[quote=TsunAmik]I am quite okay with memory system. It deals with biggest balance issue in DOS1 - for cost of just 1 or 2 skill points, your (for example) aoe fire/geo mage with wand and shield, maxed willpower and loremaster can suddenly get ENORMOUS power boost, thanks to really easy to obtain and not very restricted usage of level 1 spells like regeneration, battery ram, bitter cold, rain, thunder jump or oath of desecration. We all know, that these "one point wonders" turned your specialized character in allmighty godlike machine of war and for extremely small cost, and absolutely no disadvantage (as 1 skill point is nothing on later levels) - suddenly instead of classical slow and fragile mage, you could have selfhealing aoe ball of destruction zipping around battlefield with low cost spells like no tommorow. So yeah, memory is indeed needed to balance things out.
BUT I strongly suggest one of two tweaks for this:
1) automatically expand memory slots with leveling up. The way it currently is, you can have lvl 20 character, but if you spend no points on memory, you will still have only 5 slots... which is quite meh and seriously no fun whatsoever. I would suggest, that characters get atleast 1 memory slot every 4-5 levels, this way you can have 8-10 slots at high level+few extra depending on your stat distribution (15 max with 20 memory?) This in my opinion sounds much better, as you can have no memory character, which must choose his main spells wisely, but is not too limited by this. Or you can have little more "hybrid" character, which gets much more spells in his skillbar, but has lower main stats as int and strength.
It keeps the basic idea intact, but won´t be so restricting that it might not even be fun anymore.
2) after reaching certain skill level (lets say level 4 pyromancer), your low level fire skills could have 0 memory cost. This makes sense, because it would be really weird, that my allmighty fire mage who is capable of bringing down meteor from sky is not able to shoot small fire projectile at enemy.
So with massive investments into your chosen skill tree, you can become real master of that type of warfare, enabling you to use much more skills, but only from that tree. Which perfectly solves the above descripted problem of all mighty hybrid builds. If this restriction isn´t enought, we can introduce specialized talent (lets say "Fire attunement"?) to enable this.
Ideas?[/quote]
Oh man, these are some brilliant ideas. Please use either of these and I'll love them dearly.
His first suggestion would be very balanced and standardized. In my opinion.
Suggestion 2, however appealing it might seem, could be a little too easy to achieve and abuse though. My variation of it would be to make it so that when you hit 4 or 5 with Pyro for instance, your character can learn 2-3 novice skills with no Memory cost, while the rest maintain their normal cost.
I feel like the original suggestion might make it too easy to just dump all your points into the Ability skills (eg: Aerothurge, Hydrosophist, Pyromancer) and get ALL the low to mid level skills of those trees without having to invest much into Memory. For instance:
At level 5 you have 7 Base Combat Ability Points.
Following suggestion 2 rules that can easily convert to: 4 Pyro+3 Aerothruge if you ignore other cmb. abilities
A player with this setup could easily learn all of the Novice level Pyro Skills at no memory value and have a wealth of abilities available at ALL times. By level 6 he could do the same for his low-level Aero abilities, and easily be cruising through with like 12 abilities at that point, with no points in Memory at all. So he'd have a ton of abilities to access still with damage behind them because he'd still be able to invest into his INT stat. I could easily see this becoming like DOS1 again but with potentially WAY MORE abilities at your disposal.
