Jeff Martin wrote: As Incognito correctly pointed out 7 years ago, the MEC would come back to bite us in the behind. It has made Wizard Relic and Legendary design very difficult. I hate to do it, but I think it is time to nerf it.
So long as the old MEC is an ingredient for the Relic then most folks won't mind, and those who won't be making the Relic -- they can send it in for a free swap. The main issue as I see it (I could be wrong) is that we have a crazy matrix of all these different spell bonuses and extra spells possible that is compounded by the poorly designed MEC token.
So...let's start over from scratch and design all 3 tokens (MEC, Relic and Legendary) so that they all work together to give the Wizards some fun capabilities. I see Wizards as glass cannons. I want them to do the best damage in the game, but I want them to die the most of all the classes because of their weak AC and hp. With great damage comes the big drawback of you will probably die if you aren't careful or lucky.
So...give me your thoughts on how we can redo the MEC to coordinate with the Relic and Legendary (and all the crazy Cabal/Spell Storing/ etc. powers out there.
I appreciate your patience with me. I painted us into a design corner, and now we gotta break down a wall (nerfing MEC) to get to a good place. If it helps, I am open to redesigning the Wizards cards next week to increase spell damage there. It would be better to fix the game on the cards rather than with tokens. Let's assume spell damage is roughly doubled moving forward.
Assuming talking about both base and skill check and not just skill check, this sounds like overreaction. TD isn't just played at the "argument level". TD is played out of sealed packs a lot. When I played with no collection, I routinely had to murder monsters for the party due to the other classes not hitting where I always did my damage (of course, this burned me out of spells really fast). TD is played at rare levels, maybe even uncommon levels, got some UR levels, not legendary levels.
Yes, rare level wizard has a problem generating damage bonuses. This is much more a function of recent years piling on STR bonuses and melee damage bonuses to where others have gained while wizards would be pushed towards URs to build up spell damage.
Some damage push seems reasonable, but, unless the intent is to keep commons/uncommons/rares under control from a spell damage bonus standpoint while physical attackers have their plethora of bonuses, huge increases in spell damage seem like they would get out of line of weapon + dmg bonuses for those parties where players actually miss their slides. Again, rare level already looks like it has hit the point where to hit and damage bonuses have skyrocketed, so maybe I'm just imagining a different game than actually exists today.
MEC is bad design, I agree. It warps conversation because it's just assumed to be party of any wizard's build, which also means that Starhide (or Hat or Aron's) is assumed to be part of the wizard's build, which isn't terribly fair, either. But, trading hp for spell damage isn't specifically the issue as much as doubling is a terrible idea in games (where balance is a concern). Can just make it more like the Crazed Evoker's where trade like 5hp for +5 spell dmg and not completely rewrite what it does. Because, as we've seen, when change fundamentally how a token works, everyone has to spend a lot of effort recalibrating to understand the implications of the change.
My idea:
MEC = May cast 1st-2nd level spell as a free action but no another offensive action for combat
So, wait until combat is going badly or, alternatively, just stop playing for a while? This effect, which I think is too much of a departure from existing, would seem to make more sense as FA 0th/1st level spell [1/combat].
Relic = May cast spell as a free action (1/room) & Skill Check adds +12 pts (not +6) to spell
Legendary = As Relic & SC adds +18 pts (not +6) to spell & Retributive Strike
Retributive Strike = may break any Rare Wand to cause a massive out-powering of magical energy. All monsters in the room take 100 pts of Force damage. The Wizard takes this same damage unless she rolls an 6-20 on a d20.
I think you end up losing passionate types with relying entirely on skill checks for the damage increase. I've yet to understand how combat can usually last one round yet, at the same time, doing skill checks wastes too much time, but, apparently, it's a feature of someone's play that looks nothing like my play.
+6 for a skill check is already significant enough to incentivize doing them for some people while not being so large that everyone feels like they have to do them.
Instead of thinking about what I would want, since what I care most about is not important to most people, I was thinking about what I lose by relicing or legendarying. I lose Charm Necklace. While not the case, if we look forwards to when there will be tons of +2 dmg charms or even +3 dmg charms, I figured I would be losing the common currency of 6 dmg per spell. A relic that gives +6 to spells and something else puts ahead. Legendary at +more puts further ahead and whatever additional.
Retributive Strike is fine (conceptually). But, the single least fun thing about playing wizards is having spells nullified. I immediately lose interest in combat when my limited resource doesn't do anything, anymore. So, I'm hoping that a RS like effect cannot be countered in any way any more than gods can be. As for the wizard taking 100 damage 25% of the time, I don't know if it matters to me or not as it's on a legendary where really only Epic level play or possibly True Grind is impacted by these abilities.
