Aaron86: I saw your post about the magic schools. Are you doing anything to make sure each spell is always useful? I'm asking especially for the status effect spells like fear and silence, which in most games don't work on any monsters save for the ones that are too little a threat to actually need a status effect.
I assume the "Last Stand" spell is only practical when you have access to some resurrection. Are there any penalties for a character that dies repeatedly?
You bring up some very important points...
Spells - I can say generally that spell balance is extremely important to us and we're doing everything possible to balance Antharion's magic system. I know exactly what you mean with regard to stuff like Fear and Silence and I can assure you that this will not be the case in Antharion. Immunities will be fairly rare, so a spell's effectiveness usually comes down to the difference between the target's magical resistance and the caster's spell school skill level. Powerful spells only balance out if they have a proportionally high mana cost. In the case of Last Stand, trying to spam it wouldn't work because of its prohibitively high mana cost.
The death penalty - For a game where death is infrequent, it makes sense to implement a tough punishment like forcing your party to walk back to town for a rez. Other games however will push your entire party to the edge every battle, in which case death of one or two characters is fairly common and frequent. In the ladder case, instituting 'a walk back to town for a rez' punishment would be a gigantic annoyance not really a punishment. Antharion leans more towards the ladder type of game, but we're still considering how to handle a total party wipe, there should be some penalty especially if saves during battle aren't permitted.
