Ulm beefed up ...

[Ivan Pedroso]

PrinzMegaherz said:
Another Idea that would make Ulm something special...
What about giving the smiths higher paths, but take their abilitiy to cast spells. They would be "Forge only" mages, unrivaled in producing things (with maybe 2 in each kind of magic), but useless on the battlefield.

This solution didn't seem to get much attention. It got me thinking: "Is it possible to cripple a mage in such a way that he/she would be useless in a battle - i.e. making him/her a forger-only mage".

My idea:
Lord of the Forge (or some other name)
(Capital only or not - dunno)
paths: 2E1F1? (elemental random)
stats as the regular Master Smith but with some/all of these changes:
Precision: say 5 or lower (zero perhaps ?!?)
MR: again low
Research "bonus": -3 (or some other fitting number)
Price: somewhat lower than his paths would suggest.

The effects and the fantasy-logic behind it could/would be:

Low precision: with these randoms the only 100 precision spells available would be frozen heart and incinerate(with phoenix power), all other spells would fly all over the place. The fantasy logic behind it could be that this smith is so focussed on forging the tiny nitty-gritty details of magical items that he is somewhat near-sighted, or have blood shot watering eyes due to the heat/flames that he's always around ?

Low MR: would make him susceptible to all sorts of spells. Perhaps his excellence at forging is caused by a natural susceptibility to magic ?

Research penalty: this could be used to justify a low gold price, and it would ensure that his role as a forger is fixed. The logic behind this could be that he's a specialized forger and not a scholar.

I'm not sure that it would make Ulm much stronger, but if he's cheap it would at least give Ulm some extra options and still be in line with the flavour of the nation - and extra options would be a strength ?