Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

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lotsofphil
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Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by lotsofphil »

The Silver Mage does fire damage. This strikes me as odd (or, at least, not what I expected). What I pictured would be either arcane or cold.

Is "fire" meant to be interpreted broadly? I noticed that the storm trident (from TRoW) does fire damage too despite having a lightning strike animation. Same with Delfador's attack.
Yoyobuae
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Yoyobuae »

Maybe lightning is just another, more advanced, form of fire. :wink:
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Zarel
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Zarel »

Lightning has always been considered a form of fire (mainly just Delfador in canon), as has magic missiles (Mage, Silver Mage), since we don't want the complexity of having too many damage types.
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The1exile
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by The1exile »

Some add on or other has an "energy" type damage, iirc. I do think it's odd, though - I would expect silver magi damage types to split rather suddenly from normal mage damage types to reflect their totally different wing of study, but I guess there is a reason recorded somewhere why not.
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Max
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Max »

The1exile wrote:...but I guess there is a reason recorded somewhere why not.
what Zarel said - no one would add a new damage type because of a single unit. and what's the alternative to fire? arcane would conflict with white mage, the only option left would be cold. that doesn't fit either imo...
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Gambit
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Gambit »

"AHHH IT BURNS!"
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Araja
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Araja »

I think lightning would suit silver mages far more than reverting back to missile..

Missiles
Fireballs/Lightbeams
Missiles

Kind of a step backwards :/
lotsofphil
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by lotsofphil »

Max2008 wrote:what Zarel said - no one would add a new damage type because of a single unit. and what's the alternative to fire? arcane would conflict with white mage, the only option left would be cold. that doesn't fit either imo...
Why would having the silver mage's attack be arcane conflict with white mages? If fireballs and lightning are both "fire" without conflict, then silver-mage-energy-blast-globs and lightbeam can both be "arcane" without conflict.

A glance through units.wesnoth.org seems to see that most units have similar arcane and fire resistance.

What brought this all up was a silver mage attacking one of the fire resistant drakes and doing 1 damage per hit. It didn't seem right.
Molean
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Molean »

Yeah, I see no reason for arcane to conflict with silver mage. But I think it should keep its old fire attack too, perhaps that attack wouldn't be much stronger then a red mages.

I wouldn't mind seeing a second kind of magical attack for a level 4 mage. I mean if you get that advanced, you would think you would know more then one kind of magical attack.
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Gambit
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Gambit »

Balance > Making Sense

Also I think there is some acronym about decreasing power when leveling up and how it's bad.
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Skrim
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Skrim »

lotsofphil wrote:The Silver Mage does fire damage. This strikes me as odd (or, at least, not what I expected). What I pictured would be either arcane or cold.

Is "fire" meant to be interpreted broadly? I noticed that the storm trident (from TRoW) does fire damage too despite having a lightning strike animation. Same with Delfador's attack.
The Silver Mage never learned to do Arcane or Cold damage.

As far as human magic is concerned, Arcane magical attacks limited to the Lightbeams or Shadow Waves used by the White Mage and Dark Adept line. The Silver Mage never took up either of these paths of study.
So it simply uses a maximized version of the Missile spell it learned as an apprentice, which is slightly more powerful than the basic fireballs it used as a Red Mage. It didn't pursue the whole fire-magic line of study further, so it couldn't improve it's fireball power beyond 8-4, instead focusing on learning the ways of teleportation and how to resist magical attacks against itself.

And Cold attacks are, among humans, known only to followers of black magic(the Dark Adept line). It doesn't make sense for the Silver Mage to suddenly gain this ability after using fire-based attacks all it's life.
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Molean »

"Magic bolts" would make perfect sense for a arcane attack for silver mage. Also silver mages gifts is really just the teleportation, it gets just a bit more arcane protection at the cost of fire protection. Not many circumstances would that bit of extra arcane magic protection would be worth making a silver mage just for that I think.

Also, why should the dark magic users have two different kinds of attacks but wizards never learn more then one?
Max
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Max »

lotsofphil wrote:What brought this all up was a silver mage attacking one of the fire resistant drakes and doing 1 damage per hit. It didn't seem right.
and a great mage dealing 2 damage would have caused you to suggest changing it's damage type as well?
Molean wrote:Also, why should the dark magic users have two different kinds of attacks but wizards never learn more then one?
now that's really unfair, poor magi^^
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Oliphant
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Oliphant »

Silver mages are already very powerful, against most unit types, just because of teleportation, plus their resistances, and quick retreat ability. The only drawback to using them is they don't gain any benefit from extra experience (other than the occasional 3hp). I've had as many as 5 in a campaign (forget which one) and the more of them you have, the more their power multiplies. I guess if 'energy' were available as a damage type it might make sense for them to have that instead of fire, but then, there would be different enemies, resistant to energy, as there are to fire, and in the end, what difference would it make?
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Molean
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Re: Why does the Silver Mage use fire?

Post by Molean »

I say, make their fire damage not increase at all from red mage and instead give them a second attack, magic bolt "Arcane type". It could do lots of little hits but have less overall damage potential then their fire attack (which would be the same as the previous upgrade, red mage)

We don't need yet another time, "energy", that would be arcane.

Think of how ghosts attack with arcane hits, its not because their strikes are holy or unholy or what ever.
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