Eleventh Hour Preview: Wizard

[Utsukushi]

[kosmit]

I would rather see Spell Matrix as talents and upgrading them to other type by knacks. I think that separating knacks to thread weaving and spellcasting, and even then separating their use for general/discipline spell is too much book keeping.

I would like to know how the abilities of other Disciplines gonna work. Without Ranks? Weaponsmith's crafting will be just in-fiction or it will allow to create thread items/common magic etc.

Please show Weaponsmith in next preview. It got plenty of talents that will be changed in 4th edition - forging, crafting, tempering.

[Roth]

[Kasbak]

[Panda]

Curious. I have generally held the opinion that spells are, effectively, knacks for the spellcasting talent. It's not exact, but the costs and utility generally work out like that when you account for the infrastructure that they require. Interesting stuff, here.

[Roth]

[Kasbak]

[Utsukushi]

Spells that have a direct, immediate effect can be - if you know you're going to need them - as fast as a Talent, assuming they don't have Threads. Mind Dagger, say, you can spit out in a round. But, again - a regular, non-Mind dagger works the same way. A dagger has to be bought and kept somewhere; Mind Dagger has to be Woven and stored in a Matrix. Equivalency at its finest.

Spells that actually enhance and/or act according to a Talent (improving Climbing, or Avoid Blow, or what have you) are always offset by a minimum of one round: Cast the Spell, then Act. Or Thread the Spell, Cast the Spell, then Act. Or Attune the Matrix, Thread the Spell, Cast the Spell, and.. what do you mean, the fight is over?

[Roth]

Oh I'm sorry I forgot everything is ALL COMBAT ALL THE TIME around here. If it's not about COMBAT COMBAT COMBAT it doesn't mean anything. Who cares if Crunch Climb, you know that spell you were pandering, lasts a minimum of 6 minutes that is immaterial to the point that it takes a thread to cast and evidently the Elementalist was too stupid to cast it before trying to sneak around the castle walls.

Personally I would, and most every player I have gamed with, have cast Crunch Climb before skulking around and then 'on fly put in Earth Blend. Then when that guard is about to come around the corner I would cast Earth Blend on myself. I don't know, it seems like common sense to me to have your spells that last minutes per casting to be cast beforehand. Evidently I am weird like that.

You all keep talking about talents this, talents that, yet seem to fail to realize that by 5th circle you have as many talents as spellcasters have in one circle of spells, 14. Except and this is a biggie the spellcaster has 5 circles of 14 odd spells per circle to pull from, plus the same number of talents. That most talents are far more situational then spells. I can easily pull out a spell and place in another one. Can't do that with talents.

Haven't found players yet, until now, that would wait until combat starts before casting buffing spells. I could understand if this was D&D where you only have X number of spells per day, but holy cow this is Earthdawn where there is no only X number of spells per day. You can cast and cast and cast from the time you wake until the time you sleep. If you all are in heavy 'combat mode' all the time why aren't you keeping as many spells up as you possibly can?

[Kasbak]

It's impossible to have precognition about every single possible situation. Sure, you can cast spells ahead of time when you're planning for a certain thing to take place, but what happens when you get ambushed? Or even take it out of a combat situation, what happens when you're walking along a cliff side and the ground gives out underneath you? If you don't bother picking up a Talent for Climbing or Great Leap, you're stuck falling with the land slide until someone can get the spell off. What happens when you track down the guy that stole the Throalic merchant's goods, and when you go to return the items he tells the guards that your group are the thieves? If you don't have any social Talents to deal with the sudden situation, do you really think they're going to wait around for you to cast Bedazzling Display of Logical Analysis or something similar?

Unless you're pre-casting every duration spell you have over and over and over again, which frankly is going to be impossible because some durations will wear out before you can get through them all, not to mention all the reattuning required, you simply cannot rely on spells to handle everything. I'm not saying spells aren't useful - far from it. I do play a Wizard after all. But you cannot possibly anticipate every situation where you'll be able to use a spell ahead of time all the time. On some occasions yes, but trying to argue that this is how it always should be is just metagaming. Spells are very good at giving a significant boost to a specific situation if you are prepared for it either ahead of time or to react to it. However, they are limited resources, and as such they simply cannot compete with the on-demand results of Talents.

Also, IIRC Roth, weren't you just a short while ago arguing that your intent is to punish any players that don't choose Talents that, in your view, round out their abilities for broader situations? If you're now arguing that you should just be casting spells ahead of time all the time to cover all these situations, then what's the need to pick up the alternate Talents? I'm not sure if I'm just missing it, but you seem to be all over the place with what position you're taking, and it seems at this point that you're just arguing for the sake of arguing. If you could pick a single solid position and describe it calmly and respectfully, I think that would be very helpful.