Dangerous Magic

In multiplayer, things like this are particularly irritating.  Cancelled out magic leads to boring, drawn out combats, and maxing power for the chance at an easy win leads to substantially dissatisfying games when it's determined by sheer dumb luck as some tard casts a spell.  In single player, it will be less of an irritant, but AI would need to be restricted from doing catastrophic things just to avoid the game hamstringing itself for no reason.  It's never good to have game features like that.

I'm all for some kind of counter system that reduces your ass kicking, and some customization is nice.  However, lets avoid having our channelers die on a one percent chance because we buffed a spell by one point.  A fizzled spell is more than catastrophic enough.

aye, there should be no sudden death penalty, I agree completely.

Another way to look at this, could be that IF you owerpowered your magic, you'd be rendered powerless (in that particular sphere?) for a few turns for instance. That would still make it dangerous, but worth the while

I just like the idea that there is no such thing as free lunch - you pay for what you get

Well, if the random elements were limitedd or removed it muight be nice, but we must always try to avoid PTTBRWITS syndrome... (that's Praying To The Big Roulette Wheel In The Sky)

While cool in storytelling, such dramatic turns aren't much fun in games. If it works then there's a huge game-altering advantage, if it fails then you might as well quit and reload. If there's going to be something big like that then generally it has to have a big advantange and disadvantage at the same time.

Like, say, Pyhric Fire. Your caster (such as a wizard leader in an army) sacrifices herself to fuel a massive fireball. She causes 1000xlevel in damage to both armies. The marshall approached her with a grim look. "We can not win Sehra, but the enemy must be stopped here at any cost. It is time to begin the ritual." Sehra bowed her head. For the channeller that embued her with life and life to the lands of her family, she would do this.

I'm thinking off the top of my head, but you get the idea. You don't want massive gains or losses to be subject to small amounts of random luck or the luck will never balance out in an individual game.

Mages canceling spells from other mages would be quiet difficult... except for battlefield curses/blessings.  Most battlefield spells are instant such as fireball, lightning bolt, acid spray, etc., which cannot be countered.  In most cases one side or the other of a battle already knows whether they're on the winning side or losing side.  If on the losing side and gamers have control decisions for each battle turn then those mages will try and do as much instant damage as possible and then escape... they won't be casting curses/blessings which will obviously be countered or out performed by enemy mages. 

Personally I'd love see a few indepedents which are single powerful mages... perhaps as many as two mages which travel together and strong enough to destroy an army by themselves.  Imagine an ArchMage of Air who's flying inside a cloud and surrounded by a sphere of winds to prevent arrows from reaching him... he then encounters an army of 20 pikeman, 15 swordsman, 10 light calvary archers, 30 crossbowmen and a Mage of Water.  The ArchMage of Air attacks because they've entered his sacred valley... the ArchMage has first strike because he's hidden inside his flying cloud and shoots several bolts of lighting at the archer types.  The melee units are powerless and can only hide under trees, 75% of the archers are still alive and/or able to shoot and fire into the clouds the few arrows which near the ArchMage of Air are deflected by the sphere of winds.  The Mage of Water shoots bolts of ice into the cloud yet misses since unable to locate the target inside the cloud.  Eventually the army retreats out of the valley as the battle continues to turn worse.  This is just one example, but I think it would be very interesting for a single spellcaster to be so powerful and so confident to even attack a town all by himself.   Sounds like this will be possible with the channeller, as well as independent monsters/beasts so independent spellcasters should also be included.

This a big assumption there, Jedi. Personally I would love for 'instant' spells such as fireball and lightning bolt to be counter-able. They are so in pretty much every book that has magic - it's a bit harder to do in a game than in a book, of course, but still doable. HoMM V had a rudimentary counterspell system capable of doing just that - you cast Counterspell and the next spell your opponent casts will fizzle.

I'd love to see some method of doing this. It could be like HoMM V and require you to prepare a generic counterspell in advance which will have a chance to nullify or weaken the opponent's next spell, or it could even be reactive. When another player begins casting a spell, combat could pause and, if your magic users have the appropriate skills and aren't busy they could be given the chance to work against it.

Really I don't see why any magic should be uncounterable if you have the right abilities, resources and opportunity to do so.

One way to do it, would be to set up your mage against the opponents mage, and select "Countermagic" for instance, rendering the other mage countered - the one with the higher power level or however it will turn out to be, will be able to counter the other

What I really want to see is a non-binary counterspell system. Binary counterspelling has some significant problems - either it always works or never works, depending on the strengths of the mages involved, or it's random. Always working/never working isn't much fun (it essentially removes counterspelling as an option if you are the weaker magician); and making it random has the big problem associated with most random effects - it will often result in situations where the RNG, and the RNG alone, determines the outcome of a major event.

A 'soft' counterspell mechanic, on the other hand, would be great. Depending on the relative strengths of the magic users involved, countering an opponent's magic will reduce the effects of the opponent's spell. A mage countering an equal mage's spell should counter it completely, at equal cost of the countered spell. There would obviously be lots of modifying attributes - proficiency in the school, magical strength, all that juicy stuff.

And it could be adjustable - maybe you can invest more/less mana into a counterspell to improve its proficiency. For example if you have the weaker mage but you desperately want to stop that fireball, you can throw more mana into a counterspell to stop it entirely - whereas if you used the base amount you might have only reduced its efficiency by 50%. Or, if you just want to take the edge off, you could invest less mana.

They could make it more complicated, too; instead of having a generic counterspell, you could cast an 'opposite' spell, a spell whose effects would essentially negate the other's, at the spell itself. You could use a magical barrier spell to stop the fireball mid-air, a gust spell to dissipate the fireball, a fireball to meet it midway (something like that could potentially even cause an explosion). This might be too complex but it would be awesome

Your right, it most definitely would be awesome! I really like your idea

It's not a big assumption since the majority of TBS games have many instant spells with no counter option.  If done properly I would also enjoy for all spells to have the option of being countered especially globals and even more importantly some game winning spell.  HoMM V will be different than Elemental since one battlefield may have a couple dozen different spellcasters unless the developers are planning to place a cap limit which I find unlikely due to the massive 64bit maps which matches the unlimited research. 

Also depending on the spellcasters path as well as the spellcasters level would need to determine if the spell could be countered.  Some level 1 spellcaster should rarely be able to counter a level 10 spellcaster... even 5% would be too likely as another player would only need to mass a group of level 1 spellcasters to cripple the high level spellcasters. 

I agree, hopefully the developers will provide counter spells and dispelling spells during beta testing where we'll be able to hammer out the unbalances/exploits before the games release.

By that logic, we should assume that everything about Elemental will be just like most other TBS games and that it will not depart from the norm.

Anyways, looks like we agree on what's important, so I'll leave it at that

Obviously not everything, but obviously since most games don't offer 70+ players like Dominions_3 it's not a big assumption when Elemental doesn't match this number.

The ability to counter any or most spells sounds very interesting, and I sure hope that something like this gets into the game...

I think this is something that comes back in other Fantasy novels too, I'm thinking about The Wheel of Time here. channeling the One Power is dangerous, trying to use to much power can hurt or destroy the one channeling it.

Every spell could have various power levels, higher levels can have a bigger chance of fizzling out or have an unintended consequence. For example, a normal Fireball spell does 200 damage to a target. The second level does 300 damage, but the range is less. The third level does 400 damage to a target, less range, and also 100 damage to the caster. The fourth level does even more damage, but has a chance it will backfire or fizzle out.

I used to play a rogue-like game called Angband. In this game a mage could cast spells safely as long as the mage had enough mana. If you tried to cast a spell with insufficient mana, you got a warning, if you tried to cast it anyway, there was an increased chance it wouldn't work, or that the caster would get unconscious for a few turns. Something like this could also get implemented in Elemental. If you're losing a battle, you're almost out of mana, in a last effort to turn the tide your hero cast one final spell... and the enemy is defeated. (Or the caster is turned into a rabbit... )

Except that the magic system is intended to be, from what I can gather, the crowning jewel of the game; and so expecting it to depart from the norm is, well, sensible. 

I haven't seen anything to indicate the magic system is the "crowning jewel" of the game.  Link referencing equivalent of "crowning jewel" for Elemental or is this another empty gut feeling ?   I must recommend you read the developer journal called  Elemental: The dream.... so you can discover the "crowning jewel" of Elemental:   https://forums.elementalgame.com/360087    

Obviously, it's whichever shard is at the top of the map.

I seem to remember seeing something like this in one of the Dev Journals, I have been looking for it, but can't seem to find anything. So maybe I (and Pigeon) are wrong or read more into something Frogboy said than what was ment... Or maybe I'm just not that good in finding things again...

I don't remember any "crowning jewel" talk from anyone until now, but I remain convinced that the essence plus mana approach to a magic system is a tremendous opportunity for Elemental to stand out as a major milestone in the history of the genre. The "dream" of uber-moddability is interesting, but does not strike me as anything like a major innovation.