using' with 'only uses' or 'can only use', and you're reading me half right. This is a more extreme case than what I'm advocating. I'll offer another example, keeping to vanilla rules: even an evoker specialist CAN use other spells, and a player that DOES make use of such spells in addition to his area of speciality, where appropriate, SHOULD fare better than one who does not. This MUST be true unless those additional abilities are meaningless/too weak to be useful (and thus negiligible in terms of class diversity). Likewise, he MUST fare worse than classes who are more specialized at dealing with those particular foes, as evocation spells are, generally speaking, of fairly broad targetability/scope. If, for example, a turner is unable to deal with undead more efficaciously than the evoker, his class/build is itself negligible in terms of diversity and class balance - it might as well not exist, since no one is going to play it when the evoker exceeds it in both scope and power (and thus overall power). This does NOT mean, as you suggest, that the evoker must be 'useless', only less useful, against those particular enemies - and that's important. Unless you accept the existance of the in-between values in addition to the binary useless/uber, you just can't have specialists and generalists, and all the diversity that accompanies.
Or are you saying that if you have a baseline of 100% effectiveness, that in some areas some spells should make you 150% effective as a bonus but everything else is still 100% effective? Even if this is the case - why? That seems to be an argument for flavor which is coming at the expense of balance, not helping it.
This is much closer to what I'm advocating, yes. But it's not coming at the expense of balance, just taking a necessarily broader view of balance - modwide, rather than area- or creature-wide.
Consider WoW, for a moment, where the focus of a mage is "damage spam" as you called it. Are you suggesting that you think casters in WoW cannot be balanced because "damage spam" is consistently rewarded?
I've never played WoW, so I can't really comment on it specifically, other than to say that many of our players who have played WoW have remarked on the fairly limited set of class roles it offers. You seem to be mis-extrapolating from my remarks, however. If 'damage spam' is the only behavior that is rewarded, which I doubt, then WoW would be definitionally imbalanced. If, however, 'damage spam' is the only behavior for a GIVEN class that is rewarded, you could still have balanced play, if fairly tactically uninteresting play. Ideally, you would want that damage caster to wear a number of hats - perhaps stopping to help a knocked-down friend get up, perhaps using said damage to draw aggro away from a threatened friend - and so on. You would also want a learning curve, requiring the use of multiple spells, rather than just a single 'most damaging spell (think vanilla IGMS), and the acquisition of knowledge concerning various opponents. But that's getting somewhat far afield of your question.
FunkySwerve wrote...
This means creating a variety of critters with things like...varied damage resistances/immunities...This requires intelligent, targeted spellcasting, even when you give players access to powerful spells.
Again...why? Where's this "intelligent, targeted spellcasting" when you say "Okay, instead of spamming Firebrand 15 times I'm going to spam Cone of Cold 15 times?" How does that improve *balance?* Are you saying that every monster having identical resistances/immunities would inherently *unbalanced?* That would seem to be an interesting arguement to make.
Yes, that's actually pretty close to what I'm saying, though the 15 firebrands vs 15 cone of colds misses the point. Consider instead 15 firebrands vs 3 firebrands, 2 chain lightnings, 5 ice storms, a clarity, a heal pot, an elemental shield, a dimension door, and 2 more brands. This example assumes a much greater diversity of balancing factors - not just balanced damage types, but also balanced offensive and defensive needs - assuming the character will need to do more than just offense, due to challenging spawn composition. Even that just touches a couple of bases. Have they also buffed their allies with elemental weapon buffs pre-combat? Might they not dispell a hostile confusion or fear effect with the proper spell? And so on.
What I'm saying is that there are two problems with every monster having identical resistances/immunities. First, it'd be incredibly dull (and, as I talk about above, the lack of diversity wouldn't just stop at the spawns). Second, yes, it would be inherently imbalanced. Suppose you have them all at 20 resists on all damage types. You just hosed all your dexers, and gave a heaping helping of awesome to high damage packet classes like casters, critters, and str builds. Or, conversely, suppose said creatures all had SR requiring a level-appropriate caster to pray for a 5 or 10% chance fail roll. Well, your casters are gonna hate you, but you just solved some of your high-damage packet issues (though not all). In the end, you simply cannot create a single set of stats that will treat all build types equally - which is why you would have to homogenize your build types to acheive that kind of balance. To see a very simple example of this impossibility, pick this critter's level-appropriate ac. Simply by picking it, you've determined what weilding style you're going to favor. Too low, and dualers will deal too much damage. Too high, and they'll deal too little. You could PROBABLY, absent any other considerations, work out a golden mean balancing 2H and Shield styles. The problem is, you DO have other considerations. You then, for example, have WMs to worry about, as well as an classes that have a different tier of ab (I vs II vs III - a single level-appropriate ac that's balanced for tier 1s is too high for tier 2s, killing any hope of, for example, them dualing effectively). Unless they're all weilding the same weapon, your WMs are going to be doing too much dps - the limit of a single weapon type is meaningless when all enemies have the same defensive profile. Instead of trading off weapon type disadvantages against some foes for higher ab, it no longer matters the type they use. The diversity inherent in the classes demands a matching diversity in spawn types, or the whole system is thrown out of whack (or you throw out said class diversity, at which point we're no longer really talking about the same game).
Funky
Modifié par FunkySwerve, 24 décembre 2012 - 08:15 .
