I think it's a bit too op personally, especially with the new round robin turn system, although I haven't really played 4 man runs but I can imagine the scenario, say you have a level 13 team doing Aetera, normally the team will get one shot on the first turn, but if you have a 47 initiative summoner who invested in pure wits stat and mostly summoning, you can group up all members before the fight, the summoner can initiate combat and act before Aetera, then he can invis the entire team before Aetera can do anything to them, then by delaying turns, you'll get 5 chained turns together and finish off Aetera and everything else before the enemies get a single action.
Players having access to chameleon cloak alone already seems very powerful, blessed smoke is really overkill and not needed in the game imo. On the other hand, none of the other blessed surfaces seems too useful, hell undead players even take damage standing in most of the blessed surfaces.
It's fine that you enjoy making the most crazy-broken min-maxed characters possible and playing them where the odds are the highest against them just do you can say how easy the game is when making crazy-broken min-maxed characters.
But a lot of players (I'd go so far as to say most players) probably don't do that. Trying to balance the game to be a challenge for the min-maxers would probably be very frustrating for many players.
Enemies also don't cast curse for free, as it takes AP away. Let them, I say, I've used bless as counterplay to it myself and its sometimes viable to do so. As for the Pyramids, I was more talking post-battle, though you can actually use them during, and I have before on a more difficult fight.
FREE in this case means that they get to curse as much as they want
without spending Source points (and a lot of enemies get to use Source skills pretty freely anyway). The AP cost of enemies using Curse is irrelevant because AP is free each turn.
Many regular enemies can cast the spell Curse or Cursed Fireball (and such skills) without first using Source Vampirism on you. They get to curse surfaces by using Void Glide, and also, they get to curse for free WHEN YOU HIT THEM. they bleed Curse onto surfaces Players do not get ANY of those advantages. So I say again: Enemies get to Curse for FREE.
I am open to changing my mind and position on many things. The idea that Bless shouldn't cost a Source Point is not one of them.
On Sebille, the issue is only there if you use her as a mage (Really fits better in a rogue or variation anyway), and that would be too OP, completely nullifying something rather severe for practically no action cost (Shocked/Crippled/Slow are less severe in turn). You also don't run into silence that much.
There is nothing wrong at all with using Sebille as a mage. "Build characters how you want", remember? You can create an origin as any preset and change them after recruitment to any preset and customize them how you want. So "it's your fault for using Sebille like a mage" makes no sense at all.
The entire f**king point of Break the Shackles existing at all is to remove severe status effects. It removes Slowed, Crippled, Chilled, Atrophy, Shackles of Pain (and more), all status effects which are big trouble for a melee character, even though many of them can be dealt with in other ways, but the moment I suggest that it also remove the one status effect that totally screws over a mage, THAT would be "too OP"? That's nonsense. It costs a Source Point.
We're going to disagree still I reckon, I personally don't value source points as high as others do, I think people should take the advantage that they can use and recharge them pretty easily when needed. I think it comes down to how you play the game.
Perhaps I don't use Source points enough. That might be a flaw in my playstyle. It's a result of combining uncertainty about what is to come with the usual hoarding of power which gamers tend to do.
"Playing a goody two shoes" as you say (I can practically see the sneer on your face), is not a flaw in playstyle, it is a choice, there is nothing wrong with that in a role-playing game.
SAme with Apportation, even. Telekinis uses would love it. Non Telekinis users might scratch their head on why its such a late skill.
Telekinesis builds are straight-up gimmicks for people who have far too much patience and too much time on their hands. Apportation is straight up useless for 99% of players. I think making a skill which would more useful for the 99% of builds which are not Telekinesis builds might be a better idea. But I'm just dumb like that.
