I REALLY hate Embla.

[SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED]

Rant: She's the most useless member of my party. Sure, she has some fancy spells, but she runs through her attunement faster than water through a colander. Once she runs out and I run out of potions(my other characters can use), she's just a useless extra. Just sitting in a corner, doing nothing. I REALLY hate Embla. But I keep her in the party for the story bits.

[IlluminaZero]

If you’re worried about attunement efficiency just spam gnats.

[gallaghan2000]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

If you’re worried about attunement efficiency just spam gnats.

The problem isn't the attunement points, it's the overtuning of everything to present at most two optimal paths for the character to take for maximum power.

Useless things: multiple armor tree blocks (some of which have been butchered from a full six point block for some characters/classes), class limitations on armor when you have skill blocks for armor in the first place, weapon restrictions when the appropriate skill blocks matter at end game (anyone can swing a sword unless they've undertaken oaths not to, give the magos a sword and watch him fail to keep up with multi attackers/backstabbers/armsmasters) there was no point in over half the restrictions set by Anders. He'd have been better off with a simpler means of deciding who can wield/wear what.

For the magos it was making most damage spells ridiculously overpriced for their effect.
Burning hands/fire fists 6 attunement
Searing lash (three space fire fists) 15 attunement
Aura of flame 15 attunement
Aura of fire resistance 10 attunement
Fireball 17 attunement

Anyways, yes spellburn and swarm of gnats is now your bread and butter as a mage, but that doesn't make it FUN when all my mages/thieves/armsmasters/etc. have to follow the same stupid paths to optimal power with what they have available.

[Du-Vu]

It is kind of hard to justify using spells, they don't really have the impact one would hope for the amount of investment they require and the limited mp pool. Damage-wise at least, not sure if I just haven't found the right spells. Thunderclap is good. Buffs and debuffs seem decent? But it does seem hard to justify much other than spamming 1st level damage spells in a lot of cases.

Recently (not quite to the endgame yet) I gave Embla a fire dagger and she actually does pretty solid damage with that, and my main has a shortbow for when he runs out of attunement. I'm pretty well off for attunement potions, though, I've crafted a lot of them and spent a few thousand gold on buying them in the last few stores.

[gallaghan2000]

The big hitter is cascade, it turns a lot of those buffs you can't cast outside of combat into a godsend if done right or you can just use spellburn on that last spell option.

Example (with the 4 max cascade; not possible if you max out all three schools, 3 cascade is more than functional though): Mark of blurring, stoneskin, blink (move within range to take another action), spellburn or fire warrior for fortify strength and two attacks for one round (I need to try cascade, but if Roland can use a bow shot on his cleave strike I don't see why it won't work).

[IlluminaZero]

By the time you get Embla you actually do have the capacity to stock potions and have excessive food. The toughest time for the Arcane classes is early game and Embla drops so amazingly late that she basically allows you to skip all that.

----- More generally... I think the title is a bit misleading since this seems more like a rant against Guild Magos -----

Mages are designed around the "cascade" mechanic and being able to potentially cast 4 spells in one turn gives them the highest consistent action economy. The implementation of many things; especially obvious with spell costs, is questionable but there is reason to be wary of allowing too much spam.

Equipment limitations for Wizards are pretty common in these kinda games so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Doubly so since it is likely you won't even care about Encumbrance barring a shield character maximizing dodge.

Guild Magus is way too fragile to be on the front lines with a dagger. They should be able to do way better damage with their spells - Doubly so with Embla since she should be like... Lv 13-16.

[SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

By the time you get Embla you actually do have the capacity to stock potions and have excessive food. The toughest time for the Arcane classes is early game and Embla drops so amazingly late that she basically allows you to skip all that.

----- More generally... I think the title is a bit misleading since this seems more like a rant against Guild Magos -----

Mages are designed around the "cascade" mechanic and being able to potentially cast 4 spells in one turn gives them the highest consistent action economy. The implementation of many things; especially obvious with spell costs, is questionable but there is reason to be wary of allowing too much spam.

Equipment limitations for Wizards are pretty common in these kinda games so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Doubly so since it is likely you won't even care about Encumbrance barring a shield character maximizing dodge.

Guild Magus is way too fragile to be on the front lines with a dagger. They should be able to do way better damage with their spells - Doubly so with Embla since she should be like... Lv 13-16.

Embla is lvl 18, and I cascade like no tomorrow. For 1 turn. Then attunement is 0. I'd rather save my attunement pots for my main character and driina- buffers and healers.

[IlluminaZero]

My Lv 20 Embla has 131 attunement. Just no.

I'm not saying that mages are perfectly balanced or anything but you're blowing it so out of proportion that its basically nonsense.

[Caaaameron]

I've done two playthroughs and the RNG has yet to bless me with the recipe for a Potion of Attunement - Lesser, Moderate or Greater.

Embla can drop about one big spell per fight, then it's back to the bow (miss.miss.hit for 5 damage...) or just spam Swarm of Gnats infinitum.

BUT playing a Hierophant is worse. A PC whose spells are all aura or melee only, forced to go toe to toe, but possesses no melee skills, no health points, wears light armour and has access to no armour or shield trees. It isn't fun.

A hierophant is basically a worse Driina that can't tank and can't stunlock.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Should also point out that Embla have several extra statpoints compared to any other character. So if she is still bad despite those extra bonuses, then maybe a Magos is not for you?

Me? I think Magos is one of the stronger classes with summons and gnats.

[Du-Vu]

You don't need to wait for recipe drops. If you look at the ingredient drops, it tells you what they can be used to make. Once you have all three ingredients, you can combine them yourself and unlock that recipe.

Lesser attunement potion was chitin, laughtercap, and sorrow-eater. Not sure if that changes between runs.

Re: hierophants - auras can get so huge, though. You can basically just stand behind the front line and buff and heal them and enemies have no way through.

Summons do eat up a lot of attacks. I still felt like the higher level spells didn't do enough damage to be worth it, but vermin and giant insect are good for keeping enemies busy depending on how many enemies here are and the shape of the map.

[IlluminaZero]

Originally posted by Caaaameron:

I've done two playthroughs and the RNG has yet to bless me with the recipe for a Potion of Attunement - Lesser, Moderate or Greater.

Embla can drop about one big spell per fight, then it's back to the bow (miss.miss.hit for 5 damage...) or just spam Swarm of Gnats infinitum.

BUT playing a Hierophant is worse. A PC whose spells are all aura or melee only, forced to go toe to toe, but possesses no melee skills, no health points, wears light armour and has access to no armour or shield trees. It isn't fun.

A hierophant is basically a worse Driina that can't tank and can't stunlock.

hierophant trades a lot for Lv 15 Cascade (iirc) and Lv 3-4 spells you might not even use. (Stun aura seems to be the only good "unique" level 3 divine spell)

I mean cascade stun-touch is good but there isn't much reason to double stun a single target. Oddly enough Champion has more attunement and can arguably do that better. <<

Originally posted by Count von Bunnyhopven:

Should also point out that Embla have several extra statpoints compared to any other character. So if she is still bad despite those extra bonuses, then maybe a Magos is not for you?

Me? I think Magos is one of the stronger classes with summons and gnats.

I was wondering about that TBH. I was surprised that Embla seemed almost optimal in stat spread. It may just be a case of her having so many stat points that she is kinda.. Incidentally optimal for her class.

Seems a bit of a bummer for Guild-Magos PCs though barring skill point specialization.

[gallaghan2000]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Equipment limitations for Wizards are pretty common in these kinda games so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Doubly so since it is likely you won't even care about Encumbrance barring a shield character maximizing dodge.

Most of these types of games don't screw you over as hard in not knowing what spells are worthwhile (even adnd wizards were effectively exponential in growth).

Moreover, I'm mostly pissed off about the battlemagos when it comes to that. They lose 22 points worth of the best parts of the magic trees in exchange for a locked in use of light weapons only (even thieves can use medium weapos despite them not working the best with the better skills), a butchered weapon tree that gives nothing worthwhile unless you're an agility build and evasive (which would actually be worth it in conjunction with blink) isn't available until level 10 (thieves are free to pick that up level 1).

Which still means that he's overcompensating.

I'm also still wondering where the grandmaster arcane font and sorcerous trees are given every other 'pure' class has access to grandmaster stuff.

Also, heirophant is fine, especially after they apply their spell aptitude to the minimum healed.

Anyways, this is just an extension of the same damn problem I noticed much earlier on when he first made magos available in the demo.

On a one to one scale the healing outclassed the DPS spells for a lower overall cost. Instead of fixing that, he added cascade and then increased attunement costs to make it harder to cascade heavy DPS in general.

Why else would aura of flame (which should have maxed out at 10 attunement at most) cost almost as much as a fireball? 2 points off, whoop de doo.

Instead of making fire the cheapest and most damaging to cast due to friendly fire being so easy to achieve, it's almost the most intensive for the least value.