SORCERY Realm

[Arnuz]

Dispelling Wave - fine for me, I'd keep it as strong for overland city enchantment dispels, but if that's complicated NBD

Blur as common - agree

Psionic Blast - agree on removing (this is the conclusion right?)

Spell Lock as Common - against

Counter Magic/Mystic Barrier - I've had matches where my only defence against cracks call was CM... (there's not only heroes, nor only archangels)

Storm Giants - brrrr scary agreed with Zitros idea of higher treasure, but wouldn't they end up being a basically heroes only node monster?

[Nelphine]

Storm giants as heroes only nodes? I kill storm giants with sprites if there's 1 or 2, and they're junk against bezerkers. I beat them with halberdiers and javelineers and gorgons. Not sure what I'd use as death, probably werewolves. I suck with chaos (probably flame blade halfling slingers) and mono sorcery though.

[Seravy]

Considered Aura of Majesty but that would be ultra-powerful as a common. I mean, guaranteed peaceful game for 2 Sorcery books? I did want more forgiving diplomacy but not by that much

Aside from that, there are 9 other uncommons...

Blur : already moving it
The new counter magic : if we don't move this up and keep common, but then the effect would need to be much weaker. Like, at UC I can see it doing 70/50/33/25% for each tier of rarity, but as common, 50/33/20/10 at best...
Water elemental : We want an uncommon summon so can't
Dispelling wave : lolno
Vertigo : overlaps with Shatter, confusion, and too good for common, no.
Spell Lock : rather not, was a bad idea
Flight : ehhh no
Aether Binding : Double dispel for 1 sorcery book? No thx for same reason as spell lock.
Spell Blast : let's not break the game even more
Phantom Beast : can't
Aura of Majesty : Definitely not, this is absurdly powerful.


Note that Sorcery monsters, all that get changed stats, will get changed treasure points as well. We'll also need to special-cast Water Elemental the same way as Air Elemental to not appear in low budget nodes, otherwise that wrecks the delicate Sprites balance.

[Nelphine]

I think having some early sorcery nodes that aren't push over for sprites/draconian bowmen would be a good thing. Air elementals at least are rare so it makes sense to push them up.

[Seravy]

There are plenty of those nodes. Not every node is "low budget"...

[Nelphine]

There are plenty of late nodes yes. But nagas are early nodes. Chaos? Not easy at all. Nature? Pushover with one unit. Having some early sorcery nodes that are geared toward melee units would be nice.

[Domon]

Vertigo : overlaps with Shatter, confusion, and too good for common, no.

can these three be merged in just 2 spells?

[Seravy]

I decided Mystic Barrier will be ok for a common with less powerful chances to counter spells.
Countering spells is not fun, and two realms who are already on the receiving end of lots of "anti" spells are hurt most. (Chaos, Death)

Alternately, we can keep it as "Counter Magic" with no slider and a new effect of
Counters all common spells at a 50% chance, all uncommon spells at 33%, all rares at 25% and very rares at 20%.
However, this would be even more unfun so I still think it's better to restrict it to spells that hurt units only.

An interesting idea to extend it to at least do something meaningful against Life wizards would be to make it also counter healing type spells. (As life wizards have close to no relevant spells to hurt another wizard's units)

[Seravy]

One direction of the animation fully done.

   

To save time I'll mirror this to get the opposite direction, that way I only need to draw 4 directions instead of 8.

[Seravy]

Strength of Psionic Blast as uncommon.

For baseline, I'll use Ice Bolt because direct damage is medicore in Nature and should be in Sorcery as well.
Ice Bolt has no Illusion property so it is more effective on low armor units, while Psionic Blast on high armor.

Assuming we want the "break even" point to be 8 shields...Ice Bolt is strength 35, so that would require Psionic Blast at 27.
However, Ice Bolt costs 25, and PB costs 20. As IB is ~1 attack per mana, this difference would put PB at 22 strength.
However, cheaper spells deal less damage per turn so they are always more cost-effective - the difference here is minor, so I believe a Psionic Blast at strength 23-24 would be perfect.

For each additional shield we want on the "break even" point, the strength would need to decrease by 1.

On the other hand, Illusion is very similar to Doom. So might as well compare to Doom Bolt as well.
Doom bolt is 10 damage for 41 mana, so 5 damage for 20 mana would be equivalent. 5 damage requires a 16.66 strength but again, cheaper = more cost effective so it should be higher, this time much higher as it's only half the cost, not 5 less. So probably around 20...

If we want to pick something between these two, we get 22.