Character Creation

Players in Master of Magic can either choose one of the pre-made wizards, or they can create their own custom wizard (with the face of one of the pre-made wizards, since there is no way to upload your own wizard images).

Character Creation Options
Custom wizards are given 12 "picks", which they can use to purchase either spellbooks in one of the five magical realms/colors, with a maximum of ten picks in each realm, or retorts. Most retorts cost one pick, but a few of the more powerful ones instead cost two.

Spellbooks
As the table below shows, the number of books dedicated to each realm dictates how many spells (of each rarity) the wizard will have "in their spell book" at the start of the game.

Spell Categories
At the start of the game all spells fall into the following categories:


 * Unlearnable - a lack of books in a realm can prevent a wizard from either starting with a spell or learning it later
 * eg. a wizard with one book in a realm will never be able to learn any Very Rare spells from that realm at all (and will only ever know a single Rare spell)
 * Findable/Tradable - if a wizard at least has enough books (1 - 4) for a spell's rarity, they can still learn it from other wizards, or receive it as a reward, even if they don't start with it in their spellbook
 * eg. a wizard with two books in a realm will only start with three common spells and two uncommon ones ... but they can learn the other seven common, and eight uncommon, spells ... if they can find/trade for them. They also start with one rare spell, but will never be able to learn any further rare spells (that would require three books)
 * Potential ("in book") - with each book in a realm a wizard starts with more spells potentially available (ie. "in their spell book", but requiring research to access)
 * eg. a wizard with two books in a realm starts with three common spells, two uncommon ones, and a rare spel, but; at game start most will only be potentially known
 * Sub-categories of Potential Spells:
 * Guaranteed - the wizard can ensure that they start the game with a certain number of spells in the "potential" category
 * Guaranteed, First Page - with 8+ books a wizard can guarantee that two uncommon spells not only start out "in the book", but also on the first two pages, guaranteeing that the wizard will be able to research them immediately
 * Randomly-Selected - If a wizard does not know all ten spells of a rarity level, any spells which aren't guaranteed spells will be randomly selected
 * Active - Out of every common spell a wizard potentially starts with, a few (determined by book) will begin active, and won't require research
 * eg. TODO: get the formula for starting spells and make an example

Spell Books Table
“Guaranteed” means you will be able to research that number of spells eventually, and “(turn 1)” means it'll be on your starting page of your spellbook at the beginning of the game. Any additional spellbooks you find in treasure will have these exact same contents and effects, although “Guaranteed” picks don't apply - those are reserved to the beginning of the game.

Primary Realm
Some game elements (eg. the Specialist retort) refer to your "primary realm", which is the realm you have the highest number of books of at the beginning of the game. In case of a tie, realms take priority in the order of: Nature, Sorcery, Chaos, Life, Death.

Starting Casting Skill and Power From Books
Each spellbook provides you with +2 starting casting skill, and 1.5 power, but if your total book count in all realms exceeds 8, each additional book is worth 3 power instead.

Retorts
See the Retorts page for information on Retorts.

Comments from the Developer
The process to create your custom wizard has been fine tuned to offer the maximal possible choices and replayability. For this purpose, most retorts can be chosen without requiring specific books, and have no limitations, however 2 pairs of retorts that support similar purposes are each mutually exclusive as stacking them would be far too obvious and efficient. Likewise, there is no restriction on which realms and how many books in each you can play together - if you want, you can even play a wizard that has Life and Death magic at the same time!

The same applies to enemy wizards, and the new algorithm to generate their choices increases the variance in enemies maximally, while avoiding to generate wizards that would be far too inefficient. Enemy wizards now pick their books and retorts first, then select the best matching portrait that is still available, so it's entirely possible for two or more enemies to use the same realms of magic, and the player selecting a portrait will not prevent a wizard using those realms from being generated. Finally, Myrran is also generated randomly (as long as the quantity of Myrran wizards matches the requirement) so it will not be the same person on Myrror all the time.

Guaranteed spells are reintroduced to encourage the strategy element and spell combos, and reward the player for picking a larger amount of spellbooks while simultaneously reducing the luck factor. Picking a larger amount of books leads to a slower but stable and reliable strategy, while picking a smaller amount of books spread over several realms and/or including many retorts maximizes the early game potential at the risk of having an extremely weak endgame.

For this same reason, Very Rare spells can't be guaranteed - you have to pick enough Spellbooks to ensure your randomly generated spells will contain at least a few options you can use effectively against your last remaining enemies. The required amount of books to obtain spells of each tier by trade or treasure has been increased to give greater relevance to picking your third and fourth book in the realm - which ensures any attempts to play 3 or more realms will have to involve some sort of tradeoff.

You can play 3 realms and have very rares in each but then that means sacrificing the option of picking any retorts. Alternately you can pick retorts, but then you won't be able to obtain very rare spells in some of your realms. Do note however that you can research one spell of the “unobtainable” tier by picking the previous book, you just can't trade or find more. So picking 2 books of Chaos will give you exactly one random rare Chaos spell, ensuring lower book counts still give you a taste of the next tier's power : you just can't expect to fully utilize it. The fourth book however adds 2 very rare spells instead of the usual one, to ensure playing multiple realms doesn't result in too much disadvantage.

This still leaves a dual- or triple-realm wizard with fewer very rare spells, but the difference isn't too high and the possibility to find and trade for more (assuming you did get the 4 books needed) will compensate for that. The system ensures each and every book you pick is a valuable addition, as your first 4 books unlock a new spell tier, books 5 to 7 enable picking guaranteed spells, one for each, book 8 enables the guaranteed first turn feature, and books 9 and 10 guarantee you get every rare and very rare spell respectively, leaving nothing to chance, as well as improving your casting and research capacity in the realm - as these books likely already encroach on your ability to pick all the retorts you want to.