Design: Spells

Spell Idea: Spellcage (Sorcery, Dimensional(Metamagic) III?)

Creates an hidden nationality, invisible and immobile 'Spellcage' unit with 0 strength on the caster's tile. Enemy, neutral and friendly units can enter the tile normally. A 'dispel' spell cast targetting the tile in question from the outside will destroy the spellcage, but do nothing from the inside. Maximum of one per dimensional III-capable unit under your control

When a spell is cast by a unit standing in the spellcage, targetted spells such as 'Charm Person' or 'Banish' are cast targetting the caster. Single-tile targetting spells (pillar of fire, etc) target the caster's tile.
Area-of-effect spells such as Ring of Fire target the caster's tile multiple times, one for every other tile that would normally be targetted. (i.e. casting ring of fire in a spellcage is suicide, hitting the caster's stack eight times)
Summoning spells, including fireball and meteor swarm, are cast as normal except that the summoned units are immobile.
Buffing spells targetting units in the spellcage tile work as usual.

Use: Anticipate from where your opponent's caster-stack-of-doom will cast their spells of town-clearing, pop one of these there, and wait for the fireworks to start. As an alternative, put one in a city you're going to lose, and when the enemy attempts to defend it with magic later on...

Purpose: Hard counter against those insane stacks of ring-of-firering priests if you can pull it off, but a clever opponent will avoid using the most obvious routes of attack towards your cities, and you can never surround a city completely with these...
 
Because I think scorch and Sand Lion both ought to be moved to Sun when it releases, if scorch should exist at all...

Move Flaming Arrows to Fire 1, it is too weak for a Mage spell.
Enchantment Sor (2): Eldritch Aegis: Gives +5% Defense bonus per Channelling level, +5% per spell promo, and +10% per type promotion (Summoning, Sorcery, Divine).
or
Enchantment Sor (2): Eldritch Efficiency: Gives City the mage is in reduced maintnence and increased production. Must be cast every other turn. If possible, include function to automate this.

Fire Sum (2): Guardian Pyre: Summons a Guardian Pyre: It cannot attack, persists until destroyed and can see invisible. Powerful defender for a lvl 2 spell.

Sun Sor (2): Solar Aegis: Gives +10% Str, see invisible, +10% defense, +10% vs undead.
 
While not so much spells as abilities, they should probably still go here:

First, some cavalry-improving tricks for heroes:
Grant the weaklings not a moment's rest - we shall hound them to the very gates of hell itself!
~Rosier the Fallen

Skirmish: Until next turn, all cavalry units in the caster's tile get 100% withdrawal, but lose strength equal to the withdrawal percentage gained. (i.e. a 25% withdrawal unit gets +75% withdrawal and -75% strength) Further, the affected units are restored to have 50% health remaining after withdrawing, unless they had less when attacking in the first place. Finally, they heal while moving.
Used by Rosier and Magnadine.


Victory or death!
~Valin Phanuel

Glorious Charge: Until next turn, all cavalry units sharing a tile with the user lose all their withdrawal, but gain strength equal to the amount lost. (i.e. a unit with 40% withdrawal loses that and gains +40% strength.) Further, these units gain the ability to attack multiple times in a single round.
Used by Valin and Magnadine.




A system change suggestion for balanced magic and randomness-fun:
Wait, what?
~Ben the Adept, after completely submerging a desert town.

Each spell cast in a round has a greater and greater chance to fail in a random manner, due to exhausting the mana sources.
Chance of failure is (5-mana)*total levels of spells of element cast so far this turn %.
(With 1 fire mana, the first circle of fire does not fail. The second has a (5-1)*2=8% chance to fail, the third (5-1)*4 = 16% chance to fail, and so on.)

A failed spell has any of the following effects:
5% chance to cast normally, only unresistable.
5% chance to twincast. (Or quadcast, if twincast is present)
5% chance to cast without applying 'casted' promotion.
10% chance to cast at the beginning of next turn, instead of now.
25% chance to fizzle.
25% chance to cast a different spell from the same sphere, randomly chosen. (can be summoning, sorcery or divine regardless of caster type)
10% chance to cast targetting allies (if negative spell) or enemies (if positive spell). Summoned units are created as barbarians in the closest free tile.
5% chance to do something completely random (falling cows go here, as does casting spells from different spheres).
5% chance to damage the caster, but grant a few experience points in return.
5% chance to take two effects from the above, instead of one.

Note that only multiple spells from a single mana type will trigger failure, and that 5 mana sources grant immunity.

's all for now.
 
Good cavalry ideas, though I don't know if str and withdrawl could be exchanged equally, seems a good starting point.
For the spells, even if the random effects were too much to code, an increasing chance for spell failure each turn could balance stacks of confessors/ritualist. Especially if it was increased for the same spell.
Random spell surges might be fun, but probably low on priorities.
 
yes this is on our wanted list.

I personally think that domination should be changed a little to make it more attractive--if it fails you only lose the caster one out of like 6 times, based on the relative unit levels.

maybe if it was changed to where it just takes 80% of the caster's health away upon a failed attempt. it is really annoying losing the caster on low level units.
 
Don't know if someone has already thought of this, but it would be cool if there was a spell that granted the Guardsman promotion to an enemy unit. It would provide a way to kill a strong enemy unit (such as Hyborem) if it's in a stack. The spell could be called foolhardiness or something like that. For balance, it should either be either mind 3, or have some disadvantage (perhaps giving the caster the guardsman promotion too?)
 
i think metamagic mana (when its implemented) should be different from all the other spheres.
it could have some of these effects:
the only palace that provides it is the amurite one
the node can be built once the civ gets arcane lore
mages built in a city with metamagic mana get free exp
speed production of rites of oghama
mybe require 2 mana recources somehow
maybe when a mage is built in a city with metamagic mana it gets a random here promo?
prehaps it could only be avalabe with a wonder
if a nation has acess to metamagic mana spells cast inside its border havve a better chnce to fail or a small chance to baackfire
getting level one in it could require combat 1 or 2 and level 1 in any other sphere
getting level 2 would require combat 3 and level 2 in 2 other spheres
and acheving level 3 metamagic could require level 3 in 2 spheres, combat 4, and spell extension 2

in adittion some passive effects could be added:
less chance for spells to be resisted per level
mroe resistance to magic
higher exp gain rate
maybe twincast can be bough with hero or metamgic 3
 
There should be a shadow sphere spell that lets units walk right through stacks of enemies unknoticed, without combat. The unit coud bypass the enemy line to escape, provide a distraction, or fight undefended units, but if it ends the turn on an enemy-occupied tile it perishes.
 
Dimension III: "redirect mana flow" - destroys an existing node and creates a generic node nearby. :rolleyes:
 
I think bCalchets failing spell idea is a god one, but needs a few additions. For one, higher level spells should fail more often, and more catastrophically. What is the failure chances formula took into account how long a unit has known how to cast a spell and/or the level of channeling needed compared to the one required. An archmage should have no trouble casting the spells he did as a child. To go along with the quote, some water spells might randomly turn land to coast. This could probably just be done by accidentally casting Tsunami on the caster's tile. Also, a spell cast against a magic resistant unit should have a higher chance to backfire, not just fail.


Meta-magic mana and the specific mana type needed for a spell could both count in the formula, making Amurite spellcaster more effective. It would make sense too if Chaos mana made spells have unexpected effects more often. Maybe opposing spheres of magic should cancel each other out for failure calculation purposes. Spells from the dirctly opposing sphere could sometimes replace the intended one.
 
Clearly, Vampires should be weak to sun spells. Perhaps each level sun sphere promotion should als give a combat bonus against them. They are currently a very powerful civ (one of my favorites) and should remain so, but with a few new weaknesses.

I was thinking that a Lugus religion, if ever added, should act like CotD for the Calabim. It makes since for vamps to have a fear of the sun that could make a few of them worship them in the way others worship the dragon, but it could never fully integrate into their society. This religious promotion for Lugus could also have an anti-vampire bonus, and an extra diplo penalty could exist between civs with this as state religion and the Calabim.
 
That's a good idea, as right now there doesn't seem to be a religion the Calabim can't put to their advantage somehow. But if a built-in malus is too limiting, I think a weakness to Holy damage would be good enough. Maybe the Mark of the Sun summon could do a point of damage each turn to any unit in its range with a weakness to Holy.
 
I think the Dwarven Druids are a bit underpowered, comared to normal an Elven Druids. Nature III and Vitalize is a very nice thing to have - but apart from the Druids it's nearly impossible, to reach it - even the Amurites have a hard bargain until they can have 3 Arch Mage's with Nature III.

So.. maybe it would be a good idea to give Earth III an even good sorcery - maybe transmutation should transmute nearly everything - or you could choose what transmutation you want. (out of: gem, gunpowder, mithril, gold, iron, copper) This would also help the kilmorph search for gems. It wouldn't be much overpowered because apart of the Dwarvs you'd need Arch Mage's to cast it.

Furthermore what about a "witch" spell to transmute sheep to cow to frogs (even outside of hell?). Not sure which sphere to put this one though.
 
I don't think that iron into gems fits right. Perhaps transmute should turn change marble<-> stone <-> gems and could turn any metal into any other metal.
 
Id like to see the Scorch spell actually DO something. I think its fairly useless as it is. or better yet, replace it. perhaps make it 'ignite' which could give a negative healing promotion to a target unit (like Poison), or call it 'Burn'. i would use that more than terraforming desert squares. :)
 
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