Re: Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments
 

IMHO, the easiest way to solve the "researching summons" issue could be just to make them poor researchers.
With for example -4 RP the Spectre gets 1 RP in any non-Magic environment and would be a pretty lame investment for research.

Re: Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments
 

Why not simply give them upkeep costs in gold ?

Re: Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments
 

Well, for Spectres, they're undead... and thus, while balancing, it is hard to justify. Lamia Queens could get upkeep, though.

I like PDF's suggestion for research, though... even a -1 or -2 research penalty for upkeep-free mages could have profound effects on which choices and investments are the best in a given situation.

There are many possible rationales... for example, they are vengeful undead summoned from their graves, powered by hatred and the desire to kill, and thus uninterested in research. Or because they are merely brainless souls, they are able to fully use their memories of the previous life, but inefficient at tasks requiring high mental agility like studying and learning new things. Others (like Coatls) simply lack the appendages, intelligence (golems), humility (elemental royalty), desire (non-astral Ice and Arch devils), or physical shape (Vastness, Treelord) to conduct efficient research. Not that many of these are commonly used for research, but all of them have good rationalizations for why they shouldn't be allowed to research efficiently. It makes sense to me that mortals, with their short lives, would be much more focused on research and progress and haste compared to beings for whom time is fairly abstract, such that mortal mages should be inherently better at research than magical creatures and undeads, and that any intelligent mortal summon might demand pay.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions; I'll look through the summonable mages and think about them.

Re: Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments
 

To Arralen : it just sounds ridiculous to pay Spectres some gold to make them happy, I'd prefer my idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

To SC : I've suggested -4 RP to give a figure, this can be debated, but again it sounds more thematic to have summons make rituals, items, and combat, than holding them in labs to get research done.

And I'm still not convinced that research is the best thing to do with a LQ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments
 

In this care Turin is correct. You guys are barking up the wrong tree here unless this is in the context of making casters far more expensive than they are today.

Spectres researching is a non-issue unless you are playing ermor and have found a conjuration site, oh and maybe CW too.