SFR, Inc.

[willpell]

An old pet peeve of mine - it's pretty obvious that when TSR designed Magestorm, they didn't exactly go out of their way to reduce the amount of the product players would have to buy. The reason I say this is the Magic Items; other than the ones which produce magic points, their color distinctions are completely arbitrary. If you play nothing but Dwarves and the Magestorm pack you open up contains a very nice magic item that doesn't happen to be Red or Gold, you're boned. Whereas if you've been collecting for a long time and have a huge supply to choose from, your decision of whether to equip your Dwarf with a Red Vorpal Blade or a Gold one is basically meaningless. This is particularly an issue for the Amazons, since they can use any magic item and thus have little specific reason to use any particular one, and for Undead for the opposite reason - anything but black magic items are useless to them, so an undead player is disincentivized to buy Magestorm at all since he will mostly get dice he can't use.

So I've had an idea to try and correct for this problem - introduce an "element surge" spell that any army (or perhaps just Amazons, but that doesn't really help the whole problem) can cast with any color, or perhaps only with a color matching the item being imbued (the latter is more flavorful, but wouldn't work if the spell was made to work on all items carried by an army, which I think might be better than targeting individual items). For some period of time after the casting, the item is imbued with special properties which are flavorfully tied to the element, so suddenly the choice of whether your Goblin's shield is Earth or Death becomes very significant indeed. Magic-producing items are unaffected by this effect, since their color already matters.

I'm not up to generating a full list at this time, and anyway the capabilities of a Fire Sword or an Air Arrow should be fairly obvious. So here are my ideas for some of the more peculiar combinations, and I'll flesh the list out at some point in future. These probably aren't very balanced and some of them may just be dumb, so feel free to chime in.

Fire arrow: "Tracer" When an army containing no units larger than the arrow performs a missile attack, they may target a nonadjacent terrain. Results other than those of the arrow are halved, rounding down.

Earth arrow: "Spawnshot" When this arrow is rolled during an action other than missile, it may recruit a 1-health unit from your DUA for each melee rolled. Larger units may not be created this way.
(Note: I miss the original version of Animate Dead, so this is a nod to the idea of common units being the only casualties you could spare. Healblade originally had this same effect, but I diversified them a bit.)

Air Arrow:

Water Arrow: "Cloudpierce"

Death Arrow: "Sniper" When the containing army rolls for magic, roll this item. If more than 1 missile is rolled, target an enemy unit with health less than the number of missile rolled. That unit must roll its ID icon or be killed.
(Happens during magic since that's how you get a "target lock" in fantasy worlds where the telescope hasn't been invented. I tossed in the ID save for power level and fairness reasons; I figure monsters make big targets, while normals are possible to occasionally miss.)

Fire shoe: "Hotfoot"

Earth shoe: "Standfast" When opposing an enemy maneuver roll, multiply the carrying unit's maneuver results by the health of this die plus one. This does not apply during your own turn.

Air shoe: "Cloudleap" When the containing army rolls for maneuvers, you may move a unit capable of carrying the shoe out of that army to any other terrain.

Water shoe: "Waverider"

Death Shoe - "Ghostwalk" When the containing army rolls for saves, you may roll this item. If you do, you may remove a unit that can carry the shoe from this army. Place it and the shoe in the dead unit area. At the beginning of your next turn, you may return the shoe and a unit capable of carrying it from your DUA to any of your armies. If no unit in the DUA can carry the shoe at that time, bury it.
(Note: A unit capable of carrying the shoe will often be LARGER than the shoe, which is a problem as it means the 3-health shoe will often fail to find anyone in the Ghost World that can put it on and bring it back. I may have to reverse this for potency reasons, but for now I'll keep the elegant solution even if it means you frequently have your Skeleton step out wearing Speed Slippers and come back as a Vampire.)

Fire sword: "Forge"

Earth sword:

Air sword: "Throwblade"

Water sword: "Healblade" When this sword is rolled during an action other than melee, it may promote a unit from your DUA for each melee rolled. 1-health units may not be created this way.

Death Sword - "Dragonslay" Damage rolled by this sword during a dragon attack is both subtracted from the dragon's saves and inflicted as damage. This has no additional effect if the dragon rolls Belly.

Fire Shield:

Earth shield: "Stonesmash" Before the containing army rolls for melee, choose a unit to wield this shield and roll it. If the result is normal melee (not SAIs that count as melee), multiply the damage by the number of saves rolled on the shield.

Air shield: "Intercept" When a unit in this army is targeted with a spell or SAI which calls for a save roll or inflicts damage, roll the air shield. If the number of saves rolled is at least as great as the unit's health, the unit saves without rolling; otherwise, roll the unit normally. If the unit ordinarily could not save against the damage, this shield can save it.

Water Shield: "Surfboard" Maneuver results of units in the containing army cannot be reduced as long as the unit is no larger than this item.
(This was my original design for the Earth Shoes; I may move it again later, as the Surfboard effect feels like it ought to work like the current version of Earth Shoes, but on offense instead of defense. Suggestions welcome on where this effect ought to go, unless it's simply pathetic and best abandoned.)

Death Shield: "Dreadsign" When this army attacks, roll the shield during the melee roll; the saves it rolls are deducted from the opponent's roll for the purpose of routing. (If routing is not being used in this game, deduct the actual saves instead. This should encourage players to learn the routing rules!)
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Designer of Hybrid Dragon Breaths, the Enchant Element spell, new colored Dragonkin Breaths, and various homebrew races and dragons. If you want to know where to find them...good luck, I don't remember anymore.

[willpell]

Okay, the above set of designs are flavor-rich, but not precisely easy to memorize. So I will try and work up a second set that's much easier to figure out, and see which one I like better. Since I originally figured the spell that would do this as being for Amazons, my initial plan was to leave out Death, since while Amazons are techically allowed to carry death items they really shouldn't, since they're basically the opposite of undead. So for now, a simple 4x4 grid that ought to be easy to memorize (at least the first two concepts are; I haven't figured out how to proceed with the rest).

Earth Shield - "Impervious" Double this shield's save results.

Fire Sword - "Flameblade" Double this sword's melee results.

Air Arrow - "Windseek" Double this arrow's missile results.

Fire Shoe - "Hotfoot" Double this shoe's maneuver results.

Air Sword - "Windslice" Roll this sword during missile attacks as if it was an arrow.

Fire Shield - "Heatshield" Roll this shield during melee attacks as if it was a sword.

Earth Arrow - "Pathcutter" Roll this arrow during maneuver rolls as if it was a shoe.

Water Shoe - "Sidestep" Roll this shoe during save rolls as if it was a shield.

Water Arrow - "Mistflight"

Earth Sword - "Grandcleave" All melee icons produced by the sword are instead Smite icons.

Fire Arrow - "Blazetrail" All missiles produced by the shield are instead Bullseye icons.

Water Shield - "Absorb" All saves produced by the shield are instead Wild Growth icons.

Air Shoe - "Farleap" All maneuvers produced by the shoe are instead Teleport icons. (Note: This requires Teleport to be reclassified as an SAI available to units, as it only exists currently on monsters. We'll have to rule that rolling X teleport icons on the shoe enables the shoe and a unit of health lower than the number of teleport icons rolled to move. Aside from the identical Firewalking, the only other icon I can find which affects maneuver rolls better than plain old maneuver is Wayfare, but since the rare Shoe already produces Wayfare icons, it would kind of suck to convert all the shoes' icons to Wayfares.)

Water Sword -

Earth Shoe -

Air Shield -

I wanted to make it a different element per object per category of effect, such as doubling or converting, but it just seemed to appropriate for fire to double both speed and deadliness; what else would flaming sandals or a blazing sword do? The name Mistflight is leftover from when a similar pattern conflict briefly forced me to make the counts-as-maneuvers missile item Water under the theory that it turned whoever fired it into a cloud of mist and then dragged them to a new location as the arrow flew; making it a Pathcutter earth arrow is noticeably less dumb, though still somewhat so, and I may end up abandoning this particular combination altogether.

Edit - I've added three more abilities which convert the item's icons to a more powerful SAI related to the icon, which I think is really interesting because it means that SAIs normally only found in quantities of 3 or 4 can turn up once on a magic item roll. Now, allowing a Flicker Foil to produce up to two Smites might be a little strong, but for now I'm going with it. Note that I haven't chosen a Shoe at the moment because I can't think of a maneuver-related SAI that does anything other than count as an additional roll, which would be too similar to the existing conversion items; what I'd like is probably something similar to Vanish, but based on maneuvers rather than saves. I'll have to check the icon list to see whether such an ability exists; Teleport sounds right but I don't recall what it actually does.
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Designer of Hybrid Dragon Breaths, the Enchant Element spell, new colored Dragonkin Breaths, and various homebrew races and dragons. If you want to know where to find them...good luck, I don't remember anymore.

[DEEPBLUEB2]

First I would like to comment on your ideas...
I too have had onslaughts of ideas for SFR...and they do listen,
however they have to keep the game rules and balance of the game in retrospect to the players.
So this is a rather complex idea.
I think it shows your imagination, and willingness to expand concepts.

BTW I'm not an official SFR rep.

Ok second...
Magestorm from what I understand is not being printed anymore...
so the distribution of colors per box is really a non issue.
If you want certain colors...
they can be obtained thru trade sites..getting exactly what you want.

I happen to love Magestorm, but find that not too many players use it.

So even if you were to expand the rules,
the majority of player will probably keep to their race armies.

Now what I suggest...
this would be an excellent Game Variation.
rather than incorporate these concepts into standard play.

I have suggested many ideas to SFR...
and they have chosen a few...
so don't hold back...
but don't get discouraged either.

[willpell]

It's true that Magestorm is in the past (I'm not sure I would have wanted to post this if it was something SFR had done, as nakedly critical as the first sentence was), but my point stands - if all the non-magic 4-siders had been printed on ivory, the game would have played exactly the same except that you wouldn't have the random screwage of opening a Vorpal Sword that doesn't match the colors you prefer to play.

So I'll work on this idea some more, and if SFR ever takes an interest, great. (If I read the forum rules right, I've already granted them some sort of non-exclusive in perpituity license to use this post as they see fit and all, though since they're actual people and not corporate drones, I assume they would prefer not to invoke this clause and just have it there to cover their butts liability-wise.)

The distinction between variation and standard play is moot in my point, and anyway we are in the variations forum. I may eventually call this an official house rule if I become sufficiently fond of it, but for the nonce it's a work in progress and no more.

PS, would love to hear specific opinions about my work to date. What sucks? What's neat but needs streamlining? Do you think I ought to worry more or less about the structure on Version 2 (since that's intended to be the "fits conveniently inside your brain" version so you don't need to carry a rules printout around and refer to it every ten minutes)? Feel free to share your observations.
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Designer of Hybrid Dragon Breaths, the Enchant Element spell, new colored Dragonkin Breaths, and various homebrew races and dragons. If you want to know where to find them...good luck, I don't remember anymore.

[DEEPBLUEB2]

Ok I get your concept better...
let's look at the ivory dragonstaff.

Just as the White Dragon has in the rules ..that a Dragonstaff cannot summon it...
the ivory dragonstaff may have in it...the it cannot summon an ivory dragon...rather it can summon dragons that match the terrain color.

Now you could make it the other way...
have the ivory dragonstaff summon an ivory only...and not the terrain color...
or you could make it very powerful...
and allow the ivory dragonstaff to summon and ivory dragon..or any color that matches the terrain.

SFR really wanted to keep the ivory dragon as a "no way to move it" dragon.

So the rule that an ivory dragon cannot be summoned (dragonstalves have no effect on ivory or white dragons)...as the rules already state,
would cover the fact that even though the dragonstaff is ivory...it can only summon the colors from the terrain.


Fantasy Concept

[chuckpint]

SFR has no current plans to make Magestorm again. We are however, planning on releasing parts of Magestorm in different ways. That's about all I can say on that right now.
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You can never have too many dice.
First Place at the first ever Daemon Dice sealed starter tournament.
Battlefest tied for first GenCon 2012
Single Race Champion GenCon 2008-2009, Sealed Box Champion GenCon 2007,2009,
My collection is 21,500 Dragon Dice, 20,000 Daemon Dice, and others (too many to count).

[willpell]

[willpell]

Completed and probably more or less final version of the "simple" magic item power rules (the more complex ones are probably best put off until I can offer cards or something with them written up for reference, and if I were to go to that much work, I could eratta any dice in the game as I saw fit, with the only limit being how many cards I wanted players to juggle - since all this is very invasive for the player and a lot of work for me, I'm in no hurry).

"Enchant Element" - Amazon spell. Cost: 6, any color, targets an army with at least one Amazon and at least one Magical Item, other than Magic-producing, Artifact, or black. These are known as "qualifying items". Each qualifying item gains powers based on its icon type and color for the spell's duration. The spell lasts until deactivated; deactivation occurs when your army at the terrain no longer contains at least one Amazon unit and at least one qualifying item.

There are four types of effect that can affect these items, as determined by the item's element:
* Fire items simply double the rolled result of every non-SAI face on the affected die.
* Air items do double duty, being rolled and converted during a second type of roll.
* Earth items have their icon results "enhanced" into a related SAI, which is resolved exactly as that icon functions when rolled on a die.
* Water items interfere with enemy rolls; when an opponent rolls for the listed type of result, you may roll the Opposing item and deduct the number of icons it rolls from the enemy result. (If a rare unit rolls an SAI during this opposition roll, ignore the SAI's effects and subtract 3 from the enemy result.)

Fire Shield - "Blademelt" Double this shield's save results.

Fire Sword - "Flameblade" Double this sword's melee results.

Fire Arrow - "Blazetrail" Double this arrow's missile results.

Fire Shoe - "Hotfoot" Double this shoe's maneuver results.

Air Sword - "Windslice" Roll this sword during missile attacks as if it was an arrow.

Air Shield - "Keenedge" Roll this shield during melee attacks as if it was a sword.

Air Arrow - "Bowflight" Roll this arrow during maneuver rolls as if it was a shoe.

Air Shoe - "Leapclear" Roll this shoe during save rolls as if it was a shield.

Earth Sword - "Grandcleave" All melee icons produced by the sword are instead Smite icons.

Earth Arrow - "Magnetshot" All missiles produced by the arrow are instead Bullseye icons.

Earth Shield - "Absorb" All saves produced by the shield are instead Wild Growth icons.

Earth Shoe - "Quakestomp" All maneuvers produced by the shoe are instead Tremor icons. (See below.)

Water Arrow - "Cloudpiercer" Opposes an enemy maneuver roll made at this terrain.

Water Sword - "Deflection" Opposes an enemy missile roll made at this terrain.

Water Shoe - "Battlegrace" Opposes an enemy melee roll made at this terrain.

Water Shield - "Refract" Opposes an enemy magic roll made at this terrain.

TREMOR - This is a new SAI which I've made up to fill the lack of an appropriate candidate elsewhere in the game. Its effect is: "During a maneuver or counter-maneuver roll, Tremor generates maneuver results. After the maneuver roll, the opposing army's owner chooses that many health worth of its units to immediately flee to reserves".
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Designer of Hybrid Dragon Breaths, the Enchant Element spell, new colored Dragonkin Breaths, and various homebrew races and dragons. If you want to know where to find them...good luck, I don't remember anymore.