Grimrock

I'm still undecided

Any misgivings I have about the spell system are very closely related to how familiar I am with the one in DM. I can say for certain though that it definitely beats all other spell systems besides DM!

Thinking back to DM, besides potion creation there were only really a few spells anyone ever used. Fireball, poison cloud, light, poison ball, anti-elemental... Lightning bolt was nice but took too long to cast, spells like magical footprints had their uses but could be ignored and the whole priest class was largely there just so you could level up in it to gain health/stamina/mana (ditto for the ninjas) I do find it slightly more fiddly to switch between casters and spells in Grimrock but it really isn't any more mouseclicks, and you can queue up your next spell for each caster in a similar way.

I do prefer the skill system in DM, getting experience by doing stuff still works better for me than gaining arbitrary skill points for levelling up and then spending them to gain skills and spells and I was a bit disappointed to learn that my wizard couldn't ever learn to cast a spell just by practicing it. Still, it's very early on in my game and the excitement that I have from seeing that there are still plenty of skills and spells to unlock is outweighing the nostalgia I feel for the way things worked in the olden days

Magic system is great and fun.

the spell system is the one thing i dont like at grimrock. its too much "work" and too slow for my taste. prefer the EOB.system where u learn spells while resting.

buffyoa wrote:the spell system is the one thing i dont like at grimrock. its too much "work" and too slow for my taste. prefer the EOB.system where u learn spells while resting.

Agreed, not a lover of this DM style magic system... Always an EOB/LOL/AB fan

Neil79 wrote:

buffyoa wrote:the spell system is the one thing i dont like at grimrock. its too much "work" and too slow for my taste. prefer the EOB.system where u learn spells while resting.

Agreed, not a lover of this DM style magic system... Always an EOB/LOL/AB fan

I think I've always found D&D and D&D style magic systems a bit odd and difficult to understand because my first ever experience of role playing magic systems was DM, and as a 7 or 8 year old kid it was absolutely fascinating to have this huge table of runes with weird names and absolutely no idea what to do with them until I progressed a bit further into the game. I think the D&D system works better for pen and paper RPGs where encounters are a bit more varied and a lot more can happen between resting periods that you tend to want to hold on to spells and not waste them. But in computer games I always prefer a mana based system. Having to make your spells up out of runes is the icing on that cake. EotB made me laugh at times because my characters spent more days resting, to get spells back, than they did adventuring

Just selecting a spell like in EOB is very simple and easy, I must admit I do like the challenge of this DM style system.

Daniel.

I think the biggest problem with the magic system is it makes playing with more than one mage a total pain. So much of a pain that I think I'm going to restart. For you to cast a single spell, there is a MINIMUM of 3 clicks of a mouse button. With the fast pace of combat, decreasing CD's from talents, and increasing buttons for higher level spells, I imagine it will reach overkill real fast.

the problem with the EOB system is, once you used up the spell, you can't cast it again until you re rested, and lets not forgot, you only had a few free spell slots, and gain them slowly over the levels, personally, I disliked the D&D ruleset. I disliked the fact you only had a few spells during combat, after you used them, you had to rest and repeat, better for table top games, I just feel the D&D ruleset never really did a good job for the magic system for computer games

the DM system is a lot better, yes its a bit clunky, but you can cast more spells, yes you have to wait a bit before your mana recharges, and it would help if the rune table remains open after you cast a spell, but its still I think a better system

just my two cents

hmmm... I'm just a little conflicted over the system to be honest - I love the use of runes. I was a huge fan of the spell system in dungeon master, and never liked simply selecting a spell from a list (EOB). I love the idea of preparing and casting a spell - it's a bit more interactive!

The one thing I'm not so keen on is that it seems I need to be X number of levels into Air magic, or Earth magic etc to unlock a spell. I would have prefered there to be power levels of each spell, the basic versions all being castable from the start, with more powerful versions later by practicing casting. I suppose all I am asking for is a complete copy of the DM system

That being said, overall I'm still happy with it!

Might have been interesting to have seen something like the casting system from Arx Fatalis... That was a nice take on spellcasting

Edit: just to add a note - I didn't find the DM spell system clunky - Once I had memorised the spells, and practiced a bit, I could rattle off a whole mixture of fireballs, poison clouds and bolts etc very quickly from all my charaters (once leveled a bit!) without any problem...

Yeah... I'm running two mages and it's just such a pain. I feel like I'm dealing with MS Word or something. Click, click, click GOD DAMMIT click.

More often than not one of my mages swings a spear from the back row while the other casts spells. Would love it if the last spell cast was remembered and if the rune menu could be kept open. Maybe a Magic Lite option or something for those of us who really don't enjoy the challenge of repeated button clicks. You can even make my spells weaker if you want. It's not about difficulty. I just really, really hate casting them as it is.