I thought the discussion we all had last week about bringing all the mages up to par was a very good one. A point was brought up that I thought was very good about how each school needed to be mostly self-sufficient so it can buy mostly in school spells, with some holes in its capability so it might want to buy some out of school spells. How big should these holes be? (Ideally, how many of their 120 SP should be spent out of school?) For each school of magic, what should their holes be?
I kind of think we need to shift away from the Magic the Gathering mind set where people tend to think of the different types of magic by what they are capable of. Instead, maybe we should think about the different schools by their weaknesses. Each school should be MOSTLY self sufficient but with a few glaring weaknesses that force them to delve out of school. When they do venture out of school there should be multiple viable options to choose from so that nobody has to take specific cards or ever delve into their weak school.
For example, Arcane currently has no way to heal it's creatures. It also has no way to buff it's creatures. It can neither increase it's creature's damage or increase it's creature's survivability. Perhaps that is how we should think of Arcane, it lacks creature support and has to venture out of school to acquire it.
The other major schools should have a similar crux, but otherwise be self sufficient.
I think it is also probably useful to say what a school is exceptionally good at. Below is my impression of what the schools are supposed to be bad and good at. Would love to see these fleshed out to where we think they are right now, and ultimately where they should be.
UnholyStrengths: Debuffs, Transfering Damage (and Conditions?)
Weaknesses: Protection / Buffs
LightStrengths: Healing, Condition Removal, Protection, Attacks vs. Nonliving
Weaknesses: Attacks vs. Living, Debuffs
ArcaneStrengths: Metamagic, Mana Generation
Weaknesses: Creature Modifications (Enchantments, Heals, Conditions)
WarStrengths: Group Buffs, Mobility, Ranged Combat, Attacks vs. Conjurations
Weaknesses: Metamagic, Mana Generation
NatureStrengths: Living Creature Buffs, Healing (Regeneration), Mana Generation
Weaknesses: Attack Spells
MindStrengths: Mobility, Creature Control, Defenses, Deception
Weaknesses: Ranged Combat, Some Metamagic
I think the use of something like this, is when we ask a question like: How does each school deal with a hostile enchantment? We begin to have answers. (This is just a hypothetical example.)
Unholy: Should have an enchantment/incantation to move a debuff (or stack of the) back on to an enemy. This follows their philosophy of helping themselves by harming an opponent.
Light: Should be able to remove harmful enchantments on own creatures, maybe with a face down preventative mode like Nullify as an option. This follows their philosophy of protecting their own people.
Arcane: Should be able to remove any enchantment since it is a core strength of the school.
War: Should not have an in-school enchantment removal since this is a weakness.
Nature: Should be able to remove an enchantment on living creatures. Almost as good as Arcane, but their core strength is dealing with magic on the living, not the nonliving.
Mind: Not really sure. I don't see how my current understanding of their flavor interacts with enchantments. It seems like it doesn't, so maybe they shouldn't?
Anyway, I figured if we had a good understanding of what the schools did or didn't do, there might be a nice fundamental roadmap to overall school balance and therefore mage balance.
