This post is a continuation of the Assessment found here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/425698

The current Champion setup is a great on in concept. We have five strong archetypes that we get to use to craft our heroes as we see fit; the strong Warrior, the skilled Assassin, the noble Defender, the wise Governor, and the powerful Mage. The issue I see is not with the framing of the system, but the implementation of the skills. Too many of them are in strange places or across specializations, which cause the identities of the archetypes to be watered down, and actually serves to make most of them less appealing in general. I feel it is a problem of cleaning up identities more than anything, and my overall assessment is being done with that in mind.

I conclude this series with:

The Mage.

This is going to be a very long post so bear with me. I’m going to change the format up a bit, and address concerns over the current Path build using the current magic system, and then the Recommendations section is going to be significantly longer than the others.

The Mage is the path representing Champions gaining proficiency in the Arcane Arts, bending reality to their will, and Shaking the very foundations of the earth with a flick of their wrists. We currently have a capable combat caster represented in the skills, but there is room for skills representing casters who go beyond mere fire slinging. Those who become so infused with the stuff of magic that reality warps around them. These, I am calling the Archmagi, and there is room for them in Elemental, even in the current build.

The Good Stuff:

• Prodigy: Each level of prodigy represents a significant bump in caster potency. Considering that a full 30% (31.08% to be precise) of the game’s spells are tactical and non-damage, making those spells harder to resist is a great thing. Prodigy Level 1 is like getting 2 and a half extra levels added on to your Spell Mastery, and Prodigy 3 is like being 15 levels higher than you are (+30% likelihood of your spells working!).
• Affinity: Combined with the Path Tactical Spell cost reduction, Affinity drops your per-casting-cost to 65%. Less mana per blast. Good stuff.

The Okay stuff:

• Knowledge: While the +exp abilities are still somewhat lukewarm. Getting Potential 2 as your level 3 pick puts you at level 12 when you would be level 10. That is a two trait tradeoff for +8 Hps, and +4 to all your other improving stats. Knowledge does a little less in 1 trait, but you can’t get it until at least level 5.
• Evoker: 3 levels of traits for a grand total of double plus some damage is pretty good. However, spells that Evoker impacts amount to about 12% of the total spell selection in the game, most of which come out of two elemental spheres (Fire and Death). This is a powerful, but very much one trick pony. Good luck getting your money’s worth out of this one, Earth and Water casters.

The Downright Bad:

• Summon 1,2,3: There are about 8 spells (out of 148) in the entire game which this trait line benefits. In an effective caster who is not summoning spiders, this means you get about 2. Have fun with that.
• Elemental Traits 2-5: I’m going to go into more detail about this below, but it belongs here for a reason. Many of the spells available in the game come from combining two elements. Having a caster with two or more elements trained dramatically reduces the likelihood of improving the one you want (random selection), and seems to preference lower level spell traits, reducing your ultimate power level until far later in the game.

Issues with the system as a whole which impact this path:

I’m drawing much of this from an earlier post I made here (https://forums.elementalgame.com/424757) about the magic system, but it bears repeating here.

• Spell Casters have a dramatic lack of choice: Your champions are always going to have the same root spheres, which in turn will give you the same set of spells every time you level them up. Playing spell casters is predictable at best, if not downright boring.
• Spell Casters cannot rely upon even being given an opportunity to improve their magic when they level. Imagine leveling up a warrior to 7th and getting Potential 1, Brute, and three magic traits.
• The Path of the Mage traits are pretty much all Tactical in nature, which is fine, except that over 50% of all the spells in the game take place outside of that boundary. It has absolutely no impact on the other 50%, except summons, of which you will have 2 (more for Ceresa)
• The ability of all casters to participate in Strategic spellcasting essentially makes impossible the addition of any strategic-level spellcasting traits, adding additional weight to the aforementioned problem of tactical-only benefits in this path.

Systemic Recommendations:

• First and Foremost, the magic system as a whole needs a change. Whether that is to go to a skill-tree type system where casters buy their spells, or to get a random selection of spells from a sphere of your choice when you choose to level up your casting. Something has to change. Spell “selection” is both predictable and horribly unreliable.
• Second, there is no differentiation between Sovereign and Champion when it comes to casting spells. This not only waters down the importance of the sovereign, but also limits the types of traits you can give to champions who chose the path of magic. Champions should be limited to Tactical spells  and Strategic Summons and Unit Enchantments. This makes your choice of sovereign, your choice of spheres, and your choice of spells more important.
• Shards currently hold too much sway on whether or not a spell is useful, which means if you don’t win the “map generation lottery” there are spell which will not ever be all that useful for you, and therefore the value of your casters at all. On a Shard-Poor start, you are essentially recommended away from choosing the Path of the Mage.

Path Recommendations: Assuming one or all of the above gets any attention

• Traits which allow a Champion to cast other strategic spells like their Sovereign.
• A trait which broadcasts spell resistance across the army (Archmagi).
• A trait which give the a specific choice of a few of the spells they did not yet get. (Or preferably, gives them more points to choose spells from).
• A trait which treats spells cast by the caster as though they have X number more shards , offsetting the luck aspect in tactical a bit, or making Sovereigns truly beastly. Alternately, a trait which doubles the effect of shards on spells cast by this caster.
• A trait which has a % chance to negate any enemy spell cast in tactical combat with the champion.
• A high level trait which levels up all possessed magic spheres by one step (Min Level 15?)
• Trait-specific spells of significant power, or sets of spells which can only be obtained through these traits (not spheres)

Seriously.  In a game where Magic and Conquest are featured, where the world is once again being dominated by Epic Casters possessing the Blood of the Titans, the best we can do is offer our sovereigns who choose to focus on their magic a +125% to their Flame Dart damage? There are some technically “effective” choices in this tree, but it is seriously lacking in flavor.

Finally, I think starting at level 15 each and every Path needs to start getting access to some pretty over-the-top abilities. The sky is the limit here, and I’m not going to take the time to really illustrate all of them, but if you can get a champion to Level 15, you deserve some crazy stuff for your effort (Like +1 to the level of all your elemental spheres!).