Here is my proposal on how to improve Power Link.
Current text :
New text :
What this change can achieve :
-Still generates the same amount of power on each spell but much easier to understand, especially for the player playing against the spell ("I just need to make sure either of 4x or 500-x is a small number")
-Power gained is added over time, smoothing the historian graph
-There is a cap so a higher player count can't push the amount gained over 3333 each turn
-But with smaller player counts the spell does not lose its edge for being punishing to anyone spamming a lot of cheap spells (They'd need to fill up most of the 10000 pool alone within a very low amount of turns to hit the cap)
-Very minor nerf to the spell overall. (On average you are gaining the power with ~2 turns of delay)
-As a downside to simplify it this wording comes with the inherent assumption that whenever the gained amount would be less than zero, nothing happens, instead of explicitly saying "no power is gained on spells over a cost of 500)
Also, do we absolutely need the "counters spell blast and drain power" part?
This was included to retain the original functionality (your spells and spell economy can't be countered as the cost during Suppress Magic makes these spells not viable to use) but...with the amount of power gained, being vulnerable to Drain Power is probably better for the overall balance and Sorcery already counters Spell Blast via Time Stop. It also isn't able to prevent Spell Blast on Spell of Mastery because there is plenty of time to dispel it and you can't recast.
I'm also unsure if we need the "Time Stop" part? It's pretty obvious no one can cast spells while you stopped time and if someone else did then...is it really necessary to make them excluded from the spell's effect? Even in worst case scenario they can only fill up the pool to the cap so we don't need to worry about overflow?
If we also remove these parts, the final text would be :
"Linking pool" is used due to the spell's name but maybe a different name would be better. I don't want to use "power pool" as it would be easy to think it's the same as your power income. However "linking" as a word is already used in Linking Towers which via casting skill are indirectly related to the skill pool and would be completely unrelated to this spell.
Current text :
Quote:Whenever another player casts a weak overland spell, if the base cost of that spell is below 100, gain 4 times that much power at the end of that turn, or if the cost is below 500, gain 500 minus the cost. The link misdirects the effect of Drain Power and Spell Blast, countering those spells, and has no effect on spells costing 500 or higher, or during Time Stop.
New text :
Quote:Whenever another player casts an overland spell, the smaller of 500-x or 4x power is generated in your linking pool four times, where x is the base cost of the spell. The linking pool can hold at most 10000 power and each turn, one third of the stored amount can be extracted as power income. Power Link has no effect during Time Stop and counters Spell Blast and Drain Power.
What this change can achieve :
-Still generates the same amount of power on each spell but much easier to understand, especially for the player playing against the spell ("I just need to make sure either of 4x or 500-x is a small number")
-Power gained is added over time, smoothing the historian graph
-There is a cap so a higher player count can't push the amount gained over 3333 each turn
-But with smaller player counts the spell does not lose its edge for being punishing to anyone spamming a lot of cheap spells (They'd need to fill up most of the 10000 pool alone within a very low amount of turns to hit the cap)
-Very minor nerf to the spell overall. (On average you are gaining the power with ~2 turns of delay)
-As a downside to simplify it this wording comes with the inherent assumption that whenever the gained amount would be less than zero, nothing happens, instead of explicitly saying "no power is gained on spells over a cost of 500)
Also, do we absolutely need the "counters spell blast and drain power" part?
This was included to retain the original functionality (your spells and spell economy can't be countered as the cost during Suppress Magic makes these spells not viable to use) but...with the amount of power gained, being vulnerable to Drain Power is probably better for the overall balance and Sorcery already counters Spell Blast via Time Stop. It also isn't able to prevent Spell Blast on Spell of Mastery because there is plenty of time to dispel it and you can't recast.
I'm also unsure if we need the "Time Stop" part? It's pretty obvious no one can cast spells while you stopped time and if someone else did then...is it really necessary to make them excluded from the spell's effect? Even in worst case scenario they can only fill up the pool to the cap so we don't need to worry about overflow?
If we also remove these parts, the final text would be :
Quote:Whenever another player casts an overland spell, the smaller of 500-x or 4x power is generated in your linking pool four times, where x is the base cost of the spell. The linking pool can hold at most 10000 power and each turn, one third of the stored amount can be extracted as power income.
"Linking pool" is used due to the spell's name but maybe a different name would be better. I don't want to use "power pool" as it would be easy to think it's the same as your power income. However "linking" as a word is already used in Linking Towers which via casting skill are indirectly related to the skill pool and would be completely unrelated to this spell.
