MA: Jomon: The Courts of the Ryu - Looking for insight - Page 3

kianduatha · #1 February 7th, 2012, 02:25 AM

That new version of a Saigu is interesting--it doesn't look like much, but most of them would be able to pack quite easily E5 or A4(A5 in a storm) or N5 in a battle. Even the F ones can get F4 in a pinch in-combat, but their real benefit is as army buffers it sounds like.

Agreed on simply giving the Miko just plain bows that do bad things to demons. It just works, and I don't think there is a way of giving them a special spell that wouldn't give all your priests the ability to get demon killing weapons.

legowarrior · #2 February 7th, 2012, 10:17 AM

Miko are sacred Units.

shatner · #3 February 7th, 2012, 10:54 AM

I have been away number crunching; I see I've missed some recent developments. To help inform us on how magically powerful to make the Seigu, as well as how much it should cost, I've gone and compared all the top mages from the Middle Era and determined things like Average Gold Cost, Average Upkeep, Average Highest Path, Average Total Paths, and Average Cost Per Path. These are further broken down between cap-only mages and recruit-anywhere mages. The overall numbers are the following:

Average Gold Cost = 296.3
Average Max Path = 3.4
Average Total Paths = 6.3
Average Cost Per Path = 47

Therefore the latest 7-path Seigu should cost 329 => 330gp and it'll be in-line with the cost of its peers.

elmokki · #4 February 7th, 2012, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shatner

I have been away number crunching; I see I've missed some recent developments. To help inform us on how magically powerful to make the Seigu, as well as how much it should cost, I've gone and compared all the top mages from the Middle Era and determined things like Average Gold Cost, Average Upkeep, Average Highest Path, Average Total Paths, and Average Cost Per Path. These are further broken down between cap-only mages and recruit-anywhere mages. The overall numbers are the following:

Average Gold Cost = 296.3
Average Max Path = 3.4
Average Total Paths = 6.3
Average Cost Per Path = 47

Therefore the latest 7-path Seigu should cost 329 => 330gp and it'll be in-line with the cost of its peers.

I've done some similiar - though far more limited in scope - research for top tier mages and there it seemed that comparing those exclusively most of the time holy levels did very little to the cost. I wonder what kind of results we'd see if we did the same with ignoring holy levels (and actually it'd be interesting to see the standard deviation too)

Maybe I'll do that for your data tomorrow, I don't know. Thanks anyway, this'll be of great use for UnitGen when figuring what kind of paths to generate and how to price mages.

legowarrior · #5 February 7th, 2012, 11:12 AM

Maybe she is a bit too powerful. I should probably get rid of Awe and make her old with 1 movement. But thanks for the info, that is really cool.

legowarrior · #6 February 7th, 2012, 11:51 AM

The more that I think about it, the more I want her to be the same price as the Celestial Master.
H:2, F:1, A:1, W:1, E:1, N:1 + FAWEN x 110%?

shatner · #7 February 7th, 2012, 12:20 PM

Based on the data I've compiled, I'd make the Saigu something like this:
Saigu, E1A1N1H2 + 1xFF/AA/WW/EE/NN + .1xFAWEN, 340gp, Immune to Seduction, Healing 50%, barely old(-1 stats), Map Move-1

Now her cost is strickly average and she's like a cross between the Celestial Master and the Imperial Alchemist. This is especially appropriate because the Imperial Alchemist has a similar FAWEN path theme as well as healing. She is sacred and can hit A/E/N3 60% of the time which justifies her being more expensive and slower than the Imperial Alchemist. Plus, one of T'ien Ch'i's themes is "cheaper than average mages with low, diverse paths", so it makes sense that Jomon's capstone mage is a bit costlier.

The fact that Jomon has weak priests but seemingly decent sacred units doesn't matter so much since that sacred is an archer so you can stick the lowly H1 blessing them well out of harms way while they pepper the enemy from afar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by legowarrior

The more that I think about it, the more I want her to be the same price as the Celestial Master.
H:2, F:1, A:1, W:1, E:1, N:1 + FAWEN x 110%?

Realize that the Celestial Master is cheaper than he "should" be. Having cheap, diverse mages is T'ien Ch'i's schtick. Based on the average, the Celestial Master should cost 380gp. Similarly, the greatest mage of the entire age is the Bakemono Sorcerer. He's got more non-divine paths than any other caster (9.1), is sacred, recruit-anywhere!!!, map move-2, costs only 300gp, reliably hits a 3 in one path and is tougher than your average mage. Having hands-down the greatest mage of the era, cheap and recruit-anywhere is one of the things which defines Shinuyama. Both those nations defy the averages for the age because of the larger context of their nation making that okay.

As such, think on the larger context of MA Jomon and what the Saigu is meant to inhabit before you start trying to fine-tune its stats.

legowarrior · #8 February 7th, 2012, 01:11 PM

You think we should go with linked paths?
If we are going to keep it at over 300 gold, then I think we should have 2 map movement. Get rid of healing. Old age should be countered by the Nature magic.

shatner · #9 February 7th, 2012, 01:31 PM

When I first started that post you hadn't yet written your "H:2, F:1, A:1, W:1, E:1, N:1 + FAWEN x 110%" version of the Saigu yet; my linked paths version was meant to be a response to your linked paths version.

I think if this caster is going to be a flimsy human stat-wise than she should by roughly the same as the Imperial Alchemist as far as cost and total paths. The two fill a similar conceptual space (cap-only AEFWN mage with healing)... but that's just my take on it. This is your mod, it's your vision/design that determines what is appropriate for the capstone caster and, as we can tell from my table of MA capstone mages, the cost and power of a mage can be way over or way under the average based on the nation's design (Shinuyama's super cheap and awesome Sorcerer, Ermor's slow, old, magically average but undead spawning Grand Thaumaturge, etc., etc.).

Based on what you've said, I'm guessing the theme for MA Jomon is "expensive, diverse but magically powerful mages". Every single mage of theirs is rockin' at least one pick off of a AEFNW random. The Onmyo-ji is a really solid mid-tier mage so I don't think they need another diversity caster, I think they need something that costs less than the Ryujin (5 paths for 500gp... ouch!) but can still reliably get a 3 in one or more paths. Linked paths are a good way to do that.

shatner · #10 February 7th, 2012, 01:47 PM

I will say that putting healing on a cap-only, high-caliber mage is non-synergistic. Arco does it right by having a dinky, cheap mage-priest as their healer because having a priestess spend her mage-turn healing some wounded troops or a feebleminded astrologer is an acceptable use of her time... she's recruit-anywhere and inexpensive.

My two main concerns for the Saigu is that she should be magically distinct from both the Onmyo-ji and the Ryujin, AND she should be interesting. Healing is interesting, but it is far from being the only interesting thing we could give her. If you really want healing for the nation, we could make the Shugenja or Envoy of Ryu a weak healer.