Ye Olde Inn

by **Zenithfleet** » March 20th, 2012, 9:08 am

Yep... it's me again :oops:

After making those EU Quest Treasure cards, I realised I had a couple of art assets left over from the NA game. Three staff images and a spangly cloak - that's enough for all four elements. Thought I might use them for new Wizard gear. Staves that chuck magic at people!

See what you think. Are the abilities good/bad/balanced? Are the prices too high? I just put them all at Plate Armour level for now (as they allow the Wizard unlimited range attacks).

Burning Staff
Incinerates opponents from afar

This staff allows you to attack anyone visible, or strike adjacent or diagonally, with one die. Roll an extra attack die if you have any remaining Fire spells. May not be used with any other Staff.
Cost 850 gold coins. May only be used by the Wizard.
WEAPON

Diamond Staff
Petrifies distant foes & hardens resolve

This staff allows you to attack anyone visible, or strike adjacent or diagonally, with one die. Roll an extra defence die if you have any remaining Earth spells. May not be used with any other Staff.
Cost 850 gold coins.May only be used by the Wizard.
WEAPON

Staff of Ice
Freezes enemies at range & grants vigour

This staff allows you to attack anyone visible, or strike adjacent or diagonally, with one combat die. Roll three movement dice if you have any remaining Water spells. May not be used with any other Staff.
Cost 850 gold coins. May only be used by the Wizard.

Robe of Dusk
Shrouds the wearer in illusory night

This cloak allows you to roll one extra die in defence. As long as you have any remaining Air spells, you may ignore spells cast on you. May not be used with the Cloak of Protection.
Cost 850 gold coins. May only be used by the Wizard.
ARMOUR

Am I correct that all three staves allow ranged attacks?

So basically, they are:
Staff + Unlimited Daggers +Special Power

Just the unlimited daggers is a nice boost for a wizard. Buying a constant supply while everyone else used free arrows that did 3 times the damage always bit.

Fire staff, I have no issue with at all. The 2 ranged damage (assuming I got that right) is the one thing that makes this better than the Wizard Staff Artifact. Seems worth the cost of saving back a fire spell. (I'd raise the price some most likely.)

Diamond Staff is definitely useful as well, although I'd rank it slightly less powerful than the fire staff since HQ usually values taking out baddies fast over all else. (1 range vs 2 range is a huge difference, and wizard should be minimizing opportunities to use the defense unless you add in range badguys.) The +1 defense option is nice though. This should be cheaper than the fire staff.

Ice Staff is the hardest to categorize. definitely useful. I'd probably never take it over the other two though.

Robe of Dust is extremely powerful. Ignoring spells doesn't come up that often, but when it does, it is a huge advantage. This has no downside when compared to the artifact robe from the standard game. I'm not a fan of that so much, as I like alternative choices vs Item A > Item B.

I'm not a fan of an expanded armory, but these are all nice artifacts in my book.

by **torilen** » March 20th, 2012, 6:20 pm

Me like.

As I understand it, if you use one of the special powers for each of these, you must have at least one of
the stated spell group...and those remaining spells are used up to use the special power, right?

Keeps the overpower down to a minimum. Good designs. May have to snag those in a document for future
use...should I ever find people to play again. (sigh)

by **Thrawn** » March 20th, 2012, 6:57 pm

torilen wrote:Me like.

As I understand it, if you use one of the special powers for each of these, you must have at least one of
the stated spell group...and those remaining spells are used up to use the special power, right?

Keeps the overpower down to a minimum. Good designs. May have to snag those in a document for future
use...should I ever find people to play again. (sigh)

Actually, I believe it's as long as I have a spell still uncast from a spell set, I can use the ability. For example, if I have the fire staff, I can cast my courage and fire of wrath, but as long as I hold onto my ball of flame, my flame staff will still function. As soon as I cast ball of flame, then I no longer get the bonus damage die on attacks.

A variation could actually be having to cast the spell to activate the item for the rest of the quest basically charging it by giving up a spell, and taking away the option to cast it later.

by **Zenithfleet** » March 20th, 2012, 9:42 pm

Thanks for the feedback everyone

Yep, all three staves allow ranged attacks. (Basically they let you zap people with magic.)

Just a note--there are actually no Daggers in the EU game, so the Wizard has no way to make ranged attacks (other than spells) and can only look with envy upon everyone else's crossbows. Which makes these staves even more powerful than they would be in the NA edition.

On the other hand, the basic Staff and Cloak that you can buy as equipment in the EU game are equivalent to the Artifacts in the NA game.

Thrawn, you're right about the Burning Staff probably needing to be more expensive than the other two, and the Ice Staff the cheapest.

The Ice Staff was the trickiest one to make - I wanted something Water-related and initially tried to come up with a healing ability, like using it on other Heroes instead of monsters to heal 1 Body Point, but it seemed a bit too powerful. Extra movement is actually an Air thing, not a Water thing (Swift Wind), but I couldn't think of anything else. Hmm... maybe using it on other Heroes can heal a Body Point on the roll of a black shield?

The Robe of Dusk is hard to balance for the EU game because almost no monster has spells until you get to Wizards of Morcar (the only other one I can think of is Balur the Fire Mage, who gets the Fire spells in that Quest). No Chaos Spells in that edition, unless you import the NA ones. Don't know if the mind-battle tokens in Ogre Horde count.

Thrawn wrote:Actually, I believe it's as long as I have a spell still uncast from a spell set, I can use the ability. For example, if I have the fire staff, I can cast my courage and fire of wrath, but as long as I hold onto my ball of flame, my flame staff will still function. As soon as I cast ball of flame, then I no longer get the bonus damage die on attacks.

Yep, that's how I pictured it. Thrawn, your alternative (powering up the staff by casting a spell at the start) would also work. On the other hand, I wanted to give the Wizard player a bit of a dilemma - should he hang on to one spell to keep his staff powered, or use it to get out of a tight spot?

EDIT: Thrawn, your comment about free arrows just gave me an intriguing idea... I tend to think the Crossbow is too cheap for its price. What if you had to buy a new quiver of arrows for it each Quest? (in the same way as paying to hire a Man-at-Arms / Mercenary?) That way you wouldn't need to raise the initial price.

by **cynthialee** » March 20th, 2012, 11:19 pm

I love the staffs. The robe is too powerful for my game table. All Fimir cast chaos spells at my table. So the robe would get ussed alot.

{As for the side comment on arrows Bolts for the crossbow. I issue a quiver of 20 bolts when the cross bow is first purchaced. Never had anyone actually use the full quiver. Either we quite playing or one of my pesky Fimir spell casters will Rust spell the guy with the cross bow, thus ending that PITA.}

by **Thrawn** » March 21st, 2012, 12:09 am

Zenithfleet wrote:EDIT: Thrawn, your comment about free arrows just gave me an intriguing idea... I tend to think the Crossbow is too cheap for its price. What if you had to buy a new quiver of arrows for it each Quest? (in the same way as paying to hire a Man-at-Arms / Mercenary?) That way you wouldn't need to raise the initial price.

I actually did that, and I don't think it hurts balance too much unless you make it too expensive. I think I only charged 25 gold per quest for arrows, which is the price of one dagger for the wizard in NA.