ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've played a few mages now, and have seen dumps or screenshots for several others. In every case, the mage's health level is higher than their mana. In ever case, WIL is a lot higher than CON. It seems to me that mana should be higher than health, at least at higher levels for a mage. If you have several passive talents sustained, some of those level 4 talents wipe out most of your mana.

It's balanced around those values

And yes you can not sustain everything that's wanted

I can understand the balance with sustainable. What about a hard coded limit on how many sustainable can be activated at one time? This limit could start out as 1 and go up with either your level, magic and willpower stats. 5 sustainables seems like a good limit for a high level character. Maybe then, they would eat up less mana. You could also have a limit on how many sustainables by category. Ex: magic, stamina, positive & negative energy etc.

Why? If you're losing too much mana, just don't keep as many going.

The reason why my mages always have more hp than mana is for three simple reasons. 1 - I raise con, not willpower 2 - I am always having multiple sustainables 3 - I take the health talent, every level. That 200 hp boost really puts you close to even if not greater than normal mp (for someone not raising willpower). I have also seen dumps where unsustained mana is well over a thousand. So it really just kind of fluctuates between what stats you raise and what talents you take. I really think it is a balanced growth as is. And a hardcoded limit on the amount of possible susstainables at a time is not a very good idea. If I want featherwind, arcane focus, stone skin and blur all active always and I can still live with the loss of mana that those have, then damnit I should be able to have them on.

With nothing sustained, my 20th level mage still had 100 more life than mana. That just doesn't seem right to me.

Well at lvl 47 Archmage normal mode i had
-Arcane Power (50)
-Stone Skin (30)
-Quicken Spells (150)
-Essence of Speed (250)
-Blur sight (30)

and still had over 300 mana left to cast spells so i dont see any problem here

Maybe things balance out more at higher levels then.

Why should mana be higher than life ? It's not on the same scale that's all

darkgod wrote:Why should mana be higher than life ? It's not on the same scale that's all

A mage's life is about magic. It's his life focus, his drive. Fighters focus on physical stats because that is their life. As a result, they have high melee attack and damage and a lot of life. If a mage focuses on magic, it seems to me that should be the prevalent attribute. In T2, I remember having a lot more mana than life for magic users. I think it was Lord Dimwit that said running low on mana is more worrisome than running low on life. I realize HPs derive somewhat from your race as some races are healthier (for lack for a better term) than others. Can mana work the same way? Aren't some races more magically inclined than others?

Yes, but the scale is different.

It's like a warrior being worried that his sword is only 4' long when his armour weighs 17 pounds, and shouldn't weapons be more important?

DG could double the amount of mana everyone has, and double the costs of every spell, and now you would have more mana than HP -- and the game would be exactly the same.

ALMOST Repton. One major difference if that were to happen. If the regen rate of the mana were the same as it is now, you would actually cast less spells over time without rest because you would actually end up with less mana.

If there is a balance issue here, its not with life vs mana, its that mages (and pretty much every other class) do well to max constitution over other stats like magic and willpower that seem more class appropriate. This happens in a lot of rogue-likes because death is kind of an important issue. Here are some possible solutions (if a solution is really needed):
1) nerf constitution until it is better to increase another stat
2) limit the maximum points you can put into a stat based on class. Right now I think the maximum value of all of your stats is raised by 1.5 each level. For a mage, you could make the constitution max add 0.5 per level or something. So at level 20, the max constitution would be somewhere around 30 and at level 50 it would be ~45.
3) limit the effectiveness of constitution by class. For a mage, give 3 hit points per level instead of 5.

Personally I like #2. I think it really addresses the original posters concerns about bulked up mages and it's very easy to implement and understand.

benli wrote: 1) nerf constitution until it is better to increase another stat
2) limit the maximum points you can put into a stat based on class. Right now I think the maximum value of all of your stats is raised by 1.5 each level. For a mage, you could make the constitution max add 0.5 per level or something. So at level 20, the max constitution would be somewhere around 30 and at level 50 it would be ~45.
3) limit the effectiveness of constitution by class. For a mage, give 3 hit points per level instead of 5.

I vote for #3. That allows greater variability in mages (should I pump Con or look more seriously at one of those Shield spells and pump Wil?). Option #2 strikes me as forcing people to put the stat points somewhere other than Con instead of a choice of where to put them. Of course in any situation there will be an optimal build, and I think #2 and #3 will work nicely to alter the build from heavy health mages (such as the one I am running right now).