Re: wizard underpowered?

Posted by The Duke on Nov 27, 2011; 7:44am
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/wizard-underpowered-tp5924694p7035675.html

One of my friends owns this game and some of us have gotten together a couple times over the years to play it, but I don't think we've ever actually completed it. Unfortunately, we're all in college now, so we don't get together that often any more, but on the plus side we're planning to get together over winter break and try to play the game all the way through.

We have often commented on how the wizard's spells generally seem lackluster, excepting the fire spells. As a whole, though, it seems like he either uses the useful spells in adventuring and then is of little assistance during the boss battle, or vice versa. After perusing the  internet in an attempt to find better spells to make for the wizard, this, instead, is what seems to be a good fix for the wizard, at least in theory. It's kind of a mash up of a bunch of different ideas that I've seen, but it seems like it would help without making him way overpowered. I won't be able to try it out for around a month or so, but I'm totally open to any feedback if someone wants to try it, or just what you all think. So here it is:

1) Implement a hidden spell recharge point on the map.
-This would be chosen by the GM before each quest and could even be one of the tables or something already in the rooms.
-This recharge point would recharge all used spells one time only. Once you find it you can use it then or later, but once you use it to recharge then its done.
-By at most using each spell twice, this still causes some strategy in choosing when to use the spells, and discourages wasting spells until you have actually found the point
 
2) Add a "magical staff" item that allows the wizard to do his basic attack(one dice roll) to any monster in his line of sight.
-He would have to buy this item, helping him buy new items like all of the other characters in the game and get better as you progress through the quests
-This doesn't seem to affect his dynamic of being a stand-in-the-back, try-not-to-get-hit type character.
-It would allow him to use his heal spells on the physical characters who should be taking the beating anyways
- This would give him some use in the exploration phase when you're just trying to find and search-for-treasure in all the rooms, by helping to kill some of the smaller creatures, without turning him into some crazy powerful character who outshines all the other characters
-It's not powerful enough to make his spells worthless

These two changes don't seem like they would be particularly hard to implement, but they also seem, to me, like they would really help to bring the wizard up to the level of the other characters. I tried to include some reasoning behind why I thought these would be good, but PLEASE give me some feedback on this. Sorry this is gettin g a bit lengthy, but thanks for sticking with me all the way through!