Magic Thread

Let's talk about magic.
>what games have the best magic systems
>which archetypes are the best
>why are wizards so crazy

>Being a crusty old man wizard
>Not being a cute young witch girl

Time magic is the best magic, I will fight anyone who disagrees with me.

Math Mage is better

>not wanting to be a magic politician mass brainwashing nations into war for your own profit
Atleast tabletops exist for that kind of shit.

What the fuck is math magic going to achieve? Gonna calculus someone to death?

>Re-write the algorithms of someone's mind to brainwash them.
>Use the golden ratio to buff your allies
>Unleash the true power of physics to turn apples into deadly projectiles

God Tier:
>Magic Knight
>Necromancer
>Wizzard
>Potioneer

Great Tier:
>Summoner
>Archmage
>Arcane Rogue
>Druid
>Ritual Caster
>Bard
>Paladin

Good Tier:
>Enchanter
>Elemental Sorceror
>Black Mage
>Arcane Archer
>Arcane Gunslinger
>Illusionist
>Cleric

Meh Tier:
>Wizard
>White Mage
>Fay Knight
>Mind Magician
>Plant Mage
>Time/Space Magician
>Technomage

Bad Tier:
>Eldritch Sorceror
>Specialist Wizard
>Support Wizard
>Mystic

Shit Tier:
>Anti-Mage

Literally nerd's power fantasy.

Its one thing to launch a fireball willy nilly, its another to launch it fully understanding its trajectory.

>Potioneer
They're called Alchemists but yeah, they're god tier.

I think potioneer sounds cooler.

>Playing as a wizard virgin instead a thief Chad

>GIB ME DAT the class
No thanks I'm from the civilized world.

Literal cowards and low life scum.

>thief tries to steal shit from me
>my defensive spells find him out right away and immediately zap him out of existence
>meanwhile I'm fucking his mother with my Wand of Enhanced Pleasure

Image fucking related.

Dragon's Dogma has some shit magic.. But it also has fucking TOP TIER magic.

Well I recently played Warlords Battlecry 3 again as an Undead Necromancer and it was the most fun I've had with magic in awhile.
>Level 4 Summon Skeleton times 5 for an army of Skeletons right away
>Rush into opponents base killing all their workers
>Call of the dead on their bones making more skeletons
>More Summon Skeleton spells
>rattle rattle to victory

Well, shit.. wrong image.

I love DD, but the fact Drakes can just instantly wipe your pawns is such bullshit.

you can insta revive for no penalty to yourself whatsoever

>no Trapmancer
Shit list.

Yeah it just takes time, and sometimes the stupid Pawn AI puts itself too far away or in an unreachable place and expires. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know it's a nitpick and not game breaking or anything, but it just gets annoying, especially if you happen to be using them as mules.

Well, gotta be Dominions 4 (and presumably 5 once it's released).

>anti-mage
>shit tier

>immediately zap him out of existence
I don't think so since mages are so fucking slow, by the time you're setting up your leviosa bullshit i've already critted you a million times and your low defense won't help
Even if a wizard manages to launch his flipendo the thief will just dodge it due to his great dexterity

Thieves/rogues are the best

>Have to choose between Mage and Thief
>Not going both as the alpha Ranger class

It's literally a magic class that actually understands how magic works on a scientific level, which in theory is the most overpowered thing ever.

>implying I'd even need to be there
>implying you could even hit me through my protection spells
>implying you could dodge when my arcane sorcery warps the very fabric of reality itself to annihilate your prostate

In theory it's also the most underpowered thing ever, because magic is inherently nonscientific and so trying to apply scientific rules won't allow you to do anything but maybe the most basic shit.

>DD Mages
I'm still surprised they managed to get that storybook spellcasting to feel okay in a video game.
The cast times are long enough to make figuring out where you're going to spend the next 10+ seconds standing still important, but juuuust short enough that the payoff feels worth it afterward.
I can deal with holding a button and watching my character do a goofy dance for ten seconds if positioning myself properly means I get to summon a fight ending meteor swarm for my trouble.

This.
Applying science to magic just kills the fun.
It's fine to try and understand it, but applying hard logic to something that's feels best when only partially understood just ruins everything.

>DD
>The Grigori literally the most heavily scripted fight i've ever seen and he's supposed to be a big deal
>"LMAO ITS SO EPIC, SIMPLY EPIC, ALMOST AS EPIC AS PICKLE RICK, LOOK AT THIS MS PAINT COMIC I MADE THAT SHOWCASES HOW EPIC DRAGONS DOGMA IS"

I'm not implying it's a fun class, just an extremely powerful class to place an unexplainable force into a logical perspective and being able to manipulate it after further study.

>try to explain magic
>the subtleties of it's rules change every time you think you understand it
>end up with only a broad, generalized understanding of it like every other wizard
Yeah, okay

Well, I wouldn't say "inherently unscientific", you just have a different set of rules governing the world than what you might naively have assumed prior to that, but getting around to understanding those rules will presumably take at least the kind of maths, technology and philosophical understanding about truth-seeking it has taken in the real world (plus, a lot of wizarding), and those tend not to be available in most settings.

Besides, I think there's an easier way to make an OP "science wizard": say, if you can conjure even something as complex as food, why not conjure pure antimatter and leave wizards toying with hurricanes and volcanoes and meteors in the children's playground where they belong?

Necromancy and blood magic is the best

It's so rare for games to do it right, though,

whilst magic is inherently non scientific, the effects of magic on the world (in the game) have clear definitive rules

>tfw no game will have necromancy as interesting as pic related

I know it's hard to do magic in video games because ultimately it has to be a strictly defined system with numbers and shit, but I'm always disappointed with how lacking vidya magic is in comparison to literature.

wait for Toady to finish adding magic into Dwarf Fortress

Maybe but that's at least 10 years away.

He's going to divide you by two.

Jokes on him, you can't divide a zero like me.

...

Lol m8, 0 is divisible by any number x where x⊂C provided x≠0 haha

*casts baleful polymorph on your bbeg*

I liked magic a lot in old crpgs, so stuff like Neverwinter Nights and to lesser extent DAO, morrowind has pretty fun magic so does modded skyrim, Dark Messiah had only a handful of pretty simple spells but it was still pretty fun, arx fatalix was original but kinda clunky

>he posts Zidane, a guy with a special shtick of using Terra's magic

Magic in DD is all style zero substance, and it feels incredibly boring to boot.

Modded Skyrim still can't be beat for me in terms of magic. Perk overhauls and spell packs along with magic rebalancing actually makes being a mage a lot of fun. As opposed to just spamming elemental damage balls, and healing spells. Just use mods like ASIS to boost enemy numbers and difficult, and then form your own little party with you as the crusty old wizard.

The correct answer is Dominions and CoE for top tier magic

I still want a game where one is the counter of the other.

>Dickbag Blood Mage has set himself up in a position of authority and is inching two or more countries closer and closer to all-out war so he can use the resultant bloodshed to attain phenomenal cosmic power
>Protagonist is full of blood and can't oppose him, so begins research into Necromancy in order to bring down the Blood Mage with bloodless undead and lichdom

two worlds 2

fuck I like raining flaming swords and tornado swords at my enemy

Hey you know of any mods that keep followers close? I want to go adventuring with a party but even when I have 1 person and engage an enemy, I turn around and they aren't even anywhere close by. It pisses me off.

It's a shame the game itself is kinda shit because it certainly did a lot of things right with magic system.

Morrowind

I actually feel RTS capture the proper scope of magic in battle. Like in Warcraft and Battle for Middle Earth 2. You are literally death on the battlefield.
But I prefer being a comfy wizard living in some isolated location not too close to any inhabited area but not too far either.
Like being a NEET in a fantasy world.
>Wake up
>summon a succubus to make you breakfast in bed
>Eat breakfast in bed
>Daily succubus feeding
>Get out of bed but only put on a robe to cover your naked body
>head to library to study
>tea time
>summon another succubus to make tea
>Finish tea and succubus shenigans
>Afternoon
>Head to alchemy lab to make dank potions
>Evening
>vampire waifu wakes up makes you dinner
>Eat dinner and feed wife
>Stay up talking about wizard stuff and vampire stuff
>Midnight goto sleep
I think wizards and sorcerers in the witcher universe(only read the books) capture this properly with only slightly less sex and having them be rich as shit giving their services to whoever has the coin

The best magic system would be something mixed with The Name of the Wind simpathy and Elantris technical magic.

An interesting, but wasted, aproach was the tonal architecture in TES. But since they didn´t developed that and the saga went down since Morrowind, it´s lost forever.

I'd love a succubus familiar as a Warlock.
Not for fucking though, why would I make myself vulnerable to demonic creature? But to unleash her subtle influences and seductions on the unwary, it would make my research and travels so much easier. I'm not exactly a people person.

This would make a comfy game
I mean, people like farming and truck simulators.
Wizard simulator with a setting like this would be chill as fuck.