ROBERT! You get karma! What you said made me figure out how offensive spells can stop sucking. Or at least one method of it.
One thing that irks me is how magic affects units. Robert compared two spells - fireBOLT and fireBALL. Instead of having AoE spells effect multiple tiles (at first) have them effect multiple units. So if I cast a firebolt, it deals X damage to a single unit in that stack. If I cast fireball, it deals X damage to all or most units in that stack. I suppose that such a method could easily change how magic feels at the moment, but only if spells themselves are still empowered by the end game.
Single target spells could have a chance to be multi-hit - that firebolt could do so much damage that it actually rips through one target and damages another. AOE spells (single tile) could possibly affect allies surrounding that square.
In such a case...single target spells need to be massively powerful. It should be mostly assured that if I throw a bolt of liquid fire at an average human, that average human needs to DIE.
Single-tile AoE spells should do X damage to all members of the units. One of the problems with the game now is that a lightning bolt on a 12-person company deals X damage to the company's total health - so if they have 200 health, 17 damage is simple taken out of that, instead of hitting each individual for 17 damage. So if each person has less then 17 HP, they all die - unless one happens to get lucky and escape the carnage.
Come to think of it, this is probably the best way to fix magic. Instead of magic affecting the GROUP as a whole, let it affect each individual unit of the group. In that case, magic in its current form (based on intelligence) is still a semi-viable method, because you are doing intelligence-damage to each individual, instead of each dealing intelligence-damage to the universal HP pool. I still maintain that we need spell power to be less shot-in-the-dark, but if spells can affect individuals it'll actually be able to lay armies to waste in a fairly reliable manner.
Further, it keeps spell strike zones from suddenly jumping from 1x1 to 3x3. Those multi-tile spells would scale in the sense that they can't do X damage to every single person, but perhaps only X damage to a certain number of units (perhaps up to intelligence?). This means that if you summon a blizzard, it won't be able to instantly lay waste to a whole army, but it will be able to lay waste to most of the people in that army.
This method also brings the fun fill idea of magical combat. Since spells in this case can very easily smite a small army, protection and defensive spells suddenly become more than a little viable. One thing I like about the Eragon series' magic is that, since sorcerers are able to basically one-shot anything that isn't protected, casters are assigned to a more defensive role of protecting units, because it is very easy to simply locate a few unprotected soldiers and snuff them out with next to no effort.
How to translate this? Well, there are the cliched resistance spells and basic shields. Boring, right? Right. In such a manner, it's easy to load up on protection spells and let your troops wail away. There isn't much about it that's strategic. Instead of just casting basic defenses, all casters can learn (CAN learn. Can) how to extend an essence barrier. When combat starts, a caster may place a barrier around X units (whole units, like companies, function as one - a benefit of their training. And to keep them viable in game) which travels with them. Spells that hit those guarded units act like they are under a mana shield - it weakens the defender, who is automatically under the effects of such a mana barrier (a permanent blessing from being an essence wielder).
Each spell that hits a protected unit takes half of its mana cost out of the defender, rounded down. So if I hurl a fireball casting 10 mana at a defended unit, it's automatically null, and the defending mage loses 5 mana. At the end of the day, it is not viable to spam damage spells on protected units, and at the same time it makes sharing your essence extremely useful when you are under attack by other casters. Furthermore, soldiers are still worthwhile - if you can't blast an enemy apart with magic, you should poke him full of arrows.
Sorcerers will eventually be able to cast an anti-weapon ward on themselves, which makes them extremely dangerous enemies and fabulous allies. These wards will be like the D&D Protection From spells (Protection from Normal Weapons, Protection from Arrows, etc.) and instead of being like a mana shield, these will simply function on their own, without costing additional mana to uphold - a cast and forget sort of defense. Some sorcerers of very great power (and with very much magical knowledge under their belt) can get a special enchantment that functions like a Contingency spell from D&D. I'm going off of Baldur's Gate 2 here, where casters will pop up, immediately be protected by some immensely powerful defense magic, and proceed to be painful. Sorcerers who can use a Contingency spell can save a number of spells and unleash them as an action. In essence, they cast the spells in advance (setting up the enchantment) and then they release the spells at no additional cost.
Example: I want to set up my Contingency, so I cast Haste, Protection from Weapons, and Protection from Arrows. It costs me 2 mana for each spell and 10 for the Contingency itself, so I spend 16 mana then and there. Thirty six turns later, I get into combat, with full mana. So I whip out my Contingency, and voila - those spells immediately affect me, and I still have full mana.
The end result - casters are able to immediately become powerful with a measure of forethought. They can effortlessly lay waste to unprotected armies, and are easily thwarted by armies that are defended by another caster. When two casters end up fighting, it is a tactical, fierce thing - you can't just waste spells, but you can't not cast.
Thoughts?
