Now there's the problem. You are aauming that two people run out of essence at exactly the same time. Who says that this is what would happen. If you run out before the other guy does, you get screwed in a most unpleasant fasion, and it would be really boring if the other guy is weak/slow. But the bigger problem is, if you run out of essence and have no way to get it back, then you can no longer expand your empire (because you have to imbue land to make it usable). If you and the other guy both run out of essence at the same time and are not physically connected, you could concievably wind up in a stasis situation. Not fun at all.

And, all/most players would probably 'lose their queens' during any particularly long game. But even in chess, the queen is often one of a player's last remaining pieces - even in long matches. It would just be a terrible feeling to think, "this game is going to go on for a long time... sigh, I'm going to lose my que- er, run out of essence long before it's over." That just doesn't seem like an exciting prospect.

Edit: "Losing their queens" sounds risqué...

Well, there is the nmatter of wheter it is "destructible", as well: i.e. if the essence you expand can ever come back in some form, maybe not necissarily to you and not necissarly easily, or if it simply dissolves into the firmament and is never seen or heard from again.

That is more or less what I proposed earlier in this thread. Obviously, I have not idea how the system is going to work but let's say basic level essence usage (noticeably strengthen a hero, noticeably strengthen a spell, cast a weakened but still potent doomsday spell) costs 5% of your total essence. In my proposed system once your Channeler had used all his essence up a type of core essence would kick in that would slowly regenerate to the maximum of whatever essence level would give the Channeler basic functionality. In this particular example that would be 5% of your max. This way you can still do cool essence related stuff but very slowly and with diminished power. So the "To use essence or not to use essence? That is the question." would still be a very potent and decisive game mechanic.

I would also personally like it if essence was based on some stat and as your Channeler leveled up he would gain access to his true abilities (via increasing reserves of essence to his maximum) at which point you could never get any more essence but as stated above when you used all your essence up a basic amount would slowly regenerate.

Your method somewhat alleviates one of the issues, but it is still there. If I cast a world-wrecking spell and the world manages to recover, and the game continues for a long time after, I want the option to cast another world-wrecking spell. If my essence can only increase back to some small fraction of the original total I won't be able to do that (and the notion that a 'potent doomsday spell' would only cost as much essence as strengthening a champion is ridiculous...). 

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I was under the impression the Essence is finite, however magic shards spread across the realm can be found to provide new Essence. 

Ideally the game would provide at least two options... one being finite amount and the other allowing a regeneration of essence over time... perhaps a slider by how much it regenerates as well.

Actually you would be able to cast multiple doomsday spells with some kind of limited essence regeneration just not at their full power which sounds reasonable to me. I’m a firm believer in you can’t have your cake and eat it to especially when a system is suppose to carry some high opportunity cost. I would suggest if you want the ability to cast multiple doomsday spells to simply save the appropriate amount of essence for said spells. Either that or aim better   lol.  

To go off on a tangent for a second I’m curious how you came to the conclusion that a weakened though potent doomsday spell and hero empowerment aren’t comparable when the vast majority of our knowledge concerning essence is a big question mark? Just for example if you had an essence spell that use to jack up the whole world but now only screws up 20 square miles you wouldn’t consider that potent? I mean at this point who is to say that increasing a champion’s abilities by X percentage isn’t comparable to a doomsday spell that only destroys X miles vs the entire world. (anything to the contrary is ridiculous……)

What, you've got a mind-reading spell going already? The devs have said almost nothing about essence in general, and absolutely nothing about how it might relate to a channeler's ability to use mana. It seems very plausible to consider that your ability to channel mana is directly dependent on your essence 'stat.' That would explain the idea of late-game essence hoarders being magical badasses--it might not be that they have the essence to spare for a world-wrecking spell, but that a world-wrecking spell (very high mana cost) will take much longer to cast if you have very little essence left. IMO, getting to zero essence should be effectively Channler Death/End Game For You.

On the imbued-lands stuff, I have a lot of sympathy for folks who balk at reclaiming essence after a military loss. I'm not married to that idea at all--but I am still very fond of the idea of channelers being personally connected to anything they 'imbue,' and that 'full conquest' needs both a military and a magical phase. Maybe it's because I'm more of a role-player than a wargamer that I don't see essence reclamation as "trivializing" essence. Anyway, the flip side of that coin for me is that treating essence-spent as a plain sunk cost changes essence from a fascinating innovation in gaming magic into just another resource, magical in name only.

You should be able to get mana from your subjects if you set yourself up as their god.

I rather like this idea. Although if death was considered to extreme a severe loss of power would be acceptable. You could have safety margins for essence abilities adding another layer of depth to their use. For example abilities highlighted with the following colors.

Red: Have 20% below the required essence for an action, high risk of death or power loss. 

Yellow: Have 10% below the required essence for an action, low risk of death or power loss

Blue: Have the required essence for an action, no risk of death or power loss. 

Of course, depending on how essence is handled in the game this may or may not be possible. 

Good idea. That would be a great balance between a saftey net and trivialising essence.

We're making a lot of assumptions about how much essence certain things will cost, I've noticed. For one, we're assuming that exceptionally powerful spells will require a significant amount of essence. That may be true, but I remember something Frogboy said that gives me pause about that.

On a second reading, it sounds to me like the solution is something we didn't quite think of: essence is not so much a currency to spend on magic, but a currency to spend on heroes/cities/land. Your channeler doesn't spend essence on being destructive or healing or whatever, but rather his power with spells (which take mana) is determined by his personal essence. I'm thinking that essence quantity is kinda like casting skill in Master of Magic--having invested much of your passive magical capability in restoring the lands around you or making your heroes more powerful, you can no longer do as much as you once could with active magic.

Indeed Now that I do some digging, the devs never actually SAY that any spells will cost essance: that was purely a community assumption.

But I don't think that anything but possibly the most world-wrecking spells will cost Essance, if any spells will cost essance at all (which I still somewhat doubt). Other than that, it seems that essance will mostly be used to imbue others. Be it heroes to allow them to cast spells or the land.

I can also see essance play a part in creating high-level items.

Scott's journal from May 18 opened with some spell sketches that included essence as part of the cost. When some folks balked a bit at that, he indicated that the current plan has mana+essence spells for 'creating' or 'imbuing' something. I guess part of my impulse for starting this thread was a hope that the vast majority of spells would be mana-only and that anything you did with essence was going to be 'serious,' i.e. more substantial than a one-time scan of unexplored territory or a one-time fillup for your granaries.

Depends on who you mean by "we." I'd be perfectly happy to see essence+mana spells completely limited to restoring lands, annointing champions, and creating artifact-level magic items.

And maybe I've been alone so far in thinking that essence was a factor (a channeler stat like strength, wisdom, or dexterity) in how much mana you can channel at a given time. Probably some unconscious Wheel of Time thinking there.

I'm going to go ahead and paste the relevant post mentioned by Swicord, since I just made a post in another thread and still have it on Paste.

Yeah, that would make sense. I could even live with a finite essence system if that was the case.... but there are still problems. If you run out and are unable to imbue anything, it would still be a long, painful, and boring (although slightly less so) death.

I agree essence should be based on a stat but I lack sufficient information to decided wether it should affect total mana comparable to intelligence or wisdom in most games. I could see the essence stat having some sort of passive bonus on mana spells where it increases their damage or duration though. 

It's the word "channeler" itself that's driving my speculation here, perhaps in combination with thinking about how Jordan's channelers work with saidin and saidar. And this morning, I could swear I almost remember some never-very-popular tabletop RPG where magic users had a basic stat that was only about how much mana they could handle at a given time (not wisdom or intelligence). If it existed, it was one of those that I only got to read and could never get a crew to actually try playing...

If essence also determines a channeler's magical ability (either in mana or spell effectiveness), then running out of essence would mean no more magic for you (or possible just crappy magic). Either way, things are supposed to get more interesting as the game progresses, not go backwards. That is my fear with pre-determined finite essence. Regardless of what essence is or isn't used for, I can't imagine that the game becomes more fun when you run out of it.

This brings back my idea of a closed-loop system: you can store essence in yourself or artifacts, and move it (often by force) between channelers, but whenever you add up the total amount of essence in the game, you always get the same amount.

Did Rolemaster have a system like that? I played that for a couple of years, but I don't remember - it sounds vaguely familiar though.

For people that are afraid of running out of essence - don't run out! For every chicken little "what if" I haven't seen how a slow regen of essence helps, and often what is suggested trivializes it.

I picture essence as your innermost self, and sometimes there just isn't enough of "you" to go around.

Limited essence makes essence more valuable and the decisions of when to spend it critical. If you are worries about running out, then I have no problem with being able to "level up" your channeler to get more essence. But I would hate for it to recharge your "essence battery" rather you could access inner reserves that you didn't know you had. It may seem a slim distinction, but it is a significant one. The "trickle/recharge" means that you can just hole up and hide and wait for a recharge - again this trivializes it imho. And leveling up I think should follow the levelling curve of D&D or popular MMOs - the first levels should come pretty easy and fast, later levels should require some pretty major accomplishments to gain (I don't even know if they are doing levels, lol). I also don;t think that there should ever be a level cap. That way no matter how long a game went, there would always be the ability to gain level and access more essence.

It seems like the people overly concerned about running out of essence want to have their cake and eat it to. Sometimes, making serious choices and dealing with the permanent consequences actually increases the fun and makes you feel like you are doing something major - using essence I think should have that feel of "This is one of the BIG STRATEGIC decisions". Recharging and recouping are two ways that I feel really diminish essence. I agree, having ways to get more is important for long (never-ending?) games. I know one thing I want to do is sandbox my empire long term, and it would suck to do that with no essence EVER.

The levelling-up idea does not sound like it would work for one simple reason: there are a finite amount of levels, and just saying that there should not be a level limit doesn't fix the fact that you need to essentially hard-code the stat increases of a level-up, so it is impossible to have infinite levels. Besides, with a level curve, the amount of kills or whatever rapidly approaches the rediculous.

Easily remedied. At a "high level" (I have no idea they could scale it so that 10 was high or 100) but at that point, stop the "curve" and have it a fixed amount and a fixed amount of essence. Then you just make the variable that holds "level" something insane like 32,648, and if they ever rolled it over just grant them infinite essence and grant them the title God of the World.