How do you manage Magi as general?

[Tech]

My first project had the mage played by the Necromancer, who couldn't equip accessories because his Phylactery was a stuck item, but he could equip enemy organs to give himself a single new power. The three I made before scrapping the project were a vampire's heart, a Mhorg's entrails, and a Bhodak's eye.

My current project has the mage split between the Wizard and the Shapechanger. The wizard can switch between Blaster stance, which makes her spells hit harder against a single target, and the Warded stance, which increases her magic resistance but gives her weak area of effect spells. She can also Resonate with other party members, buffing Magic attack and Defense with each reciprocation. She can also equip Talismans that change her subclass, such as a Battlemage Talisman that grants her the ability to enchant her weapon, and a Desintergration Ray attack to deal with heavy armor.

The Shapechanger, as the name suggests, focuses on enchanting their body by changing her skin into bark (or rock at higher levels) and their hands into claws. They can also mutate to gain certain animal-like powers. At high levels, thet can buff the whole party this way. Their Totems can change them into such subclasses as a Fleshcrafter (enhanced party buffs at the cost of Berserking them), or a Shaman (elemental magic).

 

[CyberForte]

There are a lot of interesting aspects of designing mage characters, and I find some of the ideas suggested here quite fascinating, especially the thought of a skill that changes its effect with repeated uses. That sort of building combo can be pretty satisfying, and I might actually consider having a character that works like that after reading this...

For my own contribution to the topic, though, I personally find MP management to be the most fun part of designing a mage--which isn't to say attrition. As a modern MMO player, I personally find attrition that extends outside of a single encounter isn't very interesting because it amounts to "you can't use your fun skills very often." But within an encounter, I enjoy making managing MP a thing, and in my current project I'm handling it in different ways for different characters:

One of the main protagonists is basically a savant with fire. She isn't much on the technical side of magic, but she has a lot of raw power and an instinctive command of flame. This translates into her playstyle being very consuming. All her fire spells have a chance to inflict a Burning dot that can stack up to three times on a target. Its damage is actually based on her stats and their mdef, not %-based slip damage, and it can kill. A weaker spell like her low-cost filler, Fireburst, might only have a 25-30% chance of adding a stack, but fireburst does extend the dots. She also has aoes like Fireball. But her more potent spells, instead of costing a fixed amount of mp, take a percentage of her mp, based on their power. However, she also has mp regen at the end of the turn--10% by default, but this increases by 2% for every active stack of Burning. So, with judicious use of skills, she can actually sustain herself well, but this requires paying attention to her Burning stacks and not just letting them fall off.

Another model of MP management I'm playing with is for a demon character. Since demons require mana to maintain a corporeal form, he might actually be KOed if his mo hits zero. The fact that they need to consume mana to keep themselves in the mortal world also means he doesn't get any passive mp regen. Instead, he has to steal mp from enemies using various types of Drain skills. Since he's a sleep-based demon, these will often have more effect on sleeping enemies, but he also can just resort to fighting with fang and claw if he absolutely has to.

A third model I'm playing with is for a paladin. Normally in my setting, wearing iron- or copper-based armor inhibits the flow of mana, preventing mp regen and lowering max mana. While this character still suffers from the max mp reduction, her connection with the goddess she serves allows for a limited flow of regen, and in combat this takes the form of 5% mp regen when she deals physical damage. Combined with her small mp pool, this means she has to essentially switch between physical attacks and spellcasting pretty regularly. To further emphasize this dynamic, I might make some of her spells build TP.

But overall, there are a lot of ways to make MP management something more than an attrition game. A lot of my inspiration for this came from looking at MMOs. Some other examples include black mage on Final Fantasy XIV, where fire spells do increasing damage as you use more of them, but also inhibit MP regen, while ice spells are weak but let you regen MP very quickly. So, to play black mage, you have to use the fire-ice cycle, where you cast Fire spells until you go out of MP, then switch to a sort of recovery phase where you use weaker ice spells. Thematically opposite is Arcane mage on WoW, which has an ability that increases its damage based on the percent of mp remaining. But it also has spells that deal high damage for an increasing mp cost. Arcane gameplay involves managing MP while trying to do as much damage as possible without letting MP percentage get low.

 

[fireflyege]

@CyberForte Your pyromancer seems like the one I designed long ago. My Pyromancer had the passive ''Pyromania'' and it recovers %5 MP each turn for every burning enemy. The passive also says each of Pyromancer's spells have their own Flammability percentage but it is a flavor text supposed to help you how the class works and this flammability is basically your burn chance with one difference. If your spell is cast against an already burning targets, your spells deal additional damage equal to double its flammability percentage.

For example, each DEF and MDF gives %0,1 damage reduction against their respective damage types and Flametongue is a pretty weak attack that deals %40 MAT damage 3 times, so %120 is a weak ratio but the spell has %75 flammability. That means the spell has %75 chance to burn the enemy and deals %150 more damage (double its flammability) when you use the spell on a burning target. That effectively makes it a %300 modifier meaning the spell can also be strong. I mainly designed Flametongue to quickly ignite your enemies, but then I thoght making it a little more useful so it can be usable in more situations, espicially because it is AoE.

To make things interesting, I made a spell called Burnout. Burnout ignores Pyromania and the whole thing about Inflammability, working with its own rules. The spell can only be used against a burning target, and is a move that does not cost anything. You basically make the enemy explode with flames, but remove burning from the enemy also. Burnout deals damage and restores mana based on the target's burning level.

I did not want mana regeneration to be tied with burning though, as it can be not so effective against single target so I made a Human Torch spell to restore mana. Think of it as a bloodrage, you burn yourself a little to inflict more burning to people.

I did not want fire to make destruction only though so I gave it some healing moves such as Inner Warmth. I even went to include the Phoenix theme, and even made a spell called The Phoenix and Rebirth type revive spells but then I decided to not make a Pyromancer yet.

Also my Pyromancer's defenses were pretty non-existant except its ability to make the life of physical classes extremely miserable so even if the Pyromancer is basically paper, it is still scary to the melee combatants.

For example, my Pyromancer had Burn at Both Ends which is a counter against physical attacks that happens often which reduces its ATK and gives you an effect with the same name but without the ATK debuff, but you can consume yours to make your healing spells viable because without the counter most of your healing spells are low unless their main reason is to heal. It also has a shield that reflects damage against melee attackers. I also added a disarm named Scorched Steel to the Pyromancer's kit, so it can definitely make the life of melee characters exceedingly miserable.

As you can see, my Pyromancer's main weakness is the other mages since the class has little to no protection against magic except fire magic.

 

[CyberForte]

@fireflyege Haha, it does seem like we have pretty similar thought processes. In my case, the advantage of casting a fire spell on an already burning target is to possibly stack it higher, or extend it in the case of Fireburst. That said, I do have something along the lines of your flammability idea, which is Incinerate, a nuke that Ariadne (my pyromancer) learns later on that deals high damage proportionate to the Burning stacks. With 0 stacks, it does as much damage as Fireburst, so it's a terrible choice considering it costs much more MP. But with three stacks of Burning, it deals 4.5 times the damage of Fireburst (on a moderate cooldown, of course).

I do think it's okay to have a class be better at aoe than single target as long as they're not useless on one or the other, though, so I'm fine with Ariadne's mp regen scaling better on aoe. But, for bosses she does have Ignite, a skill that costs 45% of her mp, does no damage, and instantly inflicts 3 stacks of Burning. Since mp regen is buffed per stack, even one enemy with 3 stacks means she still recovers 15% per turn on a boss. But in addition, on a boss she often has her hands full with off-healing because that's another way our thought process is similar. At this stage of my game, she's actually the closest thing the party has to a healer, because she can use Cauterize to heal a party member (on a cooldown) when everyone else only has self-healing, Purify to remove debuffs, or From the Ashes for an mp-intensive res.

Actually, later in the plot she'll have the option to switch to a more healing-oriented version of her class called Princess--though, even as a healer, she won't lose all her dps potential. She'll definitely keep Fireburst and her Burning dots as a healer, and maybe even Fireball, but lose access to her stronger offensive magic like Incinerate to get stronger heals, like Renewing Flame, a heal over time effect that will give mp regen like Burning does. I do like your burnout idea, though--my own plans for something similar are Combustion and Inferno, which consume burning stacks on an enemy or all enemies respectively to deal massive aoe damage based on the number consumed. But those would be more high tier dps abilities.

As far as weaknesses, Ariadne is most vulnerable to Water, of course, but that's not a very common element in my game so far, so you're more likely to run into her weakness to archers. Ranged damage is its own element, and often archers will fixate one of the dps party members and focus on them. Ariadne, like most mages in my game, has pretty low physical defense and a 25% weakness to ranged damage. (By contrast, archers and mages usually have a 20% resistance to melee damage to represent it being hard to attack long distance, though melee still hurts on their low defenses). So, when an archer fixates her, you definitely need to take care of that, either by murdering the archer asap or by using another character's skills to protect her.

Kind of interesting that we went with semi-opposite routes there, though, since Ariadne can tank most magic that isn't water--or shadow, because shadow magic just completely ignores mdf. I think differentiating elements in more ways than just the color of their damage is fun, and can give mages more character. Fire burns, ice chills (-attack and - agi) or freezes (stun that breaks on taking fire or physical damage, but induces a temporary weakness to physical), Shadow ignores defense. Earth spells do physical damage because what is "earth" damage really? How is making a stone spire rise up and stab someone different than stabbing them with a spear? In that vein, a lot of my wind spells do ranged damage, although things like asphyxiation do actual wind-aspected damage. Lightning spells tend to have higher variability in damage. Water is mostly represented by things like poison or drowning. Do you have any elemental peculiarities like that?

Hybrid healing for mages is kind of an interesting notion to play with in general, though. Another example of it would be the paladin I mentioned. Being a paladin, she basically has elements of dps, tank, or healer, but based on her armor type you can really only use dps/tank or dps/healer at any given time. If she wears plate, her mp pool and mp regen are lowered by a lot, so she can tank but not effectively heal. On the other hand, she can also equip robes and act as a healer/dps. Since most of her defense and resistances to physical/ranged come from her armor, in robes she's not able to tank anymore, but can effectively heal while still needing to do damage to keep her mp regen up. I like the idea of healers who need to be somewhat offensive--on FFXIV, most of the healer mains I know would seriously hurt you if you tried to tell them they couldn't dps when there wasn't any immediate healing to be done. So even when designing a dedicated healer magus, I would be inclined to give them the option to do some damage, if not require it ala the paladin's mp regen mechanic.

 

[fireflyege]

@CyberForte I think we must talk on skype or some effective communication to discuss since our way of thinking are so alike. My pyromancer's kit was different about one major thing though, which is a majority of her healing being self heals. She still have 2 strong healing ST (single target) skills that makes defensive if needed but not so much. First of it was Cleansing Flame, which applies a fire DoT to the ally but cleanses all negative statuses which fall under ''DoT'' and ''body ailment'' category. For example she will cleanse poisons, paralysis effects and such but will not do anything against confusion or charm. Her second spell is Cauterization which removes the burning from Cleansing Flame and heals more when it does, otherwise it is a pretty normal heal.

Her kit offers little when protecting people, but she have useful passives for herself, for example her counterattacks and disarm. But she has one major passive. In Pyromancer I always wanted to make a Phoenix theme, getting reborn from your ashes. DragonFable's Pyromancer also had its Pyromancer supported by this theme, but the Phoenix was a nuke that you simply grow fire wings and blast your enemy. The second was Rebirth which was a full HP / MP heal. That is not a phoenix at all I said, then I made some spells to get with the theme.

First spell I did with the Phoenix theme is Ashes of Rebirth. It is a great passive. First of all, when Pyromancer dies, she gets immediately revived with %90 damage reduction for that turn, ensuring she does something before she dies. I do not like a revived person getting obliterated this instant and I think it does support the theme good enough. But of course you pay a price. All burning effects from the targets gets cleansed, and you heal for a moderate amount and an additional healing for every stack of burning. Now if you are good with applying stacks you can gloriously be reborn from your ashes, depending how well did you fight at your previous life. It is a costly passive, and has a 10 turn cooldown between each use so there is that.

The Pyromancer comes with support heals, but they are not enough to be considered defensive spells, they are mainly offensive that just happens to be a heal attached to it for example The Phoenix. The Phoenix uses all conflagration stacks on an enemy, you heal a base amount of health and mana, then recover more based on how many stacks the target has. The thing keeps more interesting, the healing you get from the fire stacks are also applied to your party, but not the base healing you receive. Also if the attack leaves the enemy at %10 or less health, it immediately kills it and restores all your HP and MP. If the enemy is killed from the attack's damage the heal applies as well, it is not like you must always leave them at low health for it to work, you can outright kill them and reap the benefits.

I wanted my Pyromancer to be squishy though, but not so much that that the Pyromancer fears getting to the fray. So I designed the Pyromancer to outright dive to the heat of battle and burning fast but bright doing so, then being reborn like a phoenix from its ashes then continue fighting. That is why the Pyromancer is supposed to weave self heals with damaging moves.

For my elemental spells, I always look for what they are meant to do. Of course each element is different and hitting someone with a stone sure will physically hurt but entangling them with vines may deal magical damage because those vines are magically enhanced matter unlike a rock because the rock is just there and you throw it. For my lighning damage, they each do different things. For example my mage has lightning and water elements and uses a two spell combo. For lightning it is Storm Warning + Deafening Thunder or Crackling Sky. Storm Warning applies to the screen as a visual effect, where it rains and voices of thunder can be heard. After Storm Warning you can either use Deafening Thunder for ST or Crackling Sky for AoE. The special thing is they have a chance to apply Silence for 1 turn and always go first. Also thunder spells deal way more damage if you are using your mental abilities, and your enemy has the Broken Will effect. For water it is Deep Blue where you deal damage and regenerate health over time for 2 turns. The next turn you can use Riptide or Ancient Flood and if the enemies are affected by Blood Curse from your blood abilities, they deal way more damage. Of course Riptide also heals my mage next turn, and being the Deep Blue a 2 turn HoT, next turn after your combo you get healed by a good amount of health.

I used the elements to support my mage's darker spells like mental and blood magic, which take control of vital things in body and can be considered torturous and inhumane for a good reason. For mental magic which breaks the will of the enemies and takes control of them, thunder magic is a good bonus because they deal more damage and silence is just an added CC (crowd control) which he would appreciate if using mental and lightning. For blood and water magic, blood magic consumes the caster's HP to deal huge damage, and even though blood curse makes him drain health from enemies over time, water magic gets power from blood curse and blood curse is not enough to top him off which he will need for blood spells, so the healing from the water tree supports the blood magic just fine.

I always liked to mix spell types as much as I concentrate to one, so I simply follow the character's theme when designing abilities. Also if there is any character I do is a hybrid healer, it is this one because you can use blood magic to heal others and even more effective than the main healer, the problem is that you cannot heal as frequently as she can so that becomes an issue if you are going to use him for healing.

My Paladin is an odd one and probably the jack of all trades but a master of tanking. He has 4 auras. Combatant Aura grants TP needed for overdrive type abilities to the team, Conflagrant Aura deals damage and increases their damage taken by a small amount so it really helps, Radiant Aura applies a HoT to the team and Brilliant Aura applies a grants MP needed for spells to the team. Now, the Paladin passively heals HP, MP and TP to himself every turn but the auras say that they expand a portion of it to the team and empower his own. For example Paladin restores 5 MP without using Brilliant Aura but when he uses he regenerates 10 and all the team regenerates 5 but I love the flavor text you know, it makes things more interesting.

My Paladin is not an aura bot though, and depending on his auras his abilities also change. For example when he uses Combatant Aura his physical spells upgrade, and Conflagrant Aura upgrades his magical spells, Radiant Aura upgrades the heals and Brilliant Aura upgrades buffs so he basically chooses his secondary role because his main role is always tanking.

My inspiration when designing most of my characters was making them flexible but not letting them to all things at once that is why my characters enter trances to unlock their skills or upgrade their skills with some of their skills and passives.

 

[Kes]

Guys, this thread is getting more and more just a presentation of your game, rather than a conceptual discussion. I know it's not always possible to be brief, but tbh, many members will not read through great walls of text.

 

[fireflyege]

@Kes well Pyromancers are still magi so this thread covers them, also pay attention. All skills we were talking about is about how you can reflect fire thematically on a mage. If you are wieving things as personal, everything is. I can as well say my mage uses MP and oh look it is beginning to be about my own individual game.

Even the skills we are giving is about how we wiev things as a whole, like how @CyberForte makes his Pyromancer being able to work as a healer or my whole thing about my magi mixing different spell types. Detailed information is not too bad, and yes even though it includes examples why wouldn't it? There are 9/10 people that give some skill examples or mechanic examples to tell us how do their magi work and that is what this thread is all about, which is learning about people's magi in general. People are supposed to give information on the mage designs they have, and more detail means we just have an easier time what they intend to do with their designs. And that is why I espicially love long posts because most of the time reading them does not disappoint.

If people do not like long posts, they can as well skip it. It isn't like we are forcing them to read it.

 

[Kes]

I find your remark "pay attention" a tad condescending. I did not say it's totally off-topic, I am saying that it is becoming a little too much "here is my game".

 

[fireflyege]

@Kes I am sorry, I may have become too intense but I had no intention to belittle you by any means so I ask for your forgiveness on this one.

It is nothing wrong with ''this is a mage in my game'' posts in my opinion. But if that post goes out of the line of the said mage I think that is where the problem starts. As long as a mage is being discussed I think no one will have a problem with that. Both I and @CyberForte discussed our magi, and as intensively detailed as it may be it is equally inspirational so I had no thought about the posts being game-specific.