Anti-Magic Scaling

[Suno_Regin]

One idea that's been floating in my head is the concept of anti-magic scaling. This would be where for every few levels you gain in any way, your anti-magic skill also increases. It seems like it would make sense, since your knowledge of the Ways would also influence your knowledge of their weaknesses and ways to negate them into little to no damage. To make it simple, it wouldn't "tilt the scale" based on whichever Way you've trained, so that if you have 100 DW, you'd only know how to negate DW spells, but since inherently casting magic is all the same concept, you would have small knowledge on how to negate all of the Ways, and this would increase the more you train and the more diverse your magical abilities are. If you're a master of every single Way, then there isn't much training left to do in anti-magic, but if you've trained where you want to be with specifically DW or RW, let's say, then you could still go for individual training in just anti-magic for defensive purposes, but otherwise, these defenses would scale with how strong your offensive skills in magic already are.

[verden]

Thats pretty close to how I've thought about it. It looks almost like anti-magic should not be a separate skill unto itself, but that progress in any of the other ways would give you anti-magic progress in that way. The ways should have relationships between them that would indicate banes and bonuses. Example, Crystal and Dark ways probably can be said to oppose each other equally. So equal levels in Dark and Crystal casting against each other would have about an equal chance of negating each others spells. Dark and Red though? What about Dark and Azure? There should also be chances for spells to go wild causing unexpected results and possible damage. Example, so if Crystal and Dark are diametrically opposed in the ways, and a low-level DW spell is cast against someone with a very high CW, and the antimagic kicks in from the DW practitioner, and it not only nulls it, but backfires... then there might be situations where a spell could "explode in your face" so to speak. But perhaps the ways would have to be diametrically opposed in order for the event to be significant. So maybe if it was RW vs AW, the spell might just fizzle and produce a puff of steam if the anti-magic kicked in.

[Bonifarzia]

Probably interesting to review in this context:

Against what opponent did you try Animate Shadows? It has a save roll on Dark Way meaning that it will fail a lot of creatures that have a large Dark Way skill. Also what level are you in Dark Way?

Taste of Death has a similar save roll in which case only a fraction of the damage will be applied.

Greetings,

Thanks, Jorrit, that is indeed a valuable and interesting information. Please, allow me to comment on this.

Wouldn't it make more sense to take into account the concept of antagonistic and synergistic ways for things like save rolls and spell resistances?
From an intuitive point of view, it would make more sense to train the opposing way of magic and/or antimagic in order to resist certain kinds of spells.
Or is that just a simple, temporary solution to test the mechanics until antimagic will be available?
And most of all: Why do mobs that are supposed to be challenged in close combat not benefit from the existing resistance mechanisms?
If a creature has a very strong protection against physical damage, shouldn't it be protected against some types of magic as well?
I see great potential in this concept of resistances for putting things in better balance here and making the game experience much more interesting.

[weltall]

anti magic makes you impervious to magic: it means you can't cast it effectively either.

[Suno_Regin]

anti magic makes you impervious to magic: it means you can't cast it effectively either.

So it's more of a physical trait than a skill that you learn? That's interesting to know.

[Illysia]

anti magic makes you impervious to magic: it means you can't cast it effectively either.

  This will work well for one of my characters.