Very very cool. Just going to throw this out there though why not make a death staff for empire factions?

I did think of doing that but decided on getting what I had out earlier as the amount of free time I have tends to be a little erratic lately. Was planning on having it instead of the healing staff for empire. That and I couldn't decide on what to make it do:

• Take health from your own men to heal the wielder of the staff
• Give a unit a very short duration attack buff. Ideally only one buff per unit per round.
• Drain attack strength from the enemy to add to your own. With a special ability to transfer attack from yourself to another unit.  
• Very low attack damage. With a special ability that kills one of your own units for a massive damage increase for a couple of rounds. 

In the end I thought it might be best just to do all of them at some point and have an array of support staves.

Edit: Random thought, Farming/profession tools for heroes that grant strategic traits like % extra food for the city they are in etc.

Sounds like a great idea, I'd like to see my magic oriented heros (children) wield something besides a bow.

Only problem I see is, cluttering up the shop with goodies.

Does anyone know if it is possible to make a spell that effects the caster as well as the target in two different ways?

It is not. Frequently requested, so far denied.

Thanks.

Well that makes things... interesting. I guess I could make a world resource and use that as mid point in some convoluted way, but then it would effect all casters of the spell not just the current caster.

This was for the "Very low attack damage. With a special ability that kills one of your own units for a massive damage increase for a couple of rounds." idea. Actually might be able to change it so it is similar to one of the spell design contest spells. Have the special ability consume some of your population.

Hey Nimbyjester, I was just wondering what the status of this mod was.  I liked playing with the ranged options, any plans to release another version?

I probably will do at some point yeah, my main concern is how much the AI will use different abilities. As well as the AI using a staff instead of something else. If the AI just looks at the attack value as to the worth of a weapon then there will have to be allot more thought put into the stats of each staff.

How have you found the current staves? Are any of them particularly lacking or too powerful in your opinion? Also what would you like to see added, assuming it is possible?

I actually make all of the  staffs available in the shop so I can buy and outfit characters instead of spending talent points.  Gold eventually gets cheap; I usually price these at ~300.  The AI will use any special abilities it has via weapons; the problem is going to be getting them to equip them in the first place.  Honestly maybe wait on 1.19, hopefully we will get some more AI hooks to make it use combinations of weapons.  Or really anything aside from biggest two handed damage dealer it has access to.

In general I think it would be good to split this kind of casting equipment into 2 camps:

1) For troopers: healing staff that turns equiped unit into a priest. fire staff that shoots "Fire Bolt" and gives a limited number of "Burning Hands" per battle, etc. Basically stuff to create a "Magic trooper" kind of role where the unit does not have essence.  The Minor Healing staff is the best example of this now, although in this role I would change the power curve from:

shards * int

TO

shards + fixed bonus (5?)

2) Only equipable by champs / sovereigns: healing staff that gives access to Kenatas Mend / Mend group, military staff that gives access to troop buffs, staff that adds +1 fire shard worth of power to every spell the caster throws, decreases casting cost of Summon spells by 10, etc.  Stuff to turn champs into death dealers, force interesting decisions, etc.

How does this approach sound to you?

I originally intended to have the staffs available in the shop only. Which they will be in future releases. I jsut kind of forgot to change some tags! I might be able to get round the AI thing, though the user information will very wrong. Currently damage is essentially derived from attack * int mod. But to do that I had to remove the strength mod damage from attack first. I assume that the AI will probably be using the Attack * str mod value to determine weapon power. So I could make the staffs all have the same attack but then alter the actual damage formula for each so that they vary. However I don't know for sure that range isn't taken into account as well, though I can't recall the last time I saw an enemy sov with a bow.

1) I don't really want to add magic stuff to troops. Though the idea that maybe they could have equipment that requires magically charging before hand could be ok. Or if the battle zone has to be prepared before hand with some other spell. I just think that all your citizens should essentially rely on your sov for all magical support. But at the same time I wouldn't want to make it a chore.

2) Adding Kenatas Mend /Mend group to the healing staff I can/will do. He has just started his own Staff mod as well which should be good.

Buffing/debuffing staff would be good. I'd also like to add elemental resistances (positive and negative), though I'd have to modify most spells in the game to do it, and add some.
 
I think if I were to make a staff act like a shard I'd have to also have a mana regen penalty on it as well to balance it out. Although that can easily be gotten around by equipping just before battle. (Note to self: can a resource cost be added to equipping an item). If it were to be specific to the wielder of the staff only then there would have to be a change to all spells/abilities that use shards.

Did give me an idea about a staff which has abilities that activate/get stronger the more you use the basic attack. Essentially charging the staff with power as you use it. But then I remembered you can't effect the target and caster at the same time .

Unfortunately you can't alter the cost of a spell directly (don't think), though I may be able to add a mana refund. So you still need e.g 30 mana to cast but get given 10 back after. I'd have to alter every single spell in the game that could be effected by that though.

Long story short, I think allot of the more interesting things to do would involve editing all the existing spells and with so many good spell mods around and growing I'd then have to do sub mods for them all else I wouldn't be happy.

It sounds like you are limited by the current tags in the engine for a lot of stuff; maybe work on something else till  we get 1.19?  I know they are working on additional tags for tactical in that.  I think your going to have better luck working with the vanilla game as a base, so would personally avoid adding the elemental based resistances.  My personal guess is elemental damage will show up in FE, but that is just a wild guess.

1) I like the idea of "special" troopers (Heavenfall's unique units).  I can see why you don't want to give citizens "magic fireball rifles"; I was thinking more of equipment that would also limit the size of troop units it could be equipped on (so you can have party / squads of preists, not 12)

2) Have you thought about breaking up the staff powers from specific spells and having them unlocked by the spell books?  So each staff gets a melee attack value equal to the sword of the War tech range you want to match.  They also come with a special ranged attack that is based on something other than the melee attack value (could also get a unique melee ability).  And give a buff / debuff from Kenata's lib. 

By sticking to specials you design yourself they play well with all the other spell mods.  Gives casters a kick ass weapon that plays different.

They play well with vanilla cause they are unlocked like normal equipment, just via "Fire", "Earth", etc.

Could sub mod it to play well with Updated Weapons or whatever else you wanted.

What about having a modable staff? Where the unit equips the staff which is pretty much just like a normal staff but enables the use of enchanted items. So depending on which enchanted items you have equipped you will have different abilities enabled. Possibly with some cost associated to equipping the items so it is less desirable to just have all of them on.

A simmilar thing could be done to create item sets, unlocking more abilities as you aquire more items.

Again there is the whole AI issue that it probably wouldn't make use of the the enchanted items.

NJ, I hope I am not stepping on your toes with the whole staff mod thing. It was simply a way to prove a point to both myself and the community concering the idea of an item that gave abilities as a unit leveled. So what is the goal of your mod?

I like the idea of a modable staff; its the execution that I think would be lacking currently.  I think you are right about the AI problems, plus personally I would want the sub items to be available via questing / fun, not just stuff I buy out the shop and lego together into a staff.  And right now building quests kind of sucks, and chain quests really suck...     I think the game will get to that point EVENTUALLY; honestly I don't think 1.19 will be it. 

Its why I think  your mod works; you are adding a kind of basic equipment for casters, not something deep and involved.  I will just say right now (IMO) the state of the game lends itself more to creating basic's than the nifty complex stuff (item sets, etc you describe) 

The goal was just to get some usable examples out there more than anything and possibly provide some ideas for others. There are two unlockable abilities used at the moment, but are unlocked by getting shards. Will keep the unlocking with the focus on shards for now (maybe making the abilities a little more powerfull that yours). That way there will be some staffs that you can always make use of all abilities, but have to level up to get them and some staffs that you need a bit of shard luck to get. As well as makeing another reason to go to war over shards.

Will try to keep it all simple for now then. No extra attributes or resources etc. Will see what I can do within those boundaries. Next ability I'm going to play around with is for the fire staff. +50%-100% extra attack for 2 rounds followed by your attack being halved for 3 rounds after and can be used every 5 rounds. Kinda thinking along the lines of powerfull abilities that have an overall drawback in the end.

For general guidlines I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Research Channeling: (abilities are effected by all shards but start weak)

Life: Heal "attack"Melee attack, healing abilities, (current healing attack to be changed to ability with no cooldown)

Death: Melee attack, Infrequent AOE attack ability, self Boost strength based on int with penalty to int, drain target friendly health to boost its attack?

Research Relavent book: (all have ranged attacks based on int and abilities are effected by related shard)

Fire: Single target Damage abilities, buffs and debuffs.

Earth: Single target Defence abilities, buffs and debuffs.

Air: AOE Damage abilities, buffs and debuffs.

Water: AOE Defence abilities, buffs and debuffs.

Sounds good to me, also is cool that you and kenata are going in different directions with this stuff.  I think the unlockable ability staff sounds more like a quest reward kind of item, what you have described being more "standard" equipment unlocked with a spell book tech.  

I would say try these out; time to send for playtesting and balance...

Hey, Nimbyjester... while I've been cleaning up my mods directory and updating the current selection, I tried to redownload your staves and I'm getting an error.

This one:

Not sure if it'll get fixed on its own or not, but I thought you'd like to be aware of it.

Edit: It did get itself fixed!