Spellcaster loot and mages looking magical

[Drakill Tannan]

I've always been disapointed of the lack of spell usage on spellcastes due to the rest restrictions on efu. It makes a barbarian look more magical when he chugs his 7 potions pre-quest and his couple spellcasting trinkets than a wizard. Efu has always been med-magic when it comes to anything but wizards and sorcerers, then, it is low-magic.

I'd like to see wizards using magic in battle (other than healing crystals) Especially because when you are playing the militant wizard, the best militant you can look is casting an ocacional fireball and shooting your crossbow. One can make cantrip wands, sure, but this are rather weak when you compare the price vs the damage output.

I just remembered one of the frustrating things about playing a wizard on EFU:A. There is never any loot on quests for wizards to use. Lots of potions, consumables for tanks, and armors that cast offensive spells that wizards can't use. But very rarely a wand drops, and usually, this wand is of a low spell with few charges.

My suggestion is to increse the drops of wands that cast cantrips and level 1 & 2 spells.

Mostly we would be talking about low damage spells that allow a mage to "look" magical and actually contribute to the fight throguh cantrips, negative energy ray (1) etc. Wands with 10-15 charges of said spells, that were to drop on all quests (with the respective theme, say, undead quest, it drops a wand of negative energy (1) with 15 charges, ooze quest, acid splash, etc.) every 1 or 2 quests.

But also some stronger spells, the wands of magic missile (3) that have 7 charges could be made to be dropped in every quest, and more common, so that each 3 or 4 quests, one would drop. Maybe also a few wands that dropped rarely, but cated melf's acid arrow/comburst 3 times. Combined with the above wands, it would give a wizard enough material to cast spells constantly during key encounters.

More scrolls of offensive spells (melf's acid arrow, magic missile, darkness, hold person, etc.) would be good as well. As well as summoning reagents, since there is but one quest that drops various summoning reagents.

This way, wizards that use their magic to kill enemies could do so, without needing to spend 600 gold on a wand of missiles that isn't worth the price tbh.

Or

Make wands of spells such as magic missile (3) and simialr spells less expensive. 600 gold for a damage of 100 to 250 means each shot costs 24 gold pieces on average, and that is a lot. I'd reduce the cost to 400, or even 300 personally.

[lolmagics]

I've had no problems destroying quests as an evoker for a long time now and that was even a small part of why I created the character, to have fun blasting shit away with lightning spells.

There are already tons of the things you mentioned that drop on quests and it's often to the point that they are left behind, perhaps you just had bad luck with it. Even since around level 5 (fireball, ect) I was able to do pretty well with evocations so long as I restricted myself a little and used them when it was actually needed. I'm able to last all the way through Orcs2 or other lengthy quests in the same fashion.

The key thing to remember is that a Wizard provides a lot of general utility to a quest to fill in the gaps, from buffs, disabling spells, or damage spells, they all help in their own way and you just need to find the right balance for it.

With all that said, I wouldn't mind seeing the odd trinket or wand with a charge or three of level 3 spells like fireball, scint sphere, haste, or similar things that are restricted to arcane classes.

[Drakill Tannan]

precicely that is my complain. Magic is avilable to anyone, making wizards look faar behind than they should in the spellcastingometer. If the trinkets that casted spells were restricted to spellcasting classes, it would be fine, but there are actually more armors than cast offensive spells than wands that do.

EDIT: or so it would seem to me, since i've seen more.

[Relinquish]

If a mage is casting spells from wands, they aren't very magical. You will do negligible damage with most spells from wands as well. You want to seem magical? Stop preparing buff spells and prepare differently. Yeah, they'll complain that they have to drink a few of their 200 potions but they always seem to take the supplies anyway.

[Egon the Monkey]

There are rally a couple of issues here. One is the way supply bloat massively favours AB classes, especially full BAB/arcane device usage multiclasses. Buff spells from items rarely lose anything from a low Caster Level except duration, whereas offense spell power is linearly related to CL and scroll DC is always lower than casters'. This means that a scroll of Haste is brilliant for PVP or dealing with an ubermonster, whereas one of Magic Missile or Flame Arrow, less so. Evokers are definitely useful, but it depends often on the quest. For example, someone with acid or fire spells is brilliant on Trolls. They also get screwed by players that don't work well in a team. For example doing a quest at a permanent run and then whinging when an icestorm falls on their head because they ran into Ground Zero, or complaining because you darknessed some archers into uselessness, but they can't see to hit them. Offense mages are hard to play well, but incredibly rewarding if you get in a faction or find a good quest team.

Now, there are 2 bits of loot I'd like to bring up as being very useful to an arcane spellcaster. One is the Abjurer's Wand. a 30 charge lesser Dispel wand with a massive UMD score to prevent use by bards and rogues. It's a great leveller against potions, as a shot can be expected to remove half. More of this sort of thing. The second is the Fang-Totem of Strength off Snakes. a multi-charge Bull's Strength (3) item restricted to arcane casters. Why is this handy? Because if you have a buff charge item you're guaranteed to get, rather than the fighter, it means you can forget Bull's and just prep a couple of Clouds of Bewilderment or Combust. On a similar line, my mages tend to hoard unrestricted Bull's (10) items and use them on long quests so they can take more flamewep. All my mages have a store of the same potions my melee chars do when they can afford it, with the exception of AB buffing pots. And I use them, because I'd generally rather have a Burning Hands or Colourspray with high damage and DC, than save an Ironguts pot.


So. My 2 penn'orth. In order to see more offensive mages and promote doing more than hiding at the back, the following things would work wonders:

• Sorc/Wiz only items for common melee class buffs as a drop on most quests. Stuff on the same sort of power level as the Barb/Ranger/Druid totems, but with high UMD. Maybe stick a "do not use if you are not a pure wiz/sorc" on them. Have these in good supply and more people will think about doing something that's not buffing with their slots.
• More class-restricted offense items,  especially X/day ones for low-level spells that are more useful in PVE than PVP. X/day items are things that you want to use rather than waste the chance to, so they get people practicing with offence spells, seeing the uses. Gloves with 2/day Burning Hands (2) for example. I've said it before, but my favourite DM loot ever was a 1/day Fireball (5) device, because if I wanted to use it, I couldn't just hide in invis. Of course, it wasn't excessively powerful by itself, but that meant I might as well use a few coloursprays too, and so on. Yes there are offensive items, but they get burned out fast, plus most of the ones with plenty of uses are Eb0l Necromancy, and thus ICly restrictive.
• Unlimited/day cantrip items must be the commonest DM loot about, but IMO they should simply be rare quest drops. Such weapons keep a caster firing. Even low damage is still useful and more importantly, active. They are not PVP scary or gamebreaking, so why restrict them? Make a Light Crossbow, No Damage, Unlimited Use, offence cantrip. It's a considerable weight, more so than the 0.3 lb DM loot items, but handy.
• More high level short but intense quests or more quests with a Part 2 where you can rest beforehand. Short quests heavily favour blowing stuff up because you're not worried about having enough invis or blur to last the whole quest.

Despite all what I've said, one thing above all else helps you play an offensively rigged mage. Grow A Pair :P. Yes your wizard *could* go and prepare a buff load out, but why should he? His specialty's summoning, or explosions, or mental assaults. Refuse to ever prepare more than MW, wards, and a couple of statbuffs or flamewep, and tell teams "If you want that, get another mage". Make it abundantly clear you're not the buffmage they're looking for but a new and interesting support PC. It also helps if you have Heal and make herbs, or you have Lockpick or trap disabling, or some other support skill that teams want. Do your supposed job well, and players will want your PC around.

[Talir]

There's a few quests (we will not discuss them here) that especially tends to the arcane characters in some of the drops. One problem is that in those the scrolls, wands and other stuff don't necessarily go to the mages there, but other classes that can use them as well.

I do not support making unlimited cantrip objects drops on quests.

As an arcanist, you don't regularly need to resupply yourself with potions or similar because you do not face dangers like the warrior classes do. The gold you earn could be spent towards crafting wands or scribing scrolls to augment your arcane repertoire. It is your choice to make.

Not to mention that Nebedzzos is the ruins of a Netherese civilization. Why not search for lost caches left behind from ancient times and organise diggings/expeditions and involve people in your mage's quest to expand his own powers? How about seeking to craft arcane artifacts of your own through dedicated and stubborn pursuit? What about making a guardian golem?

[Talir]

That said, I will try to set aside some rewards specifically for arcanists in the events I run, same with more sneaky classes.

[Capricious]

Maybe I'm crazy or maybe I'm missing something, but I've seen far more wizard loot than, say, cleric loot. I just don't think mages are that bad off here, quite the contrary.

[Barehander]

Clerics are OP with or without loot. >_<

I don't know about power and utility; it seems mages are doing quite fine in that department. But for coolness's sake, I would like to see them using more wands. When did you ever read a novel where an accomplished mage's main offensive was his own spells? It's always a belt of wands, and they save the good stuff for emergencies. Battle-mages are the gunslingers of FR. Perhaps the crafting cost of purely offensive (read: damage) wands could be decreased, because they're not worth it. Especially flashy but less useful spells like Ice Dagger, Lightning Bolt, for some variety.

[Drakill Tannan]

Yes, if wands of offensive level 1 spells (Ice dagger, magic missile, horisakul's boom, negative energy ray) Where to be cheaper, a wizard could get enough wands to act magically without needing to either paly 8 hours dialy, or gank people.

[Paha]

Well I used to make myself wands. Costs some, yeah, but if anyone claims casters don't easily save up gold, you're a blasted liar or just poor fool for giving everything away. It's not that costly with the amount of gold you save around to spend it on wands.

[Egon the Monkey]

Time for some more of my back-of-the-envelope calculations I suppose. This time for offensive wands, for a selection of better and worse ones.

Cantrips:
1d4+1 dmg, average 3.5. 60 gold to craft, useful in general, exceptionally so with elebond perks (except Fire). PVP lousy.

L1 wands:
660-800 Gp, depending on if crafted or bought Let's call the average 730. 25 shots. That's 29 GP a shot. Close to alchfore/Choking Dust.

Wand of Colour Spray(2) (the Champion of Wands):
DC 12 cone effect stun, average of 3.5 rounds. Spam it and you can ruin a group of monsters' day. If you are a wizard who didn't buy this soon, you are a chump. Potentially PVP useful.

Wand of Burning Hands(2):
DC 12 cone effect damage. 2d4. Average damage 5 or less (save). Useful for clearing out bugs, but not great. Unless however you have Ele Bond Fire, in which case the combust effect triggers and it's pretty sweet. (apparently untrue) Useless in PVP

Wand of Magic Missile(3)
No save, Magic Damage, average 7. Not cost-effective.


Above this, the problem is the high upfront cost. A  potion order consisting of 2 haste, 2 displacement, 2 blur, 2 invis and 2 seeing comes to 920 gold or so and sets you up nicely for a PVP or spice emergency. The same cost will buy you a couple of wands that are cost-effective compared to scrolls or potions, but inflexible. A wand of Lightning is 3000-odd gold, and all that can do is shoot lightning. I've said before that one way to make offense wands see more use would not be to make them drop more, or be cheaper per shot. Instead, rather than EfU overriding wand craft to make 25 shot ones each time, make L2 wands craft with 10 shots and be appropriately prices, and L3 and 4 wands come with 5 shots each. This would allow mages to save up and buy a selection of wands to enable them to have appropriate ones on hand. Or, as part of the crafting menu, allow players with the Craft Wand feat to select whether to imbue a wand with 5, 10 or 25 charges.

[Ordeal]

I think that with level 3 and level 4 wands, it's for the best to keep those expensive. If any chump can get himself 5 charges of Improved Invis on the cheap, that changes a lot.

[Barehander]

You can change the cost individually, I suppose, since that's already done for some wands. Hence my suggestion to lower the price of less powerful wands to get them used more. You can argue it's already worth it, but the strongest point against that is that they're not used right now. Don't do it for Color Spray, but do it for Ice Dagger or Hor's Boom instead.

[Drakill Tannan]

There was a thread not too long ago about a player who could make 3k a day. Enough for wands. But to get that one needed to play like 6 hours dialy with a party set-up for some serious questing. It is perfectly posible to have enough gold to hoard wands of fireball and edvard's, however, that is quite unhealthy, and only possible if your timezone is the right one and you have a LOT of spare time.

Wands like magic missile are simply NOT effective. 24 gold pieces for an average of 6 damage is insane. Consider PvP-wise they can be blocked with a potion of blur, and PvM wise they are useless due to the low damage output, except against bosses, and to do so it will be rather expensive to prove effective. Same goes with wands of horizakul's boom, ice dagger and negative energy ray. They are plain and simply not effective PvP wise, nor PvM wise unnless you play enough hours a day to make 1K dialy or mug people, wich isn't very wizardy.

Other level 1 wands are ok, although they could use some spells could use a fix. Summon creature wands for instance, i magine they are good, endure elements wands are pretty good and so are protection from alignment wands.

Level 2 wands are fine. Level 3 might be usefull i think. Too expensive for me to have used them enough to know. Level 4 wands are godly, but they cost like 8k, so i'd say they are fine.

The only problem truly are level 1 wands.