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| Thread: Magic Skills' System Proposal | |
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foxxxer
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted August 02, 2015 08:25 PM |
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Magic Skills' System Proposal
Hi there. I have a suggestion about magic system in Heroes. I’m also on the train ‘7 magic schools are too many’. I think the 7 are the real reason behind the fixed skills. I think it’ll be hard to get the school you want if there’s a real random system even if the hero has more than one options for new skills when level-up (something like 1 option to advance a skill, 1 for an ability and 2 for new skills).
Also currently, skills like Diplomacy, Leadership and Exploration ended up in the category Might because of the 7. It seems that the devs want to have equal number of magic and might skills. So now we have Warcries, Warfare, Offence, Defense, Leadership, Diplomacy and Explorer as Might skills. I’ve tried to make a proposal about real random system for H7 but it’s a real pain in the @ss to balance so many classes.
Another problem… there are too less spells per school caused again by the large number of schools. I know there are like 21 ‘free’ spells but they are level 1 and if you want something more powerful have to spend a lot of points. If you advance three magic schools to Master and pick 1 ability per tier (Novice/Expert/Master) you will spend 18 skill points. And what for? For some 15 spells you might learn or might not?
1. Introduction
As many suggested before I also think that we have to go back to the roots where we had four schools. But I don’t consider category separation (buff, debuff (curse), destructive, summoning) as a good solution of the problem. It’s better to have all aspects of the magic in one school imo. The problem is that we can’t just cut off Prime, Light and Dark considering the current lore. That led me to revive an idea that was proposed in some thread (I can’t recall which) several months ago. It’s about merging of magic schools. Prime can be independent school plus three pairs of merged elements for instance Water-Earth, Dark-Fire and Light-Air. The benefit of this approach will be more spell per school and also better distribution of might, magic and neutral skill. The spellS will still be orientated in the certain element but the hero will be able to learn two elements in one skill. If wetake a look at H7 system and merge Air and Earth skills then the hero will be able to learn 10 spells instead of 5 through this school (not counting level 1 (unskilled) spells as the hero can learn them anyway). Another benefit can be special spells distinctive only for specific pair. If I use Air-Earth example above, spells like Sandstorm and/or Tornado may emerge. Water-Air may derive Typhoon and Blizzard. H4 Faerie Dragon's ability "Magic Mirror" can be easily transformed into a spell resulted by Light-Dark merging, also I see two aspects of Meteor Shower: Fire and Earth. I’ll speak about the special spells later in my post.
Fig. 1 The six elements in Ashan
There are six elements of essence in Ashan so I managed to find out 15 different merged pairs (Fig. 2) based on those elements including adversative ones: Air-Earth, Fire-Water and Light-Dark.
Fig. 2 Possible pairs of Magic Elements
As I said before Prime can be independent (set in stone) school and accessible for all faction. So there are three other spots for magic schools (pairs) and I decided to explore all pairs’ combinations to form skill set shown in Fig.3. It appeared that there’s a possibility of 15 different groups (skill sets) denoted as G1, G2... G15.
Fig. 3 Possible combinations of different pairs
2. Preferred and disliked magic elements by the factions
In order to pick a group(s) for the factions first have to look over their preferred/hated elemental schools (fig. 4). The favored magic elements are more or less clear for all factions but lets take a look at those (secondary) which would be suitable to form a pair with the preferred ones. I let myself to include eventual 10th faction as there are some hints, speculations and hopes for lizard-swamp based faction named by me simply as “Swamp”.
Fig. 4 Possible combinations of different pairs for each faction (All secondary elements are my assumption and you might have something different in mind!!!)
HAVEN – For the secondary, I picked Air/Fire. Air because they had close historical ties to Ylath. Since H6 the devs push Fire in Haven and I was a bit surprised when I saw that Haven’s heroes don’t have an access to Water (H6). Inquisitor class (H7) appears to have Fire Magic as a main skill, so those reasons led me to this choice. The Dark school is least suitable to form pair with Light.
SYLVAN – I think Water and Light fit well as secondary. Maybe Air would fit too even though is opposite of Earth. They don’t like Fire.
SANCTUARY – Here Light, Earth and even Air would be good to form pair with Water. Same as Sylvan they hate Fire.
ACADEMY – The wizards love all kind of magic so there’s no preference or dislike here.
FORTRESS – The dwarves are “young” faction in the franchise and it was hard for me to pick secondary elements (maybe because I haven’t played the spin-offs). So I went with Earth as a secondary element associating it to the environment they live in. I’m not quite sure about disliked school, maybe Water.
STRONGHOLD – Considering Father Sky / Mother Earth worship I think the pair for the Orcs is already formed (Air-Earth). Fire would fit as another element too. Same like the dwarves I’m not sure what they dislike. In H6 Prime is not accessible for them but as I said Prime is set in stone skill and it’s accessible to all faction in the mechanics I’m proposing. So Light and/or Water might be the disliked one.
DUNGEON – Living underground may be Earth is suitable to form a pair with Dark. Fire or at least destructive aspect of Fire might be another option if we make a reference to the old Warlocks. I know after the retcons the Warlocks are part of Inferno but still… And they hate Elrath.
NECROPOLIS – The undeads favor Prime magic the most but when it comes to elemental schools Dark is right after Prime. The secondary elements were a bit hard to pick but I think Air or Water would fit. And the Light is the hated one.
INFERNO – Dark would fit well to form a pair with Fire. Air is also an option here. Light and Water are undesirable by the demons.
SWAMP – As water based faction, Water magic is logical for primary element. I see them practicing “black” magic, voodoo etc. so Dark is understandable choice for secondary. Earth may be suitable too. Light and Fire would be the least desired although I remember Adrienne master of fire witch back in H3 but nowadays the rule are way more strict.
Side note: Spells part of the undesirable/hated element (or two for each faction) will not appear in the town magic guild. That doesn’t mean that the hero will not be able to learn the skill (pair) and the respective spells. Why not Haven hero goes on dark path. I can’t understand that strictness forced by Ubisoft. Just put some penalty modifier for instance Haven hero would cast Dark spell at 0.8 (80%) spell power compared to Necropolis or Dungeon heroes at 1.2 (120%) power as Dark is commonly used by those factions and they can masterize the school better (it’s natural for them). Also if Haven hero casts Dark spell can cause decreasing Haven creatures moral. If Haven hero army is composed by let say Necro and Dungeon creatures wouldn’t be a problem for the moral.
3. Global (Universal) Magic Schools’ set
Global (Universal) Magic school’s set means to pick one of the 15 groups and apply it for all factions.
G1, G2 and G3 don’t fit for faction like Haven, Dungeon, Necropolis and Inferno. Just imagine both Light and Dark spells to appear in the Magic Guilds (MG) of these factions. We don’t want to cause a heart attack to Mr. Le Breton, do we? We can always exclude the Dark spells in Haven’s MG and vice versa for the others but somehow it is stupid as the pair should be most preferred for the certain faction. Also the point is synergic effects when two elementals are merged so Light-Dark pair will not be really good for those factions.
G4 is not really suitable for Inferno (Light-Fire) and Sanctuary (Dark-Water).
G5 might be a problem for Stronghold – Water-Earth and even Dark-Air. But it’s somehow a compromise.
G6 doesn’t fit Sylvan (Dark-Earth) and Stronghold (Water-Air).
G7 is also possible compromise but still there’s some concern how Dark-Fire would fit for the dwarves and even necromancers.
G8 and G9 are not for Sylvan Fire-Earth and Dark-Earth respectively.
G10 same story as G7.
G11 and G12 don’t fit Sylvan (Fire-Earth and Dark-Earth) and Sanctuary (Dark-Water and Fire-Water).
G13 is not for Stronghold and the same concerns as G7 & G10.
G14 & G15 are not convenient for Sanctuary (Dark-Water), Inferno (Fire-Water) and perhaps Fortress (Fire-Water).
Another option is semi-global set which means part of the factions will follow one magic schools group and the other part of factions will be able to learn another magic group:
G7 is ok for Academy, Haven, Sanctuary, Sylvan, Dungeon, Inferno and Stronghold;
G11 fits for Academy, Haven, Fortress, Necropolis and Swamp.
And if we balance the amounts of the factions will have this:
G7 – Sanctuary, Sylvan, Dungeon, Inferno and Stronghold
G11 – Academy, Haven, Fortress, Necropolis and Swamp.
So the devs should implement 7 magic skill (6 elemental pairs + Prime) in the final game – G7 (Light-Water, Dark-Fire & Air-Earth) and G11 (Light-Air, Dark-Water & Fire-Earth).
TO BE CONTINUED
4. Racial Magic Skills’ Set
5. Spells and Magic Guilds
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foxxxer
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted August 02, 2015 08:27 PM |
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cleglaw
Famous Hero
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posted August 02, 2015 09:04 PM |
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Edited by cleglaw at 21:09, 02 Aug 2015.
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just a quick reply: infernos secondary spell schools consisting air but not earth, doesnt seem right to me. they open gates in volcanos etc etc and then they come, they twist the earth. btw, prime being not a magic school on its own also seems not right because from what i recall during faction votes, it was underlined that inferno is focusing on prime magic first, even before fire. i guess thats because devs want to create some differences between infenro and fortress... dont count my last words btw, this prime thing may not be entriely true, im just saying what i understood, not really reliable.
to me this spell school system is easy to fix; pick some spells and make them all-schools type, like in h3 with magic arrow spell... or duplicate, edit with small details, and then announce them as new spells that are all-schools type... both way seems fine upgrades over the original game. everyone will get more spells to use without spoiling the existing system.
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foxxxer
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted August 02, 2015 09:40 PM |
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cleglaw said:
just a quick reply: infernos secondary spell schools consisting air but not earth, doesnt seem right to me. they open gates in volcanos etc etc and then they come, they twist the earth. btw, prime being not a magic school on its own also seems not right because from what i recall during faction votes, it was underlined that inferno is focusing on prime magic first, even before fire. i guess thats because devs want to create some differences between infenro and fortress... dont count my last words btw, this prime thing may not be entriely true, im just saying what i understood, not really reliable.
to me this spell school system is easy to fix; pick some spells and make them all-schools type, like in h3 with magic arrow spell... or duplicate, edit with small details, and then announce them as new spells that are all-schools type... both way seems fine upgrades over the original game. everyone will get more spells to use without spoiling the existing system.
Maybe I didn't explain it good enough. The secondary elements are suggestions to form a pair with the favored one, a pair which would fit faction’s philosophy. In Inferno case the pair would fit the best is Fire-Dark imo.
Prime is independent magic school and plus 3 elemental pair we have 4 magic schools. I didn't present Prime in the groups as I wanted to show all possible combinations of the pairs.
If we take Group 7 (G7) then Inferno heroes will be able to learn Prime and the three pairs (skills) Dark-Fire, Air-Earth and Light-Water. In their town magic guild (MG) won’t appear Light (and possibly Water) spells. If we cut off two elements for Inferno’s MG then we have to apply this approach to all factions due to balancing reasons.
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