How would you balance extremely powerful wizard spells in a video game of your choice?
firearms
Resource cost and casting speed.
>>736892707Limited use per run, not per battle
>>736892773
>>736892707Glass cannon approach
extremely rare reagents for most spells. weak spells are free and scale up but they will always be less powerful than anything a similarly progressed non-caster can do
>>736892959oh, forgot to add: stockpiling reagents causes npcs to spread rumors about your party trying to overthrow the local lord. they send assassins regularly if you keep piling them up
>>736892707I wouldn't. Ideally extremely powerful wizard spells are something that breaks the conventional rules of the game or the worlds reality. They're not supposed to be balanced.
>>736892707Wizards are NPC only. If you can go out and adventure then you're not spending enough time with the research and scholarly pursuits required to be considered a wizard. Spellcasters who are PCs intentionally trade off raw power for versatility and casting speed.
>>736892707Lack of defence/armour and lack of healing items. Elemental resistances/vulnerability. Mana. Long cast times. Expensive/hard to acquire spells. These things can only be justified if magic is extremely damaging however. Many games implement these mechanics without sufficiently rewarding the player, like Dark Souls 3 for example. Not enough damage to justify the build from a balance standpoint. Best magic experience in games comes from variety and utility spells, not damage spells in my opinion. Summoning minions is always fun. Portals, healing, shields, creating environmental obstacles/terraforming, slowing time, invisibility, all needed to make you feel like a true wizard and not just an archer with weird arrows. Too much elemental magic is lame too in my opinion, as in Fire/Ice/Lightning. You need to have other elements like Arcane (should be primary), blood, dark, light etc. Another bonus is if they have lore around magic and where it comes from, like Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Bloodborne.
>>736892707https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSxQcAm3PE8
>>736892707Do what Ultima 8 did with Necromancy and Sorcery.
>>736892707Extremely long cooldowns (hours if not days) and rare reagent costs. Basically turn wizards into pic related. A Wizard CAN fuck your shit up, but will they want to waste so many resources randomly?
>>736892707Makes wizards the ruling class of society, given non-wizards are parasites who offer nothing.
Give powerful spells long cooldown periods with the option of being able to reuse them inside said cooldown period at the cost of accruing harsh penalties like permanent stat damage that can't be fixed
Make the enemies more powerful, but in a way that still leaves the room for power fantasy feel.
>>736892707Just make it Invoker from Dota. I'm surprised that this design hasn't already been ripped off wholesale.
>>736892707Just don't.Magic is supposed to be overpowered. Either integrated into the lore as an overpowered concept or balance the game around it being overpowered. Or don't add magic at all.