I’d understand that mages are not in horrible shape, but we have also been the most overlooked class since inception. This post originated from conversations about specific spells that I chose to expand into a much larger list of changes. I’ve spoken with every mage I’ve seen online since I came up with this idea to make sure I included everyone’s views. If you have a mage alt that I’m not aware of, I apologize.

Now, with all of that said, I’ve considered countless balance issues, but I’m sure there are some that I missed. Whether these mistakes come from the new spell orders, or general views about how the class should change, I welcome any/all suggestions. If you think they suck, give me a good reason why and I will do my best to incorporate your views into the main post, if it makes sense.

The main reason for this post is the make all schools equally appealing depending on your style of play, and to create a much more stable curve of power. No newbie mage should hate life when they class and have next to no ability to make experience short of spelling other people.

GENERAL

Completely remove trance from the game and grant its effects as long as the
mage is not actively casting. Lower the amount of mana each tick gives, but
shorten the time between ticks.

Slightly lower the weapon restrictions. I think we got hit twice here...one at
inception and another during the massive mage nerf. This will also make greater
weapon use a slightly more useful askill.

Added mana cost for casting out of your school should be removed. I added that
as a bonus in Platinum-form, but it can be changed.

ENCHANTMENT

Remove stoneskin, put feather weight in its slot and add Dragon-form. Changes
to brains, heroism and haste. The new brains and heroism do NOT stack.

Brains: New spell = Wizard’s Boon. The usefulness of brains is in no
way consistent. It helps the duration of a few spells, gives a larger mana
pool, and (I think) increases the damage of offensive spells. Boon will
combine heroism and brains into one spell, increase the damage of area-
effects and slightly increase the chance single target spells hit a vital.
The size of the bonus to spells and stats is based purely on level. Stat
bonuses are Con 4-7, Int 5-8. Duration = Brains. Cost 40m.

Heroism: New spell = Heroic Resolve. The flip side of Wizard’s Boon, Resolve
focuses purely on melee stats and assists melee combat by somewhat counter-
acting the influence of alcohol in melee combat. Stat bonuses are Str 2-4,
Dex 2-4 and Con 4-7. Duration = Heroism. Cost 40m.

Dragon-form: At the peak of an enchanter’s ability, not only can they
change a weapon’s damage and make items unbreakable, but they can also
change their very being. As a replacement for heroism and brains (or their
replacements), the enchanter can choose between Platinum-form (caster) and
Chaos-form (melee). The forms adopts the same benefits that Boon and Resolve
give, but there is one added benefit for each. Platinum will remove the
chance additional mana will be charged for casting out of your school, and
Chaos grants a much more stable haste when the spell is active. Duration =
7-9m. Cost 95m.

Haste: When self-casted (much like the healing aspect), tone down the
randomness. The added random mana cost should also be removed and just
find a happy medium with a smaller +/- variance. Base the benefits on level
and base intelligence.

ABJURATION

Mostly a reordering of spells but also the addition of group buffs.
Remove alarm, ward and shelter. Add group resist/shield/globe.

Give a little more warning before shield spells drop.

Group spells: No need to add a cute description. They are slotted into the
spell order after the Abjurer attains the most powerful spell of that
flavor. Costs +3/4 the spell cost for each additional target, capped at 4
targets. Will attempt until out of mana and spell in the order of arrival
starting with the Abjurer. Group shield will always cast group Talisman,
group resist will always cast a specified flavor of minor resist, and group
globe will always cast lesser globe.

New spell order: shield, privacy, know target, block teleport, forceshield,
banish, iron will, minor resistance, lesser globe, rebound, major
resistance, talisman of protection, group resistance, group shield,
bane of protection, seeker, globe of invulnerability, group globe,
destructive force.

INVOCATION

This school will probably take the majority of time because of the amount of
spell changes. In the many years this class has been around, many monsters
(especially the ones that drop mage equipment) have been specifically coded
to be anti-mage by being highly resistant to fire, cold, electricity and
magic...even locations were adjusted to harm some mage spells. -Please- keep
in mind that this is intended only to allows for some additional types of
damage, not to drastically increase the actual damage an Invoker can deal.

Area-effect spells will remain basically the same, but now there is an added
syntax to all of them to continue casting it much like chain lightning.
However, the greatly reduced casting time for follow-up spells will be some-
what lowered, but not drastically. I hope that many chain lightning purists
will agree that the added flexibility of more damage types, in a continued
casting state, will be well worth the slightly longer follow-up casting times.

Single target spells all have an added damage component to a random limb,
somewhat akin to bolt, but with a greater degree of full-body damage instead
of a higher level of damage to a single limb. This change is intended to level
off the amount of single target spells a mage will have to cast to kill a single
larger foe. This will assist all levels of play for spell damage mages.

Continued

-All spell damage will be based on level and intelligence, and scale properly-

There are three levels of damage for all spells, and the mana costs reflect
that. Level 1 = Single 25m Group 55m, Level 2 = Single 35m Group 70m, Level
3 = Single 50m Group 85m (Unleash Chaos costs 10 extra mana). Damage
levels will be reflected by a number preceding the name, and area-effects will
have a + following. For example, fireball is a level 2 damage, area-effect, so it
would look like 2Fireball+. Some spells allow the caster to choose a different
damage type, which is listed after the spell name.

1Magic Missile -Magic
1Ice Blast -Cold
1Meteor Blast -Fire
1Shocking Grasp -Electricity
1Mana Surge+ -Magic
1Cold Sphere+ -Cold
2Sonic Boom -Sonic Vibration
2Fireball+ -Fire
2Suffocating Cloud -Asphyxiation
2Blast Lightning -Electricity
2Cold Sphere+ -Cold
2Manablast+ -Magic
2Electric Blast+ -Electricity
3Bolt -Fire,Cold,Magic,Electricity
3Cloudkill+ -Asphyxiation
3Shockwave+ -Sonic Vibration
3Storm+ -Fire,Cold,Magic,Electricity
3Oppressive Sphere -Asphyxiation,Sonic Vibration
3Unleash Chaos+ -Special: This spell specifically chooses the monster’s
lowest resistance from all six possible damage types and
uses that against them. No longer needs to be casted out of
combat.

ILLUSION

Keep in mind that this is the school I have very little knowledge of. Any
suggestions, just like with the rest of the post, would be greatly
appreciated.

Remove ventriloquism, misdirection, illusion death and symbol. Improve on
terror and drain mana. Replace ventriloquism with illusory fist, move blur
image into misdirection’s old spot and place phantasmal cliff where blur used
to be, move shadowwalk to illusion death’s old spot and insert illusory
ambush, and put phantasmal storm in symbol’s old spot. All of these should
work just like invoker spells but cause psychic damage.

1Illusory Fist -Psychic
2Phantasmal Cliff+ -Psychic
2Illusory Ambush -Psychic
3Phantasmal Storm+ -Psychic

Spell improvements for terror and drain mana basically boil down to how often
they can be useful. Instead of terror forcing someone to leave the room, it
stuns the opponent. Drain mana can be useful when wizards code monsters to
use mana, but that’s very rare...something that could be changed. Right now
it costs more mana to cast the spell than what is returned.

CONJURATION

Remove deadspeak, mentalmap, magical mouth, wiz eye, armor, monster summon
and greater summon. Changes to sword and flame shield. There is a somewhat
convoluted change of the spell order, so I’ll just list it all as I did with
Abjurers. To further improve the 2h summoned weapons, the specials also cause
a small amount of full-body damage when they do their “glows brightly” attack.

Lesser Sword: It works just like the sword spell, but the weapon only does
magical damage and are of much lower quality. Costs 1h 15m, 2h 25m.
Duration is slightly less than sword.

Lesser Poison: Works just like the poison spell, but just deals less damage.
Costs 15m and is considered a level 1 single target spell.

Acid Arrow: Hits a random body part and has a damage over time components. As
the name implies it does acid damage, but it does not harm equipment. Costs
30m and would be considered a level 2 single target spell.

Bigby’s Crushing Hand: Hits a random body part and has a damage over time
component, the mage must be in the room for it to remain in effect, and
while the spell remains active the monster will find it substantially
difficult to flee from combat. Players can teleport out of the effect. It
deals physical damage, costs 45m and is considered a level 2 single target
spell.

Force Cage: This spell deals no damage, it simply removes one target from the
battle for a short amount of time. Costs 60m, duration 35s-1m depending on
level.

Lesser/Greater Familiar: Conjures a familiar, but it is considered a buff so
it can not be harmed in any way. The summoner can choose to summon a fairy
dragon or a an imp. The fairy dragon is a good friend to melee mages because
they increase the weapon skills of their summoner and their power of
illusion makes their master more difficult to hit. The imp is a powerful
ally to spell casters by increasing spell damage and the chance to cast a
spell perfectly. Lesser costs 50m, duration 5-6m. Greater costs 80m,
duration 7-9m. Duration is based strictly on level.

Sword: (Change) Slight increase to 1h wc, and slightly more to 2h. The major
change is that the summoned weapon attacks the lowest resistance out of
fire, cold, electricity, magic and sonic vibration. Cost 1h 30m, 2h 50m and
a slight boost in duration. Compare current duration to the summoned cleric
weapons.

Flame shield: Rename to Elemental Backlash. Somewhat like the sword spell it
attacks the lowest resistance, but it can not cause sonic damage. No change
in mana cost or duration.

New spell order: Lesser poison, disrupt, floating disc, unseen servant,
lesser sword, summon, orb of spying, wall, acid arrow, lesser familiar,
bigby’s crushing hand, phase armour, web, force cage, poison, elemental
backlash, sword, greater familiar.

Anon

Hmm, this sounds like a really cool idea to me

A few quick responses:

1.  I’d love to see the Bigby’s Hand Spells, or some semblence thereof, make an appearance in the arsenal for mages in Moral Decay.  I always loved those when I used to play D&D;around the dining room table way back in the late 80s.  I remember an illustration in an old Player’s Maunal where some mage was holding a wand with a hand on the end of it and says “Well, either it casts the various Bibgy’s Hand Spells, or it’s a +2 Backscratcher...so far, we’re not sure which!”

2.  Having magically conjured swords “seek out” their opponents’ weakest resistences and attack them sounds great, but may make them overpowered.  I wouldn’t mind a bit more WC on them though, especially for folks who play as “battle mages.” I agree entirely that Unleash Chaos ought to be revamped, and there it might make more sense to add the “weak resistence seeker” capability.  Otherwise, when using good ol’ bolt, you would still need to cast “know target.”

3.  I’m all for changing Flame Shield to “elemental shield.” As an illusionist, I’ll never use this one, but I can see a battle mage getting a wee bit ticked off if you have to rely on this to take down a fire elemental or a high monk of fire.  I’d just change it to “Elemental Shield” and you can choose the type of damage it reflects from among the same quartet we use for bolt.

4.  Re: illusionists, shadowwalk is useless...I’d relace it with something else.  Ventriloquism, Illusion Death, and Create Illusion are all amsing things to try on newbies in the lounge, but does it really make sense to have THREE spells in the illusionist’s arsenal that are mere parlor tricks?  I’d keep illusion death because it’s a barrel of laughs; but replace ventriloquism and create illusion with something a bit more practical.  And if hardly any of the npcs in Moral Decay actually *use* mana, and you never get more mana drained from your opponent than it takes to cast the spell in the first place, why it it there?  I’d either buff it or nix it for something else.  All of these “something elses” might take advantage of underused damage types--sonic, asphyxiation, etc. etc.

5.  Add a few more levels of Superior Trance.  It makes the game a lot more playable when you only have an hour at a time.

I have to agree with shams that sword seeking out lowest resist is a bit overpowered.  I think it would work better if you could just summon the sword to whichever damage type you wanted, but then you were stuck with it for the duration.  I also agree that it would be a sweet way to make unleash chaos a little more usable.  As it stands, the only reason to cast it that I ever found was to show off for the mud

Most of Anon’s ideas I think are anywhere from decent to very good, and I plan to comment more on them after more careful thought.  A couple thoughts I had up front:

We need to continue spell trees after 20 int for primary schools as well as secondary.  As it stands now, if you’re say, an enchanter, after aristoing you become a better abjurer, illusionist, conjurer, and invoker, but you’re pretty much maxxed out as an enchanter.  Choosing a school is almost more about the secondary spells you get than the primary schools!  Because of this, if there was a major recode of mage on the drawing board, I’d propose a different strategy, similar to what Belly did with cleric:

Make up till level 10 just mage, giving basic spells like shield, magic missile (make it better), detect magic, know target, etc.  After that, choose a school, and you get no access to other schools until aristo, when you can choose a secondary school.  The catch to this, however, is that EVERY school has to have useful spells.  As is, for instance, the main draw of illusionist, unless you want to pk, is that you eventually get all the invoker spells, but you get forceshield earlier, and you get lesser globe.  Illusionist has the potential to be a sweet school, but now it’s just invoker with better defense.  I liked the ideas Anon posted for illusionist spells, and I long ago posed the idea of a “shadow items” spell that allowed you to basically make a temporary version of an item machine item. 

However, my way is way more work, and Anon’s ideas bear study.  It would be nice, also, to get the feedback from a wizard letting us know what the wiz community’s opinion of mage is: whether it needs a recode or whether we are just talking for the sake of talking here.  What changes would the wizzes like to see?

Deisel + Shams
I agree about the possibility of sword and elemental blacklash being overpowered. A few things I considered when I came up with the idea:

Sword is never going to be the major damage dealer for a conjurer for many reasons. The extra mana to recast the spell every 5m50s (my sword duration) would not pan out very well on my already taxed mana pool, it only attacks the listed resists not all of them, and a few other mage weapons are just flat out better. I also moved the spell to be the peak of a conjurer’s spell line.

I do usually keep flame shield going though, but it has also been nerfed many times. The only difference between making me choose the damage type and just having it choose it on its own is saving me time to cast know target over and over again. Well, that and it would remain potent when I go to another mob as well...testing would be the only answer to both of your concerns. This spell was also moved to the end of the conjurer spell line. I could probably replace a different spell earlier on in the line to give a lesser form of this spell as well.

Shams
Superior Trance is, quite possibly, the worst askill unless the passive trance I suggested was implemented. If more levels were added to it, the cost would need to be adjusted properly...but I could think of many different mage-specific askills that could easily take its place. Increased spell duration would be the first that comes to mind.

I did try to work in most of your suggestions for Illusionists, ‘cept the Celine Dion special hehe. Just like we talked about, I tried to focus mainly on psychic damage for illusion while keeping in mind that you do eventually get everything from the Invoker line. I left shadowwalk alone simply because any other mage that gets access to it would get a one room lurk from the spell because they can’t move while invis. I also left create illusion alone because it has potential to genuinely confuse players and help for pk.

Deisel
I’d welcome the added levels for schools, but it would cause a whole new balancing issue. I’d happily tackle it if I thought it would get put in. The larger benefit for more omax stats (at least for some of the current subclasses) is that you get access to an even greater number of spells from other schools that can make you substantially more powerful/flexible. The other major reasons I made this massive listing for were a better spread of spells for all subclasses and the removal of most of the worthless ones.

The level ten split idea that you suggested would most likely remove a lot of the uniqueness the mage class has. No other class in the game has access to the same amount of skills. Also, just like we spoke about on the game, it would almost always end up being SubclassX/Abjurer...and you’d lose everything else.

Thanks for the input guys! Keep it coming.
Anon

I looked at this thread....
I saw books....
I must read later....

haha im with you hemi.. way to many words to ready right now.. i am working 6pm-6am for the next 7 days.. soo i know ill get boerd enough to read them… but I really liked Malals idea about channeling.. i dont know what % should be what.. but i really liked that idea.. ill absorb this novel later tonight i think tho

i typed out a long post and it didnt go through soooo gonna make this one shorter

would this be a redo of mage class from the ground up?

yea illusonest have alot of spells that are fun, but pointless

i understand the extra mana for casting spells out of your school.. it would make more sense if you didnt NEED to cast spells from out of your school… as is you kinda have to.

i think stoneskin would be a great spell if it worked like it does in DnD.. but the stoneskin on moral is garbage

not much pking going on md anymore.. but still create illuson is still a fun spell and would say.. dont drop it.. becuase its low int (if i remeber right havent looked in a while)

aristo spells would be awsome

I dont think they should get rid of trance.. they could split the class like DnD into wizs and socerers.. wizs need to trance while sorcers get a minor boast in regneraton but less spells.. wizs would gain more spells but need to trance for mana… and i guess a diff name then wizards since.. thats taken hehe.. also maybe factor in where you trance.. players and npcs coming in or out or talking moving in a room should lower the mana you get from trance.. but boost the over all mana regin for trance

anyways.. laters

and again, i like the channeling idea malal had

Lynis
That sucks about your post getting screwed over. It has gotten to the point that any post I do that’s longer than a quick reply is done in a text editor that doesn’t have to deal with cookies

One way to work in your trance ideas would be to just allow trance to scale with the amount of time the mage has spent since the last cast. This would make it work a lot like mandala of mystery and blasting mages would be able to gather their next round while still regaining mana at an accelerated rate. This would be a disadvantage for melee mages though cause I cast constantly...sometimes it seems like I never stop hehe. I’d still prefer a consistent amount of mana regeneration for all subclasses and just have it scale with level. Right now trance is just forced boredom which could be spent finding/gathering your next group for area blasting goodness. A bonus could also get put into the new brains spell which would also help blasting mages more.

If I have to take less spells, then they need to be much more comprehensive. The same would follow with Malal’s concentration idea. I’d welcome not having to recast my spells constantly, but I’d also assume that I wouldn’t be able to cast force, minor res, hero, brain, will, blur, flame and haste...then start in with a web/poison on the mob. I did try to narrow down the amount of spells we’d need to buff ourselves with the changes to brains and heroism. I could suggest some for the abjurer line, but I’m fairly sure most mages would be against losing the flexibility that the shields, resists, and rebound/absorption spells that line has to offer.

I specifically removed stoneskin (which is garbage just as you said) and armor because they used to stack with shields. Now, they offer less protection with a higher Intelligence requirement...doesn’t make much sense, but nerfs generally don’t have the power of foresight either.

No, this wouldn’t be a complete recode even if it looks like it. I can’t speak for other mages, but the majority of the spells I cast are out of three schools. I rarely use Illusion or Invocation, but that doesn’t mean that I want to lose access to them either.

If everyone is really on board with giving all subclasses their own shields, damage spells and miscellaneous buffs, I wouldn’t mind tackling it. It would require a nearly complete recode and re-listing of every schools spells. Even though my listing was rather large, the only subclass that was totally changed was Invoker, and the rest just had a few spells replaced/moved. Code could be pirated from other spells (and other class spells) and tweaked to make the majority of the changes I put forward. Group spells for Abjurers could come from Clerics, single target nukes can just be adjusted from the current bolt spell, spells that attack certain resists could come from something in the game that already does that...etc etc. A lot of thought went into the original post.

I did try to give every subclass something very unique and powerful at the end of their spell lines. Abjurers already had Dest. Force, but every other subclass was lacking...and in some cases horribly lacking. If anything, Illusion is still lacking some love in the original post. I just had trouble coming up with spells that worked well with the school. Perhaps a stun component could be worked into their instant spells too.

Anon

another change i was thinking about but much more minor was to unleash chaos, i dont even have the spell anymore but id like to see it improved.. it sounds like a bad ass spell and very will could be.. but never did enough damage for me, specialy when i jacked me up too.  i think ether.. more damage or since your unleashing chaos, have random effects for everyone hit, maybe even multiple effects per person.  like stun, or weakend, or randomly ripping off a body part, blinding, confusing, ect.. i mean.. you are unleashing chaos after all, and the spell takes forever to cast and hurts you also.. anyways, just and idea i was thinking of lastnight

Yes, absolutely. Every class’ top spell(s) should be useful. If Chaos had those ideas added it would need to work out of combat as well, which I suggested too.

On a different (continuing) note, even if nobody wants to tackle the posted changes, at least consider the following:

1. Remove spell failure. Yes, just remove it. Leave the RNG to partial resists for offensive spells and let us buff ourselves without wasting tons of mana from failures. I (and probably all other mages) would be fine with perfect casts being removed at the same time simply because I fail at least 4 times more than I cast perfectly. Added to that lopsidedness, failures still take the whole cost of the spell away, and perfect casts only reduce the cost by a half.

2. Remove the random added mana costs for casting out of your own school. There is already a higher intelligence requirement and an added silver cost for learning them. I believe the added cost is 25% and if you look at the spells from #3, it could mean an extra 65 mana (for me).

3. Greatly (double in some cases) increase the duration of buffs the mage casts on -themselves- (take the code from shield spells). Name a class that needs to spend 300+ mana just buffing themselves to fight their normal exp mobs, and I’ll eat my words. This is a list of mana costs, most of which can be higher cause of #2… 30 + 30 + 60 + 70 + 50 + 30 + 40. That’s 310 without summoning a weapon which is 50-100 more, and if I used greater summon that would be another 125. Sprinkle in a few #1’s too.

4. Cost to change schools should just be money. If you look at recent history, clerics were/are able to switch between pally and priest for just the money portion and people are -still- not switching all “willy-nilly.” The reason this option was opened to them was simply because the class powers were still in flux. On the same side of that coin, mages (conjurers specifically) are not the same as when I joined. If this is implemented (I HOPE), the cost to relearn spells should be factored into the final cost since the loss of all spells would still need to be required.

Anon