The Good:
The defensive reduction on some surges was definitely needed and great. They're still useful while not being crazy.
I also believe the spell refreshing had to change, that really made going base-wizard silly and being able to manage negative surges in a safe environment allowed you to essentially just get free buff/summon casts.
The Bad:
I will say I'll miss chaos (doubly so because I had a 5% with it!), it was a really fun ability and put the 'wild' in wild mage.
The dweomer and chaos shields are largely useless; of course they draw from Baldurs Gate but don't quite come up to par. (Dweomer being essentially an instant cast for one and the effectiveness of the table in BG being significantly higher in the setting)
The Ugly (I couldn't help it):
Long story short, I'd love to see chaos and surge return - albeit without the spell refreshing.
Some thoughts on spells follow:
Blasphemy: wrote:
Problem:
This is exceptionally strong for a pure caster.
If someone has a clarity cooldown, this is a 100% chance disable. (If they pray, you cast it again.)
Suggestion:
Give it a will save. Scale the DC based on CL difference between caster and victim.
Good Hope: wrote:
Problem:
Adding further buffing ability and self buffing ability to a class which is arguably the strongest thing in the game is difficult to justify.
Suggestion:
Either remove the spell or reduce the effectiveness of bard song to compensate.
Maze: wrote:
Problem:
Possibly the most worrying spell at the moment.
On the surface it's not anything special, but it's exceptionally strong when paired with persistant spells - there's no build that can survive a maze when the return destination has been lathered with persistant spells - not to mention that you are able to timestop someone in those spells when they return and nuke on top.
It's also a weird one in terms of exploitation. NWN transitions aren't the best and it's certainly considered exploitative to take advantage of them; namely transition camping. This advocates that.
"But wait", you may say, failing a will save on weird will get you killed too! And you'd be right - however you are able to pray and immunise yourself a little, making it less effective. Pray won't help with this, even if an immunity was added, which pushes things towards the shotgun meta rather than away from it as is beneficial to RP.
Suggestion:
Give the spell an immunity (FOM)
AND one of the following
Either randomise the exit location to avoid being put into a layered trap. (Thematic but could cause problems with being pushed into unaccesible areas)
>Avoids PAoE problem.
>Limits transition problem.
>Introduces an exit-location problem.
Or:
Give immunity to everything, cutscene invisibility, and also 100% miss/spell failure on exiting the maze for 2 rounds.
Disallow lenses while in this state and area-transitioning.
>Avoids PAoE problem.
>Avoids transition problem.
>However, gives a tactical advantage when coming out of maze.