Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Seravy]

I think some redundancy is good as long as it also adds variety, especially as we add more spells.

Some, yes. But the current state of things is that almost every very rare spell is a global unit buff in Life.

Life has, at very rare :

5 Global enchantments that buff unit stats, combat or overland. (Major theme of Life magic)
2 Global enchantments that buff your economy. (Major theme of Life magic)
1 City spell that protects the city from curses, we can consider this an econmy spell indirectly as well -protecting your resources -so that brings it up to 3.
1 Combat summon (which is a global buff = Holy Bonus 1)
1 Overland summon (which is a global buff = Holy Bonus 2)
0 Unit buffs (major theme of Life magic)
0 Hero related spells (minor theme of Life magic)
0 Other Combat spells (curses and damage are not in theme so that's fine, but we also have no healing, protection, etc spells except the globals)

Basically, we have 7 spells that have global buffing as their primary or secondary function and 3 that have economy as their primary or secondary function, and zero spells that are neither of these two.

So what we need to add is
-1 creature (every realm has at least two)
-Single target Buffs, preferably more than one. (Main theme of Life and we have zero of them, yes, technically global buffs are also buffs but it's still different game mechanic.)
-Combat spells (that aren't curse, global buff, or damage).

We have 2 slots for these goals (3 if counting the rare slot as well) which would really need 4+ spells to fill up perfectly so we can't afford spending the slot on a spell we already have 5 of.

[Seravy]

I think we actually do have a reason for Mana Leak becoming uncommon.
It drains mana from the enemy wizard.
Now, 125 MP isn't much but you can drain it for every 20 MP you spend on the spell and do it as many times as you want a turn (or as many times as you have spearmen to do so)...
on the other hand this is a tactic that wins games even at uncommon tier, possibly even rare is enough effort is put into it.
So we can also argue it's not relevant for selecting the rarity because it's unfair either way, and simply make the spell stop draining MP from enemy wizards, but then we lose the strategy of casting Mana Leak to force enemy players to come out of the city instead of staying behind the wall.

[MrBiscuits]

For chaos how about a spell that scrambles a unit's stats, so melee, ranged, resistance, defence and health are swapped around randomly. It could have no save, so is guaranteed to happen. 


It could save your heroes when low on health and be used to swap the stats of an enemy unit that is too powerful to deal with normally.

[Seravy]

For chaos how about a spell that scrambles a unit's stats, so melee, ranged, resistance, defence and health are swapped around randomly. It could have no save, so is guaranteed to happen.


It could save your heroes when low on health and be used to swap the stats of an enemy unit that is too powerful to deal with normally.

That's unreliable, potentially gambreaking, and hard to use. It also can't possibly work on health because health as a stat doesn't exist. It's calculated from figures, hp per figure, bonus hp, and damage on the unit which are four different actual stats on the unit.

(hp per figure is the stat players see as "health" but swapping that isn't so useful. The damage stays on the unit and heroes will almost never have more defense, attack and resistance than health at the same time, even if they do, all it achieves is a minor healing. I rather cast Heroic Heart 2-3 times or something.)


Maybe a variation though, like "health = attack" status...or not, too powerful, especially on multifigure units. Imagine a Jackal Rider with Flame Blade and Blazing March = 8 figures each with like 14 hit points and attack strength.
Defense=attack wouldn't be any less overpowered.

[htester]

I think we actually do have a reason for Mana Leak becoming uncommon.
It drains mana from the enemy wizard.
Now, 125 MP isn't much but you can drain it for every 20 MP you spend on the spell and do it as many times as you want a turn (or as many times as you have spearmen to do so)...
on the other hand this is a tactic that wins games even at uncommon tier, possibly even rare is enough effort is put into it.
So we can also argue it's not relevant for selecting the rarity because it's unfair either way, and simply make the spell stop draining MP from enemy wizards, but then we lose the strategy of casting Mana Leak to force enemy players to come out of the city instead of staying behind the wall.

About Vampirism

What if the effect of vampirism was regain full life after battle. Basically the same effect as Herb Mastery spell but single target? This should allow to extend the use of skeletons ghouls and other undead units. It's decent for heroes and somehow balanced. Actually it should only work on undead creatures. Vampirism was discard because it gave the buffed unit a significant amount of extra damage along with healing effects better for survival than current death buffs. The spell I propose require those buffs to actually work well.

New spell: Canibalism/ Dark Pact (Enchament)

Caster undead unit is fully healed at the end of combat. For this effect to take place at least one normal unit must die on battle. The effect doesn't work if the battle wasn't won. The effect doesn't work if caster unit don't survive in combat. The idea is to get your own normal units killed if you battle against neutrals or wizards with lots of summoned creatures to trigger the healing effect. You also benefit  from killing enemy normal buffed units as your buffed undead will heal after combat. Currently only trolls benefit from atacking as an undead unit, other units will just get wounded and useless after 1 battle if they suffer damage. It's not that overpowered as save spells can still kill your units and to survive you need to stack it with wraith form and cloak of fear.

[Seravy]

What if the effect of vampirism was regain full life after battle. Basically the same effect as Herb Mastery spell but single target? This should allow to extend the use of skeletons ghouls and other undead units. It's decent for heroes and somehow balanced.

That defeats the purpose of those things not healing and will result in massive nerfing to the undead mechanic later on because it was primarily designed around the idea of those units not healing and being useful only once.
If someone wants to heal them anyway, they should take Nature books for the combo and cast Nature's Cures.

Blood Lust is a different story because it converts your own unit to undead, but most undead come from the enemy at no cost whatsoever.
Death isn't about keeping units alive anyway, that would be Life.
You use Blood Lust to make your weak normal unit kill something much stronger than itself, or because you specifically need Death or Illusion Immunity. Or to remove maintenance on units that aren't fighting anyway. Or to cast it on your werewolves or shadow demons or wraiths.
Maybe even use it on Cavalry because they strike first and with double melee that kills stuff without taking damage.
Really, it has a million uses beyond casting it on trolls.

[MrBiscuits]

That's unreliable, potentially gambreaking, and hard to use. It also can't possibly work on health because health as a stat doesn't exist. It's calculated from figures, hp per figure, bonus hp, and damage on the unit which are four different actual stats on the unit.

Yes I see the problem with health, it becomes quite complicated. It wouldn't be useful for healing, but could be useful for other things.

You could use maximum health final amount per figure after all the calculations have taken place. The result after all bonuses are taken into account is what could be swapped with other stats.

The current health is a % of this, so if it was 7 health per figure, but one figure has only 5 left then that figure has 5/7*100 = 71.4% health.
If that stat gets swapped with 9 health then that figure will now have 0.714 * 9 = 6.4 health which rounds down to 6. All other figures are at maximum 9 health now.

It would be a useful spell for beating a powerful unit that would win the battle otherwise.

Another idea is to just swap attack, defence and resistance. Attack becomes defence, defence becomes resistance and resistance becomes attack.
It would work well with warp creature.

[roarmalf]

For life magic, given what we have and what we need, do either of these work:

Divine Favor:
Target (base) normal unit gains lucky and death protection. 

Fount of Wisdom:
Enchanted hero is set to maximum level (I'm not positive of the name, Demi-god?).

This could just be base normal unit and bypass the need for warlord and crusade (for the enchanted unit only) by setting normal units to Champion level. If we allow this in combat and overland it could fill in a lot of gaps. It also feels like a summon replacement in that it turns a hero into something better than most very rare summons instantly.

Another effect that I could see added would be "if the enchanted unit it's resurrected or raised from the dead or retains all previous enchantments." That could fit with Divine Favor well IMO.

[Seravy]

This is how health swapping would actually work :

Unit has 20 health and 12 damage on it (8 health left).
Unit swaps health with defense (9).

Unit now has 9 health but 12 damage on it. Unit dies.

Shatter would become an instant kill spell for damaged units for example.

Attack becomes defence, defence becomes resistance and resistance becomes attack.

That's way too OP. Defense buffs and items are less available and more expensive to make for a reason.
I guess if it's limited to an enemy unit, that's not a problem, so basically it would be used to
-cast Disintegrate on any unit with less than 10 defense.
-Change a unit that hits hard into one that deals weaker damage but is much harder to kill. This would be favorable to the enemy 90% of the time.

idk, why not just cast 2-3 doom bolts on the thing? If I need more than one spell anyway...
At the very least I don't remember if I ever had the case of facing a unit I couldn't kill as a Chaos wizard.
If I really need some non-direct approach, I can cast Apocalypse and it confuses the unit at a 1/8 chance, after which all I need to do is end the battle by fleeing and the unit is gone.

Divine Favor:
Target (base) normal unit gains lucky and death protection.

This can work well for the rare unit slot if we don't need it for anything else. We have the same effect as an item power so it makes sense to have a spell as well.

Edit : or maybe not. Thinking about it a little, this is basically the same as casting Holy Weapon and Holy Armor on the unit. It's nice that it stacks with them but we really should try to do something more interesting.

Fount of Wisdom:
Enchanted hero is set to maximum level (I'm not positive of the name, Demi-god?).

This is way too similar to Heroism and potentially not useful (your heroes will likely be near max level by the time you have very rare spells, and some realms counter heroes effectively at very rare.), but it is an idea we can keep if there is nothing else to add.

[htester]

Well, another try after last fiasco...

Another atempt to a Death (city economy) spell on early game...

Greed (City Enchament)
Town produces extra X gold when trading goods, increase unrest by 1. Maybe up to 5 gold? Your lose production which is worth something, you also lose city growth as usually you would let your city grow population before building something. It could make newly adquired towns more useful but on the long run you should lose more than you gain from it. It's just like adding a silver mine tile to town. The purpose of the spell is to exploit skeletons as cheap garrisons with relevant military power at that tier and the peaceful early game. You can rush buildings on the capital at the expense of having more underdeloped towns. I don't know if a similar effect could work with housing but that's also an idea.