What´s best? Sorcerers or Mages?

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Yeah, read the topic

 

so this topic is back again.
It has been on every board on the web, even old baldursgate dungeon.

berzerk halflings with flails and huge shields
the way to go

never played magic user except bard.

 

Sorry. The search option did not work for me - unknown reason. It works now, and I have found a topic that includes this. But you may answer anyway, cuz I have not made up my mind yet... thx

 

what is best depends on your playing style.
if you use a lot of different spells and likes to mix around with your spellbook then a mage (specialist mage) is the way to go.
if you, on the other hand only use a few selected spells but want to use them often then sorcerer is the way to go.
as I see it you have to separate between mage and specialist mage first, since you can dual something into a mage (swashbucker to mage is fun to play and is a very useful character).
A single class all the way specialist mage will on the other hand have lots of spells.

I think sorcerer is a little like Belgarath in the books by eddings. cool but you will not have the thrill (and exp.) of looking for scrolls to scribe into your book.

In short, what kind of mage user do you want to play is a question you should ask yourself first.

(meaning, how doyou use magic)
damn am I ranting or what

[This message has been edited by bongo tjockskalle (edited July 12, 2001).]

 

For me the sorcerer is more fun to play because it is more natural. By that I mean the game flows more as you are not constantly thinking about resting to get the right spells back. I suppose it partley helps to overcome the one part of D&D that often gets criticised in CRPGs the magic system being based on sleep.

Another advantage of the sorcerer is that he doesn't need high inteligence. This means you can spread the points around to something like strength or dexterity. Again this makes the charcater more felxible in the game as he can carry more or might actually get a decent thaco or ac.

Of course the specialist mage is the most flexible in terms of available battle tactics as he can learn a much wider variety of spells. Of course you could do a multiplayer party and take both

 

Edwin is a Specialist mage. Keep in mind that, unless you're playing a multiplayer party, you can find a Specialist mage in the game normally without creating him, but you can only play the sorcerer if you create one. In any case, it's better to have two mages in BGII, a primary mage (who does the offensive spelltanking) and a secondary mage (status spells, protective spells).

 

The thing I hate about the memorization system is this; let's assume that we have a mage who, from the third level, can cast two spells, and memorizes one Fireball and one Dispel Magic. This mage spent his years to the study of magic but as soon as he casts the fireball spell he suddenly forgets how to cast it a second time even if he has the power to cast another third level spell, which is Dispel Magic in our case. And before going to sleep he will study how the spell was cast again. This gets more annoying when for example, a 30th level mage forgets how to cast a simple identify spell that he has been casting for decades. So sorcerers are better in this way (at least that's what I think). When I played a sorcerer I bought 3 or 4 scroll cases (in different places) and stuffed all scrolls that I came upon, and gave them all to Imoen when she joined the party in Chapter 4. I suggest a sorcerer because you won't be complaining about a wrong memorized spell when Dispel Magic would save your life instead of a haste spell you have memorized not knowing what you would be facing.

 

He's not forgetting how to cast the spells, his mind simply cannot be focused in the way you'd hope. The sorcerers enjoy the benefit of magic as an innate ability, when the mages have to study it and carefully imprint the spell in their mind... Think of it as preparing spells before casting. You can't really compare a sorcerer with a mage because they are so different.

And the fact that I've always hated the spell memorisation system has nothing to do with this... I just like arguing with people

 

Sorcerers are better imo. My sorcerer Cassius and his evil party can basically handle every situation thrown at them with ease, and Cassius is the only wizardly spellcaster (no edwin yet). The spells I probably use most often would be like Invisibility 10' Radius, Emotion/Horror, and of course Stoneskin. With the sorcerer's ability to cast the spell 5 or 6 times, I just put invisibility on everyone, scout around for traps with my thief, and then slaughter whatever I go against with an attack all at once.

 

well the correct term for forgeting how to cast a spell is called the Curse of the Magi. the curse of the magi was brought apon by the gods to make sure the no one person could get to powerful, so in a sense he is forced to forget because of the gods and the intellegence the had to do that to magic useres or they could just go about casting the most powerful spell and kill every one in their path.