[Suggestion] Less tiresome spellcasting

[IanTheWizard]

Can we please make spellcasting less tiresome? This topic probably has already been brought up multiple times before, but I think it deserves more attention. Why? Because how spellcasting is working is not desirable to many players.

Currently, if the "One-click Spellcasting" option is checked, a spell gesture we drew disappears when we release the mouse button and the spell automatically casts. And I have no problem with that.

But if the "One-click Spellcasting" option is not checked, I suggest that a spell gesture we draw does not disappear unless we start to draw a different spell gesture. With this feature, we wouldn't have to draw the same spell gesture again and again tiresomely, especially when we have more than one spellcaster in our party.

[Isaac]

I would bet that the built in tedium of spell casting is entirely deliberate. Mages are casting magical effects out of thin air—and prone to mid-casting mistakes. It's not like they each carry a magic blunderbuss with spell ammunitions for each effect; select & fire, select & fire.

The tedium imposes a structured pacing, so as not to allow rapid [semi-automatic] fire of spell effects. Call it a cost for —maybe— just having [the chance of] a fireball at all in the moment. (You've seen yourself the exploit of manually tossing fire bombs in rapid succession.)

There are supposed to be times when you fail to cast the spell in time.
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Years ago the developer SSI broke away from Westwood Studios, and published their own in-house sequel to Eye of the Beholder II [EoB3]. Somebody there had the idea to reduce tedium by including an 'All Attack' button, and it does just what it says; all of the PCs attack at the same time, when you click the button. This was a terrible idea.

*Consider the party attacking a giant foe who hits the whole party at once. If the whole party is recovering from the 'all attack', then no one can get in a shot at the giant until someone recovers. With the individual character's recovery being staggered (as per normal/conventional play) there could be one or more character attacks on the enemy that just might save the entire party from death.

[IanTheWizard]

@Isaac,

Thanks for your input. I'm fine with sometimes failing to cast a spell in time. However, the current way of spellcasting also causes other characters to be idling. That is, when you are drawing a spell gesture for a character, all other characters are idling and cannot do anything. That's a waste of chances of attack for other characters. Maybe a solution could be implementing a "spell memory" feature and making it so when we click one of the memorized spells, the corresponding spell gesture automatically draws by itself and then the spell automatically casts, too.

[Isaac]

That is, when you are drawing a spell gesture for a character, all other characters are idling and cannot do anything.

It's true, though if your spell casters act last in the sequence (after the others attack), then they are casting their spells while the others recover.

[IanTheWizard]

That is, when you are drawing a spell gesture for a character, all other characters are idling and cannot do anything.

It's true, though if your spell casters act last in the sequence (after the others attack), then they are casting their spells while the others recover.

Cooldowns can follow the attack sequence usually in the first two rounds. Because cooldowns can very between weapons and some weapons/shields have "special attacks", it's likely that cooldowns start to run off the attack sequence after two rounds. We can also have more than one spellcaster in the party.