Spellcaster loot and mages looking magical

[Paha]

You also got to remember things like not having to deal with AC, fireproof hitting, magical/elemental dmg that often pierces, sometimes is blocked by protection.

On top of it all magic has that bang-factor with one hit dmg. Small spells are alread achievable for reasonable price, like the cantrip. Magic missile could maybe be thrown into the pile to find a bit more variety, but all to all I don't see why mages should have to be able to fire dozens of spells at every corner to seem more magical.

On other hand you can crudely ditch fellow tankers and say you ain't giving out magic or buffs. Then you got plenty more to spare for occasional explosions, and they are often quite helpful. There are limitations and benefits for everyone, and this just happens to be one for mages on top of so many things that they can benefit from already.

[Egon the Monkey]

Your spells will run out of bang before my axe runs out  of sharp, or my bag runs out of potions.

It's about being able to deal with the unexpected. A mage PC of a decent level can easily prep to be able to blow up a melee class or unleash doom on the first wave of an invasion. However they're then usually hosed when melee Class/wave #2 or #3 turns up because they might have HP and dispel wands to spam but they're out of affordable damage powerful enough to knock past CSW chugging.

Most  duels, heck most of EfU:A comes down to consumables, but you can't acquire the class-specific ones in useful variety on a mage. Yes, scrolls, but they are the most expensive consumable and they take a round to read, which is not good for aiming, unlike wands. If every Wizard had as many fireball shots as fighters had haste potions... I know there's Observatory, but that level range is limited.

As for "Oh shit every Rogue has a II wand" the idea would be to make only direct damage wands cheap but with fewer uses, so your average wizard could pick from Fireball/Lightning bolt if there was an urgent need for extra firepower, but for example a rogue would prefer to just sneakattack free of charge. I generally try and acquire Imp Invis and Stoneskin Scrolls ASAP anyway for emergencies. it's just not cost effective for offence.

A big reason that I liked playing a meleemage, Si Brisen, was 75% of my spells went up and stayed there. Short of a dispel I could be ready to fight a second guy in combat, and have a couple offense spells in my spare slots to use on the fly. Demonstrated that quite nicely by subbing someone, then beating up a his friend, a high level Ranger twice in a row, a feat I could not have accomplished if he had used spells as his main form of attack as I'd have ran out on account of using his Firebrands and other good stuff in the first fight.

[Drakill Tannan]

Even if you have a weapon that always hits and there is no protecting against it, but it does 1d4 damage and swings once per round, a longsword is better.

I agree with egon that level 2 & 3 wands should be cratable with less charges at a proportional cost. However, level 1 wands are not cost-effective, even if you could craft them charge per charge. 24 gold for 6 damage, 4gp for 1 damage is just not right.

Doesn't matter though, if quests actually begin to drop wands wich charges of offensive level 1 spells and such.

[Howlando]

Spellcasters are underpowered in the same way that druids with their grease spell were underpowered when you were a new player, Drakkil.

[Egon the Monkey]

I don't think anyone would argue that  arcane spellcasters are underpowered Howl.  They are however, prone to running out of steam more so than other classes due to a combination of easy potions and the rest timer. A Cleric out of spells can keep on truckin' using potions and cheaper selfbuff wands, and his spells will mostly be selfbuffs that stay up. He'll be like a weak Fighter with cure wands.
Wiz/sorc PCs on the other hand have a very limited store of ammo and when they run out, no reserve beyond stuff a Bard could use. An alternative idea maybe would be an expensive (500 gold?) item allowing an arcane PC to regain spells anywhere immediately but which can only be used once every 2 RL hours or so. A 'reload' consumable, allowing you to re-prepare for the unexpected. Planning sounds great but won't save you from a battle of attrition, PVP brewing up when you set up with quest spells etc.
Wands don't cut it there unless you're running a small fortune's worth. It's the lack of variety. I like having stuff like Color Spray, Dispel, Seeing, Blur, Hold (although Immunity Ahoy) and maybe Acid Arrow for general use, but they take good time to acquire.  For the  3 grand of a 25 shot Fireball I could get a stash of haste and displacement pots and a couple of L2 wands, and my PC would likely never need to use 25 shots of Fireball. Your new quests that drop more straight-up gold are good there as it's often quite hard to persuade players "give me more gold, as I'm not competing for bull's potions"

@Drakill
Cantrip wands are hilariously cost-efficient. They won't do much against targets a your Fighter buddy can drop in 2 rounds but they are brilliant to spam against stuff with low HP/concealment, to kill Goblins or to plink away at stuff with high HP. I used to make 1-2 Acid wands each time I did Trolls. You can easily have 1 of each damage cantrip and be ready to exploit elemental weaknesses on mobs.

[Drat]

Here's how it is. In the eyes of Fayil

Its a low magic world, We know it We see it. Low magic, right-- Get ready for my rant.

Let's imagine that everyone fits into three roles that have NOTHING TO DO with roleplay, fostering conflict and general awesomeness for a second. Let's call these three roles 'Tank, DPS and Support' Now I Know what your thinking. This is starting to sound alot like a MMORPG right? Well bear with me, because its different. Its like rock paper scissors with gray in the middle kids, this is how we roll here on NWN.

First lets talk about everyones favorite example of a badass. A fighter? seriously? If were talking pure fighter they'll range from DPS to TANK depending on how they do up their feats. But I know a multiclass of fighter and somthing else make amazing tanks and decent DPS, but you know what. That's all they can do. They can drink their potions! Bastards! Well they would have alot less of them if you didn't sell them to them. It's cool, we appriciate it really but we pay what is it now, 180 coins for one potion of haste? What does it cost a wizard to cast haste in the middle of a pvp confrontation? 1 coin? When you think of how great your mighty underachiever the fighter is in pvp, consider yourself capable of doing up to 180 damage in 6 seconds, hypothetically at level 10. Lets count off what any 'tank' would have on him if he was even prepared. 40 DR to that? If you cant kill him in the first round you can finish him off with something else, Trust me.  These are AOE spells too keep in mind, so if you linem up right they'll fall down like bowling pins.  Tank's are ROCK (Get it? it's the beginning of a pun)

Next we'll talk about our boys in chainmail (woot) and leather(cowards!) They're our scissor's, they normally do alot of damage and can keep on trucking doing whatever the hell theyre supposed to do. Whether it be sneak attacking or raging on peoples faces with a MASSIVE SCYTHE (kungatar) I generally fit Barbarians Rogues and Rangers into this category, in general order of amount of damage dealt. They flank, theyre the 2nd best at pvp when the fighting is dirty, and easily the best at player vs quest. They hold the raw chopping power, the utility of listen spot search, lots of skill checks that can go a long way. Taunt is amazing against everything. Scissors don't have the raw defense of the rock's, in a even match in a vacuum Scissor's are probably going to lose unless they get some amazing rolls. But thats not what they're there for. They have their niche like the rocks, and they do it well.

Now we get to paper the man of the hour, the one people like to complain about when it's bad but enjoy every honeyed second of it when its good.
Pure spellcasters (clerics excluded) Low magic worlds are your playground, because your the guy's who can blow shit up. EFU gives you this kind of power, and gives you more. There are many MANY things that give you more spellslots, I think i've seen a guy with nine level 1 spellslots before. NINE, you don't get that many without alot of levels and int/wis/cha whatever normally. Those other boys, they've got some low level spells and whatever but you got them by the balls. They need you and they know it, they can piss on each other all they want but they ain't going on them hard quests without you. So you can take what you want and not have to answer for shit. As far as raw PVP mechanical power goes, pure casters win out. As mentioned earlier, a level 10 pure wizard can dish out about average 150 damage in 3 rounds with the right feats. I'm not counting perks since I have no idea how those work.  I imagine they're beastly, since planar lock is amazing. Why do you whine when they want your buffs? They're pathetic worms who cant even hurt a magical pair of boots without you. 'That rogues reflex save is too high, I cant beat him in PVP with elemental damage' I have a plan, Enervation Enervation Phantasmal killer. No? Well, if he didn't make his saves on the enervations his saves are now much lower.

'I can't be effective in quests with damage spells because I can only bring two fireball's'

Let's look at that for a minute, and for a moment remember that every one of those goblins, orcs whatever is 'supposed' to be a living breathing entity in our world. You just snuffed out or mortally wounded 4-10 of them by wiggling your fingers.

Your weak, your a pansy your a Pure caster that wears a dress, live with it. You can fill any roll you want. DPS (Evocation) Support (Buff bot) at higher levels you can be a TANK! Extended blur + Emp cats, bulls, endurance + what? Polymorph? Troll for regen, Umber Hulk for FACE BREAKING power. The best wands are wands that don't scale and have a disabling or stat lowering effect. Example: Negative energy burst, Curse, Enervation? Druids are counted as pure casters, but instead can do 270 max damage at level 9 in 6 seconds. If its raining, on  tuesday, during a leap year when the moon is full.

Did you know that alot of people are barely able to carry all their stuff? Unless they have storage of course. A little strength drain after a dispel might be all they need to start crawling after you.

I'm really sorry for my rant, I realize now its super long and I apologize to the internet.

Clerics are somewhere between fighter and caster that somehow turn into wrecking ball fusion of the three once they hit level 8.

Bard's are the bastard child and needs to find a niche with every generation.

Fayil out.

[Drakill Tannan]

...yes. When you can forsee what's about to happen.

[Echigo]

There are rally a couple of issues here. One is the way supply bloat massively favours AB classes, especially full BAB/arcane device usage multiclasses. Buff spells from items rarely lose anything from a low Caster Level except duration, whereas offense spell power is linearly related to CL and scroll DC is always lower than casters'. This means that a scroll of Haste is brilliant for PVP or dealing with an ubermonster, whereas one of Magic Missile or Flame Arrow, less so. Evokers are definitely useful, but it depends often on the quest. For example, someone with acid or fire spells is brilliant on Trolls. They also get screwed by players that don't work well in a team. For example doing a quest at a permanent run and then whinging when an icestorm falls on their head because they ran into Ground Zero, or complaining because you darknessed some archers into uselessness, but they can't see to hit them. Offense mages are hard to play well, but incredibly rewarding if you get in a faction or find a good quest team.

Now, there are 2 bits of loot I'd like to bring up as being very useful to an arcane spellcaster. One is the Abjurer's Wand. a 30 charge lesser Dispel wand with a massive UMD score to prevent use by bards and rogues. It's a great leveller against potions, as a shot can be expected to remove half. More of this sort of thing. The second is the Fang-Totem of Strength off Snakes. a multi-charge Bull's Strength (3) item restricted to arcane casters. Why is this handy? Because if you have a buff charge item you're guaranteed to get, rather than the fighter, it means you can forget Bull's and just prep a couple of Clouds of Bewilderment or Combust. On a similar line, my mages tend to hoard unrestricted Bull's (10) items and use them on long quests so they can take more flamewep. All my mages have a store of the same potions my melee chars do when they can afford it, with the exception of AB buffing pots. And I use them, because I'd generally rather have a Burning Hands or Colourspray with high damage and DC, than save an Ironguts pot.


So. My 2 penn'orth. In order to see more offensive mages and promote doing more than hiding at the back, the following things would work wonders:

• Sorc/Wiz only items for common melee class buffs as a drop on most quests. Stuff on the same sort of power level as the Barb/Ranger/Druid totems, but with high UMD. Maybe stick a "do not use if you are not a pure wiz/sorc" on them. Have these in good supply and more people will think about doing something that's not buffing with their slots.
• More class-restricted offense items,  especially X/day ones for low-level spells that are more useful in PVE than PVP. X/day items are things that you want to use rather than waste the chance to, so they get people practicing with offence spells, seeing the uses. Gloves with 2/day Burning Hands (2) for example. I've said it before, but my favourite DM loot ever was a 1/day Fireball (5) device, because if I wanted to use it, I couldn't just hide in invis. Of course, it wasn't excessively powerful by itself, but that meant I might as well use a few coloursprays too, and so on. Yes there are offensive items, but they get burned out fast, plus most of the ones with plenty of uses are Eb0l Necromancy, and thus ICly restrictive.
• Unlimited/day cantrip items must be the commonest DM loot about, but IMO they should simply be rare quest drops. Such weapons keep a caster firing. Even low damage is still useful and more importantly, active. They are not PVP scary or gamebreaking, so why restrict them? Make a Light Crossbow, No Damage, Unlimited Use, offence cantrip. It's a considerable weight, more so than the 0.3 lb DM loot items, but handy.
• More high level short but intense quests or more quests with a Part 2 where you can rest beforehand. Short quests heavily favour blowing stuff up because you're not worried about having enough invis or blur to last the whole quest.

Despite all what I've said, one thing above all else helps you play an offensively rigged mage. Grow A Pair :P. Yes your wizard *could* go and prepare a buff load out, but why should he? His specialty's summoning, or explosions, or mental assaults. Refuse to ever prepare more than MW, wards, and a couple of statbuffs or flamewep, and tell teams "If you want that, get another mage". Make it abundantly clear you're not the buffmage they're looking for but a new and interesting support PC. It also helps if you have Heal and make herbs, or you have Lockpick or trap disabling, or some other support skill that teams want. Do your supposed job well, and players will want your PC around.

Fuck.. That's win. I second this.