Buff Manasurge rune

[Strongpoint]

It's good and useful... for several classes and absolutely useless for the majority, that differentiates it from other infusion\runes and I think it's wrong

Some ideas

a) Give it phantasmal shield-like effect, only with arcane damage
b) Give it +x arcana damage when character attacks with melee weapons (rune to use before flurry, isn't that fun?)
c) Make it splash enemies with arcana damage like acid rune
d) Give it spellpower boost
e) Arcana resistance\spell save

Should any of the improvements be too good for intended users of the manasurge rune, tie the effects to NOT having the mana bar.

[supermini]

You can get a mana bar from equipping a wand IIRC, so that way of limiting it for non-mana users won't work.

I'm not opposed to making it more interesting, but the classes that make use of manasurge rune also get a very powerful tree (with teleport and phase door), so I always saw it as sort of a balancing act.

[Strongpoint]

You can get a mana bar from equipping a wand IIRC, so that way of limiting it for non-mana users won't work.

Yep, as well as anything that grants manabased talent. Rather annoying, because that makes character eligible for mana drain . It would be better if mana bar apeared after using mana draining talent. Nothing bad can happen if first use of spell-like ability was free In that way it was your decision to became a mage

I'm not opposed to making it more interesting, but the classes that make use of manasurge rune also get a very powerful tree (with teleport and phase door), so I always saw it as sort of a balancing act.

As I said I think that manasurge is good enough for archmage\necromancer\Arcane blade\shadowblade. My problem is that it is useless for all other classes, while I see runes\infusions as something that should be useful for all classes (all other runes give some benefits to all classes)


One more idea: make it grant effects based on mana overflow, so even if you have the mana bar (and inscripting manasurge may give the bar) , but it's full, you still get that secondary effects. And if you have, let's say 100\120 mana and use manasurge with 50 power you get 20 mana and effect like from 30 power manasurge rune.

[0player]

It's good and useful... for several classes and absolutely useless for the majority, that differentiates it from other infusion\runes and I think it's wrong

Some ideas

a) Give it phantasmal shield-like effect, only with arcane damage
b) Give it +x arcana damage when character attacks with melee weapons (rune to use before flurry, isn't that fun?)
c) Make it splash enemies with arcana damage like acid rune
d) Give it spellpower boost
e) Arcana resistance\spell save

Should any of the improvements be too good for intended users of the manasurge rune, tie the effects to NOT having the mana bar.

This is actually a more general problem with ToME. The problem is that magic is... well, it's arcane art.
Magic stat is the most useless stat, ever, for those who don't have it in primaries. I can imagine getting points in Cunning, if only for crit chance, on any character, but Magic? God forbid. I can get decent spellsave from racials or equipment. When I get antibonus to Con or even to Str due to race/class, it's a big deal and I try to fix it. When I got Mag 8... it's probably Mag 8 for the entire run.
Mana is more or less under-used, too. Of three classes that use it, two need two invest into Willpower to raise mana limit, because they use mana limit more actively than actual mana. (Just to be clear, I'm talking about Archmage, who is a creature of shields, and Disruption Shield is garbage without high mana limit, and Necromancer, who probably needs Magic even less as he got minions).
And then there's Antimagic. "You don't need this stat anymore". Lovely.

[supermini]

As I said I think that manasurge is good enough for archmage\necromancer\Arcane blade\shadowblade. My problem is that it is useless for all other classes, while I see runes\infusions as something that should be useful for all classes (all other runes give some benefits to all classes)

Adding secondary benefits to a manasurge run doesn't fix it the way you want it to - there is no chance you would pick one of those over the most powerful ones (movement/heroism/wild/regen/heal/shielding/teleport/cpd). Inscriptions are primarily life-saving mechanisms, and trading that for secondary benefits of a manasurge rune doesn't seem prudent. Look at poison and sun infusions...There is no way you are picking them over the 8 I mentioned, unless you're doing some sort of a weird build.

Attack runes found their way in partly by encroaching on wild infusion territory and offering a status clearing option to undead, or in case of lightning rune, giving straight damage avoidance of first blow for 2 turns - a very powerful effect. The reason it won't work for manasurge rune is that it's already an integral part of certain classes, and you have to make up very clunky rules to avoid empowering them.

[HousePet]

A temporary buff to max mana could work.
But anything else is either going to make it too powerful, or not be relevant to the users.

[SageAcrin]

Have it generate a weak barrier against all damage(Flat rate damage armor, say in the 10-20 range, maybe higher?), but only if you're absolutely full on Mana and have a Manasurge effect going.

(Even better; Have the rune check if you're full on Mana when you trigger it, and have it give the barrier effect instead of a normal Manasurge effect.)

Seems simple enough.

[parcel]

Make it a reward effect for casters who deny the grand corrupter and then return to Angolwen. Give a second alternate effect for natural undead that side with the grand corrupter, such as a magic resource drain field that adds slightly to health.

[Doctornull]

Side with Grand Corruptor: manasurge rune grants a small amount of Vim on trigger.

Kill Grand Corruptor and tell Angolwen about it: manasurge rune either gives you a minor buff or lowers the cooldown of one spell by some number (and Runes are spells, so your Shield / Teleport / attack rune do count).

[parcel]

Side with Grand Corruptor: manasurge rune grants a small amount of Vim on trigger.

How about slight conversion between vim and other magic resource usage as well, to make it a little more interesting? That is, vim based talents substitute bits of mana for part of the vim cost while the effect lasts, and talents using other magical resources can base a small part of their cost on vim. The effect would scale with the mana regen rate given by the rune.

...lowers the cooldown of one spell by some number (and Runes are spells, so your Shield / Teleport / attack rune do count).

Sounds neat as well. I might split it so that one spell gets a comparatively big cooldown reduction, and one gets a minimal reduction of 1, and you can choose at least one of the two as an upfront enhancement to a particular spell at the moment that you receive the buff at Angolwen.

The buff package for either choice might include a limited relief on runic saturation, as well. Done this way you could more easily recognize either unlocked ability as part of the same 'family', just derived through different methods of magical inquiry. The Angolwen higher-ups have a very secret understanding of aether flow that they are willing to share with you now that they trust you more completely as one who is dedicated to their general mission of reconciliation (despite your other flaws). Perhaps it's a very ancient teaching, perhaps it's based in part on a more recent study of how the sentient crystals work in channeling magical capacity. The GC, on the other hand, has learned a little bit about incorporating blight into standard mana flows, and teaches you the method for making 'more efficient' usage of manasurge runes. Manasurge runes are of course a very ancient technology, like the very tiny sustain that mages use to keep their bodies young. Both have been refined over the years and are very efficient, and the way in which they work is also very well understood, making them an appropriately stable platform for some fairly novel magical technologies.

[Doctornull]

Side with Grand Corruptor: manasurge rune grants a small amount of Vim on trigger.

How about slight conversion between vim and other magic resource usage as well, to make it a little more interesting? That is, vim based talents substitute bits of mana for part of the vim cost while the effect lasts, and talents using other magical resources can base a small part of their cost on vim. The effect would scale with the mana regen rate given by the rune.

Mana pool can get HUGE by endgame, relative to how big Vim pool usually is.

Many of the Defiler classes can already use Life in place of Vim.

I'd be very, VERY careful about doing something like this unless you plan to re-design all the Defiler classes.

(One of my addon projects on the back burner is re-designing all the Defiler classes to start out as Mana classes who go bad.)

Sounds neat as well. I might split it so that one spell gets a comparatively big cooldown reduction, and one gets a minimal reduction of 1, and you can choose at least one of the two as an upfront enhancement to a particular spell at the moment that you receive the buff at Angolwen.

What I meant was that you'd get a reduction on whichever spells are currently cooling down, similar to what Eye of the Tiger does.

The buff package for either choice might include a limited relief on runic saturation, as well.

Cool idea. Runic Saturation is usually less of an issue for me than Infusion Saturation, but that's usually because of Regen Infusions.

[parcel]

Mana pool can get HUGE by endgame, relative to how big Vim pool usually is

Believe me, I know. That's why the effect would be small and limited to the time period in which the manasurge rune is active, and why the degree to which the off-resource can help will have to vary depending upon the mechanics of the main resource. The sharing between a main resource and an off-resource for each of the magical classes in standard TOME is in large part just a more cosmetically appealing way to give temporarily increased resource efficiency on your castings for a short period of time. Maybe the vim users should just get a very small surging effect on their vim for the duration, but my basic viewpoint is that all of the magic classes should get to enjoy the benefit of vim-enhanced manasurge runes in some way, even if they aren't too interested in repeatedly spamming pac hex.

What I meant was that you'd get a reduction on whichever spells are currently cooling down, similar to what Eye of the Tiger does.

Do you mean that you get a temporary Eye of the Tiger prodigy for the duration of the surging mana effect, without the need for criticals? Otherwise the effect seems too small, since you only get one time to activate your rune to randomly cool one talent down by a little bit. Part of why I like associating the cooldown benefit with the activation is that it is more strategic. 'Sanctifying' a particular spell to always get part of the cooldown benefit if possible is a way of adding a tad more depth to the build process. A relatively small benefit that you can use at your discretion seems more interesting to me, as a way to give manasurge runes 'off-road' value.

Again, in the broader context, we are trying to buff the rune to the point where non-mana magic classes would consider it as possibly worth a rune slot, and they are more likely to consider a given amount of cooldown-reduction if they have some control over the way in which it applies to their character. Inviting the player to think strategically about how to configure the buff is exactly what I'd like to see; if they are searching for the best way to use a new rune, with reasonable confidence that they perhaps have a chance of making better use of the slot than the next best alternative use of that slot, then they are probably already thinking in a way that interests them. Even for classes that get a benefit to manasurge runes by default, it would be nice if there were some configurability on one branch of the Grand Corrupter Quest or the other. This way they'd still be pretty sure to face an interesting dilemma, even if they have tons of mana capacity and even if they have already determined the number of manasurge runes that they wish to carry.

[Doctornull]

Believe me, I know. That's why the effect would be small and limited to the time period in which the manasurge rune is active, and why the degree to which the off-resource can help will have to vary depending upon the mechanics of the main resource. The sharing between a main resource and an off-resource for each of the magical classes in standard TOME is in large part just a more cosmetically appealing way to give temporarily increased resource efficiency on your castings for a short period of time. Maybe the vim users should just get a very small surging effect on their vim for the duration, but my basic viewpoint is that all of the magic classes should get to enjoy the benefit of vim-enhanced manasurge runes in some way, even if they aren't too interested in repeatedly spamming pac hex.

Sounds like a worthy goal.
How about for the other Magic classes (Light/Dark and Paradox casters)?

Otherwise the effect seems too small, since you only get one time to activate your rune to randomly cool one talent down by a little bit.

That's the one I meant, the effect which is indeed rather small.

Cheers!

[parcel]

During the active period:

Light and dark spells get to use a little bit of vim to boost negative costs, I'd say. This way, for example, we don't give too much extra power to liches which use manasurges by default and take the celestial tree as a relief valve on very expensive mana costs.

Paradox users could spend tiny amounts of vim as a fixed percentage of the paradox cost, where the percentage scales with the mana regen rate given by the rune. This is the same as a 'standard' conversion where a certain amount of vim counts as a certain amount of the main resource that scales with manasurge rate, but allowing for the conversion ratio to scale with paradox as is traditional for the cost of paradox spells. However, speaking of the deficiencies of the paradox users, a shortage of resources is not necessarily one of them (TW use sustains, mainly). So maybe a better path to give the bonus for this aspect of magic is to add corruption to damaging chronomancy spells. That is, if you have the vim to pay, limited amounts of vim can be spent when dealing damage, to shave off tiny bits of life from your foes. The amount of that you can add into any given amount of dealt damage could be fixed, and the lifeshaving efficiency of the vim-augmented damage would scale with the regen rate given by the rune. Didn't you know that blight makes you younger? Heh.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Manasurge doesn't NEED a change. Who cares that melee characters will never use it? By that logic, antimagic characters will never use runes, lets create an entire new kind of inscriptions for them just so they can have options.

I don't see why it needs anything at the moment anyway.