Mage guild "split"

[Dracco]

I thought I'd post this to spark up some new conversation about the mage guild specialization possibilities I thought up when I was bored. I'll start off by throwing out ideas how it could possibly be done, feel free to criticize and post your own ideas (my ideas are rough and need help with balancing). The main factors I will be using is the "opposing" element setup currently used in the game (example: ring of fire magic gives +1 fire and -1 water), and balance in combat situations.

I see 2 ways it could possibly be done. Specialization branches for the main four elements (fire/water/air/earth) OR all 8 of the elements. Either way, all of them get the same +1 meditation per level and +5% SP per level that the guild currently gets as well as all negatives in weapons.

The first four are pretty basic and straightforward:

Fire: +1 fire magic per level. -20 water magic upon joining. May cause unbalanced issues with armorsmithing.

Water: +1 water magic per level. -20 fire magic upon joining. May cause unbalanced issues with armorsmithing.

Air: +1 air magic per level. -20 earth magic upon joining.

Earth: +1 earth magic per level. -20 air magic upon joining. May cause some unbalanced issues with armor/weapon enchanters.

The trickier part that I had a lot of difficulty with:

Life magic: +1 life magic per level. -20 death magic upon joining, -20 FW upon joining. The balance issue here is that with +10 life magic, everyone will go life mage so they can actually be a fire/water mage and not have to train any life magic to cast resists. To balance this, I'm thinking -20 FW would have to be equal to 0FW (it won't reduce damage) and is there simply to reduce damage output of a life mage (making it impossible to effectively outtrain the -20 FW) and direct them towards healing and resisting by allowing them to retain all elements for casting resists.

Death magic: +1 death magic per level. -20 life magic upon joining. Having the potential for some very powerful instant kills and decent healing with vampire blade, I figured it'd have to be balanced by restricting the ability to resist. It could be argued that they should be given some sort of undead-esque abilities such as resistance to death magic or petrification.

Spirit magic: +1 spirit magic per level. -20 mind magic upon joining. This would be an interesting one to try, you could use the spell charging to charge wands as a good offense. May cause some unbalanced issues with armor/weapon enchanters. No ability to self cast mana shield, but many newer mages I see don't use it anyways.

Mind magic: +1 mind magic per level. -20 spirit magic upon joining. No ability to self cast mana shield, but many newer mages I see don't use it anyways.

[igorith]

Please don't tell me that earth is opposed to air. I screwed up my character really bad and only got one chance to fix him for cheap (the 10 year anniversary) and if that's true then I just messed him up again.

[Dracco]

I wouldn't worry about any of this affecting you in the near future. It was an idea tossed around a long time ago and I wouldn't be surprised to not see it implemented until 2023. Plus you could always be a water, fire, or spirit mage and gain free points in those while retaining no negative to earth or air. If you want to make a good air+earth mage you can always ask me for advice when the game comes back up, I'll help you out.

[Sergano]

The way you have it, these specializations have to have an extra fee to join them, otherwise they're just giving away free (and very potent) skill points.
I was thinking that, if implemented, the specializations would be something included in the original 100,000 that you pay to join, in which case the different classes would have to have way more negatives to be balanced, assuming they'll still be getting the extra mana and meditation from leveling up as a member of the mage's guild.

For fire:
+1 fire magic every other level, +1 evocation every other level, -10 enchantment, -15 water magic, -10 incantation (not sure about this one), +1 death every other level (both types of magic cause some form of destruction)

For water:
Same as fire except for the obvious reversals, and maybe +1 life magic every other level instead of death magic?

For death:
+1 death magic every level, +1 conjuration every level, -20 life magic... ok, nevermind, the way this is gonna end up is just like the conjurer's guild, lol.

For air:
+1 air every level (not every other, no ball spell to abuse it with, and air has more of a mix of damage and utility), +1 life magic every other level, no arts negatives, -15 earth magic, -5 fire and water magic (maybe you'll want to train through it for the other goodies, make a weird potpourri mage)

And of course, each specialization will only get xp for killing monsters using the element they're specialized in.
The other elements I don't feel deserve their own specialization or don't have enough spells to make use of one, unless they wouldn't penalize fire and water magic too harshly upon joining them.
More ideas to come.

[Morwen]

@Sergano: Those are EXTREMELY heavy penalties. It'd be better off for the mage not to specialize simply to stay viable.

EDIT: I also find the negatives and positives in the OP to be extreme as well. With the penalties listed specialization in the guild would be a severe nerf to mages rather than a benefit.

[Sergano]

Well, you can't just have "fire" mages running around throwing around blizzards and frost waves, that's just silly. I also wanted to capture an RP feel to all of it, where the specializations are kind of like cults and the opposite type of magic would be shunned or something like that, same way paladins give a large death magic penalty.
There's no point in letting fire mages use water magic to any degree, and doing it for the sake of "viability" is a poor justification; these mages would still be perfectly playable, their resists to the opposite element would just suck, and that's not as big a factor for mages as for other classes (as mana shield is still on the table for any specialization, or just buy a damn resist scroll like the rest of the classes in the game lol).
The arts negative may be a bit extreme, maybe tone down both to just -5, but I stand by the fact that there have to be a lot of negatives to justify the positives. Other possibilities of negatives are maybe -5 strength or a decrease in total health (sacrifice-type RP element).

[Morwen]

I disagree. I do not think they would be viable at all.

Fire is one of the elements that is most strongly resisted by monsters, followed by cold.

You would also be destroying the ability of any resist mages to do their jobs properly. They would NEVER be able to resist anyone thanks to the heavy negative in echantment and the inability to adequately resist the two most common elemental attacks. Healing would also be out of the question.

And WHY is it silly to be casting fire and water spells together? Heck, there's a spell that uses both elements!

[Sergano]

The whole point is you're specializing to be a fire mage, not a resist mage. If you want to be a resist mage, then don't specialize.
And you're not supposed to resist every element perfectly, definitely not when you're specialized into a magic-specific part of the guild.
Are you trying to say that mono-element mages don't work?
And yes, I forgot about firefrost, but that's a single case. Definitely not a reason to throw fire and water specializations out the window lol.