So I've been thinking about this lately as I have pondered the thought of rolling up mages. Thinking to myself what if I can't find my sleeks.. if I spend all the time on a voker and my locs suck... did I really just waste all that time.

Let's be honest here, to really compete against the big dogs you've gotta have em. So here is what I have come up with.

First we junk the sleek wand system. Wands are annoying to find and gather and I don't think anyone will argue with me there. I'd be for junking the entire wand system, but I suppose limiteds can be intergrated somehow.

Second we remove detect artifact and replace it will a lvl 30 type shield spell. Gain it the same way detect artifact is thru obs/exp XP. So when you reach the threshold you learn your lvl 30 shield spell equivilent. Now this is where I can see two different ways of going about this. This can be your one damage reduction spell or the beginning of a series of three. Either way the premise would be the same. Let's say that when you learn it, it comes in at 70%. At that point it would give you a 70% effective shield spell. As your skill goes up it reaches full shield power at 100%. This spell could not be spell learned and would ONLY go up skill while you are fighting someone that is targetting you. Probably not as hard as evade to learn but not as easy as something like dodge either.

Here you can really go two ways as well. You can set lvl limits like we have now for detect artifact working, and allow mages to get the new spells when they reach them... or if you just had one it would add the the dam reduction value of the next spell in line (aura in this case) at the current spell percentage. So if you were at 83% then when you reached say... lvl 42... you'd have damage reduction equal to 83% shield and 83% aura. So on for barrier. If you decided to make it three spells... then you could do it like an inkover mastering his spells. This would allow you to remove level limits on these spells since only the people who fight a lot would have the spell high enough for better dam reduction. Much like other mechanics in the game it gives longer lived chars more power potential as would be expected of an older and well experienced magi.

In addition, you could further link spell improvement to obs/exp XP and get the occasional improvement like lore and improved compare. Not enough to take you from 70-100 or anything, but helpful percents here and there.

If someone has posted something similar to this I didn't try and steal your idea. I was just brainstorming last night as I leveled my umpteenth mage to 10 and said... do I really want to have to go thru the whole wand thing. My answer was no, not really.