Arelith

I only have access to all of the spell data on the wiki, so if that's inaccurate some of my comments will not apply. It's no wonder why people aren't playing wizard and sorcerer very much. This is because most of the spells are extremely bad and beyond useless.
Right now there are like maybe 5 or 6 decent arcane spells. This severely limits the options available for casters, especially late game, where the only role for a sorcerer is dispelling and wizard (rip) is just a guy with books and tall tales. Most of these issues are also relevant for invokers (press F)

If I had access to the code I would submit changes, but alas, I am not a team member.

There are 2 main issues with the current spell selection:

Some spells are just worse than other spells on their level, ie Summon VII vs Mord's Sword, worse than that, some spells are worse then spells several levels lower than them Cone of cold vs fireball

There is no way to overcome energy resistances, so in addition to doing less total damage, what damage done is soaked up by elemental resistances (that I will add don't often make any sense whatsoever, like why do bandits and bullywogs get fire resist?)

Here are my proposed solutions
Elemental Admixture metamagic feat: add 1 spell level to change the element to one of your choosing (maybe add to sorc at 10th level)
Greater Elemental admixture: same as above but adds 2 spell levels but includes Force, and negative and positive energy

A few specific suggestions
-add 2x damage on disintigrate
-remove 15d6 cap and add freeze/slowdown to cone of cold
-just take greater chromatic orb behind the chemical sheds and put it out of its misery
-remove damage cap from Freeze
-most spells need to have their damage and scaling increased significantly

Vitriol is probably not the best way to broach this topic, even if I share some of your frustrations. Wizards and Sorcerers are in a boring spot right now. I say boring spot, because I firmly believe both of them are very, very playable right now. They're on the weaker side, but the census that MalKalz did suggests that not only are sorcs and wizards being played right now, they're being played regularly, and are more popular than some objectively mechanically superior classes. Turns out people just like to play wizards.

There are a couple of problems with giving the wizard and spellbook some touch-ups, though spells have been changed in the past and brought up to more respectable levels -- at least for PVE;

-PVP is always a big consideration. Any wizard spell that does too much damage is going to throw a lot of the PVP balance that's currently in place out the window, so uncapping damage spells is always a risky proposition, even if they seem pretty harmless.

-A lot of the wizard/sorcerer spellbook is shared with other classes. In particular, hemomancer and elementalist. A lot of these spells which are pretty underwhelming for sorcerer and wizard because they can't make use of them are actually pretty okay when you can just spam them repeatedly. Shame that elementalist doesn't really have the staying power to do much right now due to its lack of healthy summoning options, though.

-Finally, a lot of the spells were part of the spellbook by default, or added later for flavor. They could probably use some touching up, too. I agree, for example, that greater chromatic orb feels pretty awful to use.

As far as I understand it, there's a lot of discussion going back and forth between devs right now about what to do with a lot of those spells, and probably, like the last couple of big spell updates, it'll be done when it's done.

disintegrate was actually already buffed

I wonder what would happen if some spells did 75% damage vs a successful save, instead of 50%.

AstralUniverse wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:17 am

I wonder what would happen if some spells did 75% damage vs a successful save, instead of 50%.

or even 65%? I think 75% would be too much or a lot of spells and many spells would need rescaling. like maximized fireball is 90 damage at 15d6 at 75% is 67.5 for level 6 slot which doesn't seem much, but when you x 2 it per round and can add it to runic wands (that auto apply metamagic for wizards) and it does at least that much to everyone in the area, it adds up. Any AoE Any lvl 6 AoE spells that does 120 maximized at 75% would be contending with maximized IGMS that can be reduced in damage via shield spell.. only it can hit more people for said damage.

we could even have like multi tier saves too on this line of thought. like first save for 75%. 2nd save for 50%, etc. Make DCs have plus 5 for each increment. Improved and evasion can auto reduce what increment you are at without increase dc. So like evasion makes first saved failed still do 75%, if first saved is passed, then 50%, if 2 saves passed then 25%, etc. Imp evasion would take it one step further, etc. I think we got scripts in place to make certain mind related stuff count as evasion towards like various illusion damage spells? Similar formulas might be applicable.

I almost put this in my elementalist feedback, but it more properly belongs here. The real culprit here is a combination of things, from save-bloat to the constellation of feats/abilities that allow you to ignore DC-based effects (e.g. evasion, improved evasion, slippery-mind, paralysis-immunity, mind-immunity, pray, etc.)

I'm not sure what the solution is.

Spellmageddon seemed to be a soft roll-out of two-tiered save effects, but in reality, it was often so timid as to have no effect. Take fore example. Blackfire, which does some cool stuff if you fail your save. The save is, however, reflex (see above), so on a made save it does 4d8 Fire / 4d8 Entropy...or an average 18 Fire / 18 Entropy...before resistances are applied. This is an 8th lvl spell. No caster in their right mind should gamble slotting this spell.

I am inclined to think we need more saveless spells -or- more meaningful two-tier effects -or- some other meaningful counterplay such as the scaling described in previous posts.

It's been almost a year and we can safely say that despite the effort to improve DC spells the only thing that Spellmageddon really did was nerfing the cloud DC spells.

We need DC spells to not do nothing when saved against. The way things work right now a failed save against a DC spell could be regarded almost like suffering a critical hit - regular attacks do not do NOTHING unless they score a crit either, spells should not be any different.

malcolm_mountainslayer wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 2:18 am

we could even have like multi tier saves too on this line of thought. like first save for 75%. 2nd save for 50%, etc. Make DCs have plus 5 for each increment.

Get out of my head!

-XXX- wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:27 am

It's been almost a year and we can safely say that despite the effort to improve DC spells the only thing that Spellmageddon really did was nerfing the cloud DC spells.

We need DC spells to not do nothing when saved against. The way things work right now a failed save against a DC spell could be regarded almost like suffering a critical hit - regular attacks do not do NOTHING unless they score a crit either, spells should not be any different.

well we have some spells that partiall fit that request. Just needs more work and Astral interest idea that could be adapted for other spells that I tried adding on.

For spells that DO currently do something when passed (but might have other caveats like immunities etc)
Grease (decrease movement speed still on pass)
NEB (still decreasing str on passed save)
various cloud spells (mindfog and deathcloud still decrease stats on passed save)
Scorching ray is actaully decent except it doesnt scale enough (and for good reason for low lvl spell) with it being touch attacks
Darkbolt (can still do decent damage and have chance for CC but against is easily subject to immunities)
Sound lance (again lower lvl spell, but the half save at least wont be no damage against evasion and has 'bad stuff on failed saved beyond damage. scalles really well for its lvl of slot though)

I am sure others could add to said list (and I would like to hear them for self knowledge sake)