MP vs. Casting Limit

I miss the MP system of DmS and was wondering, in terms of balance and fun, which one does the community think is better? Please explain your answer if you can.

I vote for MP, because it allowed more versatility in my opinion. Having a set amount of casts just seems like I am way too limited.

I prefer the set number of casts, it feels much more organized and forces you to use them sparingly, even though I'm a spell lover myself.

FROM bases the combat system of the souls series around melee combat. the purpose of having limited casts is because it forces you to use it sparingly and still melee, which makes it both harder and lets you get full experience. this also prevents spell spamming in pvp which would be stupid really.

mp just means magic is too good. it's already immensely powerful as it is with limited number of castings, let alone spamming crystal souls spear or WOG. MP and items to restore it mean that even your most powerful spells can just be thrown about at will, and very little thought is necessary in taking such action.

Casting limits means that magic rather than being trivial and all powerful is a tool to be used sparingly and carefully. rather than letting you breeze through just casting spells and ruining the combat, it actually brings more depth this way.

I must disagree with you Serious. DmS and the series itself I feel is more versatile then just melee combat. I think the lead designer had said in an interview before release that they wanted to encourage people to level up and design more versatile characters with more than one option. I could be misinterpreting it, but that's what I remember.

As far as forcing conservative use of magic. I personally don't feel like I have to use things sparingly, rather I just feel like my character isn't as interesting since I only have x amount of casts. That being said I wouldn't change DkS to mimic DmS's system without adding harsh penalties like high MP cost. This is because magic is more powerful in Dark Souls.

DmS was well balanced I think. The amount of stats and MP required to cast magic was very harsh on someone who also wanted to sport a dedicated strength weapon. With the use of MP it had the potential to raise your spells effectiveness in small increments allowing players to not be pigeon holed into certain pieces of gear. unlike DkS where if I wanted to boost certain spells I have to choose certain pieces like dusk crown or dark sun crown.

i don't feel though that being able to spam magic is something that should happen on souls game. it takes the challenge out of it. a pure sorcerer on demons is just like using the dwgr on dark souls; easy mode. i don't think that using magic should make such a difference. it should give you more options and versatility, not completely change playstyle and destroy any challenge in the game.

i don't get why you put in the dusk crown.. that's not a part of the casting type systems at all. Even so you still get pushed into gear, like magic regen ring, crescent weapons, kris blade etc to make magic more powerful on demons.. it works for both games.

i never said that the game is just completely for melee combat, but it is however melee centric. Fighting a 50 foot iron golem loses it's impact a bit when you don't need to go toe to toe with it and hack away at it's shins. the fact that bow damage was reduced on this game and mp was removed suggests this. while the souls series encourages people to use versatile builds, you can't just rely on the easy ranged option all the time. I think it's better this way personally.

Dusk Crown was referenced because of it's 20% boost to magic damage. I was citing the need versus the option to use gear to increase the effectiveness of magic spells. In Demon's Souls you could go full mage, or just raise MP to a minimum breakpoint to achieve what you wanted to use. You didn't have to use gear to optimize the effectiveness of the spell. In DkS, the minimum breakpoint to use, say WoTG's, isn't enough to be considered effective.

If your Golem comment is in reference to the Iron Golem fight, it can be countered by the fact that the boss has ranged attacks and is mildly aggressive. In fact, most enemies have ranged abilities too, aside from the beginning of the game.

I concede on the single point that DkS Magic is inherently more effective and diverse than DmS. I miss my Plague Cloud though

The Dark Souls magic system is much better than what Demons Souls had in terms of "fairness" because I remember well the power of Second Chance

yes, the effectiveness of spell didn't need optimising, well unless you were using kris blade, but i was saying in the same way, magic on that game relied on your mp restoring equipment. ring and crescent weapon takes 2 slots, the crown only takes one, and in proportion of tiny mp regen to 20 percent damage boost, i know which is more worth it.

also, while some magic needs optimising, much magic doesn't at all. having 36 int and soul spear is still amazingly powerful despite only having lowest needed int, wog still has 165 magic adj using thorolund talisman... which is only 30 less than most people's level.

most of the enemies have ranged :?: i know many do, but a lot don't.. that and ranged attacks are far easier to dodge than the close attacks. even if an enemy has a long range attack, staying at range is almost always beneficial to you, with the exceptions of things like channeler, seath etc.

however, while they have ranged attacks, that doesn't really matter. you know well as i do you bait a close attack, back off and fire during the animation from a nice safe distance. whether the iron golem has ranged attack or not all you do is bait it's slow close attacks and lay into him with magic when he misses you appallingly.

thing i'm most glad about is not having talisman of beasts and people using second chance and cursed weapon together, which is ridiculous really.

I like set casts solely because it isn't as common in todays RPG's. Mana bars are nice, but having to rely on a set number casts per day/per bonfire is just appealing in a way.

Hmmmmm. This is a tuff one, i was thinking about it a lot while i was getting the rest of the trophies for demons souls recently. I think that magic right now is a bit too powerful, i think they need to bring the dmg down a lot. In return i think they should bring back the mp bar, i just think its a better system. Although i will admit the numbered casts are easier to use, and judge what you can and can't do.

Think about in demon's souls, you couldn't cast as many spells in a row unless you had really high int. Although you could use an item to refill it. An item that refills mp, but is as slow as humanity would be a good way to do it. You wouldn't be able to spam as many spells in a row(GC/WOG), but you technically have unlimited spells. Have mp cost low, and dmg output low. Although to be honest i wish fromsoft did a spin off series(same controls and everything) but adjusted it to a more realistic medevil setting. With only humanoids and no magic. My brain would explode if they announced something like that.

There are some spells, as Fruit was saying, that would need changes if they could be used theoretically infinitely. I dunno, I feel that it would be better, but the system as it is now, its not too broken in any way. I'm also not a huge advocate for or against pyromancy, but if your bar was related to INT or FAI (and not ATT), then you would have a problem. I guess it could work, it would probably be much better as another stamina bar, quick to replenish, spells of different power would take more or less, but I would still have limited casts, because infinite spells could be really game breaking.

Of course, to be fair, players have really infinite amounts of other things, like ranged attacks, healing, stats curing, I guess I'm in favor, but the idea of infinite WotG honestly disgusts me, but trololol players will 30 casts, really do have infinite anyway.

ganking would be easier because the hosts and phantoms would never need to recharge their WOG/TWOP

Yea i kinda have to agree i like it how it is now actually.

I think MP could work if you were harshly penalized with MP cost. Assume that the bar has a cap on its maximum points. Say for the sake of the argument it has 50. 50 points in attunement grants 50 MP and 5 attunement slots. WotG costs 25 per cast. TWoP costs 15 and then 2 MP/sec for its entire up time. Additionally make VoS cost 1Mp/sec. Then theoretically the skills are very risky to run. Replenishing MP is the same as DmS, with an item as fruitpunchninja suggested with a longer than average consuming rate.


If we get rid of duping and such this could be awesome!

i like magic bars for pve, and that's why i really enjoy demon's souls pve over dark souls...

but for pvp stacks is the way to go.

I've never found the stacks ultra prohibitive excepting the Capra Demon fight on my "pyro only" challenge run. Before having access to the extra spells offered by Laurentis it's no fun.

Example. Great Combustion. Fire Orb and Greater Fire ball, with an accended flame you can kill ALL of the Lord's soul holding bosses. that's only 3 attunment slots... yeah.

I do feel spells suffer once you're past NG+ however, as you need more attunment slots than the game wants to reasonably give you(how many levels I gotta put in attunment THIS time?)

The MP System! And i miss the Kris Blade ...
And a mixture of the dks magic system, like you need an int/fth stat to use spell XY. And i costs mp!

Like wrath of the gods can only used if you have 28 faith, and lets say it costs 100 mp. At an magic/attunement stat of 40 you have 280 mp. So you can Spam it 2 times, and now?
In demon souls you just need free attunement slots to use the spell, but you should also have the requirements.

And i want my fresh/old spice and full moon (etc.) grass back, i have nearly 1.000.000 souls and i have everything ...

Fotitudo wrote:

And i want my fresh/old spice and full moon (etc.) grass back, i have nearly 1.000.000 souls and i have everything ...

just start duping divine blessing and we will have heal fest v2

If you want more casts just use the Dusk Ring.... It's a trade off.

Or stack Attn and do some NG+. The MP system in Demon's was OP.

I like MP better for PvE in principle, though I never had a problem with running out of magic with set casts. However, set casts really benefit PvP and help balance magic, imo.