Nioca

Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, and every day next week. Both weekends as well. Also, did you ever get your spreadsheet working? Nikki: I've got Caitlin at full HP over here.

...yeah, probably for the best that this didn't happen on such short notice. We're still missing a level-up from Caitlin, after all (unless she did it in private).

That's... kinda short notice. I mean, I can do that, but I don't know if our other players could (assuming they even see this in time), and preparing a session on 22 hours notice is... yeah, wow.

142. Displacer Feast - "Because you are... IDIOT! Zee! It IS NOT moving!" (Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but I'm pretty sure this is a Super Mario RPG reference)

If what Rowen said in the Po3 message was accurate, he won't be back until the second week of August. So if you want to have a session before that time, you'll need to get a sub for Gunnar.

Calendared. And I- *notes that the spellchecker didn't flag "calendared" Wait, "calendared" is actually a word? Wow. Guess you learn something new every day. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next session, and trying out my new spell.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Nioca Also, there's something I'm starting to wonder about our tactics; thusfar, we've been having difficulty whenever we try to scavenge from or enter a city. No surprises, after all, there's zombies. But here's what I'm thinking: Right now, zombies tend to spot us either by hearing us or by seeing us. Which brings me to my point: if they're using vision to find us, why make a scavenging run in broad daylight, when we're most easily spotted? Why not wait until dark to try it? Obviously, we don't want to try and find a safe house in an unknown city after dark, and we'd probably want to do a bit of scouting on the outskirts of the city before trying anything (we need some binoculars), but for just simple scavenging runs, it might make more sense to do it at night when the zombies are less likely to see us (And also use melee to keep noise down). Thoughts? Wait, you're seriously suggesting that we attempt to navigate the zombie-infested city at night with no special equipment and slightly over three dozen rounds of small arms ammo? Perhaps not a massive city like Oklahoma City, but I think it'd work in a smaller city or town. Also, I'm talking about fast hit-and-runs here, not drawn-out wandering; fact is, the last two times we've been in a city, we wound up drawing out a horde of undead after our flesh in record time. Come to think of it, though, I could be totally off-base here. I'm making assumptions about their sensory perception here that could wind up inaccurate... It'd be helpful if we could figure out how exactly they perceive the world and how they identify their prey from fellow zombies. I still think the idea has merit, but if we were to try it, it'd probably be best to try it in a village or very small town like McLean. Quote: dude have you ever even seen a zombie movie Nope. I'm new to this.

Yay, level! Time for some more Perception! Click to reveal.. (Devin McCloud, L3) DEVIN McCLOUD Former Occupation: Rookie Police Officer Home: Amarillo, Texas Physical Description: Male, Slight Build, 6'1'', Brown Hair, Green Eyes. Dressed in plain clothes, wearing mirror shades. BASE ATTRIBUTES LVL - 3 STR - 3 | HP - 16/16/16 (HP/Max HP/Full HP) DEX - 2 | AC - 12 PER - 4 | SPD - 4 [+1PER] INT - 2 | XP - 00/17 NCO SKILLS ----Athletics - 2 [+1] ------Driving - 3 [+1] ----First Aid - 1 Gun Knowledge - 2 --Observation - 4 [+1] -------Search - 2 -------Sneak - 1 --Speechcraft - 2 FEATS Weapon Proficiency (Small Arms) No -4 HIT penalty when using pistols and submachine guns Dead Eye +2 HIT on Called Shots. WEAPON SKILLS ------Unarmed - +2 | -Small Arms - +5 --------Melee - -1 | Dual S.Arms - +3/+1 Dual Melee - -3/-5 | -----Rifles - +0 -----2H Melee - +0 | -Automatics - +0 -------Thrown - +2 | ---Shotguns - +0 INEVNTORY Click to reveal.. (INVENTORY) WORN (Or in Pockets/Holsters/Etc.) •Plain Clothes •SIG P226 Service Pistol (3Dmg, Clip 1+10/10) •Fire Axe (3Dmg Slashing) •Pistol Holster •Mirror Shades •Amarillo Police Department Badge •Handheld CB Radio •Sedan Keys •Keys to an Empty Semi-Truck DUFFEL BAG •Police-Issue Heavy Flashlight (2Dmg, Wide-Beam Illumination, 4 D-Cell Batteries) •4 Dead D-Cell Batteries •Various Assorted Batteries •Penlight •Pink Furry Metal Handcuffs w/ Key •Amarillo Police Uniform •Lighter •Oklahoma Road Map SEDAN •2 5-Gallon Cans full of Gasoline •Air Freshener •Small Box of Laundry Detergent VEHICLE Plain Sedan Fuel: 75% (Gasoline, Unknown Efficiency) Notable Stats: ? Special: None Damage: None BACKSTORY Click to reveal.. (BACKSTORY) "They're not coming back." Officer McCloud had startled himself by saying that. For the past month, he and five other Amarillo deputies had been holed up in a small run-down house outside city limits. As far as they had known, they were the last of Amarillo's police force; the rest had been killed by either the zombies or the bottom-feeding scum that had followed them. Of course, over the past month, that number had been dwindling. One had been turned into a zombie. Another had been shot by an overly-jumpy bystander. And the third... well, the third just vanished. And he suspected that the only reason he had survived was because the others had refused to take him on outings for supplies; they had told him it was because they needed something to hold down the fort, but it was easy to see the truth: They didn't want to be weighed down by a rookie who's first day on the job got interrupted by those shambling monstrosities. Honestly, he didn't mind. Zombies, roving gangs of thieves and thugs... he hadn't signed up for this kind of damage. But he was getting nervous; both remaining officers had taken a good number of their supplies to try and make a run for food and ammo. They had been gone for four days, and still showed no sign of returning, and food was running dangerously low. McCloud sighed. He did not want to run, but Amarillo was getting too dangerous, especially for a lone rookie still dressed in uniform. Gathering his supplies, he glanced out a small gap in the boarded-up windows. The field around the house was clear, for now. Deciding it was now or never, Officer McCloud removed the barricades from the door and bolted for Interstate 40, heading east out of Amarillo. ...Whew. That's getting big. ========== Anyway, we should probably plan our next move. First off, considering how badly wounded Erving is, I suggest we consider just staying put for a day to give his leg additional time to heal. We've got plenty of food at the rest stop, so it's not like we're risking anything sitting tight for a day, and having someone up and able to contribute is better than having someone be dead weight. Assuming we're heading for Norfolk, our best bet is probably to stay on the I-40 and take it as far east as possible. And even if we aren't, we don't have any reason to get off the interstate (unless someone else has thought of something that doesn't include the words "oil rig"). Also, there's something I'm starting to wonder about our tactics; thusfar, we've been having difficulty whenever we try to scavenge from or enter a city. No surprises, after all, there's zombies. But here's what I'm thinking: Right now, zombies tend to spot us either by hearing us or by seeing us. Which brings me to my point: if they're using vision to find us, why make a scavenging run in broad daylight, when we're most easily spotted? Why not wait until dark to try it? Obviously, we don't want to try and find a safe house in an unknown city after dark, and we'd probably want to do a bit of scouting on the outskirts of the city before trying anything (we need some binoculars), but for just simple scavenging runs, it might make more sense to do it at night when the zombies are less likely to see us (And also use melee to keep noise down). Thoughts? On another note, right now, we've got a good amount of food and fuel, but ammo is running dangerously tight. We've got four magazines of Small Cal ammo between us and two shotgun shells; that'll last us one fight, maybe two if we're lucky. If it was just zombies, we could simply resort to melee, but seeing as we also know there are raiders in the area, we could potentially have a very big problem on our hands if we're caught in a firefight. In short, we need ammo. I propose we do one of the following: 1) Send a small team back into Oklahoma City: Odds are, there's got to be police precincts, shopping malls, sporting goods stores, or something that we could salvage ammo from. We could do this by sending a small team on foot into the city (they'd take the sedan to get there; that'd also be a good test of its gas mileage) to scavenge, utilizing melee only to dispatch any zombies they come across. The four we picked up already demonstrated that a small group could navigate the city without drawing every zombie out of the woodwork (they got screwed because they got into a firefight). If we decide to wait and let Erving rest and heal, we could do this while he's resting back at the rest stop, and with a little luck, the team would be back for dinner and ready to go the next morning. 2) Scavenge one of the smaller cities to the east: If we continue east on the I40, we'll wind up passing one city, Henryetta, and going through another named Sallisaw. If we don't want to risk Oklahoma City, we can instead stop at one of these two cities and see if we can locate ammunition there. Okay, I think this post is getting a bit long. Any thoughts, or anyone else have something to add?

Works for me. On a related note, can we get an updated tally of our HP/STM totals after rest/healing? I have no idea what my post-level HP is, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

Originally Posted By: Lazarus. And how does this Saturday at 6pm EST sound for session 2? Sounds good. Friday works as well.

My level for Devin. I suppose we need someone with more than 2 points in STR. Click to reveal.. (Devin McCloud, L2) DEVIN McCLOUD Former Occupation: Rookie Police Officer Home: Amarillo, Texas Physical Description: Male, Slight Build, 6'1'', Brown Hair, Green Eyes. Dressed in plain clothes, wearing mirror shades. BASE ATTRIBUTES --LVL - 2 --STR - 3 | HP - 16/16/16 [+1STR/+2HP] (HP/Max HP/Full HP) -DEXT - 2 | AC - 12 ---PE - 3 | SPD - 4 --INT - 2 | XP - 00/14 NCO SKILLS ----Athletics - 1 ------Driving - 2 [+1] ----First Aid - 1 Gun Knowledge - 2 --Observation - 3 -------Search - 2 [+1] -------Sneak - 1 [+1] --Speechcraft - 2 FEATS Weapon Proficiency (Small Arms) No -4 HIT penalty when using pistols and submachine guns WEAPON SKILLS ------Unarmed - +2 | -Small Arms - +4 --------Melee - -1 | Dual S.Arms - +2/0 Dual Melee - -3/-5 | -----Rifles - -1 -----2H Melee - +0 | -Automatics - -1 -------Thrown - +2 | ---Shotguns - -3 BACKSTORY Click to reveal.. (BACKSTORY) "They're not coming back." Officer McCloud had startled himself by saying that. For the past month, he and five other Amarillo deputies had been holed up in a small run-down house outside city limits. As far as they had known, they were the last of Amarillo's police force; the rest had been killed by either the zombies or the bottom-feeding scum that had followed them. Of course, over the past month, that number had been dwindling. One had been turned into a zombie. Another had been shot by an overly-jumpy bystander. And the third... well, the third just vanished. And he suspected that the only reason he had survived was because the others had refused to take him on outings for supplies; they had told him it was because they needed something to hold down the fort, but it was easy to see the truth: They didn't want to be weighed down by a rookie who's first day on the job got interrupted by those shambling monstrosities. Honestly, he didn't mind. Zombies, roving gangs of thieves and thugs... he hadn't signed up for this kind of damage. But he was getting nervous; both remaining officers had taken a good number of their supplies to try and make a run for food and ammo. They had been gone for four days, and still showed no sign of returning, and food was running dangerously low. McCloud sighed. He did not want to run, but Amarillo was getting too dangerous, especially for a lone rookie still dressed in uniform. Gathering his supplies, he glanced out a small gap in the boarded-up windows. The field around the house was clear, for now. Deciding it was now or never, Officer McCloud removed the barricades from the door and bolted for Interstate 40, heading east out of Amarillo.

Yeah. But I find the lack of weapon skills more worrisome; right now, we have two characters with actual weapons and the skill to use them (Devin with a service pistol, William with a hunting rifle and pocket knife). All the others have is their wits, harsh language (to which zombies are immune), and two cans of tuna. 'Course, it makes sense, since this is a group of random people caught up in a zombie plague, but still. Very squishy. Quick question regarding my pistol: It states that it has a clip of 10; does that just indicate magazine size, or is it pre-loaded with a magazine separate from the twenty rounds in my inventory? Also, Saturday works fine for me, as does that range of starting times.

I tried the demo of Eschalon as well, and couldn't really get past how slow the character walked. Seriously, it was like he was wading through quicksand.

...Gah, my willpower didn't hold out. I'll have a character in shortly. This looks too interesting to pass up.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim We can fix this between campaigns, though, which leads me to. . . Originally Posted By: Nioca However, I'm thinking that if there's a sequel, I might not rejoin as Arell Iseil. Primarily because of what was outlined under Party Imbalance; in comparison to the party, she's getting too powerful, and probably needs to be consigned to NPC-dom. I hope you don't do that. First, the imbalance between Arell and the rest of the party can easily be fixed in the inter-campaign period, during which the party will presumably gain a level or two, get some new equipment, and generally gain or lose whatever is necessary to get things started on the right foot. As for Arell's big spoilery transformation, I think that's likely to be more of a handicap than an asset. True. This is definitely all stuff that can be balanced out between campaigns. Originally Posted By: Sarachim Second, Arell is too awesome to hand over to the DM. ...You have no idea how much that means to me. Seriously, whenever I have a character, I'm always second-guessing myself. Am I shoving it into the spotlight too much? Is it slipping too far into the shadows? Is it too obnoxious? Too kind? Too loud? Too quiet? Too annoying? Is it doing what I want it to do? Is it making an active contribution to the story, party, and campaign? So, to hear you (well, read you) saying that means a lot. Thank you, Sarachim.

Originally Posted By: Rowen ~Healing Spells. I have always felt that a healing spell costing stamina was very heavy price to put on the healer in caparison to the rest of the party. The idea that I stole from others was to heal a smaller dice + a bonus or skill of some sort. After some talking and thinking I settled on this for healing. 2d3+Healing Skill+(-2 per repeated cast on each character). See, it doesn't seem that big a price to me. Magical healing should not be a simple and easy affair; we're talking anything from plugging holes to realigning and reshaping crushed bones to fixing brain damage. That's going to take time, and it's going to take a whole crapload of energy. Quote: As the campaign go closer to the end I did become agitated with the healing spell as it made character HP become bloated once more. Get hit for 6 damage, get healed for 13. Next cast is still going to heal you more then the damage you take so no worries, do whatever you want (Thank you for not exploiting this in the game). Um, hate to break it to you, but that's not exploiting, that's stupid. The smart thing to do is to wait after that 6 damage, let the character get hit again for another 6, and THEN heal for 13. It basically erases two hits instead of one, and you've got extra healing energy left over to boot. And that was pretty much what Arell did. Quote: To match the healing spell to the HP gain that I like I think that a simple change will be in order for the next campaign. 2d3+(Healing Skill/2(rounded down))+(-2 per repeated cast on each character) Okay, time-out here. Seeing as you've never played a healer, I think it's time you listened to someone who's played two (three, if you count Mal's heavy FA). Part of the trick to balancing healing is making sure it's effective while still limited in what it can do. Draining stamina accomplishes this very effectively, but having a set pool of energy does not. Why? Basically, because there's no real strategy to your new healing system. Either you've got enough energy to heal the character to good health, or you don't and the character dies or remains on last legs. There's no in-between, no compromise, and no decisions to make. And heaven forbid if someone with subpar healing has been attending to the character first or the dice go bad, because that character will wind up royally screwed. With stamina, it's a balancing act. Your healing spells are always effective (save for special circumstances), but you've only got so many casts, and you have to make tough choices. Do I chug this stamina potion so I have enough energy to heal Billy? Should I use this flashy unstoppable spell now, or save stamina for healing? Do I want to do heavy healing now, or hold back to see who needs it the most? (Also, on the topic of exploits: under the energy pool system, there's nothing stopping a healer from blowing its remaining energy at the end of the day, meaning that characters can get tons of free healing at no cost.) Another thing you're not considering is how your magical healing system is impacting other forms of healing. Or, to put it another way: in roughly 20 sessions, how many times was the first aid skill used to heal injuries?

...Man, I want to join, but I'm currently in two other campaigns at the moment. So I should probably sit this one out. I shall watch with interest, however.

Woo, finale. Here are my (somewhat late) thoughts on the campaign and mechanics in general. ----- VARYING DICE I'm not one-hundred percent sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it's nice that once you get more experienced, your odds of failure go down. On the other hand, this has the unintended consequence of causing higher-level spells and techniques to be less likely to backfire, and has the potential to get confusing if the character is dealing with multiple sets of dice. I'm also a little unsure of the mechanics behind it; does having an 8 in Awesomency mean you get an automatic 8-point bonus to skill? Does it mean that the points you invest earlier don't actually effect your success rate? I like it, don't get me wrong, but there's a few things that just seem wonky about it. ----- HEALING I'm also torn on the new healing mechanic. While it was nice not having to spend stamina on it, having to track how many times I've healed each individual person meant I was mostly relying on the DM to tell me how much was healed. Three PCs were tricky enough when the healing spells started flying; six just might have driven me up a wall. In addition, while it enabled the healer to heal more freely, it also could result in tragic consequences if the healing ran out at a critical moment; this goes double if one PC winds up singled out by enemies for some reason (e.g. a tank on the front lines), because the healing not only is liable to run out quickly, but also becomes less effective with each casting. ----- THE PC DEATH Okay, the sudden and abrupt PC death was a rather nifty bit of drama. It's a swerve no one saw coming, and cranked up the tension in an already-tense situation. Never. Do it. Again. While it ultimately turned out excellent, there are so many ways this could have backfired and gone horribly wrong it's not even funny. And even though it didn't, outright killing a very healthy PC with no warning, no save, not even an indication that the PC made a bad move, was still a very bad call. Not that I'm against the resultant drama, but in the future, if you're going to do something like that, the player should have either advance notice or some way to save against it or back out. Otherwise, it just seems like a vindictive "screw you" to the player in question. ----- LOOT/ABILITY BALANCE One thing I had noticed is that the stuff we were finding was pretty powerful, and we wound up with a lot of it. To some extent, this made sense; we were in the heart of magic-country, and it seemed Ona didn't understand the meaning of the word "small". In addition, Arell and Porifio also got some pretty powerful abilities. Porifio can summon the magical equivalent of Thermite, and Arell's now capable of raising an army of undead... at level 5. Fact is, despite three levels and two party members between them, this party could probably give the RomD party a run for its money. In short, I'm saying you may want to scale the power level back a bit. ----- HE-WHO-MUST-BE-NAMED-REALLY-AWKWARDLY Seriously, some work needs to be done on names. On one end of the spectrum, we have names like Emperor Harlifigrzix Jafplivew, Lady Isralger Kivmqat, Pranidhana Palace... Seriously, some of these sound like you dropped a bunch of marbles on the keyboard and called it good. While there's obviously no hard and fast rules for what makes a good name, having a name that's reasonably memorized and isn't impossible to spell properly is a good idea (unless you WANT your important NPCs and locales referred to as Emperor Harlyfig and Phanda Palace ). On the other end of the spectrum, we have names such as the "Battle of Death" and "Cobber". The first one is boring and non-indicative; most battles have death, after all. The second brings to mind either a typo of copper or an Austrailian greeting. Neither are impressions you want to make when you're talking about an apocalyptic final battle or magical thermite; To quote Schlock Mercenary here, "Your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth." ----- PLOT COMPLEXITY There's some issue with how complex the plot got. Its one thing to have twists, turns, and complexity in a plot, but it got to the point in this one that it became nearly impossible to keep everything straight, and it still took some considerable OoC explaining to actually sort out what was going on. There were also some plot points that showed up, then later seemed to be ignored entirely. For example, the Plant Thing antagonized Arell for a few days, only to step out of the spotlight once he revealed that he only wanted our help to stop Slumwood cutting. Considering he was apparently a Gatekeeper, you'd have thought he would have been more important, but no, he vanishes and is only mentioned a few times by the PCs after. There was also the mysterious lights over the Ko Mountains that wound up disappearing without a trace, then there was the murdered Lacewing who died under mysterious circumstances and was never mentioned again. Then we have the issue of time travel: Arell, Porifio, Sarsus, an entire squad of those assassin things (?), Leaf, and Porifio all were able to travel back (and forth) in time. How? Future Whsck demonstrated that even with his immense power, it still took a month of prep time and studying to pull it off, yet everyone else seems to be bouncing around like it was no problem. In short, while I can't remember if there were a whole lot of actual plot holes, there definitely seemed to be a lot of threads left hanging. ----- PARTY IMBALANCE Sarachim touched on this briefly at the end of the finale, and it probably needs to be brought up again. In terms of power, the party isn't internally balanced; as it stands, we have: -Arell at the front of the pack with the strongest melee weapon (to my knowledge), the ability to breathe a necromantic coldfire, the ability to raise an undead army, her ability to heal most undead creatures to full for 1STM, and finally, Click to reveal.. (HUGE SPOILERS for those that haven't read the finale) Her transformation into a lich and everything that entails. -Then there's Porifio, with a magic Epee that can be upgraded, the ability to summon Cobber (magical thermite), the ability to dispel the wards of the main villain, mithril armor, and gauntlets that massively enhance strength. -And finally Sarsus, with magical armor that grants one extra turn per combat, a slight bonus to dream world manipulation, a healing cloth that burns stamina, and an antimagic token. Yeah. There's a problem here. Arell's getting favored when it comes to powers, while Sarsus is getting left behind, and it's not fair to the players. Especially considering this isn't a situation where the party sorted the loot in a kind of lopsided way; these items and abilities were given to specific players, and that was where they stayed. In a way, it's an unconscious show of favoritism (or just complacency), and it's a tendency you need to nip in the bud. ============== Okay, I think that's everything I wanted to address for now. I really did enjoy the campaign, despite what the above might indicate, and I applaud Rowen for running the longest campaign to-date. However, I'm thinking that if there's a sequel, I might not rejoin as Arell Iseil. Primarily because of what was outlined under Party Imbalance; in comparison to the party, she's getting too powerful, and probably needs to be consigned to NPC-dom.

Yay, level! Click to reveal.. (Taking Ak-Deevt to the Fifth Level) AK-DEEVT RACE: Lacewing, Male OCCUPATION: Apprentice Mage PERSONALITY: Naive BASE STATS (+INT, +5 HP) LVL: 05 - XP: 00/72 STR: 05 - HP: 24/35 DEX: 03 - SPD: 5 INT: 06 - STM: 04/10 SKILLS (+2 Conjuration, +2 Knives) --Magic (Enchantment): 5 (15) | Magic (Conjuration): 6 (21) Magic (Transmutation): 3 (06) | ---Martial (Knives): 3 (06) ---------History [RB]: 1 (00) | ------Thievery [RB]: 1 (00) ------------First Aid: 3 (06) | -------------Nature: 3 (06) -------------Artifice: 2 (03) | ----------Composure: 2 (03) -----------Perception: 2 (03) | ------------Stealth: 2 (03) TRAITS None

Yay, level! And I think it's time to graduate Hexelion into an actual tank. Click to reveal.. (Hexelion Tyralson, Level II) HEXELION TYRALSON RACE: Elf, Male OCCUPATION: Bodyguard PERSONALITY: Reasonable DEITY: Sliros LVL: 02 | XP: 00/30 STR: 04 | HP: 06/17 (HP is last known number. Gains from rest/healing unknown) DEX: 03 | SPD: 5 INT: 04 | STM: 06/10 (STM is last known number. Gains from rest unknown) Martial (Shortblades): 5 (+2) [15 XP] Magic (Enchantment): 3 [6 XP] Composure: 2 [RB+1 XP] Streetwise: 2 [RB+1 XP] Perception: 2 [3 XP] Artifice: 2 [3 XP] Stealth: 1 (+1) [1 XP] Martial (Thrown Missiles): 0 [untrained] I think we'll need updates on our current HP/STM levels, though. Between the level, the rest, and the healing applied during the rest, its hard to tell where we are.

Wait, session five?! What happened to sessions two through four?

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES 6. How many longstanding RPs can you name? [...] New Silvar Inn Sands of Time Spidweb Cabin Tower of Babil Inn of Blades Drawbridges Zombie Attack Around the Universe Tavern Front Zombie Attack 2 Greywraith Clan Fall of the Star Clan Gethein Deludere World of Avernum Shattered Alliance Serendipity City Around the Human Body Valley of Thunder To Slay a Dragon The Empire Always Loses Spatula of Arthritis Mountain of Shadows The Vale No Hope for the Damned Here's to the Past I See the Signs of an End You Cannot Unring a Bell WOW. Are any of these still preserved somewhere, or are they mostly all gone?

Ditto. 7th works here as well.

Not likely. The Windows version is usually completed and released a couple months after the mac version.

Originally Posted By: Lilith I've been doing some thinking about the same issue recently. And while we could relax the limit, and there are many reasonable ways to do so... is the limit actually necessary in the first place? In a way, yes. It'd allow magic users to effectively turn into walking deus ex machinas; no limit means they can just pump the heck out of STR, meaning you'd have mages who not only can solve a plethora of problems with a wave of their hand, but also have the HP and melee power of a dedicated tank. As it stands, the limits force the player to make some trade-offs; Yes, they can have a lot of spells, but they're not going to be a mainline fighter. Or they can put more points in STR and DEX and mundane skills, at the cost of some of their spellcasting ability.