Age thingy, sorta

[Forrest]

Man MA Crone

Normally they are old when bought, Age 192(125).

I bought one that had 2 natures for it's 2 possible randoms giving me a Crone with a nature 5 skill lvl. I noticed this later when I checked her stats. The thing is that she is not old.

Crone not old.
Age 154 (225)

Is this a bug or did her nature 5 start reverse her age?

Also with the Treelord staff she is nature 7 and I was wondering if it would be worth the cost to empower her up a level or two to say 8 or 9. What would I use Air 2 Nature 9 mage for if I do? Well for that matter I could boost her air a few levels real easy if it was worth it. What would you use a Air 4 Nature 9 mage for?

Should I put a crown on her and start summoning veggies or
Rainbow armour, +3 Mr, +3 Reinvig
Messenger boots, +3 Reinvig
winged helmet, +1 Air
bag of wind, +1 Air, Air elemental
amulet of resilience, +5 reinvig

for a Air 6, Nature 9, +11 reinvig, +3 Mr Battle mage?

If I trade the bag of wind for a antimagic amulet the Air drops to 5 but Mr goes to +7.

What do you think of Storm + foul vapors on rnd 1 for a attacking army of hydras with hold orders to maximise time before engagement.

[Agrajag]

1) One of the benefits of Nature Magic is that it increases the mage's max age.
2) I don't really think there's a point in going from N7 to N9, you aren't getting any new spells IIRC, and very few spells get added effect from higher nature.

[Belcarl]

Each level of nature gives you +50 years of max age (before you get the aging effect).

Very few spells use a nature level higher then 4. But some gets better effects for each extra level. So generally, nature above lvl 5 is rarely needed, and most likely not worth the gem cost. Especially not if you are using empowerment to raise her level.

What kind of plans do you have for her? if you raise her air magic she could be a really good battlemage. Check out the evocation tree. Spells like Thunderstrike and Orb of lightning are very good with a high Air magic skill.

[Endoperez]

About the only battle spell that scales with the caster's power (that I can think of right now) is Storm of Thorns. Not that good. There are some nice scaling Nature summons, though. Summon Lamias, as an example, is Nat 3 and scales with power, and thus would give 2 extra Lamias for her without items, 3 more with Thistle Mace, 4 more with a Treelord's Staff, and 5 more with Treelord's Staff and a Moonvine Bracelet (you'd need someone with Nat/Astral to do it, though).

[Shovah32]

Its not a bug, each point of nature magic gives extra max age.

[Will]

If you're attacking with Hydras, and using Foul Vapors, I would assume you know to have 100% poison resistance on your mages and bodyguards...

As for aging, I think having nature magic makes your max age higher, and death magic gives a reduced chance of afflictions once old age is reached.

I wouldn't bother with empowering in nature for this particular crone. Quick manual check, looks like the only battlefield spells that would give benefit are Personal Regeneration (it says 10% +(Nature magic * 100/MaxHP), which could be close to 100% for a N9 crone... but a one-round kill of a Crone is not too difficult), Sleep Cloud (bigger AoE), Storm of Thorns (more vine arrows), Panic (bigger AoE), Creeping Doom (more ants... scary! not), Polymorph (make more enemies into bacon), Stream of Life (bigger chance of killing instead of making a fully healed berserker), Healing Mists (bigger AoE) and Wild Growth (more tangle vines). I don't think any of that is really worth gem cost of empowerment. The only battlefield nature spell out of reach is Gaia's Blessing, which requires earth anyway. For summoning, you can get a Tarrasque with just a Thistle Mace, and can get Faerie Court and the Treelords with no buffs.

[Ygorl]

In the Council of Wyrms game, I had a Tartarian with Air 2 and Nature 5. I loaded the beast up with penetration items (note that increased nature magic increases penetration for nature spells), wind rode to provinces in which enemy SCs lived, and charmed their pants off. I captured several nice former enemies like this. A crone is a lot easier to kill than a Tartarian, of course, so this is quite a bit riskier. As long as you're careful with her, though, she could be an extremely effective charmer.

[Forrest]

Thanks for the input.

I agree she is better off summoning after looking at the spell list.

I was wondering about a couple of air mages casting repeated shockwaves backed by a few N1's for vines. With the troops held back a few turns they could eliminate the enemies infantry enmass. Then the troops could just attack rear. With archer backup it looks very mean and exspensive if things go wrong.

[Graeme Dice]

Shockwave is a particularly nasty spell (When combined with resist lightning) for Vanheim, since the Van air mages are quite difficult to kill in melee combat. Crones, on the other hand, should probably be hiding in the back somewhere, since they are powerful but physically weak.

[Forrest]

You might be right that it is better to sit in row 2 and hit them with lightning bolts. But as I understand it the armour is ignored and damage is direct.

I was wondering if anything could get to them. Two Air 2 mages popping off next to each other would be doing 18 points damage out to rng 6 per turn to incoming troops. It would weed the weaklings out pretty quick.

I have a 110g source of glamour A2s. If I add shamans for casting vines to slow incoming troops it seems a big monster killer. Just kinda costly to get started. Call it 500g and 20 Air gems (doubled that) just to see if it works.

Do you get to resist shock waves and if you do would a penetration item help?