I was thinking it might be nice to consolidate movement and spell casting into the action points pool, this way you have to make a choice between how much you want to move, perhaps interact with objects on the map (such as a goodie hut or quest hut) cast spells, and in the combat map attack as well.
your movement uses action points with your movement score determining how efficient you are at it. Moving over a flat clear square would cost 1 action point, but if you have travelers boots it might improve your ability by 20% so moving over that clear square would instead cost you 0.8 action points.
We would need to add a casting skill to determine how efficient you are at casting.
a level 1 spell would cost 2 action points
a level 2 spell would cost 2.5 action points
a level 3 spell would cost 3 action points
a level 4 spell would cost 3.5 action ponts
a level 5 spell would cost 4 action points.
this sounds like a big increase in point cost but then you have items that add action points to your character, as well and items (and potentially skills) that improve your casting efficiency. perhaps a staff of casting that gives a 20% casting speed boost so a level 1 spell would cost 1.6 action points.
I think a simple system like this has two benefits:
1) it deals with spell spam in combat
2) it gives us a better benchmark we can use to compare spell strengths, i don't think we have a list that says something like:
a level 1 spell should have such and such damage range compared to casting range to gauge the strength a caster can have on combat.
I also think there should be a cap on the total global mana pool reservoir with the ability to generate mana crystals that can be used in unit creation, item creation and trade. These mana crystal can be used to restock your mana pool if it is getting depleted and gives us more choices. Perhaps the crystals we mine can be used for this purpose. And goodie huts can drop mana this way as well.
This gives us a nice way to implement movement/ pathfinding skills such as forest walking or mountain walking (water walking?)
stealth at a cost of movement speed etc etc.
