• NeilStevens
• 2.3 Warrior Mages

SPOILERS AHEAD, STOP NOW

I MEAN IT, THIS IS SPOILY DEVELOPMENT TALK

Draft 1

Here's a sample skill point apportionment for a ToME 2.3 (CVS) High-elf Mage (Tulkas) as of right now:

Plus two 7-point extra blows.

(All other skills left at their starting values)

These look like dumb choices to anyone? I'm looking to get the Poison Blood, Elemental Shield, Noxious Cloud, Essence of Speed, the good Divine Aim, a decent Manathrust, and a decent saving throw. What am I neglecting?

SoulWynd: Seems like you're forgetting about mana or that you don't really care about it all that much.

NeilStevens: That's a trade-off I'm experimenting with here. Melee is supposed to be the primary damage dealer, with Magic used to augment that instead of being used every turn for damage. One thing I REALLY forgot is that Poison Blood only gives poison brand at level 15. So unless I plan to wield a mage staff of power +15 or something, I may as well forget that school.

Draft 2

Plus two 7-point extra blows.

In a case of living dangerously, I figure I can pump Air to 27 to get the poison-brand version of Poison Blood if I give up Divine Aim and use Tulkas quests to get Stone Skin.

ZV: it seems that you forgot that mages have 1.000 modifier in standard magic schools (except mana), so you have few more points in this draft. No magical healing? Nature @ 10 for healing & grow trees, instead of few points in spirituality?

NeilStevens: Actually, last night I dropped the 1.0 multiplier to 0.9 to compensate for doubling the Combat multiplier. As for Healing, I considered that, but is a low-level Healing spell really worth it? I'm not getting any Spell-power, and I won't be able to wield a weak Mage Staff of Power (+10) as a weapon, so Healing will never be that great.

DarkGod: You should try to get some magic-devices skill to compensate for the schools you're lacking

NeilStevens: Good idea. I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can give up Divination and maybe Air, hoping to get a Wand of Demon Blade or something.

ReenenLaurie: Well, what I read from LD's strategy guide, he didn't seem too impressed by Tulkas, and says Manwe's blessing gives a huge bonus to to-hit, and Manwe gives +7 speed. But since we're on the topic of Tulkas, is 'You feel the hand of Tulkas guiding your blow' a hit where you would've had a miss, or is it a critical hit? Divine aim gives (at level 20) all criticals, not all hits right?

ReenenLaurie: Oh and obviously you wont need 50 points in combat... you'll need at max 49, but if you spend 97 on weaponmastery you'll save plenty (at least 5 I guess) on combat. This will leave you with some points to spare for prayer or whatever you desire.

MassimilianoMarangio: You need only 50 skill points. The new modifier is 0.5, i.e. 50 points raise the skill to level 26.0. The 97 skill points put in Weaponmastery (roughly 1/3 of all skill points) will raise the Combat skill to level 50.0.

ZV: Sorry, but am I missing something? Mages have 0.250 mod in Combat, don't they?

Massimiliano Marangio: Not in the actual CVS version, it was raised to 0.5 for some testing.

JulesBean: For a different approach (under 2.2.7) see my dump at http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=3307. Rather than pumping spell schools I'm maxing spell power (this means I will eventually get my 20 divine aim without putting any points in prayer...). I haven't put anything into mana, so my manathrust is weedy. I don't use it much anyway, just for annoyance creatures and ringwraiths. My main offensive spell all game has been noxious cloud, and for the last ten levels I've been able to melee most stuff, putting essence of speed and stoneskin up for the hard cases. This is all with the 2.2.7 mage fighting mods Of course, I will start missing stuff soon I think, and I'll have to put more points in combat and weaponmastery, just to hit monsters, but I have some spare points put aside for that. I haven't had to quaff a CCW for about 20 levels, things are going quite smoothly. I didn't mean to pump divination or conveyance that high, but FF gave me a couple of rewards and that was the best choice going. FF has also enabled me to get my combat mod to 0.5. [Update: that character died carelessly. I think he was doing well, though, and I think that pumping spellpower is a real alternative to Neil's skill point suggestions. Alternatives are good!]

NeilStevens: Yes, I doubled the Combat multiplier to 0.5, then dropped the school multipliers to 0.9 to compensate. I'm now carefully examining the results here to see if true warrior-mages are too powerful, still not powerful enough, or if they should be winnable now.

GreyCat: I know you strongly dislike my playing style, but I find the Warper to be the best combat-mage. You get a Weaponmastery multiplier of 0.400 instead of 0.500, but you can get that boosted up to 0.500 with Fumblefingers. Then you can boost Weaponmastery just as cheaply as a generic Mage, but you have superior multipliers for Conveyance, Divination and Temporal magic. Combat can also be boosted (from 0.200) by Fumblefingers, with a bit more luck and/or patience. Or you can just neglect putting points in Combat. Really, I don't see why you always feel the need to boost Combat so high. It's not a terribly useful skill for the price you're paying.

GregSweetman: (Partly off topic) Shouldn't Mage pluralise to Magi rather than Mages

NeilStevens: I don't think so. Merriam-Webster has has no plural for mage, but refers there to magus for a definition. There, magi is given as the plural to magus, so the dictionary seems to support my position.

GrootheWanderer: I think Magi refers to Wise Men or Astrologers from ancient times and has nothing to do with Magicians (which "Mage" is short for) other than the fact that they are both thought to value intelligence over brute strength. Oh, and neil, this interests me a great deal as one of my favorite "fantasy" book characters is Randall from Thieves World. He was kind of a warrior mage associated with a mercenary band. I always wanted to create a character similiar to this but with more a bent towards healing and mindcrafting. Thought nature and mindcraft would pretty much cover everything I would need. I wanted Swordmastery, though and the only way I could think of to cover all these things was a warrior worshiping Yvanna (yuck!).