How would you make the Trinity of Magic more relevant?

[Von Ithipathachai]

Of the two primary Triangle systems seen in Fire Emblem (the Weapon Triangle and the Trinity of Magic), the Trinity of Magic is probably the less useful of the two mainly due to the facts that (1) the vast majority of magic-wielding classes strongly emphasize Resistance over Defense and (2) most players would prefer to use magic users to fight low-Resistance enemies such as Knights, Wyvern Riders, and their promotions.

So I have a few ideas for how the Trinity of Magic can be buffed to give it a stronger impact, seen in the poll above.  I'd like to see which ones you think are the best.  The above two options are what I'm planning to do for my Sanctaea Chronicles game.

Getting rid of it is not an acceptable answer, though.  The entire point of this thread is to discuss how the mechanic can be improved and getting rid of it does nothing to improve it.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Von Ithipathachai

[Icelerate]

My idea is that different element of magic should grant bonuses against an enemy that is hiding in a certain terrain. For example, if an enemy is in a forest, fire mages will do more damage and have higher accuracy. On the other hand, lightning mages will do better damage with better accuracy if the enemy is in water. 

[Hanes]

How about just more maic users so it sees more use?

[Dr. Tarrasque]

15 minutes ago, Critical Sniper said:

How about just more magic users so it sees more use?

This would be the first step. The Trinity of magic has the same numbers as the weapon triangle so fundamentally it is the same thing but in the overall picture it is simply not as relevant because the enemies in that spectrum just aren't as common.

After that, maybe adjust the hit rate on the weapons a bit if the game's RNG is to be 2 RN or the hybrid that Fates uses.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Dr. Tarrasque

[NobodiePichu]

diversifying the weapon pool for magic might help, have some more spells that do unique things in there so that the trinity has more spells to play off of.

[Slumber]

Diversifying the base stats of the classes would go a decent way of making it relevant, and that's what I voted for before seeing remembering the argument that's been brought up:

There just needs to be more magic representation in the game's roster, both on the player side and the enemy side. Having a small handful of magic users on the player's side to combat the odd enemy magic user who is guarded by a wall of physical meat shields just encourages using physical units. Chapter 17/18 of FE7 is a pretty great representation of how Fire Emblem could/should be more often. That's a chapter that allows for your brand new Monk and Shaman to shine(Pun not intended) as they pick off the Dark Magic focused boat while your physical units deal with the other two boats.

[Mandokarla]

The identity of each form of magic should be expanded upon. We have hints of this in the GBA Light - Dark - Anima triangle, where light is faster but almost always has some crit, dark is gimmicky but strong, and anima is consistent. However, due to balancing issues, one has always been the standout over the rest. In FE7, with the exception of Luna, Anima magic is just better. It's more consistent, which is all you need in a game full of weak as hell enemy units. In Sacred Stones, Light stands supreme because of the monster-heavy second half, and Bishop's slayer. Now, these advantages are due to the games less than the magic triangle itself, which is the problem.

I agree with everyone that says that magic users should be more prevalent in the franchise to make the magic triangle more relevant. I also think we should better clarify each form of magic. Double down on the crit nature of light tomes, make dark tomes (aside from maybe basic flux) have some form of additional effect at the cost of accuracy -- due to the described (in supports) nature of dark magic as chaotic and hard to control, and have Anima magic fall in the middle, no crit stats on tomes, no special effects, etc. However, unless the classes that use this triangle are properly adjusted, most players will still primarily use Anima because of that same consistency -- assuming every playable mage from each part of the triangle is equally powerful. 

Alternatively, we could take the Tellius approach, and have each class of Fire, Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark tomes have a unique effective-against bonus. Someone above mentioned terrain-based bonuses, which I think is an interesting idea, BUT it will inevitably shaft a class of magic if one of the target terrains is less prevalent than the others. With the Tellius effectiveness, we could have Fire affect beast units (not horses, that would be far too powerful) if relevant, lightning affect dragons, wind affect fliers, light affect monsters, and dark be a gimmicky mess like always. This of course also comes with a mess of balancing issues, again based on enemy unit diversity. It also requires a net nerfing of the might of almost all tomes. 

No matter what happens, for the love of god do not go back to the Fateswakening removal of the magic triangle. Especially in fates, with all tomes being "red". That was extremely stupid. 

I feel like the easiest/laziest way to adjust the weapon triangle is to just copy the normal one. Light = Swords, Anima = Lances, Dark = Axes. Then copy the traits more clearly, where light weighs nothing and also doesn't have much might, make Anima consistent, and make Dark heavy and hard hitting. Maybe in the future certain kinds of tome effects would be totally locked to certain parts of the triangle. Make anima the only part of the triangle with Seige tomes for example, or something. There are a LOT of ways to address this, and all of them have problems. 

[Von Ithipathachai]

8 hours ago, Mandokarla said:

I feel like the easiest/laziest way to adjust the weapon triangle is to just copy the normal one. Light = Swords, Anima = Lances, Dark = Axes. Then copy the traits more clearly, where light weighs nothing and also doesn't have much might, make Anima consistent, and make Dark heavy and hard hitting. Maybe in the future certain kinds of tome effects would be totally locked to certain parts of the triangle. Make anima the only part of the triangle with Seige tomes for example, or something. There are a LOT of ways to address this, and all of them have problems. 

I've also done this in my game.  It makes no sense that Light Magic is both weaker and heavier than Anima Magic.

In my game, each magic type has a tome with a relatively unique effect.  Absorb, a Light Tome, is the only one that absorbs targets' HP.  Storm, an Anima Tome, is the only siege weapon in the game.  Death, a Dark Tome, is the only magical Killer weapon.  In addition, each of these has a Wo Dao-type user lock (Absorb is only for Monks/Bishops, Storm is only for Mages/Sages, Death is only for Shamans/Druids).

[NinjaMonkey]

16 hours ago, Mandokarla said:

I feel like the easiest/laziest way to adjust the weapon triangle is to just copy the normal one. Light = Swords, Anima = Lances, Dark = Axes. Then copy the traits more clearly, where light weighs nothing and also doesn't have much might, make Anima consistent, and make Dark heavy and hard hitting.

So what IS did in Radiant Dawn, then?

[Jingle Jangle]

I feel a good way to do it is to add different type of tomes, from siege to high change of critting ones. And increase the amount of enemy mages in the maps. But going in this direction will make low res units worse and Pegasus knights the best in the game.

[Mandokarla]

1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

So what IS did in Radiant Dawn, then?

Somewhat, but RD also had the same philosophy dedicated to the fire, wind, lightning triangle, which makes it all messier. In a simplified Light/Dark/Anima triangle, we could accentuate upon these differences. 

[NinjaMonkey]

26 minutes ago, Mandokarla said:

Somewhat, but RD also had the same philosophy dedicated to the fire, wind, lightning triangle, which makes it all messier.

Having a double magic triangle system hardly makes it messier.

[Hanes]

23 hours ago, NobodiePichu said:

diversifying the weapon pool for magic might help, have some more spells that do unique things in there so that the trinity has more spells to play off of.

Exactly, something like reaver magic tomes would help, maybe we can add one more special effect for tomes, since only dark magic is gimmicky something like Anima magic can do more damage if your opponent is on certain terrain like @Icelerate said; Fire could do +3 damage to enemies on forests and have +5 hit for example. Light magic could maybe be effective against "criminal" classes such as: Brigands, Pirates, Berserkers, Monsters, Thieves, bosses that are story-wise mega evil like not just enemies but cruel and others I might forget except for Shamans since they are already at ToMD. Dark magic could get just one more tome and what it does is it "entraps" the enemy so that they can't move on the next turn and it has a range of 3-5 or something (sPeCiAL dork megic rule: It weighs like a million lol).

Edited November 24, 2018 by Critical Sniper

[Mandokarla]

2 hours ago, Critical Sniper said:

Light magic could maybe be effective against "criminal" classes such as: Brigands, Pirates, Berserkers, Monsters, Thieves, bosses that are story-wise mega evil like not just enemies but cruel and others I might forget except for Shamans since they are already at ToMD. 

I actually like this idea -- the fantasy cleric archetype is both a healer and one who smites evil. Evil is not restricted to the inhuman, so getting a small bonus of some kind against those kinds of classes could be good. However, I think that concept would much more appropriately be implemented as a class skill and not a weapon attribute. I also think things like offensive Staves could be a cool new addition, treat them kinda like staves in FEH. Low as hell might, and completely outside the weapon triangle, but have a supplemental effect that triggers out of combat. Build chip damage like Savage Blow into a staff for example, or maybe aoe debuffs, or that movement lock ability you mentioned. 

[Hanes]

7 hours ago, Mandokarla said:

I actually like this idea -- the fantasy cleric archetype is both a healer and one who smites evil. Evil is not restricted to the inhuman, so getting a small bonus of some kind against those kinds of classes could be good. However, I think that concept would much more appropriately be implemented as a class skill and not a weapon attribute.

But isn't the tome a representation or a fraction of the god's/godess' power? If so they should be the effective but I guess it would be neater for classes to just have it.

[Mandokarla]

2 hours ago, Critical Sniper said:

But isn't the tome a representation or a fraction of the god's/godess' power? If so they should be the effective but I guess it would be neater for classes to just have it.

If that was the case, then any old shmuck who could read would be able to use the tome, which doesn't make any sense. It's one thing to know the stories and the miracles, it's another thing entirely to emulate them. Additionally, if every light tome had that kind of effectiveness -- effectiveness against classes that, due to their stereotypically evil nature, are very prevalent as enemy units in most FE games -- they would be either super overpowered (see: Sacred Stones w/ Slayer) or the might of the tomes would have to be even weaker to balance. Alternatively, it would require a LOT more effort on the map design front, because this effectiveness would need to be accounted for in potentially every map in the game. 

By contrast, if you lock it behind a class skill in the vein of Fates or Awakening, then the cleric/monk/priest would have to achieve a certain level of experience (or perhaps piety?) before they could shift from merely protecting the weak and healing, to actively crusading against evil. If you lock it behind ideally level 5 promoted (late enough to both keep up with enemy scaling, and early enough to actually matter most of the time), then the skill and tomes themselves can be allowed to be powerful.

A good example of how this could work is the specifically Awakening incarnation of Beastbane (in fates you get the skill earlier than I think is perhaps balanced in a vaccum, but the enemy phase nature of most of the game means that the beast units aren't optimal anyway, and therefore need that power earlier). Specifically in Awakening, your Taguel get it at level 15, because they don't promote / cap at 30, like your Manaketes*. You get this skill earlier than is fair in a vaccum, but if you use Panne often, like I tend to, you can somewhat easily get the skill 2/3rds of the way through the first arc of the game -- when the enemy has practically zero units that Beastbane affects. In terms of the timeline, the skill becomes actually useful in arc 2, right as a lot of cavalry units start to appear -- and this is about the time where you are starting to promote your units, and your earlier promotions are about to hit level 5, which is what I'm recommending for this kind of Cleric skill. This is also the point in time where promoted enemy stats start to become more than the Taguel can reasonably one-round, and as an offensive unit, that's necessary. Light magic users are famously weak in lategame combat, with few exceptions, so they would need that kind of effectiveness to continue contributing, but they cannot have that effectiveness early, because they will become a centralizing unit.

And as fun as they can be, centralizing or overpowered units like Seth, Camilla, Robin, Corrin, Pent, Milady, Niime, Titania, etc are not, in my opinion, good for a balanced and variable game experience. 

*I don't use Wyrmsbane as an example because it's too narrow for this kind of comparison -- it works on only one class line. I chose to use Beastbane as my example because it affects multiple class lines, without breaking the game (too much), and it's locked to the same level limit.   

[Hanes]

2 minutes ago, Mandokarla said:

By contrast, if you lock it behind a class skill in the vein of Fates or Awakening, then the cleric/monk/priest would have to achieve a certain level of experience (or perhaps piety?) before they could shift from merely protecting the weak and healing, to actively crusading against evil. If you lock it behind ideally level 5 promoted (late enough to both keep up with enemy scaling, and early enough to actually matter most of the time), then the skill and tomes themselves can be allowed to be powerful.

Or just make it something like Bishop FE8 Slayer skill, I think that would be better, Clerics and Monks would need to ptomote to get it, that wpuld be way simpler.

[Mandokarla]

1 hour ago, Critical Sniper said:

Or just make it something like Bishop FE8 Slayer skill, I think that would be better, Clerics and Monks would need to ptomote to get it, that wpuld be way simpler.

That would work, but I highly doubt we are ever going to return to that simplistic of a system again, barring Echoes games. 

[X-Naut]

Differentiate the magic types more and increase the weapon triangle mods for magic. If fire, wind and thunder are different enough then they can give mages a neat toy to get an advantage over one another and tip the dreaded mage vs mage matchup in their favor. This could be done without splitting up anima ranks, and in fact I think I'd prefer it that way.

Also I would consider just making Dark and/or Light magic triangle neutral if the anima triangle is present.

[Eltosian Kadath]

How about the obvious, give as many magic classes and units as the physical end of the spectrum. Honestly most games have like one class line for each branch of magic (and their distinguishing feature is usually just the magic they get) plus like one mounted one, where as there are multiple users of each physical weapon types, with variance on what class might get more than one, fliers, slower moving knights etc. With just one class per magic (and often just zero to two player units of each type) there just isn't enough variance for a magic triangle to feel relevant.