One thing is the magic, and schools and shards, all seem like great ideas.

But I would really like to see it expanded. And not just cost extra points to buy specializations at creation.

If War of Magic is the title. It would stand to reason that, magic should be a viable method to encounter battles in WAR.

One of the great things about 4th edition D&D. Was that they made all characters able to do something every round. And also feel distinct and different from the others.

While this is not D&D 4th edition. We can certainly learn something from that fantastically well balanced system.

The equivalent of powers. Attacks as they were.

Level 1, you get to choose 2 At-Will Attack powers, 1 Encounter Power, and 1 Daily power.

Now why did they do this?

Because as you go up in levels you start filling in your powers with new ones, and eventually replace older powers over time.

But this can apply here if we look. Depending on your class, you would get to choose your bread and butter powers. For example, Fighters, depending upon your base specialization, get certain benefits from those powers.

Like taking Invigorating Strike, where if they hit the opponent they get a lot of temp HP's. And if they miss, they get a smaller number. So it would make sense for one of their powers to be Invigorating Strike. But then they have a ton of other options, as well, are they sword and board, or two weapon style, and so on. Maybe they take Tide of Iron, hit an opponent and push them back a square, and you move into that square if you choose to.

Or take Wizards, in this version of D&D they are controllers, people who control the battlefield, dictating how it flows, for their allies. So they may take the standard Magic Missile, that does damage. And say a scorching burst, a little aoe fireball. Or maybe they take Nightmare Eruption and Thunderwave. The point being, there should be options right up front. Their bread and butter powers.

The encounter powers are only good once per that fight, and do a bit more damage, or some other controller aspect. (Depending upon class)

And Daily powers are the big guns. These spell are something that doesn't get used in every fight, but when they are, they have great impact in most cases.

But one thing we can learn from this approach.

The game is supposed to be fun, and even at first level it should be fun and you should have power at your fingertips separating YOU from the other normal people.

If these sovereigns are the only ones with starting magic, then they should start with it. They should have an alternative to needing a sword or staff. They should have magic spells that they can put in slots for their battle powers. And as they gain in levels they learn new battle slots, and get more powerful spells.

And then save the world altering ones for powerful rituals. Rituals that aren't done in the tactical battle scene. 

That's what I would like to see be looked at. Separating tactical battle spells from the other spells that change the land, and affect many people or summon powerful monsters to do your bidding.

I can't express enough how important it is that Sovereigns start off with spells right in their hands. That are a replacement for weapons. Be it Wizard's Fire, or something else. But they should have a few options in the Tactical Battles to be tougher. 

One thing about 4th edition D&D is they really streamlined the thoughts of making sure Everyone has fun, immediately right at level 1. And then as they gain in power, the player gets to enjoy it more and more. As they become really powerful, and eventually deity level strength.

They also broke the concept of classes into three phases. The early Heroic level tier is the player figuring out their identity and fighting smaller creatures, saving villages from rampaging monsters, saving the damsel in distress. Then you get to the national level as a Paragon. You are much more powerful than those lowly darklings. And you've also specialized at this point into a specific path which gives you distinct powers, like Blood Mage, or Battle Mage, Unseen Mage, or for barbarians, Bear Warrior, Frenzied Berzerker, Twinclaw Slayer, Winter Fury, Tribal Champion, and so on.

And then.. there is the Epic level tier, such as Chosen, Demigod, Avatar of Io, Prince of Hell, Godkiller, and so on. It's setting up the final tier of gameplay, and this is the time when the character's essentially going for the gold. Conquering the world, slaying the gods, reaching their final destiny.

Now I'm not saying that all of that is a must have for this style of game. But I think a good portion of it could be applied, or learned from. The sovereign if they are the great hero for their kingdom, then they should have powers right off the bat. And be good at using them. And then grow into the more powerful stuff as it's learned. And I really would like to see a difference between tactical spells and ritual powerful spells (stuff that is outside of combat). But I really want to see that if it's possible.

Agreed, you should be able to chose X slots or get one free shard for each chosen one in your first city (you have found these shard, but they need to be rooted in the ground to be used, or maybe all shards coudl be picked up and planted where ever)

Not sure, but i think you meen there needs to be more "no shard spells", but the point of the shards woudl be to create points of focuse for hostily. So far It seems to be kinda balanced.

hmm, need X shards with a shard being a shard being a shard. Rather then "fire shards" might work.. then you just pick books at the start..
 

the hourglass symble is the 'cool down' time, maybe the ico with the Cross out shoudl have a count down so you know when you will get the spell back.

I like the idea! Essence should work a little bit like HP (same thought than spicy mike), and maybe when using the most powerfull spell, including a % risk of loosing both essence and HP if the spell fail.

In regards to Essence, Wisdom, and Max Mana, I agree that something needs to be done. I just thought of this idea so I'd like to hear what you guys think.

The Wisdom determining mana I think was not done by the devs originally because they don't want every hero to be able to cast spells. So not sure if Wisdom = Max Mana approach will go over well with the devs or really work in general as suddenly all heroes are pretty much spell casters and it undermines your Sov ability.

On the other hand have Essence = Max Mana isn't really going over that well. So how about merging the two to determine max mana? Wisdom * Essence = Max Mana. This way wisdom becomes a lot more important since it's a multiplier for you Max Mana. It also means Essence use has a little more leeway in terms of loss. Since players will tend to have a large Max Mana pool it will be more about regen on how much they can cast.

I mean the base starting of 10 Wis & 10 Essence will give you 100 Mana compared to the starting 10 now. And because it's a multiplier boosting can really start to grow like say you start with 15 Wis & 10 Ess then you have a whole 50 more mana at start. With an increase of 5 Essence you will be at 225 Max Mana compared to say the default start of 10W & 10E which will only be at 150 by that point.

This will allow magic heavy SOV to really focus themselves in terms of casting. They will have INT for increasing their Regen which is important for how often they can cast. And now WIS which will be very important for how much they can cast. It also allows for really powerful spells to have really high Mana cost so that not everyone can cast them. After all someone who chose the fighter route with 5 WIS would need 40 Essence to cast a 200 Mana spell while some who focused on casting with 15 WIS would only need 14 Essence.

Also by tying the two together it means not every hero will be able to cast spells. Also not every hero will be equally good at casting spell like they are now if you give them some Essence at level up. I always found it a bit odd each level giving my heroes some Essence then suddenly they could cast spells just as well as any other hero.

I like that Phoenix.  Although maybe something like '[Starting_Essence + (Int + Wis - 25)]'.

The obvious solution to the shard and book problem is that we get a potential number of slots and then research the ones that we happen to find in the game. At the Sov creation screen we should spend points on how many elemental books we want to be able to research. Then we get into the game and scout out the shards we plan on taking. Then we research those books which will fill the slots.

What do you guys think about giving a bonus to a Sov that has all four element slots at the begining? I would say that he or she should automatically have every book tech at game start. I also think this should apply to other parts of Sov creation.

The whole is more than just the sum of its parts. [e digicons](\(\[/e]

I agree in principle with the OP. Magic is a mess, confusing and leaves you wondering what the heck is a permanent essense loss vs a temporary one. Nothing is intuitive.

I had no idea I could study spells until I clicked on it wondering why no spells showed up in my spellbook.

There is nothing to tell me without reading each spell if I meet the requirements for shards. Gee thanks.

The spells aren't even organized by shard type! I know the beta is supposed to be "not fun" but that doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to back it a pain in the rear.

I would like to see the spells organized by shard type, then under that type, organized by type of spell (economic, terraforming, combat, healing, etc.)

I don't feel like an all powerful Morgoth, more like Dave the Magician, available for kids birthday parties.

Essence = mana could work but there needs to be a way to regain essence. maybe killing powerful creatures or stealing it from locations on the map. Maybe you find a small village on fertile ground and instead of helping the locals you suck the life out of the territory to expand your own power, something like that. Characters should probably recieve experience for using magic as well.

What I would really want is better freedom without being forced to have either Life or Death magic. There should be a neutral option of just being an Elementalist or a Sorcerer who doesn't concern himself with growing grass or black magic.

Hi everyone,

Here is my suggestion to add a important layer of tactic to the current spell system :

Spell specialisation / ranking – Improving the same spell up to 10 levels of power

Rather than having several version of the “same spell” with upgraded damage/effects (like a fireblast spell with range 1 causing INT*1.4 damage vs a Firebolt range 1, INT*1.5 doesn’t add a lot of value to the the game) we could benefit from having a lower number of spells but each with a personalised effect, visual animation and strategical value.

To do so, I suggest that rather than researching only ONCE a spell, we could research it further up to 10 levels of specialisation, that will improve the spell damage and effect (similar to the INT stat) and lower the cost.

So, as for the research refined farming, we should be able to research the same “firebolt” spell over and over (up to 10 ranks), adding some damage, reducing the cost, at each iteration.

The research cost could be linear or exponential, but the idea behind this suggestion is:

1)      This will add a tactical value of specialising in a spell rather than researching everything.

2)      A mage could be “dangerous” even with a lower number of spellbooks, by specialising in few chosen spells. So a mage with the FIRE spellbook putting almost all his effort to increase his fireball spell could be deadly, but he will have less versatility than a mage having access to 80+ spells.

So, I suggest that we use the spells ranks like this:  

Including the RANK of the spells in the spell definition:

1. Ex : Firebolt : Create a bolt of blazing fire that will hit a single enemy for (INT + (1*RANK)) damage. The bolt will have 1+1*spec)% of setting the enemy on fire, causing the same damage for the next 3 combat rnd.
2. Ex : Teleport : Cost 15 – (1*rank)
3. Ex : Summon Rock Giant : Giant will have +10 hps * rank

By default, when we research a spell for the first time, I suggest that we see it as Spellname (Firebolt since we are at rank 0) but if we have researched it six time, we will be shown as Firebolt(6).

Feel free to comment and add your suggestions,

Thanks,

Agree with everything he posted, and also would prefer to see spell types classified by tabs; Fire, Water, etc..

Personal preference would also be NOT to have a favorites tab and superfluous matrix/sub-detail sorting. 

As other people have suggested, a Soveriegn should only have access to research and develop the spellbooks that they anted up for on character creation.  This would help limit the sheer volume of spells staring you in the face during play.

Personally, I have a problem with a the pigeon holing that usually goes on in games. Why is it life magic and death magic = good and bad?

Simply put, the magic is a tool, just like all techbology. Do evil dictators use "life" technology like fertilizer, farm equipment, hosptitals, vaccines and other things that produce food, heal people or aide life? Do "good" nations build advanced military hardware, spy on others, build nuclear weapons? Of course they do both! It is how they are used that defines good and evil and often the truth is a blurry in between.

You can use a rifle to kill a deer for food, or kill a fellow human being. Now, why did you kill the other person? To steal, revenge, cold blood? or was it self-defense or war?

So please do not narrow spells into good or evil. My thought is everyone should be able to learn from any book. How you use the knowledge is the key.

That said, certain spells could be viewed as "unacceptable" just like the arguements for/against cloning and nukes. It isn't that you can't learn them, it is that you will take a diplomatic hit from those that view it as evil. Using it would be like using nukes.

Also perhaps the potency of your spell is determined by your use of it. The inital skill would be based on intelligence/wisdom, put you get better by using it. I know how to cut and prepare food, but those dudes at Benihana take that to a level I wouldn't be able to without missing fingers!

Just some ideas