[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Are you sure about that cost? The average cost for a mage with 1 magic skill and 2 holy magic is more around 80-90 gold.

The way I calculated the cost for a 1/1/1/1/1/1 magic path was as follows:

First path, first level: 30 points.
Second path, first level: 20 points.
Third path, first level: 10 points.

These values are all from the Modding Guide on Illwinter's site. As stated in the original post, I am going to assume that further paths do _not_ depreciate like the first paths. From this:

Fourth path, first level: 10 points.
Fifth path, first level: 10 points.
Sixth path, first level: 10 points.

Add those all up, and you get 90g. Multiply this by the probability of getting a Master of the Five Elements with this (0.375), and you get 33.75. I then calculated the value of a 2/1/1/1/1 magic path, as follows:

First path, second level: 90 points.
Second path, first level: 20 points.
Third path, first level: 10 points.
Fourth path, first level: 10 points.
Fifth path, first level: 10 points.

This comes to 140 points. If you multiply this value by the probability of getting a Master of the Five Elements with those magic paths (0.625), you get 87.5.

Now, if we add together the 87.5 and the 33.75, we get a total of 121.25. This is the magic path cost for a mage with 5 paths at 1, plus 1 random pick. Add to this the cost for Holy-2 (20), and the base cost for the commander (30), and you will get the total calculated cost for a Master of the Five Elements.

121.25 + 20 + 30 = 171.25

This is not its actual cost (190). I'm not exactly sure what is causing the increase in cost, but I have my ideas.

I am sorry if what I posted before was confusing. I'm not that good at explaining myself. Of course, this is all academic if the Master of the Five Elements, as is listed in the unit spreadsheet can only get an Elemental pick.

Note that if the random is restricted to an Elemental pick, the cost of the magic path increases.

Are there any problems that people can point out with my math? As I said before, I'm doing this through a rather brute force approach to the probabilities, and since this is involving a lot of arithmetic, I may be making silly errors.