Arch Mage / Great Mage Melee-Attack

[godt]

Hi all

this might not be a serious issue, but i think it's worth a discussion.

Some time ago i was stumbling through the BfW ingame help, reading the characterisations of the different unit-classes, when I came to the depiction of the great mage.
In the text there is said that:
"Any person who is even considered for the title of Great Mage is quite nearly a legend in their own time, (...)"
to make a long term short: beeing a Great Mage seems to be utterly awesome, because a Great Mage has power, wisdom, superior firepower and he surely possesses a great pile of magic artifacts.

Now my objection:
Why on earth causes his *magic wand of awesomness* impact damage, just like some dumb, simple wooden club?
IMHO Fire, Cold or Arcane damage would be more suitable for a wand, which is charged with sizzling magic.
(Same idea for the melee attack of the Elvish Enchantress)

I don't know if this would have a great influence on the game-balance (i guess not), but i think that it would help to make the World of Wesnoth feel more convicing.


So far my strange thoughts
I would be happy to read your opinions.

godt
(i hope my english is good enough to make clear what i meant, if not, please ask!)

[Turuk]

Not agreeing or condemning your idea, just providing some additional reading.

Great Mage Suggestions

This idea has been debated before because others felt as you did, that for a unit who is written to be at the pinnacle of magic, why does it seem to be rather simplistic?

There are a variety of ideas talked about, some similar to your own, others focusing on the ranged attack, and others having to do with other aspects of the unit. I would give it a look.


EDIT: Had the link take you to the front of the thread, to start at the beginning.

[Skizzaltix]

Don't worry--Your English is more readable than that of some Americans I see online.

I think the reason his staff does impact damage is RIPLIB (Reduction In Power Leveling Is Bad)--That is, when something levels up, at least one advancement option should be the same in all respects but better. Thus, if you level one of your units up into a Great Mage, and he has this fire-damage melee attack... And you happen to be fighting the Drakes? Not fun.
On the other hand, it's very rare that someone actually gets a Great Mage in a multiplayer game, and the mages are a fire-damage advancement tree anyway, so I don't think it would cause much complaint if he were to be given a slightly more badass melee attack :/
Actually, come to think of it, any mage that powerful has probably picked up a few magical swords by that point, so that could be another option...

Alternatively, you could say that is melee attack his an Angela-style "animated rod" style of thing--Where the staff goes off and whacks an enemy of its own accord. Using that idea, the staff could be made Magical

Oops, Turuk beat me to posting. I see that a few of the things I suggested here were already mentioned in that thread... :/

Edit: Case in point with some Americans forgetting how to speak English online--I just found three missing particles and a couple of misspellings in there.

[Jozrael]

Alternatively, you could say that is melee attack his an Angela-style

One more <3

On topic, I don't think the balance of a Great Mage is anything to be considered for MP (rare even in Age of Heroes I'd imagine), and rules are made to be broken in this case (does RIPLIB really matter for a Great Mage :\. You could also just give him a second melee attack). I'd vote for some powering up of his melee attack.

[Turuk]

On topic, I don't think the balance of a Great Mage is anything to be considered for MP

Quite true, and you could always make the melee attack magical, to symbolize the grasp that the Great Mage has over magic, that he can even use it to guide his hand in combat. Even that idea has been mentioned before though.

[Skizzaltix]

Yeah.... I try to fix one misspelled "his" and end up messing up the "is" in the same sentence. Go me.

[roadkill]

Yeh mp balance the GM doesn't matter.

But in single player it does... the great mage would arguably (fluff wise) able to take on an army of royal guard by himself (maby not an army maby 10?).

But in regards to single player balance you don't want the great mage to be much more favourable than a royal guard to have, because they are both at the top of their unit trees.

Making the attack magical or a different damage type, or another attack is a large difference, and after re-balancing would probably be quite a pathetic attack. (secondary attack with a nerf for magical & more useful damage type, perhaps the raw damage of the inaccurate staff would be better after all...).

Also perhaps the great mage doesn't have great reserves of magical power like the slyph, (the great mage doesn't fly everywhere afterall), or perhaps his spells take too long to cast so are unweildly in melee.

Also the great mage may be great not because of his combat power but because of his wisdom and knowledge.

Does he really need a magical melee attack?

[Turuk]

Does he really need a magical melee attack?

It was a thought, nothing more. As I had pointed out twice above, all the possibilities brought up in this thread have been mentioned before and turned down. I am merely providing a reasoning for why it could be magical, but I do not think it should be, as the fact that he already has a 12-4 magical ranged attack at Arch Mage and a 16-4 magical ranged attack at Great mage means that he is quite powerful enough.

A more powerful melee attack serves no point, as it is not supposed to be a melee-heavy unit, and by the time you get a mage to level 3/4, you should have plenty of melee units to protect it.

[Skizzaltix]

Ten royal guards? The Great Mage has 65 hitpoints, Royal Guards do 11-4 base damage... With a little luck, two of them could knock him down in one turn
Conversely, even if he were hitting four times per turn, he'd still need two turns to kill one of them (16*4 = 64, Royal Guards have 74 health).
Anyway, just trying to lighten the atmosphere here with a little bit of pedantical arithmetic

[Jozrael]

The point is not that he needs it or to focus on balance. The point is just it would raise his sheer awesomeness factor to be closer to what we imagine it to be.

[roadkill]

Hmm maybe a new attack animation is the best way to accomplish this?
But I wouldn't even know where to start for ideas...

Pull a rabbit out of a hat? (no jk, but what else? without making it seem like the attack needs to be made, 70% CTH, do fire damage or do arcane damage).

[Raemon]

I'm sort of completely unrelenting on RIPLIB, but two ways of giving him an interesting melee attack without violating the principle would be keeping his current attack as well as his new one, or else giving the attack to the Arch Mage as well. The Silver Mage is something of an unconventional unit, but still a completely superior one to the Red Mage, I believe.

[Skizzaltix]

The problem there is that the Arch Mage is the one that RIPLIB is applying to--The Silver Mage is better, but it's different. I'm not sure, but wouldn't having both options be unconventional-but-still-better advancements still violate RIPLIB?

[Jozrael]

RIPLIB means that at least one advancement tree must improve or stay the same on EVERY aspect of the unit. I.e., if you have a unit x with two trees, and one of them gains something but loses...2 hitpoints. The other one CANNOT lose anything, whether it be hp, dmg, speed, attack type, etc. They can gain new attacks, but w.e.

Personally I think it's silly to worry about RIPLIB for level 4s T_T.

[Rimbecano]

A possible idea here, based off of the "Thorns" ability in the "Abilities that have potential" thread:

Give the great mage a "Fire shield" ability:

Fire Shield: A unit that hits a unit with fire shield in melee combat receives [N] damage each time it hits (modified by fire resistance).

This would encourage the opponent to hit the great mage with units with more damage per strike and fewer strikes (not to mention fire resistance). Better to whack it with your Grand Knight or Iron Mauler than your Master at Arms or Cavalier.