[0.915] Champion Traits Assessment: The Mage

The Epic Series Conclusion!

from Elemental Forums

This post is a continuation of the Assessment found here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/425698

 

The current Champion setup is a great on in concept. We have five strong archetypes that we get to use to craft our heroes as we see fit; the strong Warrior, the skilled Assassin, the noble Defender, the wise Governor, and the powerful Mage. The issue I see is not with the framing of the system, but the implementation of the skills. Too many of them are in strange places or across specializations, which cause the identities of the archetypes to be watered down, and actually serves to make most of them less appealing in general. I feel it is a problem of cleaning up identities more than anything, and my overall assessment is being done with that in mind.

I conclude this series with:

The Mage.

This is going to be a very long post so bear with me. I’m going to change the format up a bit, and address concerns over the current Path build using the current magic system, and then the Recommendations section is going to be significantly longer than the others.

The Mage is the path representing Champions gaining proficiency in the Arcane Arts, bending reality to their will, and Shaking the very foundations of the earth with a flick of their wrists. We currently have a capable combat caster represented in the skills, but there is room for skills representing casters who go beyond mere fire slinging. Those who become so infused with the stuff of magic that reality warps around them. These, I am calling the Archmagi, and there is room for them in Elemental, even in the current build.


Trait MinLevel Trait Bonus Gross Bonus
Path of the Mage 4 -25% Tac Cost, +50% Spell Dmg  
  Evoker 1 5 +25% Spell Damage +75% Spell Damage
  Evoker 2 6 +25% Spell Damage +100% Spell Damage
  Evoker 3 7 +25% Spell Damage +125% Spell Damage
  Prodigy 1 5 +5 Spell Mastery +5 Spell Mastery
  Prodigy 2 6 +10 Spell Mastery +15 Spell Mastery
  Prodigy 3 7 +15 Spell Mastery +30 Spell Mastery
  Summon 1 5 +1 Level for Summons +1 Level Summon
  Summon 2 6 +1 Level for Summons +2 Level Summon
  Summon 3 7 +1 Level for Summons +3 Level Summon
  Affinity 5 -10% Cost for Tactical Spells -35% Tactical Spell Cost
  Knowledge 5 +25% Exp Gain  


 

The Good Stuff:

  • Prodigy: Each level of prodigy represents a significant bump in caster potency. Considering that a full 30% (31.08% to be precise) of the game’s spells are tactical and non-damage, making those spells harder to resist is a great thing. Prodigy Level 1 is like getting 2 and a half extra levels added on to your Spell Mastery, and Prodigy 3 is like being 15 levels higher than you are (+30% likelihood of your spells working!).
  • Affinity: Combined with the Path Tactical Spell cost reduction, Affinity drops your per-casting-cost to 65%. Less mana per blast. Good stuff.

 

The Okay stuff:

  • Knowledge: While the +exp abilities are still somewhat lukewarm. Getting Potential 2 as your level 3 pick puts you at level 12 when you would be level 10. That is a two trait tradeoff for +8 Hps, and +4 to all your other improving stats. Knowledge does a little less in 1 trait, but you can’t get it until at least level 5.
  • Evoker: 3 levels of traits for a grand total of double plus some damage is pretty good. However, spells that Evoker impacts amount to about 12% of the total spell selection in the game, most of which come out of two elemental spheres (Fire and Death). This is a powerful, but very much one trick pony. Good luck getting your money’s worth out of this one, Earth and Water casters.

The Downright Bad:

  • Summon 1,2,3: There are about 8 spells (out of 148) in the entire game which this trait line benefits. In an effective caster who is not summoning spiders, this means you get about 2. Have fun with that.
  • Elemental Traits 2-5: I’m going to go into more detail about this below, but it belongs here for a reason. Many of the spells available in the game come from combining two elements. Having a caster with two or more elements trained dramatically reduces the likelihood of improving the one you want (random selection), and seems to preference lower level spell traits, reducing your ultimate power level until far later in the game.

 

 

Issues with the system as a whole which impact this path:

I’m drawing much of this from an earlier post I made here (https://forums.elementalgame.com/424757) about the magic system, but it bears repeating here.

  • Spell Casters have a dramatic lack of choice: Your champions are always going to have the same root spheres, which in turn will give you the same set of spells every time you level them up. Playing spell casters is predictable at best, if not downright boring.
  • Spell Casters cannot rely upon even being given an opportunity to improve their magic when they level. Imagine leveling up a warrior to 7th and getting Potential 1, Brute, and three magic traits.
  • The Path of the Mage traits are pretty much all Tactical in nature, which is fine, except that over 50% of all the spells in the game take place outside of that boundary. It has absolutely no impact on the other 50%, except summons, of which you will have 2 (more for Ceresa)
  • The ability of all casters to participate in Strategic spellcasting essentially makes impossible the addition of any strategic-level spellcasting traits, adding additional weight to the aforementioned problem of tactical-only benefits in this path.



Systemic Recommendations:

  • First and Foremost, the magic system as a whole needs a change. Whether that is to go to a skill-tree type system where casters buy their spells, or to get a random selection of spells from a sphere of your choice when you choose to level up your casting. Something has to change. Spell “selection” is both predictable and horribly unreliable.
  • Second, there is no differentiation between Sovereign and Champion when it comes to casting spells. This not only waters down the importance of the sovereign, but also limits the types of traits you can give to champions who chose the path of magic. Champions should be limited to Tactical spells  and Strategic Summons and Unit Enchantments. This makes your choice of sovereign, your choice of spheres, and your choice of spells more important.
  • Shards currently hold too much sway on whether or not a spell is useful, which means if you don’t win the “map generation lottery” there are spell which will not ever be all that useful for you, and therefore the value of your casters at all. On a Shard-Poor start, you are essentially recommended away from choosing the Path of the Mage.

 

Path Recommendations: Assuming one or all of the above gets any attention

  • Traits which allow a Champion to cast other strategic spells like their Sovereign.
  • A trait which broadcasts spell resistance across the army (Archmagi).
  • A trait which give the a specific choice of a few of the spells they did not yet get. (Or preferably, gives them more points to choose spells from).
  • A trait which treats spells cast by the caster as though they have X number more shards , offsetting the luck aspect in tactical a bit, or making Sovereigns truly beastly. Alternately, a trait which doubles the effect of shards on spells cast by this caster.
  • A trait which has a % chance to negate any enemy spell cast in tactical combat with the champion.
  • A high level trait which levels up all possessed magic spheres by one step (Min Level 15?)
  • Trait-specific spells of significant power, or sets of spells which can only be obtained through these traits (not spheres)

Seriously.  In a game where Magic and Conquest are featured, where the world is once again being dominated by Epic Casters possessing the Blood of the Titans, the best we can do is offer our sovereigns who choose to focus on their magic a +125% to their Flame Dart damage? There are some technically “effective” choices in this tree, but it is seriously lacking in flavor.

 

Finally, I think starting at level 15 each and every Path needs to start getting access to some pretty over-the-top abilities. The sky is the limit here, and I’m not going to take the time to really illustrate all of them, but if you can get a champion to Level 15, you deserve some crazy stuff for your effort (Like +1 to the level of all your elemental spheres!).

11,236 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Interesting stuff.  Regarding a trait to negate enemy tactical combat spells, I think something that significant shouldn't be so chance-based - a guarenteed free counterspell at a hefty Spell Mastery penalty seems more reasonable.  Definitely like the idea of the Sovereign having some unique spellcasting capabilities.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I honestly don't think you'll get much luck getting them to change the entire magic system at this point... mainly because something like what you're describing would seem to require a full fledge beta stage by itself to test and evaluate. So while I do think that it could use some improvement (additional spells), I don't think it's going to change in a massive way. Also, I haven't really notice a problem trying to get a high spell path when you have multiple paths, at least nothing that would suggest some sort of statistical preference towards lower ones (I should know, I'm always trying for Air 4 with many paths in every game).

However, I do agree that path of the mage is somewhat lack luster as it is. The only time I would ever use it is if I was intentionally building a fire warlock and want the most out of it. Most of the time I go assassin instead. The combination of impulsive and charge for initiative to cast your spells faster, and the ability to crit with your spells is often better... especially as you level up and gain more and more crit. Losing a bit of spell mastery isn't really a problem if you use Brilliant. The spell cost I usually rely on Mantle of Oceans, but I usually don't have that much of a mana problem in the first place. You also get the ability to fight well without having to rely on spells (to save mana in non essential battles).

As for Summons... I'm starting to think it's some kind of inside joke they are playing on us. I mean... there are tons of elementals in game, and yet you can't summon most of them. Like the 4 elemental shrills (can be used as supportive casters) and the Air Elemental. It should be pretty simple just to add those in. Then there's Demon summoning for death users... and animal summoning for Life. This is all pretty standard stuff, and yet we're stuck with 3 out of 4 elementals, a warg and a random nature summoning. What's more is a lot of this is even in the game (in the form of various abilities), it's just not for your casters... which makes no sense... unless "summoner" is some sort of running joke they've got going in the Stardock office. Heck, there are elemental LORDS in the game (wildland bosses) that you could easily use. Scale them down a bit and reduce their stats (so that it isn't completely OP), then call them "Ultimate Summons", which cost a bunch of mana... that way, you'd need path of the mage and affinity and mantle of oceans to call on them without draining yourself of all your mana.

Oh, and I really like your idea of spell power traits (acts as a shard)... but I think I would implement it a bit differently (boosting all shards seems a bit too overpowering). For example, you could have a Fire Power I-III trait path (each one adding 1 fire power to your spells), but it would require you to have Fire Magic I-III as well. So you could focus into a specific magic path, in this case, Fire... and you'd use PotM to boost your fire spells even further. So that even if you don't roll a bunch of fire shards, it would still become useful. It would also address the shard distribution on map generation problem somewhat.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top



First and Foremost, the magic system as a whole needs a change. Whether that is to go to a skill-tree type system where casters buy their spells, or to get a random selection of spells from a sphere of your choice when you choose to level up your casting. Something has to change. Spell “selection” is both predictable and horribly unreliable.
Second, there is no differentiation between Sovereign and Champion when it comes to casting spells. This not only waters down the importance of the sovereign, but also limits the types of traits you can give to champions who chose the path of magic. Champions should be limited to Tactical spells  and Strategic Summons and Unit Enchantments. This makes your choice of sovereign, your choice of spheres, and your choice of spells more important.
Shards currently hold too much sway on whether or not a spell is useful, which means if you don’t win the “map generation lottery” there are spell which will not ever be all that useful for you, and therefore the value of your casters at all. On a Shard-Poor start, you are essentially recommended away from choosing the Path of the Mage.

QFT
 
Devs, please tell us that you're going to give the magic system a lot of love in future Beta releases! :)

See here for a comment about how the AI is still not using overland spells: https://forums.elementalgame.com/426019

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like this post of yours the most, first when I was trying the  beta (back aaround 0.7 or 0.8...) I thought a could still change, and the magic system would get up to par with at least Age of Wonders - Shadow magic...
I have been terribly mistaken, magic is half the reason I came here, and currently there is little development in magic, and most of it is focused on new shiny spells, not getting an interesting spell system.

I think overland spells should  be restricted to the sovereign alone, and when heroes/henchmen gains access to spellcasting, they would be limited to summons and combat spells, this would make your sovereign choice much more interesting and important, furthermore make heroes seem like lesser mages compared to, and give sense into why your sovereign, actually is the sovereign, and not a random hero for hire.

Also I agree with you on the shards, they hold way too much sway over how powerfull your spells are, I think spells should be upgraded with 25% effictivity, and gain 50% less from additional shards, and also like the idea with a magic trait that counts as having more shards (Had it in my own mind myself).

About the summoner chore, meaby that should be the traits that unlocks summons, and should unlock some summon spells themselves? That would fix much of the hazzle, and make it much more interesting, I think that summoning monsters should have more restriction than knowing a certain school of spells, and I think that would give the summoner choice an epic feel.
(Summoner 1 unlock shadow warg for anyone who didnt have it, Summoner 2 unlocks shadow hound, and Summoner 3 unlocks Shadow Steed?)

That said, I have big issues of how things scale with level, they only gain hp and accuracy (and some magic resist, and magic mastery) and in my mind that scales badly with having high level summons, I would enjoy seeing the summons gaining something per level, and meaby unlocking a few abilities at said level (Shadow warg gains charge when its lvl 8, stuff like that) that would make the Summoning choice alot more interesting too!.

Finally as I said before, I think the general pool for heroes needs to be smaller, so I can focus more on my path, and less on random rubbish.

Alooot of things I would do with a crew of computer guys to write my own games... oh well dreams and dreams xD

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Now that we are moving into beta 4 it would seem the appropriate time to start expecting some love for the Path system. My gut tells me that they are going to start on fixing city sprawl and then look at balancing the heroes with much needed content. The Path system in general is a great idea, but it needs refining as the OP and others all agree. We need each path to branch off into new paths. A Healer or Priest path would seem to be the biggest omission. We also need alot more summons. If the devs are out of summoning ideas, go take a look at the 100+ summons in the Goetia. Feel free to add some to the vanilla. 

 

On a side note:

It is worth mentioning that Summon I, II, and III are faction wide bonuses. If you level 5 mages to Summon III, you get +15 levels to any summoned unit. That is actually a pretty OP strategy for Pariden, who can buy elemental books.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 5
We need each path to branch off into new paths. A Healer or Priest path would seem to be the biggest omission.

Absolutely. At least two distinct identities per path (which is what my posts have been suggesting), with little to no overlap between paths. Additionally, it is important that legitimate Lead-In traits exist for all five paths. Right now, Warrior and Assassin are the only ones well represented. The rest are just Magic Levels and general purpose traits.



Quoting seanw3, reply 5
It is worth mentioning that Summon I, II, and III are faction wide bonuses. If you level 5 mages to Summon III, you get +15 levels to any summoned unit. That is actually a pretty OP strategy for Pariden, who can buy elemental books.

Aside from the fact that you would need to level 5 champions into Mages, and then only give them Summoning, yeah that's pretty flat broken. The damage to your imagination and concern about your otherwise tepid champions is a pretty significant balancing factor, though. :D

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I love the assessments you have put together for each path. I plan to mod the existing paths and add new ones and I've bookmarked your assessments to draw ideas from.

Thanks for the time you put into this.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting jshores, reply 7
I love the assessments you have put together for each path. I plan to mod the existing paths and add new ones and I've bookmarked your assessments to draw ideas from.

Thanks for the time you put into this.

 

You are welcome., and thank you for the interest. You are more than welcome to use any and all of my ideas, and I would be happy to help provide support on more specific implementation if you are at all interested.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Excellent Points, cant understand why mages heal so badly

#A trait which treats spells cast by the caster as though they have X number more shards , offsetting the luck aspect in tactical a bit, or making Sovereigns truly beastly. Alternately, a trait which doubles the effect of shards on spells cast by this caster.

# A high level trait which levels up all possessed magic spheres by one step (Min Level 15?)

# Trait-specific spells of significant power, or sets of spells which can only be obtained through these traits (not spheres)

Ive always thought Mage Traits with level III should unlock spells, for example:

Evoker III: Mana blast

Prodigy III: Mass + Spell Resistance

Summon III: Summon XXX

 

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

It would be interesting to see faster-cast traits that reduced the number of turns required to cast spells. Would be nice to make some of the 1 or 2 turn spells into instant ones.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Advanced Healing would be best suited to work like Fireball, healing once for every soldier in the unit. That would allow a healing for armies and a different advancement to heal heroes with 100+ Hp. It should be working much the same as damage. There is also some room for a % heal and % damage option, but we have yet to see any spells that go that route. The XML is there for it though.