Tomb Titivator
Posts: 857
Joined: Monday, 31st January 2011, 23:19
Underused Spells
For example, Alistair's Intoxication. I can't imagine a situation where it would be useful and you couldn't win without it and the mechanics are really complicated. Silence is another one. The term I see tossed around in various games for these sort of things are "win mores" in that they only help you if you were going to win ANYWAY without them and seem to be designed specifically to NOT be "game changers" by adding complicated mechanics.
Are there any design goals to make such spells used more? Currently the trend seems to be to create a useful spell, nerf it until it's no longer useful, then remove it since it's no longer used... or alternatively, imagine a corner cause that the spell would be useful and then otherwise ignore it and leave it unused. The only reason I can see for this trend is to keep balance between holding tab with an axe and holding tab with a conjuration spell... is there a fundamental design flaw with heavy armor and conjurations that's bottlenecking what spells can be useful in the game?
One possible solution is to make some spells easy to cast in armor and some spells hard to cast in armor instead of adding 4000 clauses and side effects to a spell that MIGHT confuse a monster.