Magic Missile
Crystal Cost: 1 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 70; Antimage Bonus: +50%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 140; Antimage Bonus: +75%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 210; Antimage Bonus: +100%
Does Magic
damage to a single target enemy. If the target is considered to be a mage, the damage is increased.Magic Missile is your Soothsayer's bread and butter damage Spell in the early game. It's... basically directly inferior to Flaming Arrow, unfortunately. (Same base damage!) At the beginning of the game you're fighting a lot of stuff that's at least a little weak to Fire (Undead and wild animals), you're fighting a decent amount of stuff that's resistant to Magic (eg Necromancers, partially offsetting the anti-mage damage bonus), and instead of getting to occasionally inflict Burn you have a damage bonus that only occasionally applies and basically all the units it applies against are resistant enough to Magic that you're still behind (Many mages have 50% Magic resistance!) or are only a little bit ahead of targeting something that isn't a mage but isn't resistant to Magic either.
It's a little better once you start leveling it, but it's still usually not worth using over Flaming Arrow. It also takes so long to get around to Droids -which are still the only units in the game that are actively weak to Magic- that it's not like you're going to be regularly busting it out for Droids. By the time Droids do show up, your Spell list almost certainly includes better options for exploiting their Magic weakness, such as Rune Chain, so it's not even like how back in The Legend Fire Rain and Ice Snake largely shoved aside Fireball, but it was okay because they tend to take so long to enter your Spellbook that Fireball was still something you used extensively because it's plenty good, just not as good as they were.
So basically Magic Missile is largely a defacto nerf of the Spellslinging class, as the Soothsayer starts with Magic Missile instead of Flaming Arrow. (And the other classes will have to push through a minimum of one other Spell sphere to reach Rune Magic!) Basically the only reason to use it heavily/at all past the super-early game is if you decide to shoot for manually maxing Crystal Collector as a Soothsayer and so A: have it already and B: aren't necessarily willing to learn a better Spell to thus displace it.
And honestly, Crystal Collector just means you should grab a few essential Spells early on, not that you shouldn't acquire any at all. Displacing it with a competent damage Spell is absolutely worth slightly delaying maxing Crystal Collector.
Rune Magic has a bit of a theme of being anti-magic/anti-mage, and I do like the idea of it, but Magic Missile is one of the worst executions of the idea in Rune Magic.
Ice Snake
Crystal Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 130; Damage Adjacent: 20-60; Freeze: 10%, Bleed: 20%, Ice Heal: 50
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 275; Damage Adjacent: 45-125; Freeze: 20%, Bleed: 40%, Ice Heal: 100
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 420; Damage Adjacent: 65-200; Freeze: 30%, Bleed: 60%, Ice Heal: 150
Targets an enemy unit, inflicting Ice
damage to it and lesser Physical
damage to all adjacent units. The central target has a chance to be Frozen, while the units around the target instead have a chance of being afflicted with Bleeding. Friendly Ice Creations can be targeted to be healed, while enemy Ice Creations are un-targetable, but Ice Creations are not protected from the splash damage. Splash damage ignores Spell immunity.The actual numbers haven't changed any, but now it's mixed Physical/Ice damage, can inflict Bleeding, can heal Ice Creations, and (partially) ignores Spell immunity. (Oddly, it also no longer has guaranteed Freeze on Fire-resistant units) This is still pretty awful, unfortunately (It just costs too much Mana for its result, without being the best at what it does), and as you'll see Rune Magic has other options for bypassing Spell immunity, so even though it's been clearly buffed over the previous game it's still the case that if you want Ice Snake broadly viable you should go play The Legend.
That said, there are some niche situations where it can be useful, such as if you're fighting Spell-immune units before getting a hold of the other options. It's also one of a handful of ways to try to inflict Bleeding, and since Bleeding lowers max HP it's a way of improving the effectiveness of any non-percentile damage source, such as most Rage attacks. As such, it is a little better off than it was in Armored Princess, where it was very narrow.
Some oddities; first of all, you might notice I've listed Bleed chances as being higher than Freeze chances, when the game itself claims the opposite. This is because the devs mis-wrote the code so the game doesn't call the intended values, but the opposite ones. Whoops. A Soothsayer run is unlikely to notice or care -you can easily have the Intellect and Rune Magic rank to have both at 100% by the time you find an Ice Snake Scroll- but for Viking or Skald Olafs you're much better off fishing for Bleed than Freeze if you use Ice Snake at all.
Second, the Ice Creation healing is actually boosted by Creation, for whatever that's worth.
Third, Items can boost Ice damage on Spells, and in Ice Snake's case such damage boosts will apply to the Physical splash damage instead of the central Ice damage. Oops!
Fourth, Ice Snake now has an annoying display bug, where hovering Ice Snake over exactly one target provides the correct damage prediction, but if you hover over a second target the game will incorrectly predict damage as if the central target would be hit by both the central Ice damage and the outer Physical damage. This effect will occur no matter what you hover over and will persist even if you cancel out of using Ice Snake and click into it again.
Rune Chain
Crystal Cost: 6 / 10 / 16
Mana Cost: 5 / 6 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 50; Rune Scaling: +40%, Rune Limit: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 100; Rune Scaling: +45%, Rune Limit: 4
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 150; Rune Scaling: +50%, Rune Limit: 5
A single target enemy takes Magic damage. The damage can be increased by first targeting allies, consuming the Runes on them.
Note that Rune Chain will take all the Runes on an ally you target, up to its actual limit, but also note that if the first unit you target doesn't have enough Runes you can target additional allies. You also have no control over which Runes are taken, though it will tell you ahead of time what will be taken, so that's nice. Also note that the Rune scaling factor is 'linear': adding 2 Runes at Level 3 will double the damage, adding 4 Runes will triple it. Finally, note that the Rune scaling factor is improved by Creation; Level 3 Rune Chain backed by Rank 3 Creation adds +65% damage per Rune rather than +50%. So if you want Rune Chain as lethal as possible, you want Creation and Destruction both maxed.
Rune Chain is flatly inferior to Magic Missile if you're not taking advantage of the Rune scaling effect, but if you are taking advantage of it, it's the most lethal single-target Spell in the game (Ignoring Hel's Messenger being percentile), and for a shockingly low amount of Mana. It's particularly reliable in Ice and Fire, where the vast majority of units will gain Runes from leveling, ensuring that even units that lack the Runic Knowledge Ability will still start the battle with enough Runes to fully charge Rune Chain, but even in the base game it just requires a little more support. (Maxing Rune Magic to spread around Runes, wearing an Item that passes out more Runes, that kind of thing)
The one limitation on its utility is that Warriors of the North provides some truly amazing options for killing enemies en mass, such that vaporizing a single target for dirt cheap often falls to the wayside in favor of hitting everything all at once. On the other hand, for the Soothsayer you do want something cheap to cast due to Higher Magic, so it often is perfectly good as a first-Higher-Magic-cast, and hey the Soothsayer is the main class that does damage through Spells anyway, so really the whole thing works out reasonably well.
Winter's Dance
Crystal Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 45-65
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 95-135
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 145-205
Does Physical damage to all units in a circle, with the center being safe. Ignores Spell immunity.
Winter's Dance is a really awful Spell when it comes to raw damage output, but it's worth leveling it anyway because it's by far the least clunky/dangerous way of murdering Spell immune units with magic and also because its odd strike zone is surprisingly useful, particularly if you're fond of throwing a unit into the midst of the enemy. Soothsayers also appreciate that its cheap enough to be your first cast in a turn, if only because it gives them some more options in that regard. Fireballing Demons and dragons isn't exactly a great strategy, after all, due to their high Fire resistance.
Just don't make the mistake of thinking of it as a staple damage Spell. And don't get confused by the fact that you're conceptually attacking with ice: it's not Ice damage and it can't inflict Freezing. Look to Blizzard for that.
Sonic Boom
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 10 / 25 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 120, Blast: 1 tile, Shove: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 250, Blast: 7 tiles, Shove: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 385, Blast: 19 tiles, Shove: 60%
Does Physical damage to all units in the blast radius and attempts to shove them away from the center. Damage drops off by 20% for each tile away from the center, meaning 80% damage for adjacent tiles and 60% damage for two tiles out. Ignores Spell immunity.
That's right, Rune Magic has three ways to blow up Black Dragons and whatnot. Sonic Boom is the clunkiest of Spell-immunity-ignoring-Spells, but it's still easier to use safely than Death Star and its damage is respectable, so it remains usable.
Note that while the game claims Sonic Boom can Stun, this is cut functionality. Also note that the shove chance gains 1% per point of Intellect; it's entirely realistic to have the shove guaranteed by the time you're actually using Sonic Boom. The shove is... potentially useful? The shove mechanic's behavior is honestly a bit unintuitive, and circumstances generally conspire so you won't be able to hit all the enemies and achieve a useful push effect, so I tend to ignore the push effect and occasionally curse it.
Sonic Boom is terrible at Level 1 and limited in utility at Level 2, and even at Level 3 I tend to find it pricey and shunted aside by Blizzard as far as 'expensive but damaging' goes. It really is specifically fights involving Spell-immune units where I find it worthwhile to break out, and even then it depends on the exact distribution of enemy units and their placement.
Still, while it's more niche than you might expect, and I really think it should've been a bit cheaper at levels 2 and 3, it's got a place.
Blizzard
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 35 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-160, Freeze: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 160-320, Freeze: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 240-480, Freeze: 60%
Generates a 7-tile circle of a storm, which is spawned from a chosen location anywhere on the battlefield and travels in a straight line, hitting all units along the way for Ice damage with a chance to Freeze.
Blizzard is basically Evil Shoal, but way more awesome. (Except that it does respect Spell immunity) Unlike Evil Shoal, you can generate it right 'inside' units and impassible terrain, and since it's a 7-tile region centered on your target location you can actually catch units behind where you want to start it from and the like. While Evil Shoal expands into a 5-wide strike zone and Blizzard is just 3 tiles, meaning there's situations Evil Shoal could catch the entire enemy army that Blizzard can't, Blizzard is not nearly so prone to being blocked from great opportunities because of inconvenient positioning. The fact that it does Ice damage means it's mostly poorly-resisted and indeed it finally gives you a tool for murdering Demons with magic en mass, and being able to inflict Freeze is awesome because Freeze is so crippling an effect. Even if you're not a Soothsayer, it can be worth considering getting Blizzard maxed just so you have a way of doing mass Freeze fairly reliably.
For a Soothsayer, Blizzard is the final word on killing things. Once you've got Blizzard, all your other damage Spells are worthless or limited to specific situations. (Most obviously: Fire damage Spells remain relevant for dealing with Ice Creations) While its damage is fairly variable, its low roll isn't bad and its high roll isn't too far behind Death Star's while its targeting behavior is just way more convenient, and the high odds of Freezing things means that against oversized battlegroups it'll often end up doing more damage in real terms while also delaying the enemy reaching your army.
It's honestly one of the best attacking Spells in the entire series.
Hel the Messenger
Crystal Cost: 9 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 10%, Cap: 30%, Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 20%, Cap: 40%, Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 30%, Cap: 50%, Level: 1-4
A single living organic enemy within the Level range takes percentile Astral
damage. Plants are immune.
The 'cap' is the, well, cap on effectiveness at a given level. Awkwardly, the Spellbook prediction doesn't reflect this cap; your Spellbook is perfectly happy to predict 65% kills, when in actuality it will be properly capped at 50%... unless combined with Mark of Blood, of course.
And yes, Hel the Messenger scales with Intellect, unlike Soul Draining. In conjunction with the lower Mana price, Hel the Messenger is far, far more useful than Soul Draining was back in Orcs on the March. It specifically gains 0.5% of its base per Intellect; that is, with 20 Intellect you gain 10% more, in the sense that Level 3's base 30% rises to 33%, not in the sense of rising to 40%.
Rune Chain
Crystal Cost: 6 / 10 / 16
Mana Cost: 5 / 6 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 50; Rune Scaling: +40%, Rune Limit: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 100; Rune Scaling: +45%, Rune Limit: 4
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 150; Rune Scaling: +50%, Rune Limit: 5
A single target enemy takes Magic
damage. The damage can be increased by first targeting allies, consuming the Runes on them.Note that Rune Chain will take all the Runes on an ally you target, up to its actual limit, but also note that if the first unit you target doesn't have enough Runes you can target additional allies. You also have no control over which Runes are taken, though it will tell you ahead of time what will be taken, so that's nice. Also note that the Rune scaling factor is 'linear': adding 2 Runes at Level 3 will double the damage, adding 4 Runes will triple it. Finally, note that the Rune scaling factor is improved by Creation; Level 3 Rune Chain backed by Rank 3 Creation adds +65% damage per Rune rather than +50%. So if you want Rune Chain as lethal as possible, you want Creation and Destruction both maxed.
Rune Chain is flatly inferior to Magic Missile if you're not taking advantage of the Rune scaling effect, but if you are taking advantage of it, it's the most lethal single-target Spell in the game (Ignoring Hel's Messenger being percentile), and for a shockingly low amount of Mana. It's particularly reliable in Ice and Fire, where the vast majority of units will gain Runes from leveling, ensuring that even units that lack the Runic Knowledge Ability will still start the battle with enough Runes to fully charge Rune Chain, but even in the base game it just requires a little more support. (Maxing Rune Magic to spread around Runes, wearing an Item that passes out more Runes, that kind of thing)
The one limitation on its utility is that Warriors of the North provides some truly amazing options for killing enemies en mass, such that vaporizing a single target for dirt cheap often falls to the wayside in favor of hitting everything all at once. On the other hand, for the Soothsayer you do want something cheap to cast due to Higher Magic, so it often is perfectly good as a first-Higher-Magic-cast, and hey the Soothsayer is the main class that does damage through Spells anyway, so really the whole thing works out reasonably well.
Winter's Dance
Crystal Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 45-65
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 95-135
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 145-205
Does Physical
damage to all units in a circle, with the center being safe. Ignores Spell immunity.Winter's Dance is a really awful Spell when it comes to raw damage output, but it's worth leveling it anyway because it's by far the least clunky/dangerous way of murdering Spell immune units with magic and also because its odd strike zone is surprisingly useful, particularly if you're fond of throwing a unit into the midst of the enemy. Soothsayers also appreciate that its cheap enough to be your first cast in a turn, if only because it gives them some more options in that regard. Fireballing Demons and dragons isn't exactly a great strategy, after all, due to their high Fire resistance.
Just don't make the mistake of thinking of it as a staple damage Spell. And don't get confused by the fact that you're conceptually attacking with ice: it's not Ice damage and it can't inflict Freezing. Look to Blizzard for that.
Sonic Boom
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 10 / 25 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 120, Blast: 1 tile, Shove: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 250, Blast: 7 tiles, Shove: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 385, Blast: 19 tiles, Shove: 60%
Does Physical
damage to all units in the blast radius and attempts to shove them away from the center. Damage drops off by 20% for each tile away from the center, meaning 80% damage for adjacent tiles and 60% damage for two tiles out. Ignores Spell immunity.That's right, Rune Magic has three ways to blow up Black Dragons and whatnot. Sonic Boom is the clunkiest of Spell-immunity-ignoring-Spells, but it's still easier to use safely than Death Star and its damage is respectable, so it remains usable.
Note that while the game claims Sonic Boom can Stun, this is cut functionality. Also note that the shove chance gains 1% per point of Intellect; it's entirely realistic to have the shove guaranteed by the time you're actually using Sonic Boom. The shove is... potentially useful? The shove mechanic's behavior is honestly a bit unintuitive, and circumstances generally conspire so you won't be able to hit all the enemies and achieve a useful push effect, so I tend to ignore the push effect and occasionally curse it.
Sonic Boom is terrible at Level 1 and limited in utility at Level 2, and even at Level 3 I tend to find it pricey and shunted aside by Blizzard as far as 'expensive but damaging' goes. It really is specifically fights involving Spell-immune units where I find it worthwhile to break out, and even then it depends on the exact distribution of enemy units and their placement.
Still, while it's more niche than you might expect, and I really think it should've been a bit cheaper at levels 2 and 3, it's got a place.
Blizzard
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 35 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-160, Freeze: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 160-320, Freeze: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 240-480, Freeze: 60%
Generates a 7-tile circle of a storm, which is spawned from a chosen location anywhere on the battlefield and travels in a straight line, hitting all units along the way for Ice
damage with a chance to Freeze.Blizzard is basically Evil Shoal, but way more awesome. (Except that it does respect Spell immunity) Unlike Evil Shoal, you can generate it right 'inside' units and impassible terrain, and since it's a 7-tile region centered on your target location you can actually catch units behind where you want to start it from and the like. While Evil Shoal expands into a 5-wide strike zone and Blizzard is just 3 tiles, meaning there's situations Evil Shoal could catch the entire enemy army that Blizzard can't, Blizzard is not nearly so prone to being blocked from great opportunities because of inconvenient positioning. The fact that it does Ice damage means it's mostly poorly-resisted and indeed it finally gives you a tool for murdering Demons with magic en mass, and being able to inflict Freeze is awesome because Freeze is so crippling an effect. Even if you're not a Soothsayer, it can be worth considering getting Blizzard maxed just so you have a way of doing mass Freeze fairly reliably.
For a Soothsayer, Blizzard is the final word on killing things. Once you've got Blizzard, all your other damage Spells are worthless or limited to specific situations. (Most obviously: Fire damage Spells remain relevant for dealing with Ice Creations) While its damage is fairly variable, its low roll isn't bad and its high roll isn't too far behind Death Star's while its targeting behavior is just way more convenient, and the high odds of Freezing things means that against oversized battlegroups it'll often end up doing more damage in real terms while also delaying the enemy reaching your army.
It's honestly one of the best attacking Spells in the entire series.
Hel the Messenger
Crystal Cost: 9 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 10%, Cap: 30%, Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 20%, Cap: 40%, Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 30%, Cap: 50%, Level: 1-4
A single living organic enemy within the Level range takes percentile Astral
damage. Plants are immune.The 'cap' is the, well, cap on effectiveness at a given level. Awkwardly, the Spellbook prediction doesn't reflect this cap; your Spellbook is perfectly happy to predict 65% kills, when in actuality it will be properly capped at 50%... unless combined with Mark of Blood, of course.
And yes, Hel the Messenger scales with Intellect, unlike Soul Draining. In conjunction with the lower Mana price, Hel the Messenger is far, far more useful than Soul Draining was back in Orcs on the March. It specifically gains 0.5% of its base per Intellect; that is, with 20 Intellect you gain 10% more, in the sense that Level 3's base 30% rises to 33%, not in the sense of rising to 40%.
More importantly, it's also affected by the Destruction Skill, operating on the same logic. Thus, Rank 3 Destruction is already enough to bring Level 3 Hel the Messenger to 45% kills! To get the same result out of Intellect would take 100 Intellect. Only it's better than that, as Destruction applies to the final, Intellect-boosted result; this means you can hit the 50% cap off a mere 23 Intellect (30*1.115=33.45, then multiplied by 1.5=50.175, ie a hair over 50%) instead of the 32 Intellect you might expect to need to cover the other 5%. (Not that 32 Intellect would be much more of a hurdle, mind)
As such, so long as you max Destruction and get Hel the Messenger to Level 3, you almost certainly have it at the cap of 50% -a Soothsayer is liable to have 40+ Intellect by the time you can get all that other stuff set up, honestly.
And yeah, it's just Soul Draining with a new graphic. Amusingly, where Orcs on the March's Soul Draining was just the hand coming out of nowhere, Hel the Messenger is a return to the Reaper-appearing animation, albeit with glowy effects sort-of-kind-of obscuring his identity.
Warriors of the North doesn't have the kind of extreme endgame scaling of enemy counts you saw back in The Legend, nor even the kind you saw in Armored Princess, so unless you luck into Hel the Messenger fairly early on and then go out of your way to fight battlegroups out of your weight class a Soothsayer is unlikely to ever use it, but for other classes it's the option for wearing down a problematic stack with magic. It's convenient that Skalds and Vikings tend to want to max Rune Magic just for the bonus Runes, as Hel the Messenger is a good Spell to max on them. The fact that even quite low Intellect is fine for maxing it is also convenient -maxing Destruction isn't very useful outside Hel the Messenger if you're not a Soothsayer, but it's not that burdensome.
And yeah, it's just Soul Draining with a new graphic. Amusingly, where Orcs on the March's Soul Draining was just the hand coming out of nowhere, Hel the Messenger is a return to the Reaper-appearing animation, albeit with glowy effects sort-of-kind-of obscuring his identity.
Warriors of the North doesn't have the kind of extreme endgame scaling of enemy counts you saw back in The Legend, nor even the kind you saw in Armored Princess, so unless you luck into Hel the Messenger fairly early on and then go out of your way to fight battlegroups out of your weight class a Soothsayer is unlikely to ever use it, but for other classes it's the option for wearing down a problematic stack with magic. It's convenient that Skalds and Vikings tend to want to max Rune Magic just for the bonus Runes, as Hel the Messenger is a good Spell to max on them. The fact that even quite low Intellect is fine for maxing it is also convenient -maxing Destruction isn't very useful outside Hel the Messenger if you're not a Soothsayer, but it's not that burdensome.
It's awkward that Undead dominate the game, particularly the very end, given they're immune, but fortunately the majority of the late game is actually primarily valid targets. As such, a maxed-out Hel the Messenger does actually get a chance to shine.
... and yes, 'Hel the Messenger' is a really bad translation. I'm not sure why it isn't Hel's Messenger, or Messenger of Hel. Hel's Herald would also have been valid, and awesome. 'Hel the Messenger' is one of the strangest, most obvious oopsies in Warriors of the North's translation.
Runic Word
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Gives 2 Runes
Level 2 Statistics: Gives 4 Runes
Level 3 Statistics: Gives 6 Runes
Grants some Runes to a single target that isn't immune to Spells. The types of the Runes given are random.
Runes are sufficiently low-value, especially on non-Viking units, that the primary reason to consider Runic Word is to set up for one of the Rune-burning Spells. Unfortunately, most of those Spells are... niche at best. Rune Chain is astonishingly lethal when fully charged, but if you're having to burn a turn on Runic Word prior to Rune Chain, the effective damage output is a lot more dubious, compared to just slinging two more straightforward attacking Spells, and Rune Chain's Mana efficiency becomes less true: burning 14 Mana per full-power Rune Chain is still good, but it's not crazy good.
Part of the problem is that Warriors of the North's combat is fast. At the beginning of the game, putting effort into feeding units Runes can be useful, as battles tend to take a few turns, you don't have Rune Magic maxed, you don't have any leveled-up units, and you probably don't have any Items for passing out Runes to units. By the mid-game, battles tend to be gotten through so fast that innately carrying around 6 Runes (eg Vikings backed by Rune Magic 3 or Rune Magic 2 and a Soothsayer-the-unit, not even touching on the topic of level-based Runes) is generally more than enough for the fight, no matter your class.
As such, Runic Word's primary value is for grinding one of the Skald's unique Medals. It's an important Spell to learn early for a Skald as a result.
As an aside, quite unexpectedly Runic Word can actually target enemies. This is normally a terrible idea and kind of frustrating if you accidentally click an enemy when you mean to gift Runes to one of your units, but has a notable -if clunky- use I'll be covering in a minute.
Runic Word
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Gives 2 Runes
Level 2 Statistics: Gives 4 Runes
Level 3 Statistics: Gives 6 Runes
Grants some Runes to a single target that isn't immune to Spells. The types of the Runes given are random.
Runes are sufficiently low-value, especially on non-Viking units, that the primary reason to consider Runic Word is to set up for one of the Rune-burning Spells. Unfortunately, most of those Spells are... niche at best. Rune Chain is astonishingly lethal when fully charged, but if you're having to burn a turn on Runic Word prior to Rune Chain, the effective damage output is a lot more dubious, compared to just slinging two more straightforward attacking Spells, and Rune Chain's Mana efficiency becomes less true: burning 14 Mana per full-power Rune Chain is still good, but it's not crazy good.
Part of the problem is that Warriors of the North's combat is fast. At the beginning of the game, putting effort into feeding units Runes can be useful, as battles tend to take a few turns, you don't have Rune Magic maxed, you don't have any leveled-up units, and you probably don't have any Items for passing out Runes to units. By the mid-game, battles tend to be gotten through so fast that innately carrying around 6 Runes (eg Vikings backed by Rune Magic 3 or Rune Magic 2 and a Soothsayer-the-unit, not even touching on the topic of level-based Runes) is generally more than enough for the fight, no matter your class.
As such, Runic Word's primary value is for grinding one of the Skald's unique Medals. It's an important Spell to learn early for a Skald as a result.
As an aside, quite unexpectedly Runic Word can actually target enemies. This is normally a terrible idea and kind of frustrating if you accidentally click an enemy when you mean to gift Runes to one of your units, but has a notable -if clunky- use I'll be covering in a minute.
Also note that Runic Word actually scales with Intellect... slowly. It adds 1 Rune for every 30 Intellect, capping at +3 Runes from 90 Intellect. It similarly benefits from Creation, running specifically off the base numbers; Rank 3 Creation will thus add 1 whole Rune to Level 3 Runic Word.
Chargers
Crystal Cost: 3 / 7 / 12
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 3, Rune Limit: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 4, Rune Limit: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 5, Rune Limit: 9
Takes Runes from an allied unit, and generates a number of Rage and Mana chargers on the battlefield equal to the Runes taken, placed semi-randomly and split roughly evenly between Mana and Rage versions.
At first glance, this sounds like a gimmicky return to Lina's Chargers, and that's not entirely wrong. The mechanics are actually overall much-improved behind the scenes, though.
That's right, Last Hero is back, and it's a whole different effect!
... unfortunately, it's not a good effect. Among other point, if you end a battle before Last Hero times out, it still times out and does the damage anyway. While this is less mystifying than the original form Last Hero took, I'm still genuinely puzzled as to what the development team was thinking. I suppose this is mildly synergistic with the mechanics of Warrior Maiden-derived resurrection?
It's especially puzzling because if anything I would've expected a really powerful variation on the idea of the original version, 'balanced' by having a Rune cost. Something like 'no member of the stack may die so long as this buff is in place, but it requires 3 Runes to activate'. Or maybe it eats a random Rune every time the stack should've taken damage, and they take no damage. This version of Last Hero doesn't even have its name make sense -and that's not the fault of the English translation deciding to stick out a name that doesn't fit. (This is a problem that's all over the place with older Pokémon, for example, like Mr. Mime having a gendered name even though it can be either gender)
So Warriors of the North's version of Last Hero puzzles me on a number of levels.
Generates a Snow Storm in a 7-tile region. The Snow Storm increases Ice resistance for all units inside of it, and additionally modifies the unit's Attack and Defense based on the unit type's base Fire and Ice resistances. Every 10 Fire resistance is another step of penalty, while every 10 Ice resistance is another step of bonus.
As I noted in regards to Sorcerers, the above description is accurate to Attack, but Defense is bugged and additionally adds or subtracts a flat amount of Defense as multiplied by the percentage modifier. In this case, that means that every 'step' will result in 3, 4, or 5 Defense added or subtracted above and beyond the percentage modifier that's actually intended. This is particularly impactful on units with low base stats -an Ancient Ent and a Thorn Hunter will both probably ram right into the damage modifier cap due to their -100% Fire resistance resulting in +50 Defense from Level 3 Snow Storm right there, for example, when the Ancient Ent probably already got a good amount of damage reduction out of its high base Defense.
Chargers
Crystal Cost: 3 / 7 / 12
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 3, Rune Limit: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 4, Rune Limit: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Mana/Rage Generated: 5, Rune Limit: 9
Takes Runes from an allied unit, and generates a number of Rage and Mana chargers on the battlefield equal to the Runes taken, placed semi-randomly and split roughly evenly between Mana and Rage versions.
At first glance, this sounds like a gimmicky return to Lina's Chargers, and that's not entirely wrong. The mechanics are actually overall much-improved behind the scenes, though.
The big thing is that unlike Lina's Chargers, Rune Magic Chargers have locational preferences. They strongly prefer to drop within 2 spaces of the unit you targeted with the Spell, and even when dropping further out they tend to attempt to drop within 2 spaces of your other units. So if all your units are at one end of the battlefield and the enemy at the other when you're casting Chargers, it's actually pretty unlikely that enemies will get a chance to pick them up before you, unless you specifically are fighting enemies with high Initiative and mobility like dragons while leading a force that has one low-mobility high-Initiative unit and a bunch of lower-Initiative units, or something in that vein.
This preference is, it should be noted, largely lower priority than another preference to space out the Chargers from a given cast so that there's at least one space between all of them. That is, if the game cannot place all the Chargers you're generating with a space between each of them at the same time as having them within 2 tiles of the target unit, that is when you'll tend to start seeing the Chargers dropped further away, nearby your other units.
Further note that Chargers doesn't care about pre-existing Chargers for spacing considerations. That is, if you're a Soothsayer and cast Chargers on two units nearby each other, the game is perfectly happy to have the second Chargers cast set Chargers down such that you have an unbroken string of Chargers due to the first cast's Chargers being in between the second cast's Chargers. This is particularly pertinent to the Soothsayer due to their ability to double-cast, but can also crop up with the other classes if eg you cast Chargers late on the first turn and immediately on the second turn, having not been able to pick up all the Chargers from your first cast.
Even more interesting in this regard is that the game is willing to, to a certain extent, set Chargers on top of existing Chargers: you can have a Mana Charger dropped by one Charger cast be converted into a Mana/Rage Charger by a second cast, functioning much like how Hilda's Arrows produced mixed chargers. If you then pick up such a Charger, it will provide the full value of both components, aside that it won't provide 2 action points. (Note that I haven't tested what happens when using the Spell at different levels. It's... rather difficult to reliably force this behavior to occur, and overall I don't think it's terribly important so I'm not going to go out of my way to test it) This cool bit of behavior means that even when using high-level Chargers in cramped confines back-to-back, the Chargers are still surprisingly reliable about landing nearby your troops instead of enemy troops, since the second cast will likely do some Charger merging.
Another point is that Chargers actually scales to Intellect! It adds 1% Mana/Rage gained for every point of Intellect, specifically,; thus, Level 3 Chargers gains 1 additional Mana/Rage for every 20 Intellect. Additionally, this is boosted by Creation, scaled to the final numbers; thus, as your Intellect climbs, Creation boosts the generation yet further. It can get very economical in the late game.
For a Soothsayer, Chargers is actually a surprisingly useful Spell. First of all, you want something to do with your first cast once you have Higher Magic, and it can genuinely be a struggle to find something better that can fit within Higher Magic's limits. Second of all, once you're solidly in the midgame the majority of damage in fights will tend to be done by slinging Spells; you may have entire units that never get a chance to fight, especially if you're relying on one one of the myriad high-Initiative melee units (eg Sea Dogs, Gorguls) to get you the jump on enemies for Spellcasting purposes: using such a unit as a Charger battery/collector makes their utility as a unit slot much higher, and if you were fielding such anyway you may be losing nothing by taking advantage of Chargers. Third of all, it does a lot to bring Rage into reasonable usage. And fourthly, the Soothsayer is very Mana-hungry, and Chargers will become increasingly consistent about being a significant net positive on Mana; when your Intellect is in the forties, using Chargers on a unit with at least 7 Runes will result in 35 Rage/Mana to pick up, usually divided 20/15 or 15/20. Let's just arbitrarily say you only got 3 Mana Chargers generated: that's still 15 Mana to pick up, when you spent seven.
At those numbers, even fueling it with Runic Word comes out ahead: we'll just say you're using Level 3 Runic Word, resulting in 6 Runes for 7 Mana. Then you spend 7 Mana to turn that into 15/15 Mana/Rage; you're now 1 Mana ahead, and 15 Rage ahead.
Oh, and you're getting action points for the units picking this up, don't forget! This can be used to reach chests that are just out of reach surprisingly reliably, or to get a melee unit into the thick of things much faster. Once you no longer care about working on Grand Strategy (Whether you maxed it or don't think it matters enough or intend to use Astaroth to max it), being able to rush melee units into the fighting is pretty useful -among other points, Warriors of the North's fast-paced combat gives melee units more opportunities to attack and take little or no damage. Accepting a casualty here and there on a unit you're fielding more than a hundred of isn't a big deal, overall.
While the Viking and Skald don't have Higher Magic and are unlikely to end up with the kind of Intellect a Soothsayer wants, that doesn't make Chargers bad for them by any stretch. Mana can be an issue for them too, and in fact is often more of an issue for them in the mid-early game, because the Soothsayer is quicker to acquire increases to maximum Mana and to Mana generation in the early game, while Higher Magic massively spiking their ability to spend Mana comes later. Rage is also appreciated, and action points can still be used to pick up chests, get units to enemies faster, or for that matter get ranged units away from enemies in their face.
The final thing that makes Runic Magic Chargers actually pretty useful where Lina's Chargers was terrible is that it's not attached to Rage generation/Rest mechanics. In The Legend, you couldn't count on having enough Rage at the end of a fight to have Lina use her Chargers, and if you were prone to using her other skills she may well have been Resting when the fight was about to end. Rune Magic Chargers can instead be used on demand, so long as you have a fairly token amount of Mana available and Runes left. So long as a fight wasn't a brutal grind that exhausted all the Runes on all your units, Chargers can be very reliably cast in the closing stages of a fight, when you don't need to cast other Spells, don't have to worry about enemies picking up the Chargers (Because you'll finish off the final enemy stack before it moves regardless), and would appreciate getting Rage and Mana up for potentially a near-future fight. Indeed, once Chargers is decently effective, you can potentially deliberately get into a not-very-hard fight on the idea that you'll use Chargers to get back your Mana and bolster your Rage, setting up to enter another fight high on Rage and full on Mana. (Or close enough to full, at least) There's not really any Spells competing with this particular bit of utility -Magic Spring has some overlap, but it's clearly much worse at this particular job, for example.
It's too bad that probably most players never used it, or used it once and erroneously concluded it's just Lina's Chargers again and so ignored it from then on forth, because Chargers is actually one of Rune Magic's better Spells, no matter your class. It's just easy to overlook because the Spellbook is minimalist and a returning player is going to have reasonable expectations the game doesn't do a great job of communicating are incorrect in this case.
One minor complaint/flaw with the Spell: unlike eg Rune Chain, Chargers doesn't tell you which Runes it's going to take from the target. This obviously doesn't matter if the answer is 'all of them', but it can be frustrating if you're considering using it early in a fight on a unit with somewhat more Runes than the Spell will use up. Especially if you're wanting to be able to later use one of the Rune Spells that demands a specific Rune to activate, such as Gift. Most of the time this isn't too big a deal, fortunately, but it's pretty strange it doesn't have this functionality given that the game clearly has code for telling you which Runes a Spell is going to eat.
Timelessness
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 5 / 8 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 4 turns
A single target unit will, for the duration of Timelessness, freeze the timer on all other effects on it, whether they are positive or negative. Consumes a Defense Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Defense Runes.
Timelesness is nifty for potentially extending the benefits of powerful, short-duration effects like Ogre's Rage, with the tradeoff being that hostile effects will also linger. So don't let them get hit with Stun or something!
I don't use it very often, and it's really another victim of Warriors of the North's fast-paced combat, but it's a really cool idea, and frankly I'm probably underestimating it. The fact that it specifically burns a Defense Rune is also a very minor cost, as optimal play tends to minimize the utility of Defense Runes as far as their default utility goes, making it much closer to a 'free' cost than if it were Attack or Luck being burned.
Timelessness
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 5 / 8 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 4 turns
A single target unit will, for the duration of Timelessness, freeze the timer on all other effects on it, whether they are positive or negative. Consumes a Defense Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Defense Runes.
Timelesness is nifty for potentially extending the benefits of powerful, short-duration effects like Ogre's Rage, with the tradeoff being that hostile effects will also linger. So don't let them get hit with Stun or something!
I don't use it very often, and it's really another victim of Warriors of the North's fast-paced combat, but it's a really cool idea, and frankly I'm probably underestimating it. The fact that it specifically burns a Defense Rune is also a very minor cost, as optimal play tends to minimize the utility of Defense Runes as far as their default utility goes, making it much closer to a 'free' cost than if it were Attack or Luck being burned.
Also, this is where it can be desirable to use Runic Word on an enemy: Timelessness can in fact be cast on enemies, but still requires your victim has a Defense Rune to use up on it. Since plenty of enemies won't have a Defense Rune on their own, it's easy to not realize Timelessness can in fact be cast on enemies in the first place, which is unfortunate given it eating a Defense Rune is an advantage when used on an enemy who started with any Defense Runes, rather than a cost the way it is when used on your own units.
Anyway, this means if you want to use Timelessness on an enemy who has no Defense Runes -such as because you want a Blind on them to last much longer- then you'll have to use Runic Word on them first. This is particularly pertinent to the base game: in Ice and Fire, Runes being passed out by units leveling means eventually every enemy you fight that's not Spell Immune will have some Runes, but in the base game only enemy Vikings can ever be hit with Timelessness. (Jotun also have innate Rune access, but you can't target Timelessness on Level 5 units)
Do note that its duration rises with Intellect in the standard way; +1 turn every 20 Intellect.
Negation
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 5 / 8 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 4 turns
A single target ally will, for the duration of Negation, have the duration of all other effects always be 1 turn. Consumes an Attack Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Attack Runes.
Negation is sort of an interesting concept, but a lot of negative effects of note only last 1 turn anyway (eg Shock, Stun), and lots of effects you're better off purging them immediately, before they create problems. (eg Poisoning/Burn/Freeze/Bleeding are quite likely to immediately inflict casualties past the early game, Blind eats an entire turn even with Negation, etc) In theory Negation could be useful for helping free up Spell turns (Because you cast Negation once, instead of repeatedly Dispelling effects on the same unit), but in practice it's just overly niche at best, and borderline useless more realistically.
The above problems aren't even accounting for how it's Level-limited nor the fact that the Attack Rune requirement is an extra layer of constriction, particularly if you're playing the base version of the game where units leveling for Runes isn't a thing.
I really think Negation should've been a kind of preemptive Dispel, where say it purged a negative effect immediately while reducing its duration by 1 turn each time one was inflicted on the target. That would be a fantastic tool in various situations, among other points giving the player a way of dealing with certain frustrating scenarios where they're worried their fastest unit is going to be hit with negative effects after all their units have taken their turns, making Dispel an invalid tool for purging them before the next turn applies. (Particularly relevant for, again, the damage-over-time effects, particularly when you're still trying to get Grand Strategy) I'd gladly give up an Attack Rune for that kind of utility. As-is, though, it's just... gimmicky.
Alas.
Negation
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 5 / 8 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 4 turns
A single target ally will, for the duration of Negation, have the duration of all other effects always be 1 turn. Consumes an Attack Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Attack Runes.
Negation is sort of an interesting concept, but a lot of negative effects of note only last 1 turn anyway (eg Shock, Stun), and lots of effects you're better off purging them immediately, before they create problems. (eg Poisoning/Burn/Freeze/Bleeding are quite likely to immediately inflict casualties past the early game, Blind eats an entire turn even with Negation, etc) In theory Negation could be useful for helping free up Spell turns (Because you cast Negation once, instead of repeatedly Dispelling effects on the same unit), but in practice it's just overly niche at best, and borderline useless more realistically.
The above problems aren't even accounting for how it's Level-limited nor the fact that the Attack Rune requirement is an extra layer of constriction, particularly if you're playing the base version of the game where units leveling for Runes isn't a thing.
I really think Negation should've been a kind of preemptive Dispel, where say it purged a negative effect immediately while reducing its duration by 1 turn each time one was inflicted on the target. That would be a fantastic tool in various situations, among other points giving the player a way of dealing with certain frustrating scenarios where they're worried their fastest unit is going to be hit with negative effects after all their units have taken their turns, making Dispel an invalid tool for purging them before the next turn applies. (Particularly relevant for, again, the damage-over-time effects, particularly when you're still trying to get Grand Strategy) I'd gladly give up an Attack Rune for that kind of utility. As-is, though, it's just... gimmicky.
Alas.
On a different note, you might be wondering what happens if you put Timelessness and Negation on the same target. The answer is simple: the new Spell overwrites the old one, just like Haste and Slow overwriting each other. Sensible enough.
Oh, and its duration does scale with Intellect, for... whatever that's worth.
Gift
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4
A single target ally has all its Talents reloaded/fully recharged. Consumes a Luck Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Luck Runes.
It's our old buddy Gift from The Legend, but made more awkward to infinitely abuse.
I appreciate the idea, but I think the attempt is ill-advised. It would be one thing if Runic Word didn't exist, as then Gift would genuinely have a sanity check on its behavior so it couldn't simply be exploited infinitely, but with Runic Word the exploitive behaviors from The Legend are still there, they just take a bit longer to get done and cost a bit more Mana since you'll have to occasionally Runic Word whatever you're wanting to abuse Gift with. The overall result is that it's a worse Spell for regular, non-exploitive play, when it wasn't actually that great a Spell for such play in the first place, and yet nothing has been done to close the exploits.
That's basically the worst of all worlds on a design level.
Justice
Crystal Cost: 6 / 10 / 16
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Runes Collected: 2, Adrenaline Collected: 15
Level 2 Statistics: Runes Collected: 3, Adrenaline Collected: 30
Level 3 Statistics: Runes Collected: 4, Adrenaline Collected: 45
Collects Runes from all units, and then redistributes them evenly. Also collects Adrenaline from Orc units and redistributes it evenly among the Orc units.
Remember Balance of Power, and how it was fairly mediocre? Well, Warrior of the North brought it back and made it worse!... and made it do Runes too, but whatever.
Note in particular that this includes enemy units. In theory you can use this to steal some Runes for yourself, but the player is extremely likely to have more Runes than the enemy (And if they don't, it's probably because they're running a Spell-immune-heavy army and so can't benefit from the Spell), so that's somewhere between 'niche' and 'active negative'.
Stealing Adrenaline from enemy Orcs with your own Orc army is slightly more plausible -the further you get in the game, the more Adrenaline enemy Orcs start with, and the player can't really match this at all- but it's also ridiculously niche, especially since Orcs aren't even that common of enemies in Warriors of the North past the mid-early game.
So Justice is just bad.
Gift
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4
A single target ally has all its Talents reloaded/fully recharged. Consumes a Luck Rune on the target unit, and cannot be cast on them if they lack Luck Runes.
It's our old buddy Gift from The Legend, but made more awkward to infinitely abuse.
I appreciate the idea, but I think the attempt is ill-advised. It would be one thing if Runic Word didn't exist, as then Gift would genuinely have a sanity check on its behavior so it couldn't simply be exploited infinitely, but with Runic Word the exploitive behaviors from The Legend are still there, they just take a bit longer to get done and cost a bit more Mana since you'll have to occasionally Runic Word whatever you're wanting to abuse Gift with. The overall result is that it's a worse Spell for regular, non-exploitive play, when it wasn't actually that great a Spell for such play in the first place, and yet nothing has been done to close the exploits.
That's basically the worst of all worlds on a design level.
Justice
Crystal Cost: 6 / 10 / 16
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Runes Collected: 2, Adrenaline Collected: 15
Level 2 Statistics: Runes Collected: 3, Adrenaline Collected: 30
Level 3 Statistics: Runes Collected: 4, Adrenaline Collected: 45
Collects Runes from all units, and then redistributes them evenly. Also collects Adrenaline from Orc units and redistributes it evenly among the Orc units.
Remember Balance of Power, and how it was fairly mediocre? Well, Warrior of the North brought it back and made it worse!... and made it do Runes too, but whatever.
Note in particular that this includes enemy units. In theory you can use this to steal some Runes for yourself, but the player is extremely likely to have more Runes than the enemy (And if they don't, it's probably because they're running a Spell-immune-heavy army and so can't benefit from the Spell), so that's somewhere between 'niche' and 'active negative'.
Stealing Adrenaline from enemy Orcs with your own Orc army is slightly more plausible -the further you get in the game, the more Adrenaline enemy Orcs start with, and the player can't really match this at all- but it's also ridiculously niche, especially since Orcs aren't even that common of enemies in Warriors of the North past the mid-early game.
So Justice is just bad.
Note that both its components are actually affected by Creation; with Level 3 Justice and Rank 3 Creation it will scoop up 5 Runes and 58 Adrenaline. Yay?
Last Hero
Crystal Cost: 1 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 5 turns
A single targeted ally takes only halved damage from effects for the duration, with each hit suffered reducing the duration of Last Hero by 1 turn. Once Last Hero runs out, all the damage that was blocked by Last Hero comes back 25% stronger, in the form of Astral damage. Additionally, for the duration of Last Hero, the recipient has infinite retaliations.
Last Hero
Crystal Cost: 1 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 5 turns
A single targeted ally takes only halved damage from effects for the duration, with each hit suffered reducing the duration of Last Hero by 1 turn. Once Last Hero runs out, all the damage that was blocked by Last Hero comes back 25% stronger, in the form of Astral
damage. Additionally, for the duration of Last Hero, the recipient has infinite retaliations.That's right, Last Hero is back, and it's a whole different effect!
... unfortunately, it's not a good effect. Among other point, if you end a battle before Last Hero times out, it still times out and does the damage anyway. While this is less mystifying than the original form Last Hero took, I'm still genuinely puzzled as to what the development team was thinking. I suppose this is mildly synergistic with the mechanics of Warrior Maiden-derived resurrection?
It's especially puzzling because if anything I would've expected a really powerful variation on the idea of the original version, 'balanced' by having a Rune cost. Something like 'no member of the stack may die so long as this buff is in place, but it requires 3 Runes to activate'. Or maybe it eats a random Rune every time the stack should've taken damage, and they take no damage. This version of Last Hero doesn't even have its name make sense -and that's not the fault of the English translation deciding to stick out a name that doesn't fit. (This is a problem that's all over the place with older Pokémon, for example, like Mr. Mime having a gendered name even though it can be either gender)
So Warriors of the North's version of Last Hero puzzles me on a number of levels.
Note that the infinite retaliations go unmentioned in the English version, making it seem even worse than it is. Also note that it's bugged; casting it on a unit that already has infinite retaliations results in the unit being completely unable to retaliate for the duration. Though if you cast it on a Passive unit, it 'rolls over' again and causes the unit to have the standard 1 retaliation; you can have a Burrowed Brontor retaliate with its ranged attack this way! Notably, this works even if the Passive quality was caused by stacking two infinite retaliation effects; you thus can partially work around the Mountain King's Set causing Drunk Dwarves-the-unit to go Passive by stacking on Last Hero.
Actually, in general Last Hero is really buggy. Sometimes when it times out it will trigger its damage multiple times (And with different damage numbers!), I've had it time out as a unit was being attacked and this prevent the unit from retaliating even though it had never been attacked that turn, and it can just straight-up crash the game. So beware; at minimum, save aggressively before battles if you're inclined to use Last Hero a lot.
Also, as it does Astral damage, it actually is possible to reduce the final damage by boosting the unit's Astral resistance. Reminder; Divine Armor and the Guardian Medal boost Astral resistance, and some units have access to Astral resistance, such as Shaman. So that's some options for making it less bad, if you're comfortable risking crashes and all.
Oh, and to be explicit: its duration (And thus the number of hits it applies against) does scale with Intellect.
Snow Storm
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns, +5% Ice Resistance, Resistance-based Modifiers: 3%
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns, +10% Ice Resistance, Resistance-based Modifiers: 4%
Snow Storm
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns, +5% Ice Resistance, Resistance-based Modifiers: 3%
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns, +10% Ice Resistance, Resistance-based Modifiers: 4%
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 4 turns, +15% Ice Resistance, Resistance-based Modifiers: 5%
Generates a Snow Storm in a 7-tile region. The Snow Storm increases Ice
resistance for all units inside of it, and additionally modifies the unit's Attack and Defense based on the unit type's base Fire and Ice resistances. Every 10 Fire resistance is another step of penalty, while every 10 Ice resistance is another step of bonus.As I noted in regards to Sorcerers, the above description is accurate to Attack, but Defense is bugged and additionally adds or subtracts a flat amount of Defense as multiplied by the percentage modifier. In this case, that means that every 'step' will result in 3, 4, or 5 Defense added or subtracted above and beyond the percentage modifier that's actually intended. This is particularly impactful on units with low base stats -an Ancient Ent and a Thorn Hunter will both probably ram right into the damage modifier cap due to their -100% Fire resistance resulting in +50 Defense from Level 3 Snow Storm right there, for example, when the Ancient Ent probably already got a good amount of damage reduction out of its high base Defense.
Also, the Ice resistance scales with Intellect, adding 1 to the resistance bonus for every 2 Intellect, and the Ice resistance also benefits from Creation, but Creation only runs off the base numbers; thus, Rank 3 Creation adds a meager 4% Ice resistance to Level 3 Snow Storm. So basically it's worth 8 points of Intellect... less, for lower levels of the Spell. It should also be pointed out that every 20 points of Intellect adds another turn of duration. Not that battles tend to last long enough to care, but hey.
In any event, Snow Storm itself is a weird army-supporting Spell that's basically tailored to using Snow Elves, Vikings, etc to murder Demons. Especially the Snow Elf part, since they have a bunch of Abilities that kick in when Snowstorms are involved.
Also note that Snow Storm is considered to be a buff, even on the Archdemons it's currently crippling. This isn't super-important, but it does mean it'll offset Morale penalties from negative effects etc etc.
I don't personally use it very often, in part because Snow Elves have internal ways of achieving the same sort of utility (And the Sorcerer's White Haze has a superior modifier, albeit a lesser duration), but it's a really cool idea and it's still usable. If you've always wanted to use a Plant-focused army but felt you couldn't justify it, the Defense bug makes Snowstorm fantastic support to such, for example.
In any event, Snow Storm itself is a weird army-supporting Spell that's basically tailored to using Snow Elves, Vikings, etc to murder Demons. Especially the Snow Elf part, since they have a bunch of Abilities that kick in when Snowstorms are involved.
Also note that Snow Storm is considered to be a buff, even on the Archdemons it's currently crippling. This isn't super-important, but it does mean it'll offset Morale penalties from negative effects etc etc.
I don't personally use it very often, in part because Snow Elves have internal ways of achieving the same sort of utility (And the Sorcerer's White Haze has a superior modifier, albeit a lesser duration), but it's a really cool idea and it's still usable. If you've always wanted to use a Plant-focused army but felt you couldn't justify it, the Defense bug makes Snowstorm fantastic support to such, for example.
Just remember that mild Ice resistance and mild Fire weakness is pretty widespread on Undead, so they benefit notably from this bug too, and you fight Undead a lot in Warriors of the North. Don't be careless with Snowstorm placement when fighting them; +10 Defense plus a percentage of their base Defense is liable to really slow down the process of killing Undead.
Ice Spikes
Crystal Cost: 4 / 6 / 8
Mana Cost: 6 / 12 / 18
Level 1 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 9
Generates a number of Ice Spikes. At Level 1, they will be clustered in a triangle. At Level 2, they will surround a single tile. At Level 3, they will surround a triangle of tiles.
Basically Lina's Ice Spikes have come back again, but made to scale horribly instead of starting out horrible and turning good as you level them. There's uses to be sure, especially if you're running a Snow Elf army, which has extra uses for Ice Spikes, but it's still a bit odd that it's been functionally nerfed. And even the Snow Elf support is a bit limited, given both Lord of the North doing incidental Ice Spikes and the Snow Elves having internal means of generating Ice Spikes.
It's still usable in some situations, it's just... odd how the game handled it.
Ice Prison
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Level: 1-2, Duration: 2, Health: 100
Level 2 Statistics: Level: 1-3, Duration: 3, Health: 200
Level 3 Statistics: Level: 1-4, Duration: 4, Health: 300
A single target unit -enemy or ally- is trapped by a prison of ice, which causes them to automatically Defend on their turn. Conversely, the prison will take damage for the prisoner, with any 'overkill' damage failing to spill over.
It's Glot's Armor, except it's worse as a buff to allies (Can't target higher-Level units, prevents them from doing anything) but doubles as an option for trapping enemies. Also, it's noticeably more expensive.
The big point in its favor is that Level (And Spell immunity, which is worth noting given how much Spell immunity-ignoring stuff Rune Magic has), is the only protection against it, and yet it's a complete lockdown. It can be compared to Sheep in this regard (And their prices are similar), and it's worth commentary that Sheep leaves the target free to move. They move randomly, of course, but it's still possible to Sheep a target, have it wander over into your lines, and then de-Sheep in an inconvenient location, where Ice Prison just plain disables the target completely. Furthermore, not only does Ice Prison's duration scale with Spell Level, but also scales with Intellect, meaning it can absolutely achieve 9 turns in a real run. As such, it's actually usually going to be more efficient/effective than Sheeping a target once you're past the early game.
The primary caveat to this is that damage over time effects (Burn, Poisoning, Freeze, Bleed) occur before the unit gets its turn properly, and will be absorbed by the Ice Prison. As such, if you inflict any of these on a unit and then slap an Ice Prison on them, what will probably happen is that the Ice Prison will be instantly cleared out and then they'll get their turn, with the only thing the Ice Prison accomplished being that you actually prevented some damage to them. Oops.
The game kind of makes it sound like the unit inside can fight its way out of the Ice Prison, but nope. They just always Defend no matter what.
So it's really a fairly amazing disable, with its primary limitation being that you'll tend to be inflicting damage over time effects completely incidentally all the time.
Ice Spikes
Crystal Cost: 4 / 6 / 8
Mana Cost: 6 / 12 / 18
Level 1 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Ice Spikes: 9
Generates a number of Ice Spikes. At Level 1, they will be clustered in a triangle. At Level 2, they will surround a single tile. At Level 3, they will surround a triangle of tiles.
Basically Lina's Ice Spikes have come back again, but made to scale horribly instead of starting out horrible and turning good as you level them. There's uses to be sure, especially if you're running a Snow Elf army, which has extra uses for Ice Spikes, but it's still a bit odd that it's been functionally nerfed. And even the Snow Elf support is a bit limited, given both Lord of the North doing incidental Ice Spikes and the Snow Elves having internal means of generating Ice Spikes.
It's still usable in some situations, it's just... odd how the game handled it.
Ice Prison
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Level: 1-2, Duration: 2, Health: 100
Level 2 Statistics: Level: 1-3, Duration: 3, Health: 200
Level 3 Statistics: Level: 1-4, Duration: 4, Health: 300
A single target unit -enemy or ally- is trapped by a prison of ice, which causes them to automatically Defend on their turn. Conversely, the prison will take damage for the prisoner, with any 'overkill' damage failing to spill over.
It's Glot's Armor, except it's worse as a buff to allies (Can't target higher-Level units, prevents them from doing anything) but doubles as an option for trapping enemies. Also, it's noticeably more expensive.
The big point in its favor is that Level (And Spell immunity, which is worth noting given how much Spell immunity-ignoring stuff Rune Magic has), is the only protection against it, and yet it's a complete lockdown. It can be compared to Sheep in this regard (And their prices are similar), and it's worth commentary that Sheep leaves the target free to move. They move randomly, of course, but it's still possible to Sheep a target, have it wander over into your lines, and then de-Sheep in an inconvenient location, where Ice Prison just plain disables the target completely. Furthermore, not only does Ice Prison's duration scale with Spell Level, but also scales with Intellect, meaning it can absolutely achieve 9 turns in a real run. As such, it's actually usually going to be more efficient/effective than Sheeping a target once you're past the early game.
The primary caveat to this is that damage over time effects (Burn, Poisoning, Freeze, Bleed) occur before the unit gets its turn properly, and will be absorbed by the Ice Prison. As such, if you inflict any of these on a unit and then slap an Ice Prison on them, what will probably happen is that the Ice Prison will be instantly cleared out and then they'll get their turn, with the only thing the Ice Prison accomplished being that you actually prevented some damage to them. Oops.
The game kind of makes it sound like the unit inside can fight its way out of the Ice Prison, but nope. They just always Defend no matter what.
So it's really a fairly amazing disable, with its primary limitation being that you'll tend to be inflicting damage over time effects completely incidentally all the time.
Ice Prison's Health scales with Intellect and is boosted by Creation, gaining 1% Health per Intellect and applying the Creation bonus to the final result. This is all straightforward enough, but for some reason it has special rules on its incrementation; if the final result is 200 or less, the game does it's usual thing of rounding the final result to a multiple of 5. If it's between 200 and 1000 Health, the game insists on rounding the final number to a multiple of 10 instead. If it's between 1000 and 5000, the game rounds it to a multiple of 50. And if you somehow get it to over 5000 Health, now it will insist on rounding the final number to a multiple of 100!
I have absolutely no idea what the point of this non-standard behavior is meant to be.
I have absolutely no idea what the point of this non-standard behavior is meant to be.
Also note that the game considers Ice Prison to be a summon Spell (The shell is mechanically a proper unit), and thus stuff like Items that boost summons will boost its Health as well. More niche is that it's actually classed as an Object that Siege Gun triggers against, so Cannoneers and Catapults will get bonus damage against it.
Permafrost
Crystal Cost: 6 / 16 / 26
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Leadership: 750, Egg Health: 30
Level 2 Statistics: Leadership: 1500, Egg Health: 60
Level 3 Statistics: Leadership: 2250, Egg Health: 90
Generates a fragile egg in a chosen empty tile. The next turn, the egg will hatch, releasing a Lizardman that acts as an uncontrolled ally. At Level 1, the egg can hatch into Gorguls or Gorguanas. At Level 2, it can additionally hatch into Highterants. At Level 3, it can no longer hatch into Gorguls but Brontors are added to the list.
Yes, the in-game description provides a Level parameter for summon range. No, it doesn't actually mean anything.
The generated ally is, interestingly enough, tagged green. I'm not sure how that's different from being a blue unit you just lack control over, mechanically. I'm not sure it is different.
Permafrost is a neat idea, I guess, but it isn't terribly useful in real play. It's a delayed summon that produces a unit you don't have control over, but unlike Demon Portal there's a vulnerable period it can be destroyed in, preventing the summon. And also unlike Demon Portal, even though its list is more limited in unit total the actual capabilities of the units are more divergent -Demon Portal will usually result in a meatshield that tries to rush into the fray. Not so for Permafrost, which makes it even harder to plan around.
It's too bad, really.
Permafrost
Crystal Cost: 6 / 16 / 26
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Leadership: 750, Egg Health: 30
Level 2 Statistics: Leadership: 1500, Egg Health: 60
Level 3 Statistics: Leadership: 2250, Egg Health: 90
Generates a fragile egg in a chosen empty tile. The next turn, the egg will hatch, releasing a Lizardman that acts as an uncontrolled ally. At Level 1, the egg can hatch into Gorguls or Gorguanas. At Level 2, it can additionally hatch into Highterants. At Level 3, it can no longer hatch into Gorguls but Brontors are added to the list.
Yes, the in-game description provides a Level parameter for summon range. No, it doesn't actually mean anything.
The generated ally is, interestingly enough, tagged green. I'm not sure how that's different from being a blue unit you just lack control over, mechanically. I'm not sure it is different.
Permafrost is a neat idea, I guess, but it isn't terribly useful in real play. It's a delayed summon that produces a unit you don't have control over, but unlike Demon Portal there's a vulnerable period it can be destroyed in, preventing the summon. And also unlike Demon Portal, even though its list is more limited in unit total the actual capabilities of the units are more divergent -Demon Portal will usually result in a meatshield that tries to rush into the fray. Not so for Permafrost, which makes it even harder to plan around.
It's too bad, really.
Not helping is that the egg has strangely horrible scaling. It gains a pathetic 1% Health for every 5 Intellect you have (Bizarrely, the game calculates this as if your Intellect is 1 less than it actually is, so the boost happens every fifth point starting from your sixth point), and though Creation applies to it for some reason it's half a percent below half the full Creation bonus. So 14.5% more egg Health with Rank 3 Creation. It's to the post-Intellect boost, but... say you had 101 Intellect; the egg would have 20% more Health, bringing it to 108 Health, and then Creation 3 would bring it to either 123 or 124 Health depending on how it rounds; so still essentially nothing.
The Lizardmen that hatch from the egg thankfully scale better, using usual summon scaling rules.
A non-obvious odd aspect of Permafrost is that access to it is gated by an early midgame Quest. On Nordlig the lighthouse guy wants a parrot; once you've brought him his parrot, he gives you a crow, which is a piece of equipment. One you can talk to. It can do interesting-sounding stuff with Wanderer Scrolls I've never bothered to take advantage of, and more relevantly to Permafrost the crow will give you a Permafrost Scroll one time if you dig around in its dialogue. I think this is the only way to get Permafrost; at minimum, it's at least very rare for it to be loot or in a shop.
Ice Ball
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Summons a Level 3 Ice Ball
Level 2 Statistics: Summons a Level 4 Ice Ball
Level 3 Statistics: Summons a Level 4 Ice Ball, which is a different unit from the previous Level 4 Ice Ball
Summons an Ice Orb into any open tile adjacent to an ally.
It's cheaper to learn and cheaper to cast than in Orcs on the March, but you can't summon it just anywhere anymore. Of course, what's important is how the actual unit is doing...
And yes, both Level 2 and 3 summon an Ice Ball whose Level is 4. I suspect an error, particularly given the Spellbook description itself claims it's a Level 5 Ice Ball being summoned at Spell Level 3.
Ice Ball
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Summons a Level 3 Ice Ball
Level 2 Statistics: Summons a Level 4 Ice Ball
Level 3 Statistics: Summons a Level 4 Ice Ball, which is a different unit from the previous Level 4 Ice Ball
Summons an Ice Orb into any open tile adjacent to an ally.
It's cheaper to learn and cheaper to cast than in Orcs on the March, but you can't summon it just anywhere anymore. Of course, what's important is how the actual unit is doing...
And yes, both Level 2 and 3 summon an Ice Ball whose Level is 4. I suspect an error, particularly given the Spellbook description itself claims it's a Level 5 Ice Ball being summoned at Spell Level 3.
Also note that Creation's boost to summons has its effectiveness halved for Ice Ball.
Ice Ball
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 30 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 400
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison
, 80% Magic, -100% Fire
, 80% Ice
Talents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
Like in Orcs on the March, the display still has problems being correct when it comes to Ice Ball, and I'm providing the more accurate Ability list.
Going to Warriors of the North has substantially improved it, thanks to Ice Creation being pretty awesome, though its damage has gone down a decent amount. It can tank a shocking amount of damage against a wide variety of units -though of course Fire damage units are a problem.
Unfortunately, you're unlikely to get it early enough for this to be all that great, and the thing is...
Ice Ball Level 4
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 40
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 800
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
... this tier boosts Initiative, Attack, Defense, and Health over the previous one, but not Damage.
Which means it has a third of the base damage compared to the Armored Princess equivalent.
It's an even more incredible tank with doubled base Health, but the failure for its Damage to increase is a problem.
Ice Ball Level 4 Also
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 50 / 50
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 1200
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
Same basic boosts as the previous one, including not getting any more Damage. This is about a fifth the damage the Armored Princess equivalent had! It also lacks the blizzard effect the max level equivalent from Armored Princess had, so it's debatable whether it's actually better at soaking hits or not.
Since the Ice Ball doesn't gain Damage from leveling the Spell, an argument can be made for using lower-level versions if you're expecting the Ice Ball to only get in one real attack anyway. The jump in Mana cost from Spell Level 2 to Spell Level 3 in particular is pretty high, and while 10 Attack isn't irrelevant it's not necessarily worth the Mana.
Of course, if you intend the Ice Ball to distract enemies, absorbing punishment for your other units, max level summoning is the thing to do.
I strongly suspect the fact that the Damage stat doesn't scale is an oversight, something to the tune of copy-pasting the parameters from the base Ice Orb and then when tweaking was done to the higher-end Orbs Damage got missed, and it's unfortunate in any event, especially since Rune Magic has options like Rune Chain and Blizzard for dishing out huge damage cheaply. Ice Orb is, in real terms, largely a meatshield in Warriors of the North, with any damage it does being a minor bonus... and Warriors of the North isn't a game where meatshields are all that important or useful past the early game; you just kill everything too quickly.
--------------------
As a school, Rune Magic clearly has three primary themes:
Ice, Runes, and, interestingly enough, antimagic.
While Chaos, Order, and Distortion's vagueness creates their own problems, I think Rune Magic's specific-ness ends up creating worse problems. The Rune mechanic could have been used to create a distinctive Spell school that explores concepts that would be nightmarish to make interesting yet powerful yet not invalidating other Spells, but instead it's mostly a token cost on a few Spells, most of which would be dubious to cast even if they didn't demand a Rune to boot. Ice damage as a theme is even less helpful, and Rune Magic doesn't even hold itself to it that strongly -not only is Geyser still hanging out over in Distortion Magic (Which honestly has always felt strange to me. What does spawning giant geysers of freezing water have to do with Distortion's manipulative theme?), but Rune Magic has multiple Physical and Magical damage Spells, and even an Astral damage Spell. It lacks Poison and Fire is all.
The overall result is really pretty disappointing, and it's too bad because I actually think the basic idea of Rune Magic had some inherent potential in that Chaos/Distortion/Order put together covers such a broad swathe of abstract concepts it would honestly have been difficult to introduce a fourth category that was equivalent, which is exactly the kind of situation most games go ahead and try to introduce another such category anyway. (And have it faceplant) If Rune Magic had really embraced the mechanic of Rune Magic being centered around Runes, and made it work, it would've neatly sidestepped these kinds of problems. Unfortunately, less than half the Spells actually have anything to do with Runes, and most of the ones that involve Runes have it as just an attached gimmick, rather than a real mechanic.
I feel it's the biggest case of wasted potential in Warriors of the North. Alas.
Next time, we cover how Rage looks in Warriors of the North.
Ice Ball
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 30 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 400
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical
, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% IceTalents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
Like in Orcs on the March, the display still has problems being correct when it comes to Ice Ball, and I'm providing the more accurate Ability list.
Going to Warriors of the North has substantially improved it, thanks to Ice Creation being pretty awesome, though its damage has gone down a decent amount. It can tank a shocking amount of damage against a wide variety of units -though of course Fire damage units are a problem.
Unfortunately, you're unlikely to get it early enough for this to be all that great, and the thing is...
Ice Ball Level 4
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 40
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 800
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical
, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% IceTalents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
... this tier boosts Initiative, Attack, Defense, and Health over the previous one, but not Damage.
Which means it has a third of the base damage compared to the Armored Princess equivalent.
It's an even more incredible tank with doubled base Health, but the failure for its Damage to increase is a problem.
Ice Ball Level 4 Also
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 50 / 50
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 1200
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical
, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% IceTalents: None
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever thing stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells)
Same basic boosts as the previous one, including not getting any more Damage. This is about a fifth the damage the Armored Princess equivalent had! It also lacks the blizzard effect the max level equivalent from Armored Princess had, so it's debatable whether it's actually better at soaking hits or not.
Since the Ice Ball doesn't gain Damage from leveling the Spell, an argument can be made for using lower-level versions if you're expecting the Ice Ball to only get in one real attack anyway. The jump in Mana cost from Spell Level 2 to Spell Level 3 in particular is pretty high, and while 10 Attack isn't irrelevant it's not necessarily worth the Mana.
Of course, if you intend the Ice Ball to distract enemies, absorbing punishment for your other units, max level summoning is the thing to do.
I strongly suspect the fact that the Damage stat doesn't scale is an oversight, something to the tune of copy-pasting the parameters from the base Ice Orb and then when tweaking was done to the higher-end Orbs Damage got missed, and it's unfortunate in any event, especially since Rune Magic has options like Rune Chain and Blizzard for dishing out huge damage cheaply. Ice Orb is, in real terms, largely a meatshield in Warriors of the North, with any damage it does being a minor bonus... and Warriors of the North isn't a game where meatshields are all that important or useful past the early game; you just kill everything too quickly.
--------------------
As a school, Rune Magic clearly has three primary themes:
Ice, Runes, and, interestingly enough, antimagic.
While Chaos, Order, and Distortion's vagueness creates their own problems, I think Rune Magic's specific-ness ends up creating worse problems. The Rune mechanic could have been used to create a distinctive Spell school that explores concepts that would be nightmarish to make interesting yet powerful yet not invalidating other Spells, but instead it's mostly a token cost on a few Spells, most of which would be dubious to cast even if they didn't demand a Rune to boot. Ice damage as a theme is even less helpful, and Rune Magic doesn't even hold itself to it that strongly -not only is Geyser still hanging out over in Distortion Magic (Which honestly has always felt strange to me. What does spawning giant geysers of freezing water have to do with Distortion's manipulative theme?), but Rune Magic has multiple Physical and Magical damage Spells, and even an Astral damage Spell. It lacks Poison and Fire is all.
The overall result is really pretty disappointing, and it's too bad because I actually think the basic idea of Rune Magic had some inherent potential in that Chaos/Distortion/Order put together covers such a broad swathe of abstract concepts it would honestly have been difficult to introduce a fourth category that was equivalent, which is exactly the kind of situation most games go ahead and try to introduce another such category anyway. (And have it faceplant) If Rune Magic had really embraced the mechanic of Rune Magic being centered around Runes, and made it work, it would've neatly sidestepped these kinds of problems. Unfortunately, less than half the Spells actually have anything to do with Runes, and most of the ones that involve Runes have it as just an attached gimmick, rather than a real mechanic.
I feel it's the biggest case of wasted potential in Warriors of the North. Alas.
Next time, we cover how Rage looks in Warriors of the North.