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Good day to you ladies and mentlegen at DakkaDakka.

I have made an alternative way of resolving magic in 8'th and I wanted to share it you. These changes to magic will make magic scale much better, improve the incentetive to include more low-level wizards in your army and casting more but weaker spells.


1. Resolve number of power and dispel dice

Roll for winds of magic: The casting player starts the magic phace by rolling 2d6 dice. The highest die determines the number of power dice, and the lowest die determines the bonus to a wizards casting result. When the dice is rolled, don't pick the dice up, It's good if you can refer to the dice, if you should forget them.

The shared power pool: The casting player gains the same number of power dice in his shared power pool equal to the highest number shown of the winds of magic. Every wizard can use power dice from the shared power pool. Only three power dice may be used to cast a single spell

The personnel power pool (channeling): Wizards also get there own pool of power dice which only the wizard who channeled them can use. To see how many power dice the wizard channels, he rolls a number of dice equal to 1+wizard level. The number of dice which rolls 4+ is added to the wizards personnel power pool.

For example, a level 2 wizard channels worth of 3 (1+2=3) dice. He rolls a 1, 4 and 6. This will give a total of 2 power dice, since three dice rolled 4 or above, which only he can use. In addition he may use any number of power dice from the shared power pool (he may still only take 3 dice from the shared power pool to cast a single spell).

The shared dispel pool: The dispelling player gains a number of dispel dice equal to half the total number of the 2d6 winds of magic.

Channeling dispel dice: The armies wizard are also able to generate some dispel dice for the army to use, this however is a bit harder than actually producing power dice itself, since it's easier to harness magic than disrupting it. The wizard must roll a number of dice equal to 1+wizard level. The number of dice which rolls 6 is added to the shared dispel pool.

For example: An army with a level 3 and a level 1 wizard is going to generate dispel dice. First the casting player rolls for winds of magic and he rolls a 2 and a 4 adding them together gives 6. The dispelling player gets 3 dispel dice, since the half of 6 is 3. Now it's time for channeling dispel dice, and since he has a level 3 and a level 1 wizard he may roll 6 dice (1 + 1 + 1 + 3 = . He rolls 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, and 6. Since he rolls 1 six he adds 1 dispel dice to the shared dispel pool for a total number of 4.

2. Cast

When the winds of magic and the channeling have been resolved it's time for the casting player to cast spells with his wizard(s).

Choose number of power dice: When the spell and the target have been decided the caster must choose how many power dice much be used to cast the spell. A minimum of 1 must be chosen, and the wizard may never choose more than 3 dice from the shared power pool. A wizard may maximum use 6 dice to cast a single spell.

Casting value: All the power dice used are added together, and then add the lowest die from the winds of magic. This bonus from the winds of magic can't exceed the wizard level, however. If this value equals of exceeds the spell's casting value, the spell is cast successfully (though it might get dispelled by the opponent). If the total of the unmodified dice does not equal 3 or more the spell fails automatically.

Broken concentration: If the wizard's spell doesn't succeed in casting a spell the wizard's concentration is broken. The wizard may not add the lowest die from the winds of magic to his casting result for the rest of the phace.

Irresistible force: If a wizard rolls more than two unmodified sixes when determining his casting result, the spell has been cast with irresistible force. This means that the casting result is doubled for that spell, but the wizard is also subject to a miscast. This may be avoided as described below

Miscast: If the wizards cast a spell with irresistible force he must roll 2d6 and refer to the miscast table.

Avoiding miscast and irresistible force: Potiential wizards may try to avoid an irresistable force and a miscast. A wizard may roll a wizard test (which equals 4+wizard level) to avoid an irresistable force or a miscast. If he succeds the spell is completed normally without a miscast or irresistable force. If he fails roll a d6. 3-6 the spell is cast with irresistable force and a miscast as normal, 1-2 the spell fails, but the wizard still suffers a miscast

3. Dispel

Choose wizard: The dispelling player choose a wizard to attempt the dispel. If no wizards can attempt the dispel or the dispelling players chooses so the army can attempt the to dispel the spell. Any wizard on the dispelling player's side battlefield can be chosen to dispel the spell. The dispelling player then decides the dispel power of the wizard. A wizard has a total of dispel power equal to his wizard level. The chosen dispel power is added to the dispel result. A wizard can be norminated to dispel more than once, but he can never add more to dispel result than his wizard level through the enite phace. For example a level 4 wizard may add +3 to one dispel attempt and a +1 to another dispel attempt.

Choose number of dispel dice: Any number of dispel dice can be chosen from the shared dispel pool.

Dispel value: When the wizard and the number of dispel dice has been chosen, the dispelling player rolls all the chosen dispel dice and add them together with the chosen dispel power of the wizard.

Example: The dispelling player nominates a level 3 wizard and 3 dispel dice to dispel the opponents fireball spell, which scored a 13 on it's casting result. He chosses to only add +2 from the wizards power, since he want to use the +1 bonus for a later spell in that phace. He then rolls the dice and add them together for a total of 12. This is not enough to dispel the fireball spell, but since he gets a +2 for his wizard, he then gets a total of 14 and there by dispels the spell.

Dispelling with irresistible force: If the wizard rolls more than three similar unmodified dice when determining his dispel value, the spell has been cast with irresistible force. This means that the dispel result is doubled for that spell.

Dispelling when the army have no wizards: If the army has no wizards, the army gets +1 to all the dispelling attempts.


Spell resistance also protects against hexes.
Level one and two wizards may roll d3s instead of d6s when rolling for spells.


Please comment

EDIT - Missed a bit of your post. Forget I said anything.

I don't know if that will reduce the number of high level wizards, or increase them.
Let's say I've got a pair of level 4's. (say, Grey Seers with a pair of 13th spells)

On a magic phase of 4,4 (fairly average), I've got 4 power dice in the shared pool, and I channel 10 dice, needing a 4+.
That's going to give me ~9 power dice or so, and both wizards are casting with a +8 to cast.
That makes the big spells a hell of lot easier to get off.
Now, previously I'd need a total roll of 21+ to get off the big nasty spell. Now it's a 17+.
The reduction in base power dice looks like it helps, but really, with so many armies with bonus dice (slaan, power of darkness, mushrooms, warpstone tokens), all that is really happening is that you're gaining another +1 to +4 to cast that big spell.


I think what you need is two things.
1) All wizards, regardless of level, channeling 3 dice. This would make multiple wizards more viable, as you can get a lot more power dice out of less points with level 1's.
2) Have MR give a chance to nix hexes. Any unit targeted by a hex that has MR rolls it's MR. On a roll of it's MR or less, the unit is unaffected. This roll is resolved after all other dispel attempts.

So more wizards gives more dice, but MR has been improved to help counter a lore of shadow spam list.



-Matt

Hey Matt, I think he said up there that the bonus can never exceed the caster's level, not that they are added together. So a lvl 4 caster can get AT MOST 4 pts of bonus (if the lower dice happened to roll that high) or, more likely less, which the lower of two die most likely will be. So his rules, if I'm reading them right, really do reduce some of the benefit of taking a high level caster vs taking more low level casters. The fact that all casters automatically get at least 1 power die also makes more casters better than 1 good one.

4 1st level casters (1 or 2 die each) gives you on average 6 more die. 1 lvl 4 caster (1-5 die) gives you on average 3 more die.


I think the rules do what they are supposed to do actually. But I think the net effect is to strengthen the magic phase overall so races that depend on it will get more benefit than other races. This changes the balance of the game somewhat.

What would you do about dwarves?

I don't know if that will reduce the number of high level wizards, or increase them.
Let's say I've got a pair of level 4's. (say, Grey Seers with a pair of 13th spells)

On a magic phase of 4,4 (fairly average), I've got 4 power dice in the shared pool, and I channel 10 dice, needing a 4+.
That's going to give me ~9 power dice or so, and both wizards are casting with a +8 to cast.
That makes the big spells a hell of lot easier to get off.
Now, previously I'd need a total roll of 21+ to get off the big nasty spell. Now it's a 17+.
The reduction in base power dice looks like it helps, but really, with so many armies with bonus dice (slaan, power of darkness, mushrooms, warpstone tokens), all that is really happening is that you're gaining another +1 to +4 to cast that big spell.


I think what you need is two things.
1) All wizards, regardless of level, channeling 3 dice. This would make multiple wizards more viable, as you can get a lot more power dice out of less points with level 1's.
2) Have MR give a chance to nix hexes. Any unit targeted by a hex that has MR rolls it's MR. On a roll of it's MR or less, the unit is unaffected. This roll is resolved after all other dispel attempts.

So more wizards gives more dice, but MR has been improved to help counter a lore of shadow spam list.

You don't get your wizard added to your casting result, but the bonus from the winds of magic are capped by wizard level. Maybe I formulated it bad, sorry about that.
The idea about giving MR to hex spells (or all spells to those you wish), seems like a great idea. MR is really underpoweredm, so it could need a buff.

Edit: Added the SR change to my main post. Great idea!

4 1st level casters (1 or 2 die each) gives you on average 6 more die. 1 lvl 4 caster (1-5 die) gives you on average 3 more die.

No, the average is 4 dice. A 1st level caster channels from 0-2 dice, not 1-2.

What would you do about dwarves?

All armies with no wizard gain a +1 to all dispel attempts (maybe this is to little?)


I also tried a game with a friend with these changes, and it seemed rather balanced. More spells did go off, but the spells was also weaker. So more spells overall, but fewer powerfull (15+ or above) spells was cast. That is good
Low level wizard was quite good in this version, though not so good that a higher level wizard wasn't worth it.
I still need to play more games with it, before I can say if this system is really balanced.

Thanks for the comments