How much should a Random-5 Mage cost?

[Scott Hebert]

I'm not sure your method is "fair". I mean, having the average of the cost of an Abysian Blood mage, an Atlantian Water mage, and a Vanheim Smith is not a good estimate of a random mage, because variety/flexibility itself is a thing that should be paid and that noone in my 3 examples gets.

Flexibility is not necessarily a good thing, however. The flip side of being flexible is not being reliable. This, to me, is at best a wash.

I don't know how else I could evaluate them. I honestly don't see how it _can't_ be fair to look at them strictly on the numbers. I'm not going to be making any qualitative judgements as to the various numbers I generate.

With the specific example of a 5-random mage, the most common occurrence is a 2/1/1/1 mage (with a 0.513 probability), and that has a price tag set by Illwinter at 160g. Again, if you think the 4th path's 1st level should cost more than the third path's first level, that's your opinion, but I have no rubric to deal with, so I'm trying to extrapolate from the current rubric.

Really, I'm not sure how I could calculate the price of mages with random picks aside from the method I'm using. Strict probability and a weighting of price based on those probabilities seems the 'fairest' way, to me. No, it doesn't take into account the other variables involved, but then the very lack of those other variables in the analysis may point to the way to quantify those variables.

What is the nearest thing to a random-5 mages I think of is Arco Mystic, but he has only 3 random elements + 2 fixed Astral . He costs 180, and is usually considered rather underpriced.
I'm not sure a random-5 mage would fit thematically anywhere or be "balanced", but I suggest a cost of at least 240 gp.

I don't know, personally. You can look at the Master of the Five Elements and the Celestial Master from Tien Chi to see the most likely costs. I haven't gotten to them in my analysis yet, but they're costed pretty well.

I think the main point I'm unfortunately failing to get across is how not-good the 'average' random-5 mage is. You have to buy on average 6 5-random mages before you get one that has a 3 in a single path. That is something that most if not all of your examples above have that the random-5 mage most likely does not, and that's a difference of 60g. There's a greater than 70% chance that the 5-random mage doesn't even have 2 paths at 2. All of these lower the price, believe it or not.

Unfortunately, by the way that Illwinter currently has their pricing scheme up, randomness is not valued as highly as specific picks, if those specific picks are at all concentrated.

I'll do the Master of the Five Elements right now to show you how I'm doing this.

Commander: 30g
Holy-2 Priest: 20g
The probability that the Master of the Five Elements is a 2/1/1/1/1 is 0.625. A 2/1/1/1/1 Magic Path is worth 140g. Multiply 140 by 0.625, and you get 87.5.
The probability that the Master of the Five Elements is a 1/1/1/1/1/1 is 0.375. That is worth 90g. Multiply 90 by 0.375, and you get 33.75.
Add these together, and the Master of the Five Elements should cost 171.25g. Its actual cost is 190g. This can lead to several conclusions, which I've said before I really won't go into at this point. I agree with Gandalf that interpretation of data is not as useful to IW as the data itself.

I will say that any mage that has only 1 random pick that I've done so far (mostly independent due to the structure of the .xls file) I've matched with Illwinter's costs about 90% of the time. I also calculated the cost of the Jade Sorceress as 182.25, which is quite close to IW's cost of 180.

In any event, I think I will continue on as I have until I receive a different method of evaluating the grey areas in the current rubric.

[Scott Hebert]

Can anyone tell me if the picks of the Loremaster are indeed random? That's a 4-Random mage (with a large research bonus, IIRC) for 150g (calculated cost: 142.27).

Also, does anyone know of a large detriment to the Circle Master?

Also, I note that the Master of the 5 Elements Random is only in Elemental. This guarantees him to be a 2/1/1/1 mage. So:

Commander: 30
HH: 20
2/1/1/1 Magic: 130
That comes out to 180.

Almost finished with the stats.

[ June 20, 2004, 00:01: Message edited by: Scott Hebert ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
The probability that the Master of the Five Elements is a 1/1/1/1/1/1 is 0.375. That is worth 90g.

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.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
Can anyone tell me if the picks of the Loremaster are indeed random?

Very likely. I've seen 1-1-1-1, 2-1-1, 2-2 and 3-1, although I'm not sure I've ever seen an all-elemental or an all-sorcery. So it's either 4 x 1? or 1Elem + 1Sorc + 2 x 1?.

Also, does anyone know of a large detriment to the Circle Master?

If you're looking for hidden weaknesses in the Circle Master that would explain his low cost, he hasn't any - at least, none I'm aware of.

[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.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
Very likely. I've seen 1-1-1-1, 2-1-1, 2-2 and 3-1, although I'm not sure I've ever seen an all-elemental or an all-sorcery. So it's either 4 x 1? or 1Elem + 1Sorc + 2 x 1?.

Thank you. This helps...

If you're looking for hidden weaknesses in the Circle Master that would explain his low cost, he hasn't any - at least, none I'm aware of.

All right... because it's shockingly low.

One other question. Can anyone confirm whether or not the Galderman's random picks can be the same? I know that when I've played Mitgard, I've never seen the Galderman get 2 in the same path for his randoms.

The reason that the Circle Mage has such low cost for the paths is because it is a rare site that is hard to find.

You have to take that into account.

Look at Celestial Master's for a cost estimate of what you are doing for Randoms.