Grimrock

How about using a scroll. Like how you use a rock to throw it.

Scrolls as one use items, or being writable to a spellbook has been done in modding, and is a pretty popular idea. Not a make or break point by any means I feel.

I don't know if anyone knows a game called Arx Fatalis (old game). On this game you do the spells with mouse movement on screen (you write the rune on screen) but you have the possibilty to store 3 spells and use later using shortcut like 1,2 or 3 for example. When you need to store a spell only need to pressure a specific key and do the movement on screen, with this, the spell was stored. This is another option for quick spellcasting on log2.
Obviously you have another 3 keys to delete stored spells (like 4,5,6 for example).

Sorry for my english

Just my opinion, but as much as I like the rune system myself and wouldn't like it to see it go, the mage is underpowered in LoG compared to all other classes because of the fact that you need too much time to use something that isn't fireburst or shock (and shock is better because the rune is near to the cast button). What would be needed is imo (either or more of these):

1. "remember the last runes" system (and a "clear runes" button)
2. a rechargeable mage staff: you charge it as you would enchant arrows, and it has 5-10 charges, then you have to charge it again. One staff for each kind of magic, that can memorize spells of that magic school (a fire staff could be charged with fireburst or fireball), then you would use the staff with a single right-click. Using the staff would drain energy just as the relative spells (while a lightning rod doesn't), plus some energy needed to charge it. Fighter would still deal more damage, but at least the mage could attack every round like everybody else, as long as he has energy left.
3. scrolls like in Eye of Dragon mod, or even a spellbook: as you would enchant arrows, casting a spell with the book in your hand would store the spell in it, then you open the spellbook with right-click, cast the spell from there and the spell in is expended. You could store a certain number of spells for quick use.

Just to make a comparison, right now an axe user can deal easily over 100 damage with a blow, and the mage can only deal such damage with lightning/fireball, that costs much more energy and needs time for the runes, time that in difficult situations you probably don't have.

I like the above suggestions. I agree that the LoG1 spellcasting system is too complicated. In combat against a single opponent, the complexity can be managed, but against multiple opponents it becomes too difficult to use along with other special actions like using potions or moving items out of inventory

I hope they get rid of the meta gaming aspect of spellcasting.

The mystery and experimenting on the rune combos is fun but only for the first time. Once the player knows all the combinations (after first playthrough or having a look on these forums) it serves no purpose to have the spells listed as ??? in the skill trees and having all these spell scrolls in the dungeon. So in that sense I would prefer the EoB kind of approach where you actually need to find the scroll in order to learn a spell. Or simply revealing all the spells in the skill trees.

Perhaps it could be a combination of some kind where "basic" spells could be learned automatically on level up and the more complex/powerful/special spells would have to be learned from books and scrolls discovered in the dungeon.

There is huge gap between difficulty by UI and difficulty by game rules.

You can make super hard game with perfectly working and user friendly interface. Unfortunately as it proven to be the case with LoG 1, it's not that difficult game but with difficult UI.

When I started the game, I spent like 15 minutes trying to find out keyboard control for character actions finding there is none, finally figuring out I have to click by mouse all the time. Oh well, okay. Instead of watching the enemy and act according to that, my sight is focused to bottom right 1/16 th of screen... Hour or two later I get first spell. I already know there is no keyboad control of the game key-pad, so I go fight the enemy. Before I manage to click-fest the spell, my rogue is already dead. Next few tries ending a bit better, with bare survival - clicking those icons just takes me way too long and in the end the fight skipping two mages ends up with better outcome. When I get to more difficult enemies where 2 character whack&slash mode doesn't make it and casting spell takes waaaaay too long via mouse (and also losing idea of what's going on in game due to staring at char controls chasing cursor, I gave up... my first dungeon since days of Dungeon Master, Ishar or EoB.

I actually also posted about an easier magic system in Legend of Grimrock II. I would love if there was a way to "predefine" or "macro" spells. So that the more complex spells that require 3 or 4 runes, can be made into a macro. Because if you're going to be casting fireball a few times, it gets pretty annoying to do that same 3 or 4 runes. It'd be cool to have macro runes set up, if players wanted that option, to maximize the spell casting experience. Imagine if, when you attack with a sword, you had to select "Swing, Lunge, Piece" for the type of attack you wanted to do with a sword? Would get pretty bothersome after awhile!

Sir Tawmis wrote:I actually also posted about an easier magic system in Legend of Grimrock II. I would love if there was a way to "predefine" or "macro" spells. So that the more complex spells that require 3 or 4 runes, can be made into a macro. Because if you're going to be casting fireball a few times, it gets pretty annoying to do that same 3 or 4 runes. It'd be cool to have macro runes set up, if players wanted that option, to maximize the spell casting experience. Imagine if, when you attack with a sword, you had to select "Swing, Lunge, Piece" for the type of attack you wanted to do with a sword? Would get pretty bothersome after awhile!

This has come up before but the response has been that the difficulty in selecting the runes is part of the challenge; as in casting under pressure... and possibly making mistakes.

I don't know how it would play out without seeing the macros in action, but I do know that "Eye of the Beholder 3" included a macro attack button to have all PCs attack at one click ~and it was terrible. [IMO]

Isaac wrote:

Sir Tawmis wrote:I actually also posted about an easier magic system in Legend of Grimrock II. I would love if there was a way to "predefine" or "macro" spells. So that the more complex spells that require 3 or 4 runes, can be made into a macro. Because if you're going to be casting fireball a few times, it gets pretty annoying to do that same 3 or 4 runes. It'd be cool to have macro runes set up, if players wanted that option, to maximize the spell casting experience. Imagine if, when you attack with a sword, you had to select "Swing, Lunge, Piece" for the type of attack you wanted to do with a sword? Would get pretty bothersome after awhile!

This has come up before but the response has been that the difficulty in selecting the runes is part of the challenge; as in casting under pressure... and possibly making mistakes.

I don't know how it would play out without seeing the macros in action, but I do know that "Eye of the Beholder 3" included a macro attack button to have all PCs attack at one click ~and it was terrible. [IMO]

Well, the way I would (like to) see it, that you could hotkey spells. So maybe a side bar for mages, that would allow you to even hotkey a limited amount of spells. Maybe 3 spells? So you could change and rotate them (so long as you're not in combat). And you'd have to do the spell - so you'd right click this empty slot, and do the three runes, and it'd put a spell there. If you did the runes wrong, you wouldn't know until the spell is used in combat. So you may have six or ten spells but can only macro 3 of them. Even that would be fine.

But I get the challenge of the runes. I ended up writing the icons down as if I were looking at a 10 pad. So the upper left rune was 7, the rune next to it was 8, the one next to it 9, then next row down was 4, 5, 6 and so on.