Posted 18 October 2004 - 07:47 PM
I'm all pro-mage. I love my mage. I'd hate for them to get weaker and I agree with you that they should be unique.
That is to say, unique ability-wise compared to other classes, not necessarily stronger than the rest.
Yes, they're physically weak but that's to be expected when you devote the majority of your time expanding your mind rather than hardening the body.
As it stands, mages can already do a lot of damage. People will complain that they can round any class (save berserkers) and even though I have yet to see this, this has to entale that mages at least have some kind of power.
Yes, they are hard to train (harder than the majority of classes if not all of them) but that's not really a bad thing. Give mage-trainers those obstacles to over-come so, in the end, you're left with the diligent ones. (Unless you're buying/selling characters, which is totally different and something I do not support at all... but that's besides the point)
Armour doesn't need to be made better nor can it get better. When you try to get a mage to wear a suit of metalic armour that weighs 120 lbs, chances are he/she won't be the happiest of campers. There's a reason why they are restricted to lighter armaments like robes and cloaks.
Mages will get better armour once they can actually wear it. They will only be able to wear it if they get stronger. To get stronger, they need to train their bodies harder. To train their bodies takes time; time that they need to master their spells. If you want to improve their armour then you need to increase their physical build which, in turn, decreases their ability as magic users.
I'd also like to point out that assassinate and smite will ignore most armour but not all of it. That means that if you have insane amounts of armour then even smite or assassinate can be rendered useless.
(If I'm right about this, anything with 200+ armour gives a character a 100% chance to block/dodge though you'd have to check with JLH about that)
I'm not sure what you mean about the mage vs. mage scenario since that kind of contradicts whatever you're trying to get across. If you increase one mage, the other one will increase. If you decrease the power of one mage, the other one decreases. Mages can fight fairly when pitted against each other; that's a given.
And so what if Druids can do extremely well against Mages? Mages aren't these godly idols - I'm sorry. There are bound to be some "kinks in the works" and this seems to be Druids more than anything. I have no problem with this. If it really bothers you so much, stop dueling druids.
Spells for mages are pricey but that's not really a big deal and neither is their expensive armour. God only knows how long/costly it must be to weave an entire robe from gold. And the teaching of a spell could take weeks, months or even years! Asking a guild-master to give up his valuable time to tutor you for a certain spell is surely going to add up in the end.
All in all, mages are pretty much equal with the other classes. They have their power, they have their high, spell-induce armours, equalled out by their low HP and limited mana supply.
If there is anything that needs to be given to mages, it's a wider range of spells/spell effects that would give mages a little more "flavour" rather than just keeping them as solely PK characters.