cute.
Arg, I'm at that place where there are several serious posts in earlier pages that I still want to respond to, but I don't have the brain for them at the moment, so more nonsense it is!
maxernst wrote...
@CGG, I agree that as it stands, the Circles don't do a very good job of "serving mankind" as Andraste instructed the mages to do. I suppose they serve mankind when they fight the Blight, but they didn't allow many mages to go to Ostagar, though I got the impression that the entire surviving Circle was sent to Denerim for the end battle.
That said, does magical healing have any advantages over herbalism? I suppose there's the lack of dependence on particular herbs, but I can't see why you wouldn't be able to farm elfroot and it seems to be fairly abundant naturally anyway. One of the things I find striking in the DA universe (at least as expressed in the games), is that magic seems to have very limited use outside of combat. Maybe it's just a game mechanic thing and they've drained out the non-combat magic with the non-combat gameplay, but it seems like there's remarkably little divination, communication or transportation magic, compared to most RPG systems. Illusions? Invisibility? I don't think we even see a simple light spell or a spell to open locked doors? The fact that crazy Grace whines about not being able to elude the Circle because they have no provisions (like that's my fault??), suggests that they don't have the ability to create food and water.
I'm fine with there being no transportation or magical conjuration of food and water spells, for conservation of mass reasons, at the very least. It seems to me that magically conjured physical things (like grease and ice) dissipate rapidly when the caster stops focusing on them, which is a reasonable and practical rule. There are some silly 'conjuring or teleporting people or magical creatures' subquests in the original circle tower, if I recall correctly. In some cases you conjure something that runs off, in other cases it disappears, and in one case you can kill it and its corpse will stick around like any other corpse. So there is some degree of conjuration possible, the limits are just very hazy. I need to play DA:O again.
That said, teleportation is one of those 'changes everything' technologies that you can't regularly employ without solving too many useful problems. Same for distance communication. In my opinion having giant scary currently corrupted elf mirrors be the only things that can do teleportation and instantaneous distance communication is spot-on perfect for world balance.
I'm actually good with invisibility being impossible, for a number of different reasons. I've long been of the opinion that actual flight (as opposed to featherfall or minor levitation) and invisibility should be used sparingly, especially in magic-light worlds (which Thedas is. Not to the extreme of ASoIaF, but magic isn't a central part of every single human's day). Invisibility should be, at best, very hard to achieve though possible if completely stationary. I'm fine with just throwing it out the window completely though. Solves a lot of problems, and there's no reason why it logically needs to work. Even in the magic-heavy world of Harry Potter, you need a rare and expensive magical item with limited versatility to achieve invisibility.
Not having knock, camouflage, or stealth is probably for class balance reasons (another design vs. realism thing). That no unlocking thig is more annoying, because there's no real reason why that shouldn't work, especially if you're effectively just melting/exploding/using telekinesis on a lock.
Simple light spells are a thing that should exist. There's no reason to believe they don't... but still.
The limitation of magic to the manipulation of forces and limited conjuration of matter (which rapidly dissipates when focus is removed) is a good balance that ensures magic doesn't completely replace the pursuit of technology or completely ruin the economy.
As for healing itself, the general impression I get is that herbalism is for treatment, and healing is for active intervention. Like, if you break your arm a potion's not going to set it and knit it back together, whereas a healer can do that. This doesn't manifest in gameplay as much (all injuries are equal in regards to potions vs. heal spells), but that's what I gathered from conversations in both games about both disciplines. There are some situations that herbalism handles better (poison and poison cures, for instance), and some where magic is better (putting your intestines back inside you.) If you've just gotten bruised or lost a lot of blood, healing and herbalism will do the same amount of good fixing you up, but a lot of stuff responds better to one or the other, IMO. Also, herbs are limited and can be 'picked clean' by overuse, to the extent that there won't be more available for weeks or months, whereas any healer who is at full mana is 'wasting' a resource that could be actively replenishing itself... if that makes sense?
Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 30 juin 2011 - 12:01 .
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As would photoshopping it with this many people. So... um... use the power of imagination! 
