ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Adventurer definition is jack of all trades, master of none. But they come up HUGELY short on any sort of magic build that uses mana. Vim builds go fine, positive/negative fine, etc. But the total and complete lack of natural mana regen forces them to either invest in one of the three trees that grant it, or grief a inscription slot with a crappy manasurge.

EVERY magic-user that uses mana has either natural regen (Alchemist, ARchmage, Necromancer), or has a tree exclusive to their class that doesn't synergize well outside of it which grants some form of mana regen. (Stone warden, Arcane Blade, Shadowblade)

It is hugely annoying to be either griefed out of a cat point and some talent points, or griefed out of an inscription slot, just because I want to run an archmage variant of adventurer. Nor is this the only build type to be penalized on this.

Please, PLEASE, give them some form of mana regen. In keeping with the 'not as good as real versions of a class' I'd suggest half the regen granted to the mage class-type. This doesn't unbalance them any more then they already are, and opens up a greater variety of build types, for more fun adventurers. Reasonable?

You can get staves/wizard hats/rings with mana regeneration egoes at level 1 if relying on Manasurge is too beneath you. Adventurers should have to plan on how they're going to recover the resources they'll be spending, I don't see why Mana should be any different from Vim or Negative in that regard. Consider it the penalty for that extra staff you probably have floating above your head.

Except mana is the only resource penalized in this fashion. Every other resource has some easy means of regeneration, except EQ. And no one gets natural EQ regen, so that's moot. I don't think a little small mana regen is asking too much. But then we're right back to having a slot griefed if we go with equipment. I'm not saying the system needs to be perfect, I just don't see why an adventurer that can do anything, can't understand basic magic. Even the simplistic alchemist's in towns have an understanding of mana regeneration.

I really only see this as a problem for mana/melee combos. For any straight caster build, taking the Arcane tree, getting to level 12, and taking Disruption shield is easy enough with a manasurge rune, and after that, you don't really need the rune. And, actually, considering the shielding nature of Disruption Shield, that's a good tactic even for mana/melee combos, though it does require a focus on magic early on. What's more, it's only one cat point and 4 class points (Disruption Shield is a 1-point wonder after all).

What Arcane guys get is: not -4 life rating. That's pretty spiffy. Using a Manasurge Rune until you can get the gear to give you passive mana regen ... seems not so horrible.

There's no real reason why Arcane guys need the minor annoyance of doing that, but it's not worse than a minor annoyance, and the upside is huge.