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Currently I find the difference between a level 1 mage and level 4 mage too minimal. What does it help to know more spells but not have the necessary dice to cast them? I don't think a big adjustment is needed though.

I have a proposed rule to improve higher level mages' channeling abilities and thus increasing the power and dispel dice pool depending on the level of your mages. The rule is that for every level, the chance of channeling is improved by 1 as the mage has more experience controlling the winds of magic. Thus a level 1 channels on a 6+, level 2 on a 5+, level 3 on a 4+ and level 4 on a 3+. A Mage with the channeling staff's roll will still require 1 less to channel. Thus a level 4 with a channeling staff will channel on a 2+.

This is a slight adjustment but I believe it will be enough to add to the desirability of a higher level over a lower level and remove some randomness from armies that rely more heavily on magic.

I do think there needs to be some differentiation, but i don't think it needs to be +1 for every level. Level 1's and 2's should channel on 6+, Level 3's and 4's on 5+ perhaps.

The desirability for higher level mages comes from their bonuses to casting and more importantly dispelling, not channeling.

If a level 4 with a chanelling staff channels on a 2+ using your rules then the magic phase would be blown out of proportion. I think I like Alexs way of lvl 3 and 4s channel on a 5+.

The idea of mage levels is more about how many spells you know. It doesn't necessarily mean they can channel any better or worse. If it was -1 to channeling for every mage level above 1 that would be unfair because if you bring a lot of wizards you will end up with so many dice and get the MAX amount of dice much more often.

it would also create some really broken combinations.

Slann with Harmonic Convergence and the Channelling staff would be channeling on a 2+ with 3 dice for example.

It won't break the magic phase, remember you only get 1 additional die per wizard. 2 level 4's can at most result in 2 additional dice.

As for the harmonic conversion + channeling combo: That's kinda the idea, Lizardmen are supposed to have some of the best magic but they pale in comparison to Tomb Kings. Casket adds +D3 dice alone and it's not nearly as expensive as a Slann which is probably the most expensive caster for what it can do. Elves and Empire have characters that add 6 to casting, why can't the Old ones favourites not have a decent combo? I can't tell you how many times OnG and Ogres have completely dominated the magic phases because of winds of magic.

This is a small adjustment to a rather large problem.

if you are implementing this rule specifically with Slann in mind then you're going about this the wrong way. This creates a number of broken combinations that can be abused by several armies. You aren't simply bringing Slann up to par with other casters, you are giving other races the potential to stay ahead of you.

For example...
Beastmen taking the Herdstone.
OnG's spamming cheap casters. Also I think the Catchweb Shrine on an Arachnarok enables better channeling?
WoC having access to their own item which improves channeling ability. Meaning they could take both it and the Channeling staff and get two extra dice reasonably reliably... and I'm sure there are a number of other combinations that can be used that I haven't listed here.

The winds of magic are meant to be fickle. It's a game rule that actually represents the nature of magic in the Fantasy world really well. OnG's have access to 2 lores, but depending on whether the caster is an Orc or a Goblin they are excluded from one. Ogres have access to 3 lores if I am not mistaken. Slann have access to all 8 rulebook lores and their own native lore (which has a very handy lore attribute). They also have access to some brilliant powers that don't even count towards their magic item allowance. You can't possibly claim that the Slann don't already have access to some 'decent combos' of their own.

Like I said, I agree that there should be some channeling bonus for higher level mages, but +1 per magic level isn't necessary.

I agree with Alex 100% on this one.
You can't make the rule for just 1 army, but it Lizardmen already have great magic.

Heh. Channeling is actually a way of getting people to use more, lower level wizards, as opposed to a single, high leveled wizard.

You may not see it, but Lvl4 Wizards are hugely powerful. They have an important bonus to both cast and dispel and that extra roll on the lore chart not only means an extra spell, but a higher chance to get the spells you want.

The only disadvantage of taking a Lvl4 over the equivalent points in Lvl1s is that you have less chance to channel. If anything, you should be making channeling so that it lends itself to multiple, low level wizards, rather than the other way around.

I sort of agree with Shadow. It should be viable to take lotsa mages. Right now, having a bunch of combat heroes in many cases is better than a single big Lord. Because you can spread out LD and put some magic weapons here and there and add some heavy hitting.

That's not nearly the case with Wizards. The bonus to each cast is so significant, it easily outweighs a maybe possible die. +4 on every single cast roll vs. +1 is like 3 bonus dice a round.

People aren't taking a ton of lvl1s for channeling. They won't have the spells they want and won't be able to cast them. And usually, the lvl1s are heroes with sucky magic item allowance. People take lvl1 heroes in addition to caster lords if they got the points.

Making caster Lords even better just means the heroes are fairly worthless except as scroll caddies, a potential channel, and to get the sucky spells so the good ones are left to the Lord.