Suggestions to improve the Water Magic discipline

[Vicious Love]

Afterthought: Things That Are Not should all be named "Nothing". If a player renames one, a white-gloved hand should come out of their monitor and slap them. This should be accompanied by a hilarious sound effect, but have genuinely terrifying undertones, in a David Cronenberg sort of way.
Kinda like slipping on a banana peel and landing faceefirst in a meringue pie, except that later something kills you in your sleep.
But I digress.

[Jack Simth]

Here's a random one:

Provincial Quickening
Alteration 8
Requires 7(?) water, 1(?) nature (alternately, 7(?) water, 1(?) blood)
Costs 50(?) water gems
Causes every female in the targeted province to become pregnant and give birth virtually overnight, effecting a 50% increase in the population. However, the sudden influx of mouths to feed causes a sever disruption to society (forces scales to turmoil-3, sloth-3, death-3, and increases unrest by 200). This spell can target both friendly and enemy provinces.

Used offensively, it pretty much denies the target value from the province for a while - blood hunting doesn't work until the unrest goes down, taxes are pretty much nothing until unrest and turmoil go down, resources are pretty much nothing until unrest and sloth go down. About the only thing stuff can be gotten out of a province targetted by this spell (for a while, anyway) are the stuff from sites.

Used locally, it's a long-term investment - you set taxes to 0 and arrange for your dominion to push the scales back. After several turns, you have a province with (about) 50% more people in it than previously - which means about 50% more income and recources.

A note to those who are curious - the water and alteration choices are based on a pun; as I understand it, "quickening" is (was?) archaic English for the first time a woman felt a baby move in her womb; "Quickening" is a water spell in the alteration path, and this spell speeds things up considerably.

Oh, and a thought on the Thing That Is Not - all its attacks and offensive abilities should have "Magic Resistence Negates" (as per attacks from illusions) and "Doesn't Affect Mindless" - after all, it doesn't exist; it can't affect the universe directly - only through thinking beings that aknoweledge it.

As to making it immune to empowerment, give it a forced, permanent affliction: "FeebleMinded", but have it otherwise immune to all afflictions.

[ June 20, 2004, 02:57: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Vicious Love]

Heh. Great spell idea, if I say so myself.
As for the Thing That Is Not, I came to the same conclusion you did, was dissatisfied with it and, using the power of logical bias, came to a better conclusion. I reasoned that, in IC terms, phantasm is not the same as "aggressive nothingness". One addles the mind, the other addles reality. Also, magic nothing is in many ways unlike ordinary nothing(Which can be easily resisted).
I came to these counterintuitive conclusions because I felt that making high MR offer absolute protection from the Thing will greatly diminish its effectiveness in its principal role: Cosmically unlikely superassassin. As it was never meant to rival the abomination and its ilk in other roles, this would leave the Thing underpowered.
Nonetheless, its attacks do have plenty of resistable side effects, since I simply couldn't disregard magic resistance altogether, when it's so logically appropriate.

[Vicious Love]

Just clarifying something about my proposed dome, those probabilites were meant to be results on a percentile roll, not separate checks. So 01-30=Neighboring province(Good, but not that good), 31-50=Random province(Good, bad, whatever. Fun.), 51-60=Reflection(Booyah!), 61-00=Nothing(Not the ethereal trampling assassin kind).

[Jack Simth]

Here's one:

Dream of Turmoil
Conjuration 6 (path from Voice of Tiamat, as they both deal with dreams)
Water 6, Astral 1
Gem cost: ???
This spell causes the caster to fall into a trance, and dreams of what would happen if every unit and commander in this province were to attack the targetted province. While the caster dreams true, it isn't always possible to move everyone there for the battle, and the dream Lasts too long for the caster to act on the information in time for the dream to become reality.

Mechanics: The caster casts the spell, and targets a province. The next turn, the player gets a message: a battle simulation, showing what would have happened had everyone in the province moved to the targeted province for a battle (or a message to the effect that there weren't any troops or province defense outside of any castles, if that was the case) - but it doesn't move anyone, and doesn't inflict any actual casulties or injuries - it was just a dream. Perhaps the targetted player recieves a message that the troops in that province all recieved distrubing dreams, but gets no details. An extremely good spell for scouting - although limited, as it won't give you any info on what's inside of a castle (you'd end the turn seiging the castle, if you won, not fighting the defenders).

[Endoperez]

I think 'dreams' don't need Astral component. After all, neither Voice of Tiamat or the Blood global causing demons to harass enemy commanders in their dreams need it.

BTW, I really like the Dream of Turmoil of Jack Simth (on purpose?). But giving out information about the excat strategies and troop composition of target army is too much... Numbers should be enough. Even suicide scouts won't see the spells enemy mages have been scripted to cast.

[Vicious Love]

While that really is a great idea for a spell, it
A) Doesn't really sound like a water spell, and
B) Has already been suggested a while back. The devs felt it would slow down the game/be tricky to implement/be overpowered. Or at least one of the above three, I don't recall which.

Update: Oh, and while I may have overused astral in my own suggestions, when the less tangible aspects of water woulda sufficed, I'm actually inclined to agree with Simth on the astral component in his spell.
Foretelling the future is strictly and astral sorta thing, y'see.

Updated update: Duuuude. Making the Thing That Is Not your prophet would be, like, the coolest thing ever.

[ June 20, 2004, 22:18: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]