Magic Defense

[Saint Vierzehn]

On the whole, I think all the changes that are being made to mages are a good thing. Because of those changes, magic defense is going to be much more important.

 

Right now, the only effective defense against magic is healing (either SA: Healer or Cleric), and even that is somewhat limited depending on whether the targets have toughness.

 

With the mods to familiars, counterspells are of very limited effectiveness. If a wizard casting an ice spell has a familiar, the best that a counterspell will do is delay successful casting by a turn. I would prefer to have a successful counterspell negate the spell recovery of a familiar.

 

-StV.

[psyberwolfe1]

The best defense against a mage right now is to delay them long enough so your combat monster can get in there and kill the mage. The real trick will be to do this while keeping your own mages/clerics alive.

[spiritual_exorcist]

I'm actually on board with this one. 10 points for a counterspell is a pretty hefty investment given that you can buy a fireball for 12; especially since you need to make a successful caster check, and then the enemy caster has to fail their modified caster check as well. It seems awful that you can successfully counter an Ice Storm only to get hit with it again in the next turn.

 

I've got no problem with the familiar itself allowing the retention of spells, but if counterspelled the spell should be lost.

 

Otherwise drop the cost and casting level of counterspell.

[vejlin]

remember that the changes were made to make mages more attractive. Making counterspell more powerful than it currently is not really doing that. I still feel counter spell is a sound investment at 10 points. Remember it is cast on the enemys activation, this IMO makes all the difference. I find that the most precious commodity to mages these days is combat actions. During a normal battle most mages don't get more than 3-4 rounds where they can cast spells. Denying them one of these chances even without losing the spell is IMO plenty worth 10 points. Remember that a lot of the spell casting points are actually tied up in the mage model itself. If you deny a mage the chance to cast a spell that means you've effectively made the other guy waste 20-30% of the total points invested in his mage.

[Saint Vierzehn]

remember that the changes were made to make mages more attractive.

 

 

Remember that, in order to get a counterspell, you have to take a mage.

 

-StV.

[vejlin]

yes, but taking a cheap mage with counterspells shouldn't be able to cancel out an expensive mage with offensive spells. I don't know if it's an issue anymore, but in WHFB there was a time where you coulld pretty much just buy a cheap mage and load up on dispel scrolls, totally kill the enemys ability to cast spells. This was called a scroll caddy and was no no fun.

 

If we want offensive magic to be easily countered then why even both with that whole aspect of the game? 10 points is not a lot to pay for refusing a mage the chance to cast a spell IMO.

[Saint Vierzehn]

yes, but taking a cheap mage with counterspells shouldn't be able to cancel out an expensive mage with offensive spells.

 

 

They can't. Cheap mage = low CP. Low CP = pretty good chance to fail casting, which means you've burned 10 points of counterspell + cost of mage for jack diddly squat. And even if you succeed at the counterspell, if you're facing off an expensive mage with high CP, the powerful wiz still has a pretty good chance to succeed at blasting something.

 

Not to mention that a cheap mage with a couple of counterspells won't be good for much else. If I'm dropping 60+ points of wiz on the table for the sole purpose of magic defense, I expect him to be able to actually generate some effective magic defense once in a while.

 

-StV.