Being a Mage, Part 1

Now that I'm done with introductions and gloating about my possessions, we can get to the heart of the thing; how does the GM of OMG define "Mage".

The Mage, as I see it, consists of the three mage skills and their synergy skills; Magery, Necromancy, and Spellweaving. Despite having spellbooks, Ninjistu, Bushido, and Chivalry are not Mage skills and will only be addressed as extra/supplemental skills. Since Paradise allows for all skills to be GM'd, I will talk about a lot of other useful skills to a Mage, most especially Poisoning and Parrying/Bushido.

Before we get into skills, a word (or thousand) about stats: The base total stat cap on UOPF is 300, and there's a powerscroll for 325 available at Paradise Mall for 25K. You can also donate for a 340 stat cap. I donated and encourage serious players to do the same, but everyone can pull the 325 cap and I assume in this that they will. Individual stats cap at 150, and items/spells can push any one stat to a max of 300.

STATS

- Intelligence is your bread and butter. 150 it, period. Every 10 points of Int is 1% spell damage that does not count against your SDI bonus cap. Beyond that, it's far harder to get Int on items than it is Str; the SC max for Str is 20 while Int is 16.

- Dex at minimum or at 80. The only reason for 80 dex is to make Parrying/Bushido most effective. At less than 80 dex, you suffer a penalty to your block chance of
Dex Mod: (80 - dex)/100
Final block chance: Base * (1 - dex mod)
Dex over 80 gives a dex mod of zero. Thus, as long as you maintain 80 dex, you have your full chance to block. The importance of this depends on how much you plan to use Harm or Poison (both benefit from close range). Reaching 80 dex through items also counts, and I recommend it; curses use your base stat in their formulas without item/spell bonuses; if you have 40 base dex, few creatures will knock off more than 4~6 dex, so pulling another 50 dex in items gives you a good buffer against curses to keep your Bushido/Parry going.

- Strength is obviously vital, but far less so than to a warrior. Without the Extreme Backpack, you can easily get enough strength to carry your gear *and* allow for the full 400 stones in your pack. Using GM/GM Spellcrafting, I threw 59 Str on my jewelry without much effort. If you're going for base 80 Dex, take the points from Str; with Str and HP bonuses, you can handle the hit.


Skills

I'm going to try to just gloss over the core skills here. At a later point, I'll cover some of these skills more in-depth as well as some of the more important secondary skills.

- Magery and Eval Int: These two are the most vital (and where the Mage gets it's name). It gives you access to the most basic 64 spells in the game. Magery skill works as your chance to cast. At 0 skill, you have 50% chance to cast 1st circle. At GM skill, you cast everything 6th circle and below at 100%, 7th circle at 75%, and 8th at 50%. Few important spells depend on Magery for their effects; healing, curing, poison, poison field, and Mind Blast use Magery directly.

The rest of what you need works off of Eval Int. Damage spells, bless, and curses all benefit from high Eval. When you're looking for power scrolls for these two skills, give priority to Eval Int. It's effects on a spell are applied first and is the most important.

- Necromancy and Spirit Speak: These two work in the same way as Magery and Eval; Necro determines chance to cast, Spirit Speak impacts effects. There are 16 Necro spells, but only a few will be of much general use. In the hunt for power scrolls, I would probably rate Spirit Speak power scrolls at about the same priority as Magery and Necromancy just below.

- Spellweaving: 12 (of the 16) spells here are live on UOPF, and there are really only a few that you'll want to concern yourself with. Spellweaving is an underwhelming skill for a number of reasons, one of the biggest being that even with the little Faster Casting it takes, the cast times are still very long. This makes things like Word of Death even harder to use in the heat of combat. It's also a skill designed with the idea of a group of people working together to get a high powered crystal. I've never gotten a +6 crystal, so the damage I've seen these spells do has been poor. It does have a few high points and is worth getting to GM. Very low power scroll priority, though.

- Meditation: As long as you're wearing no, leather, or mage armor, you'll have a significant benefit to your mana regen rate. This is a vital skill, and thankfully it will GM without much effort. It also has an active use that increases your regen rate further, but that's generally not necessary. The mana regen rate formula is very complex, but meditation takes into account your intelligence in it's part, and later impacts the benefit of any Mana Regen item bonuses you might have as well. Under Eval in power scroll priority all the same, but definitely worth grabbing if you can.

- Focus: Meditation-light. It has no armor restrictions but also doesn't benefit from intelligence in anyway; it's simply a flat rate bonus to your mana regen (and also stamina). Focus also impacts the benefit of MR Items.

- Magic Resist: No where near as vital as it once was, but somewhat important still. It no longer reduces direct damage, but it does lessen the effects of curses, both Magery and Necro, and is checked against Poison spells. You'll likely wind up with just 70 resist most of the time; base GM skill minus the 30 penalty for using Protect. Another 'grab it if you can' power scroll skill.

- Wrestling: Perhaps more important than Magic Resist. Wrestling is your basic defense skill. Anytime a creature attacks you in melee while you're unarmed or holding a spellbook, it compares against your Wrestling skill; the higher you have, the better. Against some custom creatures it simply won't matter since their skills are so high, but against things you'll want to hunt for cash, such as dragons, poison and blood elementals, and demons, as well as their Terragon forms, you'll have at least a decent shot of avoiding blows with GM or better Wrestling. Power Scroll priority varies based on how often you choose to get close for Harm and Poison.