Red Mage Advancement Path

vetgirig · Post by **vetgirig** » May 7th, 2004, 5:39 pm

Instead of lowering the number of steps a mage can move - why not make it so that the teleport takes all moves in a single turn, so when a mage teleport he can only teleport on that turn and not move.

That is the mage must move into a villgage on turn N, turn n+1 the mages telport to another village and on turn N+2 he can move out of that village.

That would make teleporting less powerful.

Post by **Darth Fool** » May 7th, 2004, 6:53 pm

Sangel wrote:I still like the fast teleporter idea. Maybe we should put the proposed "Green Mage" line to a poll and see if people would like a fast, teleporting Mage line?

The green-mage/force-mage line was originally intended as a defensive type mage. the green mage had reasonably good resistance, the force mage upgrades that with a shielding of adjacent units (providing some additional resistances). A fast teleporting mage would be a different beast.

Post by **quartex** » May 7th, 2004, 6:56 pm

Unless someone actually creates a new graphic for a teleporting mage, the only option seems to be to change an existing unused mage idea, like the green mage or force mage. Creating a second 3rd level mage won't happen until we get some artwork. Although we could try to decide what ability the normal 3rd level mage should have.

Post by **Darth Fool** » May 7th, 2004, 7:09 pm

quartex wrote:Unless someone actually creates a new graphic for a teleporting mage, the only option seems to be to change an existing unused mage idea, like the green mage or force mage. Creating a second 3rd level mage won't happen until we get some artwork. Although we could try to decide what ability the normal 3rd level mage should have.

You seem to be asserting that a unit that until a unit is actually incorporated into the Wesnoth Official Source, that it is dead. This, imho, would stifle creativity as unit developers would be encouraged to wait until a unit is all but done to submit art instead of doing the art/unit balancing in parallel or even art first. I don't think that the green-defensive-mage is dead. By your logic this would mean that the fast-teleporter has no options and can therefore be considered dead? OR, someone could create a new graphic for the teleporting mage.

Post by **quartex** » May 7th, 2004, 7:59 pm

I've just seen many units proposed, argued over and then seemingly dropped (case in point: the illusionist). Sometimes units are redundant or their abilities just don't work right. But you're right, a unit proposal is never dead. I thought that getting the right artwork is often the hardest part of creating a new unit, but creating new properly balanced abilities can be difficult too. Recently there have been lots of units proposals, and while designers are welcome to use special units in their campaigns, I am biased against having too many types of mages in "Heir to the Throne". I'd rather we finish races like the undead who still lack a lot of level 2 and 3 units, rather than try to create new lots of units and abilities. Unit creation is a tricky process, and it often takes a lot of work and time to actually get a unit approved. It can be frusterating, but I suppose it's one of the great things about an open source project.

Post by **quartex** » May 7th, 2004, 10:23 pm

Okay, getting back on topic:

"That is the mage must move into a villgage on turn N, turn n+1 the mages telport to another village and on turn N+2 he can move out of that village.
That would make teleporting less powerful"

It would make teleporting much less useful, becuase it would be very slow, as it is you can't teleport into a village with another unit in it.

What is the point of teleporting? Well obviously to move quickly across the map. So a teleporting mage with higher movement could be weaker than a great mage becuase the point would be to capture towns, not to be a strong combat unit. People seem to be hesitant to make the teleporting mage a "force mage", but it would be interesting if his other change was to make his ranged attack impact instead of piercing. (since he shoots bolts of force, not fire)

The great mage could be the combat/fire oriented mage. I like the idea of a fire shield. Right now mages are succesptible to melee attacks, whereas their ranged magic attacks are very powerful. So what if the fire shield did 4 damage every time an enemy hit the mage? I'm toning the amount of damage down a bit becuase it would be automatic damage and most wesnoth attacks only do 4-8 damage. If the fire shield did too much damage than a mage would be very hard to kill becuase it would deal almost as much damage as it recieved when it got hit with a melee weapon, making it almost invincible.

But mages get pummeled by melee attacks usually, so why not give the great mage a fire shield ability? We just need to think of an image to use for the Blink Mage/Teleporting Mage/Force Mage.

Christophe33 · Post by **Christophe33** » May 8th, 2004, 9:58 am

A classical variant of force/fire shield is the attack reflexion.... an attack a given chanceto be send back to the attacker (like 30%). That's a quite strong defensive power but far from overwhelming.... and it should work only with melee.

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » May 8th, 2004, 11:00 am

quartex wrote: People seem to be hesitant to make the teleporting mage a "force mage", but it would be interesting if his other change was to make his ranged attack impact instead of piercing. (since he shoots bolts of force, not fire)

I like the other force mage idea better...

quartex wrote:The great mage could be the combat/fire oriented mage.

wait, great mage is lvl 4...
I like this tree:
White Mage->Mage of Light
Red Mage->Fire Mage(fire shield)
Green Mage->Force Mage(adjacent shielding)
..but I am not sure where a lvl 4 mage should fit in, if anywhere.

Post by **Boucman** » May 8th, 2004, 11:06 am

it fits because we already have the graphic and that's the hardest part

that's also one of the reason why the green/force/impact/blink mage keeps coming back, and I think it's really a good reason (I love the floating mage graphic)

yes, we have a ancient mage, lvl4 graphic.

I think this lvl4 mage should be gone entirely, and the graphic kept for a special character, like defeldor's aprentice in the second HttT scenario...

currently there is only one lvl4 unit, and it's almost the same than the lvl3 because lot of people think that a true lvl4 unit would be too powerfull (and I agree with that btw)

I think this lvl4 is an error, get rid of it and keep the nice graphic for something else...

Post by **turin** » May 8th, 2004, 2:10 pm

Boucman wrote:it fits because we already have the graphic and that's the hardest part

that's also one of the reason why the green/force/impact/blink mage keeps coming back, and I think it's really a good reason (I love the floating mage graphic)

Yes, we have the graphic, but i don't think thats the only reason (for green mage). The idea for a green mage actually makes a lot of sense.You have white, which is all colors, and red, which is fire, so why don't you have the opposite of red, which is green?

Boucman wrote:I think this lvl4 mage should be gone entirely, and the graphic kept for a special character, like defeldor's aprentice in the second HttT scenario...

currently there is only one lvl4 unit, and it's almost the same than the lvl3 because lot of people think that a true lvl4 unit would be too powerfull (and I agree with that btw)

I think this lvl4 is an error, get rid of it and keep the nice graphic for something else...

A character as insignificant as that should most definitely NOT get a special unit for it.

The current great mage is not really like a level 3 unit; it has the same power defensively (about same amount of HP), but its offense is very powerful. A third level unit usually cannot kill another third level unit in one battle.

Dacyn · Post by **Dacyn** » May 8th, 2004, 7:13 pm

turin wrote:Yes, we have the graphic, but i don't think thats the only reason (for green mage). The idea for a green mage actually makes a lot of sense.You have white, which is all colors, and red, which is fire, so why don't you have the opposite of red, which is green?

well, green isn't really the opposite of red, but I think we should stick with primary colors.
The reason the current tree makes sense is the relation between the colors and the mages. Red->fire, white->holy. But what does green have to do with speed?

Post by **turin** » May 8th, 2004, 9:02 pm

Dacyn wrote:
turin wrote:Yes, we have the graphic, but i don't think thats the only reason (for green mage). The idea for a green mage actually makes a lot of sense.You have white, which is all colors, and red, which is fire, so why don't you have the opposite of red, which is green?
well, green isn't really the opposite of red, but I think we should stick with primary colors.
The reason the current tree makes sense is the relation between the colors and the mages. Red->fire, white->holy. But what does green have to do with speed?

green is the opposite in red. some people might not think of it like this, but in your eye, the cones are red-green and yellow-blue. those are the opposites.

i never said green is speed. i think green should be slow but powerful impact attack. thus 'force' mage. someone else was in favor of a fast green mage, not me. if anything, red mages should be fast (nothing spreads quicker than fire!

)

Eponymous-Archon · Post by **Eponymous-Archon** » May 10th, 2004, 1:01 pm

quartex wrote:But mages get pummeled by melee attacks usually, so why not give the great mage a fire shield ability? We just need to think of an image to use for the Blink Mage/Teleporting Mage/Force Mage.

I'm not sure I agree with this philosophy. Powerful units can have great weaknesses as well. Indeed, part of the idea behind different races is that they have certain strengths and certain weaknesses. That makes the game more varied and interesting.