Telekinesis and wizards are overpowered.

Which is good.

One thing I really hate, particularly when it comes to fantasy RPGs, is this moronic notion that equitable balance is both preferred and necessary, so I absolutely do not want to see magic or telekinesis nerfed--especially considering how those complex systems represent the "core" of the DOS experience.

I don't think anyone is going to play the game without a magic-user, and if anyone does, they'll be playing the game wrong, wrong, WRONG. Well, outside of intentional challenges I suppose.

The ideal fantasy combat system would use a asymmetric balance. The guy who says "I can hit things with a club. Hard." should always be a less valuable combat asset next to the guy who says, "I can explode anything. With my mind."

An good example of asymmetric balance is Baldur's Gate II, where magic-users are--by far--the most powerful damage-dealers in the game, but are balanced by the Vancian magic system and extremely defensive capabilities--making them glass cannons, or glass nukes (at higher levels). They're further balanced by being extremely weak for a long time (until they advance far enough to memorize a fair number of higher level spells).

Alternatively, a good example of equitable balance is Skyrim. Remember how magic is implemented in Skyrim? No? That's okay--you probably never used it after the first few tries. Essentially, magic was nerfed (to an insane degree) to "balance" with melee skills, to the point where tossing a fireball at a magical creature conjured out of ice would do the same amount of damage as hitting it with a club, and where basic melee often dealt significantly BETTER damage than magic against everything.

....

So, how does all this apply to DOS?

I'm saying I don't think the versatility or potency of the magic or abilities needs to be changed. Any balancing that occurs (and some balancing should occur) should be focused on the cooldown timers. I'd suggest increasing fireball cooldown by 50%, for example.

A couple ideas of what more could be done with cooldowns:

-Cooldowns could "pause" at the end of combat and "resume" at the start of the next combat action. That way, instead of being able to use the most powerful spell at the start of every encounter, players would be encouraged to think more carefully and use their magic more sparingly--lest they find themselves in a difficult battle with no powerful spells to use (right away), because they wasted them burning crabs.

-Cooldowns could persist in the non-combat mode. It would achieve a similar effect to the first idea, but would also effect how players just mess around with the world. Telekinesis, for example, would become an ability that could only be used sparingly, instead of the constantly-ready tool of mischief it is now.

........

Also, as for the difficulty in clicking on NPCs or chickens... DOS needs a pause button. Every top-down RPG needs a pause button, IMHO, where you can issue commands w/ the game world frozen in time. Makes things a lot simpler.