Wizard Scaling

[Yakumo_Chen]

Of all the rounds that have been in SS13 for most of its history, there's almost nothing as polarizing as Wizard. An antag that is insanely strong with the right spellset, or at worst a terrible meme or someone who fireballs themselves 2 minutes into the round and ends it.

However, it's important to realize that unlike every other antag mode in the game, no matter how many crew there are, there will always be one wizard with 10 spell points.

This creates an incredibly strange scenario where the wizard is insanely powerful in lowpop rounds, which often net a lot of complaints, but comparatively weak when there's 70 players, which often leads to extremely short or boring rounds.

Wizard really does need some scaling to make it more interesting in higher population and not a complete steamroll when there's only 20 or so crew to fight it. either more wizards or more spells (perhaps an alternative in a free apprentice contract with every 20 or so extra players), even blob would get two overminds with a high enough population to balance out the fact that a single one was insanely easy to kill with 20 assistants rushing it with welders.

[Cobby]

10 has been plenty for highpop, wtffff

[Qbmax32]

That’s because wizards only murderbone. You can get by with 10 spellpoints on high pop if you stealth wizard or actually do your objectives

[BeeSting12]

>cant murderbone with 10 spell points
literally git gud

[Qbmax32]

DELET THIS

[PKPenguin321]

>he's bad at wizard

[kevinz000]

how do you ever lose wizard?

[CPTANT]

You are never going to catch a competent wizard with 10 spellpoints no matter what the population.

[Incomptinence]

how do you ever lose wizard?

Thinking summon guns and summon magic will be fun for you.

[kevinz000]

how do you ever lose wizard?

Thinking summon guns and summon magic will be fun for you.

it is you just have to react even faster and take blink.

[Deitus]

>not making summon guns, summon magic, and slaughter/laughter demon purchases for Max chaos/amount of people having fun

smdhtbqh

[calzilla1]

>not making summon guns, summon magic, and slaughter/laughter demon purchases for Max chaos/amount of people having fun

smdhtbqh

Not just spending all in summon major guns and go single man operator

[Yakumo_Chen]

That’s because wizards only murderbone. You can get by with 10 spellpoints on high pop if you stealth wizard or actually do your objectives

Boring. The whole point of wizard is to create as much chaos as possible. You're the only antag and the roundtype revolves around you, why wouldn't you do this?

You are never going to catch a competent wizard with 10 spellpoints no matter what the population.

Absolutely not true. Wizards excel at 1v1 combat, against groups of people they quickly get swarmed. Spell cooldowns are brutal, especially if you're using expensive spells like jaunt or disintegrate, and you can only run away so far with everything but teleport (which makes you yell your distination).

With enough crew any wizard is likely to get swarmed.

You are never going to catch a competent wizard with 10 spellpoints no matter what the population.

10 has been plenty for highpop, wtffff

If this is objectively the case then it's going to be overpowered for lowpop. There is absolutely no way a solo antag can possibly be balanced through any population with the exact same stats. It doesn't work for blob, it doesn't work for team antags or traitors. It's definitely not balanced when there's 70-90 (!!) crew or more, all of whom are willing to run at you by lemmings if it means at least a few of them get a toolbox in and drop half your health before you can jaunt away.

how do you ever lose wizard?

kevin, wizards are solo antags that can't equip armor or EVA protection without sacrificing speed or spellcasting ability or spellpoints to have one or the other. While at best any stun can be mitigated by stalling tactics (blink, jaunt that doesn't move you, timestop, counter-stuns), you can still craft plenty of one-hit-kills for wizards like explosive lances or syringe guns. Wizards who don't raid med storage on their first teleport also tend to get worn down eventually because they generally can't self-heal. They're walking glass cannons.

[Cobby]

Right I have no issue with lowering it based on pop, but never should it be more than 10 imo.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Wizards have the highest mobility of any antag in the game with the exception of revenants, who are incorporeal 90% of the time. Blink + Ethereal Jaunt makes you basically impossible to catch unless you fuck up, especially if you also took magic missile or another "back the fuck off muggles" spell

[Rustledjimm]

The biggest weakness I see with the wizard personally is very strong lack of any kind of healing bar the staff/wand of healing. I believe there should be a small healing spell whether it's one that heals slowly overtime or one that heals quickly with a very long cooldown.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

What wizard worth his salt doesnt pick up a pair of medkits from medbay storage though

[Rustledjimm]

What wizard worth his salt doesnt pick up a pair of medkits from medbay storage though

And that's an issue. Why is it a requirement to do so? Shouldn't have to be, there should be a choice of a healing spell imo.

Why is it seen as good game design if to be good you have to do this one certain thing?

[Steelpoint]

If healing is such an issue then take the wand belt and the recharge wand spell.

Bam! You get a staff of healing in a compact form.

[Cobby]

What wizard worth his salt doesnt pick up a pair of medkits from medbay storage though

And that's an issue. Why is it a requirement to do so? Shouldn't have to be, there should be a choice of a healing spell imo.

Why is it seen as good game design if to be good you have to do this one certain thing?

Because those eventually run out which means he has to go back to medbay, chemistry, or science. With a spell they do not.

Also as people said, there is a healing item available under the wand pack

[Steelpoint]

I would not mind seeing some kind of spell point scaling for low pop Wizard.

But 10 spell points is more than enough for a Wiz even on high pop.

Wizards are the single most destructive, capable and survivable antagonist in the game. Personally I feel most Wizards die to either them making a mistake, or intentionally disadvantaging themselves in some way.

[Iatots]

Time to ask atlanta ned for a spell tracker tool. See what spells are associated with victories, and how often they are bought.

[Rustledjimm]

Because those eventually run out which means he has to go back to medbay, chemistry, or science. With a spell they do not.

Also as people said, there is a healing item available under the wand pack

I feel that restricts the wizards choices and there should be a third option of having a balanced heal spell. It would obviously have to be balanced with either a long cooldown or by being very weak. I'm not really sensing any argument against a spell existing other than 'The wizard can do this instead' which boils down to requiring to show up in Medbay and stealing equipment or taking a wand belt which has a lot of extras you might not really want when all you want is some healing.

This isn't something I'm really going to push strongly for, it's just something that I think would be a nice option for the Wiznerd.

[Steelpoint]

A healing spell likely should require the Wizard to remain stationary for a very extended period, and the spell should have a long cool down.

[Grazyn]

Why would a wizard have access to healing spells? Healing is divine magic, they can only use arcane magic.

[PKPenguin321]

Healing spells would just be a newbie trap, since any wizard worth their salt can just steal good heals from the station and take spells that not only provide them mobility but often get them away from damage in the first place

[obscolene]

>take fireball, magic missile, ei nath, jaunt and time stop
>teleport to medbay storage and take one of each medkit at roundstart
>be literally unkillable no matter the population
what seems to be the issue

[onleavedontatme]

Issue is pitting one player with anywhere between 2 weeks to 5 years experience vs anywhere from 30 to 80 other players who also have between 2 weeks and five years experience and thinking you can do anything balance wise to the spells to get consistency out of that

[BeeSting12]

Time to ask atlanta ned for a spell tracker tool. See what spells are associated with victories, and how often they are bought.

Nobody goes for greentext on wizard though. They just go for either max kill counts or a friendly gimmick.

[D&B]

Wizard as it stands right now it's more dependant on how experienced the person is rather than how many points or pop there are.

An experienced player can kill the entire station with nothing but three spells or stupid gimmicks while newbies will die rather quickly no matter how much you outfit them or arm them.

[Incomptinence]

The only solution to push over wizards screwing the balance is more wizard experience.

Which would require an absurdly high round percentage to develop due to the single slotted nature.

Wiz scaling would probably just lead to powergaming vets taking even more brutalist bare bones builds and boring/infuriating people more.


What might be an interesting idea would be a *RARE* side antag or low pop variant journeyman wizard with a bit less spell points but here is the big twist: spent randomly on the regular menu excluding summon guns and magic because that would basically be an involuntary announcement.

Helping newbies actually learn something instead of trying to do the ""fun"" thing and summon guns/magic before they start. Force veterans to try and bend some of the less used spells and items to achieve success.

[Steelpoint]

Maybe if there was a off-station Wizard role that a ghost player can take control off that lets the Wizard fight in a self-contained environment. The environment should be utterly cut off from the rest of the game, likely on the Centcom Z-level. Also the Wizard would need to lose any teleport spells so it can't teleport to the station.

Imo to be a good Wizard player you need to be a good player to begin with. But getting some experience as a Wizard can go a long way, and most people don't know how to download the code and try it offline, plus its very hard to play as a Wizard (in all my years I've never been a round start Wizard).

[Incomptinence]

A self running thunderdome for antag combat practice would be good in general if it could run itself admin free and never use much resources or touch the round proper.

[DemonFiren]

Would be nice if you could watch it on the bar screens, though.

[Incomptinence]

As long as everyone there is random appearance should be possible to watch it.