Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
#576125 24/11/15 01:54 AM
Joined: Aug 2014
old hand
OP Offline
old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
Loremaster isn't very interesting in D:OS. It's useful on a first playthrough to discover enemy strengths and weaknesses, though most of the information is intuitive or easily figured out anyway, and on a second playthrough you won't need that information as much. Abilities should stay relevant through multiple replays as much as possible. Maybe AI and enemy stats in D:OS 2 will be more varied, semi-random somehow so information will be always useful, but not sure about that.

Identifying items is nice, but boring. It's just a balance between ability point sink vs. gold and time sink. With a more balanced economy, a gold sink might incentivize loremaster more, but it's still doesn't add much.

Here's my ideas to improve Loremaster. These are only really balanced with loremaster bonuses not appearing on loot. I will try implementing them in D:OS1 once the editor is released to see how they play out:

A certain amount of points in loremaster lets you not consume skillbooks on use. While this might seem minor on first glance, it lets you customize your skill rollout for every fight if you want without sinking tons of money into skillbooks. This will be especially useful with all the crafted skills there will be in D:OS 2. One way to balance it is to make higher level skills require higher loremaster to not consume them.

Loremaster could give you a chance to recover scrolls on use, like arrow recovery. Could be a talent with a loremaster requirement, or it could just be a percentage of your loremaster skill, 8-10% per point invested or something.

Scrolls could even require loremaster to use. Or at least some scrolls, like a superior resurrect scroll that revives people with more health.

I think that would be sufficient to make Loremaster worth investing in and more entertaining. On a roleplay level, situations where you can identify old and magical things would be cool too.

Joined: Jan 2014
enthusiast
Offline
enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2014
Maybe have it like a background trait or something? Like something that you'd choose at character creation (only) and it'd allow you to identify ancient magical things as well as common shit that you find on the battle-field.

In general, I figure it would take years if not decades of training and experience to be able to identify shit at a glance, so anything that wouldn't just be a skill point sink would be good in my book. Possibly have only specific vendors able to identify things, and even then, only up to a certain degree; and possibly have it where higher level object identification requires a hell of a lot more gold, possibly even reagents for a vendor to identify it.

Joined: Aug 2014
old hand
OP Offline
old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
It's as unbelievable as developing any skills over the game. Just pretend you're tapping into innate, magical knowledge or something. It'd be kind of neat if unidentified items had most of their stats revealed, but identifying it would open up a final stat or two. That way, identifying items wouldn't be mandatory, but it'd be a bonus. Agree that only a select few vendors should be able to identify items, but not sure how expensive it should be. Too expensive, and loremaster is basically mandatory. Too little, and there's little point in investing in loremaster for that reason. But that's why I think loremaster should provide other bonuses so it's not just a goldsink vs timesink thing, but actually provides you combat benefits.

Another idea:

Loremaster 2 and 3 each let you learn one novice skill outside your ability investment with no AP penalty, so you could learn a witchcraft novice spell as a warrior. Loremaster 4 and 5 let you learn an adept spell outside your ability investments with no AP penalty. Stat penalties would still apply,

Another idea:

Loremaster 4 or 5: Skill bonuses on items have less or no AP penalty for not having the appropriate skill tree. Probably just reduced penalty by 2 skill levels or something, so an item that grants a spell with recommended level 3 in a tree would only have a +2 AP cost to cast.


Moderated by  gbnf, Kurnster, Monodon, Stephen_Larian 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5