Growing the perfect Mage (long)

[Merkin]

It’s gotta be the Faerie. The combination of highest starting INT, great speed, and quick SP regeneration, makes the little blue guy the premier magic slinger on Dominus.

At character creation, put the max 17 pts into INT, you want to max this ASAP. Then 9 points into PIE, enough to give you a bump in available SP’s, and in realms skills. 10 into VIT, for the HP bump and the remaining 14 into SEN (more important for the Mage initiative than SPD).

So, he looks like this:

STR: 25
INT: 77
PIE: 44
VIT: 40
DEX: 55
SPD: 60
SEN: 59

At level-ups, it’s going to be 3 INT, 2 PIE, and 1 SEN until you max INT at level 8. Then 3 PIE, 2 SEN, and 1 SPD. This will keep your Mage moving along nicely in Wizardry, spell points and initiative.

For skills, it’s all about the Magic, baby. Anyone who puts weapons or soft skills into a Mage is a fool. You’ve got a lot of Magic realms to develop, that should be eating up all of your skill points.

Start with Wizardry, 3 points each round. 3 each into two of the realms; I suggest Fire, Air, Earth, and Divine, giving Water and Mental a pass, or at most, if you find a spell for one of these two realms, putting just enough points into the realm that you don’t hurt yourself with backfires. You’ll have plenty of time to come back and fill in the blanks later. Try to keep the four realms you’re concentrating on balanced out. Fire and Air are your most immediate friends, but later on, when Earth and Divine come into their own, you’ll want a lot of skill and SP’s to back them up.

You get your spells at the following levels for a Mage:

Sp Lev Mage Level
1 1
2 3
3 5
4 8
5 11
6 14
7 18

There is a lot of discussion about holding back on acquiring new spells, to have more picks at higher levels. I don’t think this is wise, with the one minor exception of holding off on your pick when you reach second level. You don’t want to starve your Mage of things to do, and by mid-game you can acquire pretty much every spell you want, including the higher level ones. I also dislike planning strategy around “cheats” (i.e., I know what spells will be in Arnika, so there’s no need to pick them). I want to develop the best “honest” caster that I can. Found/purchased/stolen spells are gravy, but I don’t rely on them. If you aquire a spell that you already know, hang onto it for your Samurai or Bishop, they’ll be wanting it soon enough. Here are the spells I pick, and when.

Level Spells Spells to pick
avail.
1 1st Energy Blast, Sleep
2 1st None
3 2nd Enchanted Blade, Missile Shield
4 2nd Web
5 3rd Fireball
6 3rd Noxious Fumes
7 3rd Whipping Rocks
8 4th Element Shield
9 4th Armormelt
10 4th Crush
11 5th Summon Elemental
12 5th Portal
13 5th ?
14 6th Banish
15 6th Firestorm
16 6th ?
17 6th ?
18 7th Nuclear Blast
19 7th Asphyxiation
20 7th ?
21 7th ?

At the “?” levels, this is the time to either fill in the gaps in your education picking those spells you haven’t found/bought/stolen, or holding on to it because you see one at the next spell level you want. I would suggest Mental spells as being more useful overall than Water, but your call.

Growth and development:
Practice, practice, practice. Your spells that can be cast out of combat should be practiced almost non-stop, throughout the game. Every time you rest, cast all buff spells at full power. It’s doesn’t matter if they backfire, you still have a better chance of getting a skill-up than by casting it at low/medium power. You can tell if a skill-up is possible in a particular spell by its color. White means you have a chance to improve. Blue means you don’t, it’s already been cast too recently. And red, of course, means it cannot be cast at all.

Combat strategy for Mages:

Plan your spell attacks carefully. You have to keep in mind enemy resistances, spreading your casting around, sequencing, coordinating with other casters in your party, and providing maximum support and opportunities to your fighters.

In general, you want to try and keep your buff spells up continuously, so you don’t have to waste combat turns casting them. Lead in combat with your de-buff and immobilization spells; Sleep, Web, Armormelt, etc. This does a couple of things. It shortens battles considerably, it lets your fighter types get the maximum swings in, and it prevents a HUGE amount of damage to your party. After you’ve cast those, it’s time to hit the area effect spells…Noxious Fumes, Fireball, Whipping Rocks, Magic Missile if you’ve got it. Although it does less damage than Fireball and Whipping Rocks, Noxious Fumes has become one of my favorites, because of its combined damage/de-buff.

An exception to this is when there is a spell caster hitting you from a distance. Then EVERYTHING is secondary to taking the caster out ASAP, with whatever you’ve got. You would not BELIEVE how badly it sucks to have half your party frozen, and the other half insane and hacking the frozen ones to bits.

Another important thing to master for the Mage, and it’s more of an art than a science, is leading your target. It is crucial that you put your Fireballs, etc, where the enemy WILL be, not where they are. They move quick, and each monster moves at a different speed, so this just takes practice and getting a feel for it. In general, putting the spell about halfway between you and the mob is a good place to start.

There you have it, my version of the perfect Mage. You will be throwing spells like there’s no tomorrow, with nary a backfire in sight. Your Mage, properly grown will probably be the kill-leader in your party through most of the game, and if there was a way to see total damage points dealt to the enemy, the Mage would be INSANELY in the lead. The Faerie Mage; don’t leave home without it.

[vesselle]

this is a big help to anyone wanting to make a good mage. enjoy!

V***V

[Merkin]

A minor correction to this. I was mistaken that Sense is more important than speed for a spellcaster. In fact, they are exactly equal. So whether you choose to pump sen or spd should be based on A) is there anyone else with a high sense in your party? (you should have at least 1) and B) Do you envision pumping speed all the way to 100? If so, you get snakepeed, and your mage's initiative becomes insane.

[DraconisRex]

Interesting. Not exactly what I'd do. But interesting. Things I do differently:

1. Elf:

a. Higher piety score to start (+15 already).
b. Far fewer restrictions to weapons and armor.
c. Higher strength & vitality make up for the
Faerie advantages in Senses and Dexterity.
d. 45 points to distribute.
e. Faerie does have a major advantage in speed.

2. Dual class:

a. Elf has more options because of size differential
and armour class. No character should stay "pure" (IMO)
in this game. Even if it's just a couple of levels of
this or that in the early game.

b. Bard multi-class adds some interest and skills to the
party.

c. Can swap easier at early levels with Samurai. Even start
as a Samurai for one or two levels. It's not necessarily
the best way to go. But I'm trying to make a point that a
Faerie mage starts the game hopeless weak and frail and won't
survive w/o reload due to this fragility. If you're going
iron man, this is a major problem.

3. Realms:

a. I don't put anything into fire on level-up. There are
only five spells in the Realm.

b. Take light & sleep if you've got a Bishop. (Who won't take
light for minor spoiler reasons.) Otherwise, energy blast
and sleep.

c. Water, Air & Earth. 2 pts each level up. 3 into Wizardry.

d. Select/Obtain terror (Mental) and cast it all the time. Every
non-challenging battle until you're out of points.

4. Stats:

a. Max intelligence. Work hard on Piety, Speed & Senses.

b. On creation, work on Speed, Piety & Intelligence. Put some
into dexterity.

c. Consider what class you may want to cross-train. Such as
Alchemy. Learn a few PURE ALCHEMY spells to foil silence.
They will share your realm points and will quickly wipe out
that annoying idiot who silenced your mage in the first place.


These are just some of my perspectives being different than yours. You're not wrong. We're just different.