A new idea for magic scales

[Chris Byler]

On that other scale thread Saber mentioned that high magic scales provide diminishing returns - going from 4 RP to 5 is bigger than from 5 to 6 or 6 to 7. (The cost of a research point can be approximated as (commander's maintenance cost)/(commander's research ability) - of course this neglects pretenders, who have no maintenance costs, but usually have many other things to do with their time.)

I thought of an interesting idea for high magic scales to provide an appropriate, useful and cool benefit: magical talent. In provinces with a magic scale, magical talent pervades the populace, causing some mages to be born with greater than usual magical ability.

Whenever any mage is recruited (not summoned) in any province with a magic scale there is a chance (I propose 5% per level of magic) that he (or she, as appropriate) will be talented. A talented mage gets +1 power to one randomly selected path of magic he already has (after taking random picks into account). One-path mages (like Anathemants) will get a predictable bonus, and many-path mages (like Masters of Five Elements) will get an unpredictable bonus.

I've never been happy with magic scales only helping research and not helping actual use of magic. Talent would change that - a talented Anathemant Dragon would have more powerful fire spells, for less fatigue cost, and have access to spells his untalented brethren wouldn't. But even with magic 3, on average you would have to buy 7 AD (a cost of over 2000) to get a talented one.

Players with a strong magic scale would probably get some talented mages over the course of a game, but not very many. But players with no magic scale wouldn't get any.

Talent is the equivalent of a "free" empowerment - except that you can't choose whom to empower (if most of the mages you hire are sages, most of your talented mages will be talented sages) or in what path. Furthermore there is only a small chance of getting it and only when you buy mages (which are expensive to begin with).

So I think this is interesting, not too powerful, and adds an attractive advantage to the otherwise insufficiently rewarding high magic scales.

Now that I thought of this idea, I like it better than Saber's and my other ideas about extra gem income or reduced gem costs for rituals, forging, empowerment etc. It gives the talented mages more individuality, and therefore makes magic scales more interesting (as well as more useful) to play.

(Note: this wouldn't benefit Ashen Empire, Soul Gates or Carrion Woods much, since those themes summon more of their mages. Those themes seem to be powerful enough anyway.)