[Blitz]

I voted Other, and I voted for the Daughter of Avalon. If you're looking for a mage, she's hands-down better than the Bard.

An 80g NN Sacred mage is very hard to scoff at. I'm appalled she's not listed.

You could make a case for a couple of other mages... but she didn't really meet any of the criteria I chose. She's obviously better than a few on this list, but I didn't anticipate anyone strongly considering her for the top spot. She's a pretty mediocre combat mage with limited forging ability... and while her research abilities are excellent, I didn't anticipate that being enough for most.

Take for example, the Master of the Way. Here we have a hasted banisher who can forge clam of pearls and jade armor. He can search for water, astral, and death sites. He can blood hunt sometimes. He can communion slave sometimes. He's just a better unit than the Daughter of Avalon for a bit more gold.

Or how about the seraph? She flies, she lightning bolts. She can cloud trapeeze. She can haste herself. Under the right circumstances, she can use summon storm power to lightning bLast the heck out of people. She's also a FASTER researcher at level 3 magic. Frankly I'm surprised she wasn't the runaway leader in this poll.

The seithkona is also a faster researcher than the daughter, and she can forge tons of great stuff and cast search spells for astral and death sites (arguably the most important). In combat she can cast both neither darts and healing light, plus body erthreal. Power of the spheres gives her access to a ton more spells, and of course she's a nice communion slave.

None of these three are my first choice (Fortune Teller was), and I think you would have a hard time arguing that the DOA is anywhere close to them in any area aside from cost. She's not a GREAT researcher... she's an efficient researcher. Given the choice of a 90 gold 5 research unit that can do a ton of other stuff or a straight 65 gold 4 research unit that is really quite limited outside the lab, I take the faster researcher and better unit over the econo mage.

What's the DOA's combat contribution anyway? Breath of the Dragon? Relief with a gem? Anything she can do the Seithkona does better, and for only 25 more gold.