Its not about simulating anhting.
Lets have fireball dealing cold damage then. We don't need to care about inner consistency.
IMO 2e is the best one in therms of simulating living in other world. Not only because certain classes who are far more complicated than others require more XP to level up, and that the hit points aren't inflated past lv 10 like 3.5e but ALSO because for example plate armor is far better protecting you from slashes than blunt.
By other hands, 2e had a save rule that i particularly don't like ie - save vs death that means that resisting a finger of death from the strongest necromancer and from a lv 1 wizard with a scroll is the same save. 3.5e with DC has a better mechanic. But 3.5e is the edition who suffers more from pun-pun builds.
because you need to be OP to have fun?
No, needs to not suck.On NWN1, a Wizard 5/Pale Master 10 will be efficiently a lv 5 wizard with only one weak summon. Even a lv 6 wizard is stronger than him. Caster level is so vital for arcane like BAB is for melee warriors,
wizards worked well in the divintiy games :^)
No, the range is ultra limited, only one summon, cooldowns(...) and your progress is just by getting bigger number. Wanna see a game where is hard to be a wizard but also cool? See Gothic 1.
You don't start the game with magic, you need to find someone able and willing to teach you. Corristo only teaches you on mid of chapter 2. And finally after you become a magician, you need tons of Learning Points to learn each magical circles and increase your mana. Warriors can max out their one hand and strength at lv 15. But wizards even if they save up LP to when they become magician, will only be able to max out at around lv 30.
And Gothic 2 did magic far harder than G1 already was. Now not only you need to learn magical circles and mana, but also nobody sell magical runes to you. You need to learn how to make runes too. I NEVER did a pure magical run on any Gothic game(except Gothic 3) by a reason.
The best implementaiton would be in Dragons Dogma i guess.
By not having cooldowns, they on DD are far better than Divinity BUT i prefer rangers and magick archers over wizards any time. I can output far more DPS with my magick archer
I dont like it when you can summon an army o dudes AND fly AND open locks AND scry AND be invisible AND change the weather.
Yesterday i completed the first DArk Sun from golden box. My wizard had one tier 5 spell(Cone of cold) and 2 tier 4. Scrolls aren't easy to obtain in that game. The versatility of a wizard is proportional to how many spells he learned. You can nerf wizards without changing a single rule.
And now let me role play my warlock/paladin who uses charisma for spells and weapons and with his holy weapon he adds both radient and necrotic damage to his attacks while summoning undead as meat shield and having ultra high saves and immunity to several effects.
Have fun with your Pun Pun build; it is a single player game. On my group, if i an a DM, will only allow multiclass if there are a good story reason for that. Many servers on NWN1 ban multiclass by a reason; there are a lot of people who pick lv 1 cleric only for the Divine Shield.