Water Blessing Borked?

[love crime]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:

Now if Illwinter added a new pretender who had like water 2 or ( shudder ) water 3 right off the bat and was availiable to all nations, and did not cost too much ( hell I would not even mind if it was immobile ) that would be *great*. I would probabaly use this strategy, a lot.

Blue dragon has 2 water, is available to most every nation, only costs 50, and is a strong early expander to boot...


BTW, am I alone in not understanding the cost rational for pretenders? I mean, compare said blue dragon, with frost mage. Frost mage has so few hp that not only can he not be used in battles, but he is an assassination liability, he has a weaker dominion, is a weaker water mage, and COSTS 5 MORE DESIGN POINTS?

I mean, sure he has 10 point cost reqs for ease of rainbow maging... but I really don't understand any of those rainbow mages, at least not at their costs.

What is the purpose of giving a pretender a little from each path of magic, if he can't even fight?

I mean, outside of combat, you need to have gems to get any use out of the magic (from rituals or construction)... So if you are getting a few magic points in paths your nation already doesn't have... how are you going to find the gems to get any use out of your magic paths? The pretender will find them himself? (what a waste of time...) And if you already have mages that can search for magic sites, then why does your pretender need a few points in such many paths, since the mages can use the gems themselves.

Don't get me wrong, a rainbow mage out searching all the provinces could jumpstart your gem income, but I don't see how that justifies the relatively high costs of selecting them as your pretender.