One of the three focuses for Fallen Enchantress is Magic. We want the spells to be unique, to feel like casters with enough mana can change the world. We want magic to fill the game, all the sovereigns start with spells though some like Procipinee are better spell casters than Verga. As in Master of Magic you can choose your sovereigns proficiency with the various magic types when you create them.
I’ve attached a PDF of the spells with this post. It includes the normal spells the player can cast, it doesn’t include spell abilities of creatures, spell like abilities granted by equipment and some other special abilities in the game.
I’d like to give a special thanks both to Unacomn for suggesting the Shadow World spell and NuclearNeumann for suggesting the Blood Curse spell. They are fun spells to play with.
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I Removed the spell PDF as it is almost a year old and woefully out of date. New spells have been added and even more are coming. check out out dev journal on spells here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArdQVqLHsI&feature=youtu.be
- Derek 4/11/2012
I love this idea. It worked well in the HOMM series. My favorite was Solmyer (couldn't you tell? ) he started with the chain lighting spell which was a level four spell and could only really be cast once per combat early on but it was so powerful early on that it only required one cast. Anyways having unique spells for each sovereign would be great as it would add more to the personality of each sovereign. The only real pitfall to avoid would be to make some of those spells overpowered and thus pigeonholing people into choosing the most powerful ability rather then choosing who they want their sovereign to be.
Great update. Really looking forward to FE
Ok, I'm disappointed. I've been watching Master of Magic games on youtube and playing some myself and the number of interesting spells in Master of Magic is FAR greater than in this PDF.
I'm not entirely certain if Life, Death, Chaos, Nature & Sorcery magictypes are ultimately better than Life, Death, Fire, Earth, Air & Water but I'm biased towards the MtG system. However, since Derek like MtG I'll cautionally trust him with this one....
Then there is the fact that in Master of Magic (you'll never stop hearing about that ancient game ) the magictypes have their own strenghts like Death having the best curses and evilthemed globals. Chaos having the best destructive spells as well as aggressive summons and also the globals doing damage and stuff.
I'm not sure about so many "outside of spellbooks" spells like questspells f.e.
Then we got the "luck out on a certain shardtype"....In Master of Magic (I know I sound like a broken record here....) ALL the nodes gave the same amount of mana except if you had the Node Mastery traits (Chaos Mastery, Nature Mastery, Sorcery Mastery or Node Mastery.)
I know I sound negative but I can't help it. I'm calling it as I see it.
Derek,
Thanks for the journal and info on magic. If nothing else, I think you could say that there is still a very interested community surrounding this game, even if we tend to get a little over-zealous in analyzing every stitch of information that you guys give us.
Spells look like a great improvement over what is in WoM. I am looking forward to trying them out in the beta. What makes me even more excited is the possibilities this suggests for modding. Sounds like a lot of the roadblocks we hit in making spells for WoM should be overcome in FE.
Thanks for the update. I like most of the changes but am concerned about a couple of things:
Terra-forming spells just seem like dev-wank to show off what an engine can do with deformation. It changes the underlying game too much. Really wish these were dropped.
The combat numbers still look very small. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but the small damage number examples lead me to think that tactical combat in FE is not going to be a hell of a lot different than WoM. 12 months in and WoM still can't find where it needs to be with these numbers and it looks like FE is going to have the same problems. Really hope I'm misinterpreting these numbers.
Ooo, right, I forgot to ask.
Will spells in Fallen Enchantress be more modable than in War of Magic? In the sense that, will it be possible to add side effects, backfire effects, or percentage chances to do X instead of Y.
I to am an avid searcher for the MoM successor. I am looking forward to FE. If you played as Tauron you always wanted Fire Nodes because he had Chaos Mastery which helped with Mana, and fire summons were more powerful in the aura of a fire node. The best was when you had a fire node by your capital city. Just plunk a Great Wyrm or two down in the Capital and you were pretty good go.
Freya had Nature Mastery. So there was still luck of the draw which nodes were close to you. I hated having Tauron and having nothing but water nodes around.
The spell list is a great start. The possibilities for expansions is limitless. One expansion could be "The Lost Spell Books of XXXX". You could add layer upon layer of books to find. I like the quest spells and the option to learn other spells, especially the spells that require multiple spell categories--Fantastic (Volcano comes to mind--that spell is wicked powerful and should be that hard to do). Keep the faith, it seems the lessons learned from WOM are really shaping FE in a great direction.
Fallen is great on every single points but the magic system ! I'm afraid of what it will be like because of it !
For a game that is supposedly based on Magic and that is supposed to make us all powerful when we have enough mana, I don't feel the power of magic when I read the PDF
Yes there a couple of good spells and really interesting but we won't succeed to change the face of the world with those kind of spells... Or by changing the face of the world you mean the terraformation spells already there in WoM ? (volcano, raise and lower land, mountain, ...)
Even though Master of Magic did not have those terraforming spells, I think we were still more able to change the world with them.
Where are the raise dead ? Mind Control ? Desintegrate / Mass desintegrate ? All those buff to transform a unit or make it invulnurable to physical attacks ? Transform a unit into a shadow, air form... Enchantments to protects area surrouding the city and not only target the city itself in order to place a couple traps? Those destructive AOE spells ? + all I said above ? etc...
Again, I hope there's way more spells to come because right now, I kind of lost my interest for Fallen Enchantress I keep hope though ! Right now, I feel like monsters and boss all around the world will be way more powerful than us and won't collapse under our spells if we chose to be a mage
I hate to complain, but I have to agree with this. I was a little bit underwhelmed, too, considering that magic was one of the areas that the developers were claiming as a major area of focus.
On the bright side, depending on how these new effects were implemented, there should be plenty of fun to be had with modding.
Thanks for the update.
Have a nice weekend.
-.-
I have mixed feelings for the spells of FE. As someone has said, most of the spells just play around with stats, and too few do anything truly interesting. But I do like how they feel different from one another.
I have another concern. Because of the way champions and channelers gain magic proficiency when they level, ans well as the steal spirit spell, I feel that by the end of the game all channelers would be masters of all schools of magic. Due to my bias from games with other magic systems, I would rather see a system where channelers could gain mastery over at most one school of magic, and lesser proficiencies in others. If I saw a shooting star, I'd also wish for a magic system that would make it vaible for a channeler to focus on a single school, but the aren't enough spells for that.
What I like most from the PDF are the icons. They look good. I also like the concept of researched spells and quest spells. Of the bunch, my favorite spell is blood rage because it looks truly powerful on a high hp/damage unit. I want to cast it on a dragon.
Interesting that so many people are negative about this document, I think the direction they've taken is great. I really am looking forward to it.
I played MoM as much as anyone, and I think that this is a case where people are remembering it being better than it really was (at least in terms of the spells) ...
I think that the mix of magic that has been shown is really very good, and varied. Of course there is always room for more spells, but for the most part we don't want 100 spells of which most people only use 10 or 20 useful ones. I really like what is there now, and the way it is separated in to different ways to gain the spell.
That said, if we can get a sneek peak of the format of the magic files (xml files, definitions of tags, acceptable values, .xsd files if available), I'm sure that some of us would love to start adding more spells (Murteas Grimoire for FE for example) to get a feel for what will work and what won't.
Derek, any chance of getting an early look at the magic/spell xml files?
My priority of spells that I would add -
early summons,
more champion empowering spells (speed, strength, death touch, fire breath, poison fangs, etc.) - although these may not be needed based on the item powers that are available,
charm spells of some sort (for creatures in particular),
a spell that will extend your territory for a limited amount turns for a high mana cost,
high risk high reward type spell (altar of fortune idea from the Grimoire),
far seeing spell (allows you to see in the FOW),
an illusion based spell that creates a weaker copy of your sovereign/champion and puts him under your control.
A few more global effect spells (i.e. increased random events, random wildfires break out, units will have to freeze for a turn, meteorite shower, increased gold production, decreased mana production, etc.) something that will affect everyone unless dispelled.
Dispel global spell to go along with the above
others...
This really looks promising and inspiring!
The only thing I'm wondering about is the lack of an Arcane school of magic. Spells like Mana Blast and Mana Shield are oddly under Fire+Water or Earth+Water.. it doesn't make much sense and it means impossible to specialize in these type of spells - you get them seemingly at random based on what elements you pick. And Confusion is under.. Water?
A category for Arcane / Spirit magic would definitely be a good addition to house all the magic energy / mind magic type of spells.
Will shards still appear at random on the map?
How about a system where shards would appear in appropriate terrain on the map? That way you would know where to look for what you need instead of them being completely random.
A Sovereign with a focus in Fire magic could then automatically start the game in a volcanic region, which would further establish his identity.
Likewise..
Mountains and high places for Air shards and Air mages.
Lakes and islands for Water shards and Water mages.
Caves and underground areas for Earth shards and Earth mages.
Forests for Life shards.
Since I don't know the damage vs hit points ratio, I can't really say one way or another if the spells are under-powered. But on the surface, it seems if you are an archmage in a discipline and have a couple shards--you will be able to do a significant amount of damage.
Blizzard, Firestorm, Storm, and Shockwave look like good mass tactical spells. Fire always seems to have the most direct damage, but the other spells seem to be pretty interesting. Like everyone, more spells is always a plus. I would like to see more summon spells, unit spells, global enchantments, but we always will.
I really like the dual discipline spell concept. Falling Star--air and fire is great.
I have a few specific issues.
No strategic counter spells/spell defense/dispel magic-
This relates mainly to a few of the strategic spells, such as Curgen's volcano and grip of winter, but also touches on many of the buffs/debufs.
Spells like Curgen's Volcano are very nice, very powerful spells (There should be more of spells like this, next issue), good job. However, the concern I have is that there is no counter to these spells. Wow, I just got access to Grip of Winter and have been storing up mana since turn one... now what? Looks like I can cast the I win spell, and I'm not talking about the spell of making. Now you can't train, your economy has just been halved, and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if you've also been saving up mana since turn 1. Same with Curgen's Volcano, looks like an I win button unless there is some sort of counter/defense. If you include super powerful worldwide enchantments or supremely powerful strategic damage spell, and these definitely should be included, you also have to include defensive counters to these spells. Anti-Magic bubbles to guard cities. Dispel magic to remove world enchantments (and those anti-magic bubbles so my offensive spells are useful again). Allow me to use my mana to both destroy my enemies or to protect my own territory from my enemies.
Not enough powerful world enchantments/powerful strategic spells-
You basically have three. Curgen's Volcano, earthquake, and Grip of winter. You need more. Every school should have big global enchantments like Grip of Winter. Look at AoW. Each school had its own global enchantments that each had profound and interesting effects on the game. FE still has very little of this.
No mana cap-
Huge issue here. Basically, because mana will be able to stored without limit, the most powerful magic using empire late game will be the empire that never uses magic prior to the late game. Seems a bit counter intuitive to me. While there should be some trade off between storing mana and using mana, the system as it exists seems to go to far, and will discourage any use of mana in the early game for fear of not having enough when the volcano's start erupting. If I want to have huge mana reserves late game make me focus on magic throughout the game, building mage towers, mana banks, etc.
Having a simple mechanic like a mana cap would go a long way to removing this problem. There is still an interesting tradeoff between using mana for big strategic spells and smaller tactical spells, and even a tradeoff in terms of when you use your mana and saving vs. spending. But it also grants the freedom to cast fireballs on turn 10-100 without making me worry that I'll be crippling myself at turn 500.
Add to that the fact that you can then include buildings that increase the mana cap and you have another interesting tradeoff. Do I construct buildings that increase my mana cap so I can focus on magic, or buildings that increase my economy or military production?
Without something like this I think its going to be even harder to balance the big powerful spells that we all want to see included. Volcano's are great, but if I can destroy every single one of my enemy's cities with no warning the turn after I have access to them then there might be a potential balance problem. With a mana cap, I can destroy an important city, but I because of the cap, there's just no way I can do it again in the near future (unless I take some penalty like 'Sacrifice', which is a great spell).
Lack of balance between spell schools-
There are a few spells that will have a disproportionate impact on the game. These spells will, in my opinion be very difficult to balance leading to greater problems down the road. A few obvious examples:
Cloud walk: Teleport by another name. Completely changes the concept of strategic movement within the game. A player with Cloud Walk is playing a different game than a player without Cloud Walk, making Air almost a mandatory choice. Tone this down (make it only the caster, scale mana cost to army size, etc.) or just remove it. There's no way to balance something that so drastically changes the way a fundamental mechanic (movement) works.
Mantle of Oceans: Another one that affects a fundamental mechanic (the mana economy) in a rather drastic way. Someone with one water IV mage can now cast twice the number of tactical spells as someone without a water IV mage. Why is this effect in the water school anyway? Contrast with Mantle of fire. One does 4 damage to a units that attack me, one halves the cost of ALL tactical spells. Both are level 4. One of these things is not like the other.
Curgen's Volcano and Earthquake- Boom! population halved, city destroyed. As I said before, with some sort of defensive magic system, this problem is somewhat mitigated, a civ specializing in life magic would at least have some defense. However, if a defensive magic system is not implemented these spells are WAY overpowered. One line of magic, earth can halve an enemy's population and with it their economy. Unless cities are going to be drastically reduced in importance these seem like overpowered spells compared to the other level 5 strategic spells.
More summoning spells-
Echoing many others here. You guys can do better than a few bland elemental summons. Come on, these are boring!
Lack of an Arcane/Sorcery/Metamagic school-
This has already been mentioned, but I second it.
The system needs a generic magic category for many of the effects that just don't fit into any of the schools. See my next comment about water magic for the worst offender.
Make the school available to a wizard with the requisite rank in any of the disciplines. This would enable you to further specialize the schools while still retaining some basic spells for all magic users to access. E.g. a basic direct damage spell, dispel magic, a nerfed healing spell, a few low levels summons, some low level buffs/debufs, etc. Then the specialized schools give the really powerful versions.
Water Magic seems like a collection of random effects-
Small issue, and one that's probably not really solvable until there is a major overhaul to the way the sea is used in Elemental. Other than the ice based spells, most of the stuff in the water school doesn't really have anything to do with water.
I would have liked more differences between spells, but a lot of the spells sound really cool, and will be fun to use in mp with friends. Hopefully AI can use them as well.
What I'm more interested in will be how modable the spell system is, since I remember reading it got a nice upgrade in that department.
Wow love the update. The title changes to what magic level you are are like mage and archmage is a nice touch. I do appreciate the little details.
Very nice list of spells too. Itching for that beta now mmmhm.
I like the direction in general, especially with gaining spell levels via the ability to fatten up a champ. Fits right in with the Fallen's concept for me.
As for spells to add, my addition to Murteas list, would be to add more "raiding" focused spell ideas to give you a reason to move castors through territory. Something like:
Curse Shard: A first level spell that cuts off the mana from an enemy's shard for a number of turns related to your level of proficiency in that discipline. So an apprentice would cut off the mana for 3 turns, while an Archmage would cut off the mana for 20 turns.
Steal Shard: A level 3 spell in each elemental disciplines that gives control and mana of a shard in enemy territory for a fixed number of terms. For Life/Death shards this could also temporarily change their nature if it was opposite the castors. This could give a really cool visual of your kingdom being "infected" by an invading force it they started to terraform the land around them as well....
I think both of these should be "Strategic", although they would also need to be of limited range to balance the damage they can wreck to a strategy. You thought the war of attrition was bad, wait till you start running out of juice to Heal with...
Just my thoughts, keep up the excellent work!
If the AI is half decent (or in multiplayer) and you're playing at an appropriate difficulty level, the most powerful magic using empire late game will be the one that used magic early game to jump out ahead of you, controls more territory & shards and is producing more mana because of everything they got by being willing to use mana while you didn't.
Seriously, if you're refusing to use mana mid game and I'm willing to? You won't reach late game because I'll wipe you off the map. A good AI should do the same.
Mana caps are a crude sledgehammer solution to a problem that shouldn't exist at all if the AI can pose a challenge and early game spells are useful. Besides, they totally distort things. Once I hit the cap, I basically have to find something to spend mana on each turn or waste production. That just encourages ridiculous micromanagement and in general is a very bad mechanic.
edit - Also if it's anything like WoM mana generation, late game it'll take 3 turns to get the same mana you got in the entire early game. So a total non-issue.
I also noticed the killer nature of Grip of Winter. Apart from hoping the casting player runs out of mana, how do you counter this? Perhaps there should be a cooldown on some of these spells, or a time to cast ([cough] MoM)
Since there is now a way to completely destroy resources (volcano), how about spells to create them: e.g.
It would also be cool if researching/finding certain spells made an attribute available for you to add to designed units. e.g.
This would add a little "magic" flavor to the units themselves without the sovereign having to be there. Of course, training cost would be increased, and cost some mana to train units with magical abilities to counter the "free magic" effect. Equipment unique to those with a certain spell or school level would be neat as well. This might allow for a less micro managed magical enhancement of your troops: magic abilities/equipment being a more general, less powerful enhancement, and the sovereign initiated spell-based enhancements being a more powerful, situational approach.
Mana drain spells or the already mentioned shard stealing spells would be good counters to summoners
I like the improvements so far. It's looking more like MoM with each update. Next thing you know you will have to conquer a shard's guardians before you can use it (or did they do that already?)
Titan's Call is just as powerful as Grip of Winter and Volcano. Does anyone else play WoM? Its just a better version of those spells. So Murteas' Grimoire will likely be easily transferable. That pretty much takes care of variety for me.
What about turning every shard into a death shard? You would be super powerful and an early game rush would allow you to pretty much make the game a Life vs. Death game. Death always wins that one (especially if you are you know who).
I think my favorite part of FE is that we can approximate gameplay and spell issues based on previous experience. I do agree that it sucks when you get a major city hit by a volcano, but with a proper air shard defense, this is not impossible to counter. Just teleport over and kill their fire mage. There are many other options too, I usually go for mutually assured destruction. Oh, that reminds me, can we get the AI to understand that I really don't want to destroy the realm, I am just trying to defend myself? I foresee many problems with high level spells and overly aggressive AI.
P.S. The old teleport spell has been renamed Wind Walking so don't be fooled.
Exactly
Or it might not be free - it could have a cost from your global mana pool, and limited to n times/combat. Or maybe expensive to train but free to use is better, but the opportunity to do either would surely be of great use to Heavenfall
Please no. It's a desolate world being further desolated by war, which only ever destroys more things of value. More to the point, scarcity creates value. It should hurt if your resource is destroyed, and be awesome when you find a resource. If your neighbor has a resource you covet, that might be why you go to war. Spamming resources is contra-fun.
Awesome update, which looks suspiciously like part of a manual Definitely many huge steps in the right direction. One thing that worries me (not having played, maybe my worries are misplaced) is this sentence from the beginning:
As the sovereign levels, traits can be selected that increase these proficiencies (a sovereign created as an Air Disciple can become an Air Mage).
As I've advocated elsewhere, you should never be able to use all strategies in a single game. And I don't mean because the opportunity to learn a spell didn't spawn, but because you made choices at the beginning to influence your entire style of play and possible available strategies. A primary incentive and source of enjoyment of replaying a game is to try something different from what you've tried before. Strongly meaningful - and limiting - choices at the beginning have great value. In fact, the incredibly distinct capabilities you had for the entire game based upon your initial choices was one of (....can't .....help ....myself!) Master of Magic's strokes of genius.
My new slogan: Scarcity is a Commodity of Great Value.
The problem with this is the nature of the 5 system formula their pursing, i.e. there are various ways to win, of which magic is one of them.
Economy, conventional forces, champions, diplomacy, magic. Assume these five are properly balanced such that a given nation can specialize in one and have a reasonable chance of victory.
Right now only magic has an early use opportunity cost: if I use magic early I'll be weaker later. All the others (except maybe diplomacy, depending on implementation) are the reverse, the earlier I start using it the better off I am at endgame. My champions will have more levels, my troops will be experienced and upgraded, my economy will grow exponentially. Thus if these systems really are balanced then best path is to specialize in something else early. Hold off the magic users and then volcano them to death late. Only magic has the mechanic where the player who used it the least in the early game could potentially be the strongest magic user in the late game.
The real thing I want to avoid is a scenario where a player who has avoided magic the entire game gets an Earth Mage to level 5 and immediately throws out 15 earthquakes or volcanoes the next turn, with no warning and no defense. If not a mana cap then some sort of channeling limit. E.g. you can only channel x amount of mana each turn. AOW had this (heck even essence was akin to this prior to global mana).
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