yes staves could be an option (i still would prefer mages to be not dependant on items early on  but its not important)

the problem would be to make  staves NOT attractive to other kind of sovereign/champions

since usually even if the dmg is low any ranged weapon is better early on, where you can easily avoid the dmg they should scale with some magic stat or only be usable with some mage trait, dunno

I prefer using Air over Fire unless I can guarantee a first turn Fireball.

Stinking mud is also a great spell.

The realm of magic I use the least is Life.

Life isnt' bad, growth, shrink, and heals are fairly useful.

growth and shrink are nearly OP, at least against the strongest bosses/mobs/champions

Just to differentiate from one another and to be fair to the other schools of Magic, each school should have it's own, but equal, low level damage spell. I would suggest something that does 1-3 damage and only cost 1 or 2 mana. It was something that was somewhat lacking in Elemental as well. I often found that trying to take a sov into battle early on without an army backing him up would be suicide. Unfortunately though it's practically what you have to do for the first 10 or 20 turns.

Sovs who wish to rely solely on magic and not use armor or weapons tend to get owned early on. To me that's kind of the opposite of what it should mean to be the Super-Bad-Ass wizard guy ruling over the whole nation.

Oh yeah, not to get off topic but what's with a whole bunch of people using the alien head as a forums avatar? Am I missing something I should be aware of?

I think the alien head is the default avatar for those who don't ...um...have an avatar? 

The problem of having a sov specialized in buffing other is that there are no other to buff at the beginning, as we can only build groups of 3 clubmen...

I was kinda thinking that too but then I see some forum regulars with it too. That's probably it though you're right.

Okay, weirdness.  I saw the alien faces when I was at work, but now I am home and don't see the faces any more...

Lord Xia, I see the alien face for ddd888 and Zygwen, but not for you or RavenX.  I suspect you were right to say they hadn't set up forum avatars.

Some of us forum regulars don't have avatars. I'm just lazy I guess...

NTTAWWT

I just changed the staves to do 10 magic damage for the first bunch. The damage can be resisted will Spell Resistance, Dodge, and Air Dodge. So the extra punch is possible to countered in a few different ways. In the early game wizards can buy these to do damage without needing to submit to melee or bows. The Spell Mastery and Accuracy decide if you hit, so level and Intelligence matter alot more to mages. Each staff gets +5 to Spell Mastery with that in mind.

The second bunch of staves do 12 damage in a radius of 1. They get +10 to Spell mastery, but you will use all your crystal to just get a few of these. It is nice to see mages acting like mages. The only thing I need to change is the spell effects for the AoE staves.

I like your Stave ideas Sean.

What about initiative? I'd have 0 initiative effect on the first batch of staves, and a slight increase (+2) on the second batch.

That being said, I think there should be some sort of penalty for using heavy plate armor with magic users ....

maybe plate heavy armor decreases spell power and spell resistance?

maybe plate heavy armor decreases accuracy by a bit?

and maybe you can have "Unit Traits" (during Unit Design) which increase intelligence and lower strength ... to increase the encumbrance penalty for those wishing to max Intelligence values.

I made all staves to follow the current pattern of Bows. -5 Initiative. I consider that the time it takes to will magic from the staff. They also weigh 10 so you will likely need a high strength to use them with heavy armor. That means you have to use traits that could be focusing on Initiative and Accuracy. There are a few robes that go nicely with these staves too. In my game you can unlock mage robes in the shop when you build certain research buildings. I want to make hero mages have a slight power boots over trained units. Of course they can already use some unique items to increase Spell Mastery and basically hit on every cast. 

The coolest thing is that Fire Mages avoid staves, preferring magical daggers and the Initiative bonuses they give. There are alot of interesting intersections where a mage levels to the point where he casts aside his staff and begins casting the really big spells. 

I will also make some special staves for my next test that gain power with shards. Some might even have a larger radius.

Yep, but i think the problem is not only the lack of level 1 - 2 spells, but how the effect of spells scales. If you select warlock + path of the mage + evoker I - III you get + 250 % spell damage. This is a huge balancing problem, because without those improvements damage spells are weak and with those improvements they are overpowered. It would be better to:

- Increase the base effect and not the shard effect of spells by 50 %.

- Reduce warlock, path of the mage and evoker I - III to + 25 %.

- Give weapons a - 25 % spell effect modifier.

- Add many caster weapons without the - 25 % modifier and with other effects that improve spellcasting

I would also like to see differentiation in the Path system for mages. Increasing all spell damage is overpowered. How about increasing a specific element's spell effectiveness. I personally like the idea that each element offers a different kind of magic. Healing, Cursing, Damage, Buffing, strategic, tactical are fine specializations for an element. The best design, as I believe is being implemented, is where each element has some of these features, but also specializes in one area. So fire should be the best at damage. Life at healing. Water at buffs and debuffs. Earth at strategic and summoning. Air at buffs and damage. Death at curses and damage. There is room for all, but I personally like knowing a Fire Mage is going to do much better damage in battle than an Earth Mage. 

So far there is a great level of difference and character in each element. I would hate to lose that for a couple of 5-6 damage spells at level 1. Now, there is also a ton of room for improvement. Like one poster said, there should be elements that do great damage with no shards and others that are more powerful as you find more shards. Basically we need more play with the y=mx+b equation. To me, Fire is better when b is higher and m is lower. Water and Earth is better suited to offer barriers to defend against attacks. Then Air could offer a very high m with a rather weak b. I would be fine with some level 1-2 spells that offered this kind of variation. But I don't want to see a clone spell for minute damage in each category. That is muggle thinking.

Being able to start out with a weak ranged staff comparable to the starting bow would be great. It might not even need any bonuses, just something to let the player feel like a mage casting spells instead of shooting arrows. A nice variety in staves for upgrading would give casters more options. Some could increase power or reduce tactical cost while others might increase initiative allowing for faster spellcasting but at a cost of increased mana. A caster's playstyle is likely to change as their economy gets stronger. Staff selection should push the player from being heavily reliant on the weapon for ranged damage to picking one for the benefits it offers (using the ranged damage to conserve mana). 

In my current game, I'm playing a Warlock with Air/Death. I used bows until level 4 or 5 when I picked up air 3. Storm is fairly strong, but at a decent cost to mana. Contagion is great but feels a bit overpowered. I can decimate groups of enemies quite easily when I'm not counter spelled, because the poison does around 20-30 damage a turn right now. A decrease in boosts to spell power might be need, but with it could be more decreases in tactical mana cost. This would allow a 'stronger' mage to cast more with less strain  on their mana supply even though each spell isn't as powerful.

There is a lot of special gear to be found, however I haven't seen much for mages outside of robes, rings and necklace type equipment. A weak researchable set of spell resist or spell mastery armor (with little to no defense) would be nice.  Perhaps too late in the development process to add such an involving mechanic, but I personally feel MoM's gear crafting system was one of its strong points. 

There could easily be a robe that greatly increases spell resistance. I will likely make one and add it to Shard Harvesting.

I do think it would be nice if there were a starting profession that boosted non-summon, non-damage spells but I don't think Fire or Air are in any way mandatory.  Starting at level two in pretty much any school can get you through your first few levels, by either increasing your defense with Earth, slowing your enemy with Water or just out healing with Life (Death has the worst first two levels in my opinion but Curse still lets you get there).  You might need to chose an axe/bow as your starting weapon or bring along a group of militia, but you still feel distinctly like a spellcaster because your spells are what is allowing you to take on higher level enemies. 

Personally the only school I think is OP is Death with the Death Worship civilization trait, this combo lets you easily get a bunch of death shards which combine pretty well with Dirge of Cersara (Contagion on steroids) to kill any opposing army.  Plus you get high single target damage in Graveseal and Drain Life (which conveniently heals you) so you can pretty much take on anything.

this seems just too good and also taking over the real spells

if you just can do ranged aoe dmg spells are not really needed, you ll focus again on initiative to spam more stave hits, maybe

A little demo of an AoE Staff.

this would be cool

it is possible to link staves to any school of magic ?

I can remember some modded staves from WoM that did damage based on your shards.