Is there an incongruous distribution of magic?

[HotNifeThruButr]

Strictly speaking, the potential to grow your magical arsenal is possible in every path, getting 1 to search sites and then empowering until you can actually become a "power" in that path. But yes, Death would be easier to grow than most of the other paths.

But if anything, that makes Death even more heavily represented in at least Early Era.

[K]

Being a Power, in my mind, means not having to do anything crazy to be good at it.

Fire for example, is a Path that you just don't get into except by straight empowerment, which is wasteful in the extreme.

Death and Nature are very easy to get into, since summonable mages are available that let you "walk up the ladder" to powerful amounts of those magics.

[Sombre]

Air is only useful if you have 4s and 5s in it? Huh?

What about arrow fend, thunderstrike, wind guide?

[K]

Arrow Fend. A3. Costs a gem, but its great for the value. You want an air 4 or else your mage is knocked out.

Thunder Stike: A3, and is 50 fatigue. Cast two, then get get knocked out. Compared to Falling fire or Falling Frost, its underpowered and overpriced.

Wind Guide: A2. Cheap, but costs a gem.


Sooo, thats three spells, one of which is a loser and others two cost gems. Do you seriously expect anyone to build an army on that?

Look at the best Air spells:
Mists of Deception, A6, 200 fatigue
Wrathful Skies: A5, 200 fatigue
Fog Warriors: A5, 300 fatigue

Considering that the AI often won't cast high fatigue spells and overspends on them if it does cast them, you are spending Air gems at a very fast clip.

Add in that the Bag ogf Air needs an Air 4 to make(20 gems), and a Wind Helmet is A5(25 gems).

So lets say you are Lanka and you best Air mage is A3, and you want to ever cast Mists of Deception. You spend 60 gems to empowered youself to A4, then another 55 gems to get yourself to A6. Now you can overcast the spell with an extra gem and only knock yourself out(total spent: 115 gems).

[RamsHead]

Or, in the case of your mists of deception example, you can use a sabbath.

[K]

RamsHead said:
Or, in the case of your mists of deception example, you can use a sabbath.

Sure. Anyone can use a Communion or a Sabbath to make up for weak magic, and some nations even get those options on recruitables. What's your point?

Setting up a Sabbath is difficult and easy to foil, and costs blood slaves, and its not going to help 99 out of 100 castings of spells you need to cast over the course of the game. Even implying that it makes up for weak magic is baffling to me.

[Micah]

Erm...doing a bit of setup for a BE (especially one that doesn't kill your mages) is pretty bar for the course...

Even without a communion it's pretty easy to drop a single booster onto your caster, cast summon storm power and then burn an extra gem while casting to get mists off.

The one time empowerment cost to get to A4 for the boosters (assuming you can't get there some other way, via trading, etc.) isn't THAT steep. You're also flat-out wrong about the helms being at A5.

Thunderstrike is also an incredible spell. It's lower research level than falling foo and has 50 range. A single caster with each spell might fall in favor of the bigger AE spells, but if you bring along a whole squad of mages the range advantage of thunderstrike will become obvious, since the army getting pounded by it will be well on the way to routing before their mages even get in casting range. If you commit enough mages to a fight you'll find that 3 casts of it per mage is generally enough to do the job. It's also never rendered obsolete against troops. Army of Niefelheim completely shuts down cold damage and army of gold makes fire magic pretty worthless...the best you can do against lightning is a 50% resist from storm warriors.