Hi guys! I just read the whole thread and wanted to throw in my own few thoughts...
So far I was playing a mage and fighter. The way I play, the mage did the job on his ( her ) own and the fighter was pretty useless. This is because I always tried to avoid getting the fighter in the way of the spells / getting hit by the aoe/cone spells of the mage. Most of the discussion in this thread is about longer cooldown vs. ingediants neccessary to cast powerfull spells. I think both ways wouldn´t realy change the problem. Even if you would find a way to restrict spawning the powerfull spells... my problem stays the same... why should I get the fighter up close, when he is also damaged by every spell I use? ( btw. I realy like friendly fire )
In other words, how can the combat mechanics be changed to render the fighter more usefull? What would make the whole game more challanging... tactic-wise?
I very much like the "no mama" thing and I very much like to cast alot and have a big arsenal of spells at my disposal to choose from all the time ( this speaks against long timers and the ingrediants idea )
and I very much !!! like the ideas of @Grokalibre... just the post here above...
What if...
- there were no aoe damage spells at all ( maybe just cones, but they would have to do much less damage )
- the only way to do powerfull aoe damage would be e.g. by electrifying water etc. ( if this is a two phase process, the fighter should have powers or gadgets to do one of the two pases... e.g. the mage makes it rain and the fighter throws a power-battery in the water or can throw a torch in a gas cloud to ignite it ect.( this also could render the explosive barrels standing everywere useless and which would be a good thing too )
- fire damage spells were single target only or could ignite poison as aoe
- freezing dosn´t do any damage at all but has a longer effect, so that the fighter can step in
- poison cloud has aoe damage over time
- water cone or single target pushes back ( washes away the poison gas )
- electicity could be a single target or aoe damage everybody who is wet ( jump over ) or electocute water
- what about rocks ( just as earth bending in the animation series "Avatar the last airbender" ) where you can make barriers or slow enemies down
... alot of this is already in the game and I´m happy about it, but there could be more elemental interaction
All in all I think it would be good, if you couldn´t just outrun enemies, but would have to do something with them to slow them down in the first place to be able to escape. If magic was more about buf and debuf, manipulating the environment, summoning and combining different effects. I also think, that if you would make changes like that the pcs should get more hp to survive longer in a more hostile and challenging setting.
I realy enjoy blasting a group of foes with one shot, but in a tactical game like this, it makes no real sense.
Please excuse all my misspelling and "have a good slide" ... as we say in Germany - come good into the next year ;-)
Last edited by Spice; 30/12/13 11:11 AM.
