Suggestions to improve the Water Magic discipline

[PvK]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
I though Ice Fortress would be something like your Ice Wall idea, temporary fort that gets destroyed when sieged and/or when it melts. It could get bad with some Earth rituals though.

I meant to suggest both. A fortress is an HQ and a place to hide, but can be bypassed. A wall would block all movement (except flying & magical) in and out of the province, and wouldn't serve as a fort. Water already has a ritual to freeze the surface of all water provinces, so a limited ice wall around one province might be considered reasonable.

PvK

[Slygar]

Just a quick thought. It's always seemed kind of silly to me that Air evocation spells work underwater, while water's dont. I would think it would be pretty suicidal to throw a bolt of lightning at someone underwater. But shouldn't spells like Ice Strike function there? After all, you'd just be freezing some of the surroundings and hurling it at the enemy, which would probably be easier than just generating the ball of ice out of nowhere like normal.
And no risk of electrocuting yourself either!

Note that I dont mean ALL water evocation spells, like Falling Frost and Neifel Flames would obviously be excluded, but Ice Strike, Cold Bolt, and Cold BLast should definately work underwater, I think. Also note that my assumption that Lightning Bolt, Orb Lightning, and Thunderstrike do work underwater comes from the manual, so if thats not true, dont flay me alive.

[Jondifool]

just some thoughts? trying to be inspired by the good points about uniqeness and about need for monthly rituals

I had been thinking a little on the status of light infantery as discussed here
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=002364

couldn't water magic be a suitable candidate to improve the use and strenght on light inf.

something like changing the whole battlefield to a muddy place, where heavy inf is severly punished. But thats maybe to similar to other spells. A ritual improving the use for LIs was maybe a neat option. I tend to think of water magic as defensive and as such I think of something making defense of a provinse a little more poverfull or giving some good skirmish powers

A option was a lower upkeep spell/ritual working for LIs (or all tropps) in the one province where the spell is cast? Basicly this makes the water gems able to turn into gold when enough troops are gathered.

But forgetting about the LI talk I have been thinking that if water need some really unique and usefull monthly ritual , what about one turning water only troops into troops cabable of going on land/and in sea.

This could be done by changing the aquatic ability to amhibian or something similar.
Or it could be something like a mermaid curse , where a few troops gets a disease/ and now has to change and go on land/into the sea or loose hp. Or gets some limmited rounds to go on land in!

(this could maybe even be combined with clamps -if clamps was turned into something like the fewer fetish forced to be hold on land- but thats another topic).

well thats pretty vaque but someone might want to comment on it anyway

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Jondifool:
something like changing the whole battlefield to a muddy place, where heavy inf is severly punished. But thats maybe to similar to other spells. A ritual improving the use for LIs was maybe a neat option. I tend to think of water magic as defensive and as such I think of something making defense of a provinse a little more poverfull or giving some good skirmish powers
well thats pretty vaque but someone might want to comment on it anyway

Hmmm. Maybe a spell that muddies the entire battlefield. Light Infantry (and militia, etc) aren't affected, but HI and Cavalry, any high armor units, take penalties. -2 to Defense, -2 to protection for anything over, say, 8 armor protection? No effect on flyers, maybe no effect on units with Swamp survival.

This would reflect military history in the effects - cavalry ruled the battlefield, armored foot also did quite well. But in rainy, muddy conditions, the unarmored opponents were able to overcome. Horses slip in the mud, everyone does - but the LI and skirmishers were able to get up quicker and stick sharp pointy objects through the chinks in the armor.

Then again - this doesn't actually fix water, nor does it fix LI - it only helps make things not-so-bad if you have both.

[ April 21, 2004, 17:29: Message edited by: Cainehill ]

[Vicious Love]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Then again - this doesn't actually fix water, nor does it fix LI - it only helps make things not-so-bad if you have both.

Agreed. Nonetheless, I second it. Furthermore, I recommend penalties be based on encumbrance, not armor. Good armor is one thing, heavy armor is... usually the same thing. Usually. I'm wondering whether base encumbrance should also be factored in. I'm inclined to say "yes", since bird boned Caelians and purely hypothetical hypermetabolic skaven can't handle their mud nearly as well as humans.
Let's not dwell on this too long, though, no need to hijack a water mojo thread with our LI propaganda.

[Baalz]

How about a water battlefield enchantment (or global?) to reduce everyone's attack skill. In general this would make battles Last longer and thus let the encumberance advantage of LI be worth more. Of course, it would also accentuate the advantage of elite units...

Water should have some more good climate changing effects like Wolven Winter. I like the idea of a Very Powerful item which shifts the scale of a province to cold. It fits the theme and is similar to some other items. How about a Drout spell that shifts a province towards death? A combination of multiple Wolven Winters and Drouts would be a worthy gem sink in a lot of situations...

[Vicious Love]

Only have 2 metric minutes to post, so I'll be brief.
How about an alteration combat spell, in 3 possible variants(Single target, large area, and Inner Sun style death curse) which can only be cast/triggered underwater, and renders the target/s aquatic? Amphibians, poor amphibians, water mages and their retinues, anyone who fails to resist would be incapable of leaving the ocean without an amulet of the fish. Stylish, appropriate, and only rasies 1 question, that of whether poor amphibians would retain their penalties for fighting underwater.
A similar spell with slightly different style could simply afflict target water mages/amphibians/aquatic units with the mermen's curse, meaning they'd have to return to water every so often, amulets of the fish nonwithstanding. If this spell had a small area effect(Meant to be used on commanders) but could be used on land based units ordinarily incapable of entering the sea, that might serve to complicate things nicely.
I actually got the idea for this curse when toying with a nature battlefield enchantment, "Circe's Caprice". Irreversible, insanely random(And affected by fortune scale) mix of Polymorph, Transformation and Cross Breeding, which affects both sides in any given battle(Including the caster, but that's what mage MR is for. Besides, the effects aren't necessarily negative). If we start grasping at straws, I can see how a, shall we say, fish-based variant of that might work, though I imagine actually coding this sort of thing could be a major headache.
The second spell could also have a blood/nature or blood/earth counterpart which binds units/commanders to a particular province, a la hamadryads, certain vampire myths, and much, much more. Not that that's on topic, or anything, I just find it cool.

Time elapsed! See ya.