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According to current rules each player or team has it's own power pool of dice that are used to cast the spells. It consists of 2d6 dice and additional ones that each wizzard generates on a roll of 6. This is system does't work when you play 5000 point game and you deploy 4 wizards which all need to use the same power pool. So if you cast one very powerfull spell, then you often whan't have enough dice to cast two more weaker spells. Another problem occurs when you play a 2v2 with your friend. As you both share the same power pool, you often disagree which spells to cast( Everyone wants to cast his spells). If you divide dice equally then you will not have enough to cast single powerfull spell.

Option 1. Let each wizard have his own power pool. A wizard would generate d6 + his power level casting dice every turn. He would generate d3 + his halved power level rounding up dispel dice.

Option 2. Keep the current power pool.Let multiple wizards combine their power( allow them to cast each spell together). So if there would be lvl 4,3 and lvl1 wizards casting one spell, the casting total would be the sum of their lvls, in this case 8 + the sum of the dice roll. Dispel could work in the same manner.

What do you think of it . I'm open for criticism, but appreciate if you give the solution for the problem instead.

The rules tend to cease to apply, or have practical meaning, in larger games. A good example I use was in 5th edition 40k, before they introduced the double FOC.

The rules aren't designed for games of such a size, and hence don't deal with situations like them. In such a game, you have to take matters into your own hands, and create a system that works for you: you can't expect the rules to decide things for you in that kind of game.

When we play large games, we normally just use the Storm of Magic system.

You could use the current system, but double the dice at 3k points - the same place that rare allocation etc doubles. PD = 4d6, DD = the two highest. This gives more potential power without vastly increasing the power of offensive magic.

"Doesn't work" implies that it should scale. Which means at, say, 2500pts you get 2D6 and 1500 you get 1D6 and 1000 you get D3 etc.

OR, it means you're not supposed to have eight lvl 4 wizards regardless of the point value of the game.

Just cuz you have 10 more mages in an area doesn't make it any windier. It seems to me Winds are a finite bucket that each mage draws from (and that's the way it is played). An entire mage, regardless of lvl, has the ability to siphon off one extra die rarely. But they all draw from that same bucket. Even the enemy does with their dispel dice. If it's not snowing, having 100 people with snowboards won't change that.

A combat lord is a combat lord regardless of point levels. In a 2500pt game he was a lot more powerful than in a 5K point game at least % wise and what he has to do to stay alive. He's all of a sudden surrounded by masses of Monstrous Cavalry and bored Giants with nothing better to do than shove him down their pants. But those guys don't scale up either--unless you buy more stuff.

Most augments, hexes and many DOOM spells apply to the entire unit, regardless of size. So those already scale. Magic Missiles get screwed.

The problem occurs when someone deploys 4 wizards at a 2000 point game. That's why I ask you how do you like my options that I presented. If winds of magic are finite or infinite is contentious question. Just because game mechanism makes them finite does't mean their finite, it's just a system.

Magic is arguably too powerful now. If you can simply add more and more mages and have clutches of 2D6 dice to throw, the game will be over after the first magic phase of 4D6 mages decides to rain hell on the enemy.

Likewise, massive games tend to not have a corresponding massive number of units but more larger units. And they will die just as certainly to a Dwellers or other doom spell. Which means they are scaling.

It would be like at if 3K points every wound caused by every source was turned into 2 and at 4K points every wound was turned into 3. It makes big games go faster, but just play a smaller game if you want that.

Not having enough dice is the balancing factor in the game.
Combining casting is bad. The game has enough wizards in it now, letting them combine is just giving bonuses to armies with the cheapest wizards (goblins). At also avoids issues with spell generation when you get all the level bonuses regardless of who's casting.

The first idea might work if spells got re-worked.

-Matt

I agree that the easiest thing is just to bump up the number of dice for big games, but the other place the scale doesn't really work is in small games. At 1,000 points or even up to 1,500 you often only see a Lvl 2 on each side, and then with so few spells to cast you just throw a pile of dice at each, while the other player basically picks one to throw all the dispel dice at.

It's only really with Lvl 4 casters, or multiple casters that you actually start choosing which spells to cast, and the other player starts making some good choices about which spells to cast. When you don't have the points for that there's too many dice for the spells.

I guess you could solve that by reducing the power dice, perhaps rolling two dice, the casting player gets the higher die, the dispelling player gets the lower die.


And then at 3,000 points or more you could move to three dice, with the dispelling player getting the hghest die +2. At 4,000 points you could go to four dice, with the dispelling player getting the highest and third highest dice for dispelling.

I like big games more when you don't bump dice.
Magic does enough damage. Having a back up wizard gives you something to do if your main caster dies. Having them both work at full power gets crazy, as they both can focus on the same target and erase whole units.
Keep dice as is just means that you get the same power level as a normal game, it's just more likely to last through the whole game.

Besides, you don't really want to face the zombie invasion with 3 power dice vs 2 dispel dice (ok, so these 15 wizards all cast invoke; that's 150+ zombies a turn).

-Matt

Or double Slann with all +1 die to cast. Or Death or Tz or Goblin. You can start generating a LOT of power dice and then it's like 7th again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and some items were designed with 2d6 in mind. Wand of Whimsy, is going to instantly make a LoC a god. So will Blue Scribes. WoC and DoC lore attributes will go nuts. Not to mention the DoC winds only works at all under 2D6.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Besides, you don't really want to face the zombie invasion with 3 power dice vs 2 dispel dice (ok, so these 15 wizards all cast invoke; that's 150+ zombies a turn).

-Matt

Yes, but adding 150 zombies to a 5,000 point game is only on scale with adding 75 zombies to a 2,500 point game. It's actually with armies like Vampires that the issue becomes most obvious - when you need the buffs provided by casters to make your troops effective, then scaling the game up so you have more and more troops and more casters but only the same number of casting dice means you hit a point where your list's effectiveness just doesn't scale with the points anymore. While in lower level points games your casters are more effective because there is a greater surplus of power dice to fuel their spells.

I agree with Duke and Sebster.

Rather than create new rule mechanics such as combining spells/dispels with multiple wizards (as cool an image as it is) I would just go with adding more power and dispel dice in larger games.

How about D3 +level for each wizard (with dispel dice just being the wizard level) but with the option for other wizards to channel magic to an ally. So for example lets say your level 4 rolls a 3 so ends up with 6 dice. He wants to cast a big scary spell and needs more dice so his apprentices lend him strength, to do this they "wager" dice from their own pool. Apprentice 1 is level 2 and wagers 2 dice he rolls both and gets a 2 and a 5. You could say that you need to roll equal or less than your magic level to channel to an ally so the level 4 gets 1 out of it with the other being lost to the winds of magic in the transfer. Apprentice 2 is a level 1 and wagers 3 dice rolls them and gets a 1 a 3 and a 6 losing 2 and giving the level 4 a second channelled die.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:
How about D3 +level for each wizard (with dispel dice just being the wizard level) but with the option for other wizards to channel magic to an ally. So for example lets say your level 4 rolls a 3 so ends up with 6 dice. He wants to cast a big scary spell and needs more dice so his apprentices lend him strength, to do this they "wager" dice from their own pool. Apprentice 1 is level 2 and wagers 2 dice he rolls both and gets a 2 and a 5. You could say that you need to roll equal or less than your magic level to channel to an ally so the level 4 gets 1 out of it with the other being lost to the winds of magic in the transfer. Apprentice 2 is a level 1 and wagers 3 dice rolls them and gets a 1 a 3 and a 6 losing 2 and giving the level 4 a second channelled die.

I would take my full hero allowance as Lvl 1 Bright Wizards, and just have every single one of them cast the signature fireball spell every turn, with as many dice as they rolled for their winds of magic. In a 4,000 point game I'd have 15 wizards casting fireball every turn. And then I'd have a master wizard using up the actual winds of magic to cast whatever I wanted on top of that, and I'd have a crazy number of dispel dice to just shut down the other player's magic phase entirely.

Basically, this is the problem when power dice directly scale with the number of mages you have - when mage offers such great bang for your buck then there's no reason to not simply take as many mages as you can get your hands on. Having the power pool give a hard cap, so that whether you have 1 mage or 5 mages you're still dependant on 2D6 power dice puts a hard cap on magic and makes players take other stuff as well.

And yeah, that means as games get bigger then magic doesn't scale with it, there's still only 2D6 power dice. But that's why, when playing bigger games, just make the power dice pool bigger.

Different armies are balanced differently in terms of wizard levels. DoC, for instance, has their lvl 4 wizards cost like 500 or so points. While greenskins can field vast number of wizards if they wanted.

You can't base it on models because Wizards and levels aren't individually balanced among armies. The power pool is.

If an army needs to have lots of power, like TK, they often give them abilities and units to gain power dice. Caskets of Souls and Heirotitans, etc. VC can get master of arts and that coven throne or whatever.

It doesn't scale perfectly of course.