Gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
posted February 02, 2025 12:53 PM
Galaad said:
Hmmm… Something I noticed on the Temple of the Four Scholars is that it increases the level of a visiting hero’s spells. That implies a few different potential spell mechanics:
1) It could just be that it improves a visiting hero’s magic skills, which is the boring but probably safeway to do this.
2) It could imply that heroes have a “magic talent” stat that’s separate from skills and attributes, and which determines the maximum level of spell that they can cast. I’ll call this the “weird” option, since that’s traditionally been covered by skills (Wisdom in H3, and the elemental/ spell school of the associated skill in 4/5), so I don’t expect that’s what this is.
3) It could imply that the hero’s spells level up with them, potentially adding another form of scaling other than just skills and spell power to them. For example, a hero with the Arcane Arrow [Level 1] spell reaches level 3 or visits a Temple of the Four Scholars, and their Arcane Arrow becomes [level 2], allowing them to select a second stack to target when they cast it, or increasing its scaling from (hypothetically), 10+4*Spell Power to 20+5*Spell Power. Similarly, level 1 Slow could be single target and apply -2 Initiative and -1 movement, and level 2 Slow could make it affect all hostile creatures adjacent to the target, or it could increase the penalty to -3 initiative and -1/2 movement. The levels would definitely have to be limited, probably to 3 per spell.
I’d call 3 the “interesting but complicated method, since that would require making scaling effects for every spell, and being careful to keep levels from providing redundant levels to spells that get modified by skills or skill specializations. Still, could be neat to have “basic” versions of spells, “advanced” (like or expert) versions, and “master” (or signature) spells.
It's been confirmed that spells have levels on top of tiers. I hope it's not just a hero stat, but something more meaningful that changes how spells work. If done properly, it should be something like 3.
Likeliest scenario to me:
- knowledge and spellpower are the magic stats like in Heroes 3.
- tier is the unlock condition also hinting at how impactful the spell is compared to others.
- level is what changes/expands how the spell works.
My concern is that level will somehow turn out to be another variety of knowledge and spellpower, or have significant overlap. Basically more damage and cost reduction. That would be a letdown.
____________ Guide to a Great Heroes Game The Young Traveler
My guess is that spell level is replacing magic school skills. Rather than having Expert Earth Magic giving you all Earth spells at Expert power, you need to level up your spells individually from Basic to Advanced to Expert.
Gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
posted February 02, 2025 04:40 PM
Stevie said:My concern is that level will somehow turn out to be another variety of knowledge and spellpower, or have significant overlap. Basically more damage and cost reduction. That would be a letdown.
This is why my ideas were extra targets for the missile and making a single-target spell into an AoE, because a "Spell mastery" system should be interesting, not just "Big number get bigger." Cost reduction might be all some spells, like your traditional insanely expensive but powerful Implosion, needs, though, or a reduction in the team-killing potential of certain spells (Say, Fireball and Armageddon reduce damage to the spellcaster's army by 33% per mastery level).
As long as the lower tier spell masteries (1-3) do unique and still useful things that helps low-tier spells scale into the later game via increased utility, that would be enough for me. The higher tier spells won't need to be as flashy when mastered, they should already be ridiculous at a baseline.
This thread is pages long: 
posted February 02, 2025 12:53 PM
