Six offensive magic elements

[BernieBearSimp]

Part of me honestly thinks that the next Fire Emblem game is going to have six offensive magic elements like in Three Houses: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, and Dark. Do you think how Three Houses handles them is good, or should there be changes made?

[vanguard333]

One thing I am certain of is that the next FE game is probably going to reuse a lot from Three Houses; they spent a lot of time on all those assets, so they're probably not going to toss them aside after one game.

As for the magic elements specifically, the thing is that they're really decoration. In terms of gameplay, they're categorized into white magic (light), black magic (fire, ice, lightning, wind) and dark magic (dark). I could see them reusing this categorization, but with new spells (especially for dark magic, as I doubt they're going to once again have dark mages be associated with advanced technology) and that could result in different "elements", especially for anima/black magic (whatever they choose to call it in the next game).

There was only one ice spell in Three Houses and it wasn't very useful, so I could easily see that disappearing. Wind will probably reappear since that's always the anti-flying magic, fire is pretty much assumed in any fantasy game involving magic, so that will undoubtedly reappear. Lightning is similarly pretty much assumed, so it will probably remain as well.

 

Now, that's what I predict will be the case for the next FE game; as for whether or not I think it's good or should be changed... I honestly think that, if they're not going to separate the anima spells by element in gameplay, then they shouldn't limit themselves to "elemental" spells, and the next game would be a good opportunity for them add other types of offensive spells. One thing I actually liked about Shadows of Valentia was that, in addition to the "elemental" spells, it also had Sagittae: an offensive spell where the caster unleashes a series of energy arrows that aren't of any "element". I think it could be interesting to see stuff like that be included in the list of offensive spells for the next FE game.

[lenticular]

I don't really see a need for so many distinct elements unless they're really going to be made properly distinct from each other. As is, there's really not a whole lot of difference between a mage who learns Wind and Cutting Gale and a mage who learns Fire and Bolganone. Sure, the numbers are slightly different, and occasionally that's going to translate into a difference in combat, but for the most part, the two units are going to feel very similar. It's mostly just going to be a difference in what animation plays when you attack.

I'd like to either see them cut back on the number of different types of black/anima magic or really work hard to give every element its own distinct flavour and identity. Ideally, I want to be incentivised to use different builds for different types of elemental magic. So, for instance, maybe I'd want to do a full crit build with a frost mage. That's sort of possible in Three Houses, but the crit bonus that ice spells give isn't really big enough and none of the characters who can learn Black Magic Crit +10 learn ice spells so it's hard to stack crit, so it just ends up not being worth it.

Another important change will be to make white/light magic not be terrible. I don't think that it really works having it tied to the same skill as healing and utility magic, especially since characters are limited to a maximum of 5 learned White Magic spells and 2 of them are always Heal and Nosferatu. Characters that have have good healing and utility lists just don't have space to have good offensive white magic on top, even if those spells actually existed. There's a few different ways that this could be fixed or changed, but I do think that change is needed.

Dark magic in Three Houses is in a weird place. The spells are all pretty great. They're flavourful, powerful without being overpowered, and have interesting secondary effects. I'm really happy with the dark magic spell selection. But then there's the way they are integrated into the class system, which is... considerably less good. Dark Mage and Dark Bishop don't offer any bonuses to dark magic; they only give a single dark magic spell and it's the generic one that has no interesting secondary effects; some characters just use dark magic as standard anyway even in black magic classes and it mostly just means they don't get a -faire skill if you make them a Warlock. The whole system is just a mess.

My off-the-top-of-my-head probably-needs-a-lot-of-work idea for how to solve things is to give every character three different Reason magic spell lists, one each for dark, light and black magic. Which spell list they have access to then depends on what class they're in. If they're in a dark magic class, then they have access to their dark magic list; if they're in a holy class (Priest, Bishop, Holy Knight, War Ascetic) then they have their light magic list; if they're in any other class then they get their black magic list.

51 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

There was only one ice spell in Three Houses and it wasn't very useful, so I could easily see that disappearing.

Actually, there were two, Blizzard and Fimbulvetr, but neither of them were very useful so your point still stands.

[Ouzyxol]

Eh, aside from the Dark/Black distinction, without a magic triangle, there is little point to having so many elements.  Well, I suppose flavor for different characters is a minor point for it.

52 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Now, that's what I predict will be the case for the next FE game; as for whether or not I think it's good or should be changed... I honestly think that, if they're not going to separate the anima spells by element in gameplay, then they shouldn't limit themselves to "elemental" spells, and the next game would be a good opportunity for them add other types of offensive spells. One thing I actually liked about Shadows of Valentia was that, in addition to the "elemental" spells, it also had Sagittae: an offensive spell where the caster unleashes a series of energy arrows that aren't of any "element". I think it could be interesting to see stuff like that be included in the list of offensive spells for the next FE game.

Small point, but Sagittae does exist in 3H, so it's not like everything fits nicely into the Fire/Thunder/Wind/etc. catagories.

[BernieBearSimp]

15 minutes ago, Ouzyxol said:

Eh, aside from the Dark/Black distinction, without a magic triangle, there is little point to having so many elements.  Well, I suppose flavor for different characters is a minor point for it.

I think that you could work around that issue by instead giving different enemies various elemental weaknesses and resistances to Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, and Dark. Both with spells and certain weapons; there'd also of course be certain armor to grant resistance to certain elements.

[vanguard333]

15 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Actually, there were two, Blizzard and Fimbulvetr, but neither of them were very useful so your point still stands.

Thank you. I don't think I ever used Fimbulvetr, so I never would've known that it was also an ice spell.

 

3 minutes ago, Ouzyxol said:

Small point, but Sagittae does exist in 3H, so it's not like everything fits nicely into the Fire/Thunder/Wind/etc.

…You're right; how did I forget that Sagittae is also in Three Houses?

Now that I think about it, there was also Agnea's Arrow, which is really similar. …I really need to replay Three Houses if I'm forgetting these spells.

Actually, after watching a video showing Sagittae, I realized why I had forgotten it: instead of being the series of energy arrows that it was in SoV, it instead was just three tiny simultaneous blasts of magic that could easily be mistaken for an ice spell or a light spell and just plain easy to forget. Bring back the arrows!

 

Anyway, what did you two think of my overall point (that, if they're not going to have the elements matter in gameplay, they may as well come up with more non-elemental spells)?

 

29 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Another important change will be to make white/light magic not be terrible. I don't think that it really works having it tied to the same skill as healing and utility magic, especially since characters are limited to a maximum of 5 learned White Magic spells and 2 of them are always Heal and Nosferatu. Characters that have have good healing and utility lists just don't have space to have good offensive white magic on top, even if those spells actually existed. There's a few different ways that this could be fixed or changed, but I do think that change is needed.

I agree that it needs to not be terrible; outside of seraphim (and even then, seraphim's only good against monsters), the offensive light spells are almost useless; white magic really is the healing & utility type of magic. I suspect that the developers probably thought that, if the offensive white magic spells were great, then there would be little reason for a character to learn black magic. Of course, there are obvious reasons I can think of for still wanting black magic spells: having more spells (since spells have limited uses), some characters aren't good at learning white magic, different spells having different benefits, etc.

I agree about the dark mage class system being a mess; the class system overall is something I really hope they take the time to refine in the next game.

[lenticular]

3 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Anyway, what did you two think of my overall point (that, if they're not going to have the elements matter in gameplay, they may as well come up with more non-elemental spells)?

I'd largely agree with it. If the only real differences between spells are the exact balance of their numbers and their battle animations, then it would be neat if they really let their imaginations go wild and came up with some wild spell designs. "Here's a gust of air. Here's a slightly bigger gust of air. This is an even bigger gust of air." isn't really going to excite anyone. I'm thinking about how many different spells there are in D&D and how many different moves there are in Pokémon. There's a ton of potential for more interesting-looking spells (even if they don't actually do anything more itneresting than damage).

[eclipse]

I'd rather have bits and pieces of the various magic systems put together.  I liked the light/dark/anima triangle, but the fire/wind/thunder triangle was a little too much IMO.  As long as each school of magic has a nice niche, I think it would be okay.  For example, light magic is for buffing/healing allies, dark magic is for debuffing enemies, and anima magic is for interacting with the environment (for example, fire magic gains accuracy against enemies in a forest, thunder magic deals additional damage to foes in water/in the rain, and wind magic deals more damage to flying units).

[vanguard333]

56 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I'd largely agree with it. If the only real differences between spells are the exact balance of their numbers and their battle animations, then it would be neat if they really let their imaginations go wild and came up with some wild spell designs. "Here's a gust of air. Here's a slightly bigger gust of air. This is an even bigger gust of air." isn't really going to excite anyone. I'm thinking about how many different spells there are in D&D and how many different moves there are in Pokémon. There's a ton of potential for more interesting-looking spells (even if they don't actually do anything more interesting than damage).

Yeah; there are a ton of things they could do. For just one example, other than Leo's unique spell in Fates, has there ever been a plant spell in Fire Emblem?

 

32 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I'd rather have bits and pieces of the various magic systems put together.  I liked the light/dark/anima triangle, but the fire/wind/thunder triangle was a little too much IMO.  As long as each school of magic has a nice niche, I think it would be okay.  For example, light magic is for buffing/healing allies, dark magic is for debuffing enemies, and anima magic is for interacting with the environment (for example, fire magic gains accuracy against enemies in a forest, thunder magic deals additional damage to foes in water/in the rain, and wind magic deals more damage to flying units).

That could be really interesting. I personally would still want light magic to have offensive options (in terms of offense, light magic's niche could be stuff like dealing more damage to monsters), but stuff like fire magic having greater accuracy in forest areas sounds really neat.

[Shadow Mir]

10 hours ago, BernieBearSimp said:

Part of me honestly thinks that the next Fire Emblem game is going to have six offensive magic elements like in Three Houses: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, and Dark. Do you think how Three Houses handles them is good, or should there be changes made?

I don't know. Some prior games had six elements, though a good few games did take fire, thunder, wind and ice and mold them into anima magic. There's also not much purpose without a magic triangle, which has not been seen since Shadow Dragon.

6 hours ago, BernieBearSimp said:

I think that you could work around that issue by instead giving different enemies various elemental weaknesses and resistances to Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, and Dark. Both with spells and certain weapons; there'd also of course be certain armor to grant resistance to certain elements.

Tellius did something like that, having anima magic deal bonus damage to certain units (fire was effective against beast laguz, wind was effective against flying units, and thunder was effective against dragon laguz [and dracoknights in Radiant Dawn, which for whatever reason, despite being flying units, did not take bonus damage from wind magic and bows, the typical bane of fliers]). Unfortunately, the Tellius games were also among the worst for mages, especially Radiant Dawn.

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

Dark magic in Three Houses is in a weird place. The spells are all pretty great. They're flavourful, powerful without being overpowered, and have interesting secondary effects. I'm really happy with the dark magic spell selection. But then there's the way they are integrated into the class system, which is... considerably less good. Dark Mage and Dark Bishop don't offer any bonuses to dark magic; they only give a single dark magic spell and it's the generic one that has no interesting secondary effects; some characters just use dark magic as standard anyway even in black magic classes and it mostly just means they don't get a -faire skill if you make them a Warlock. The whole system is just a mess.

Also of note, most of the characters that can learn dark magic are female... while Dark Mage and Dark Bishop are male-exclusive. Worse yet, both of those classes are tied to an item that can be pretty annoying to get (and because of their being male-exclusive, only one character actually wants to have anything to do with them... and he's locked to one route). And even then, they're not that great despite this (it doesn't help their cases that their mastered skills are lacking; Poison Strike is incredibly niche, and Lifetaker is just plain bad).

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

Another important change will be to make white/light magic not be terrible. I don't think that it really works having it tied to the same skill as healing and utility magic, especially since characters are limited to a maximum of 5 learned White Magic spells and 2 of them are always Heal and Nosferatu. Characters that have have good healing and utility lists just don't have space to have good offensive white magic on top, even if those spells actually existed. There's a few different ways that this could be fixed or changed, but I do think that change is needed.

Agreed. One of my bigger complaints about the magic system in 3H is that offensive white magic sucks except for Seraphim. For a game that has a master class that is meant to be an offensive faith user (in theory, at least), the fact that this is the case is just plain dumb.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Yexin]

for me, the more magic elements, the better
even more so if they bring back at least one of the trinities of magic

[TheChoZenOne]

How about NO magic in the next game. I have the power of God and Anime on my side 😎

 

 

.....and my forged iron sword Mystletainn....

 

(Imagine a FE with no mages at all)

[Jotari]

They could have 118 different offensive magic elements, but if all 118 just do the same thing, they really only have one type.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Jotari

[Yexin]

27 minutes ago, Jotari said:

They could have 118 different offensive magic elements, but all 118 just do the same thing, they really only have one type.

just like regular weapons tbh
but at least they have their own rock-paper-scissors mechanic

honoestly, i'll never understand why they, someday, woke up and felt like the trinity of magic was just "not worth being a thing anymore"

Edited December 9, 2021 by Yexin

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Yexin said:

just like regular weapons tbh
but at least they have their own rock-paper-scissors mechanic

honoestly, i'll never understand why they, someday, woke up and felt like the trinity of magic was just "not worth being a thing anymore"

Well the reason would be Shadow Dragon, which didn't have alternate magic types at all and they wanted to maintain fidelity to that. Awakening was the one that really removed it and, I actually wouldn't be all that surprised if they just sort of forgot about it when it came to make that. The characters still seem to be somewhat designed around specific magic types (Miriel fire, despite being a blue unit in Heroes, Rickon wind, Robin thunder).

[ARMADS!!!]

16 hours ago, Ouzyxol said:

Eh, aside from the Dark/Black distinction, without a magic triangle, there is little point to having so many elements.  Well, I suppose flavor for different characters is a minor point for it.

Small point, but Sagittae does exist in 3H, so it's not like everything fits nicely into the Fire/Thunder/Wind/etc. catagories.

 They could the distinction just for the sake of making it cool, its interesting to have a big variety of elements, also it could make the units more different from each others (like, if some mages can only wield ice and wind magic while others can wield fire, you would have an incentive to eventually test both of these mages). But yeah, we should have a magic triangle anyway

[Yexin]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Well the reason would be Shadow Dragon, which didn't have alternate magic types at all and they wanted to maintain fidelity to that. Awakening was the one that really removed it and, I actually wouldn't be all that surprised if they just sort of forgot about it when it came to make that. The characters still seem to be somewhat designed around specific magic types (Miriel fire, despite being a blue unit in Heroes, Rickon wind, Robin thunder).

i haven't specified it, but i thought it was obvious that i wasn't taking into account Shadow Dragon, New Mystery and Echoes

as for what you said about Awakening, that's a funny theory, and if they're ever to officialize it with an interview, it would also make the "intelligent" part of the software house's name even more unfitting
Three Houses would've been the perfect game to bring back one Trinity of Magic, what with all of its """complex""" mechanics and the fact that Genealogy was a huge inspiration for it

anyway, as far as "diversification" goes, i'd like them to go back to how magic worked in RD, meaning each element being effective against a particular type of unit

Edited December 9, 2021 by Yexin

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Yexin said:

i haven't specified it, but i thought it was obvious that i wasn't taking into account Shadow Dragon, New Mystery and Echoes

as for what you said about Awakening, that's a funny theory, and if they're ever to officialize it with an interview, it would also make the "intelligent" part of the software house's name even more unfitting
Three Houses would've been the perfect game to bring back one Trinity of Magic, what with all of its """complex""" mechanics and the fact that Genealogy was a huge inspiration for it

anyway, as far as "diversification" goes, i'd like them to go back to how magic worked in RD, meaning each element being effective against a particular type of unit

Well they could have brought it back for Shadow Dragon (Shadows of Valentia not quite so much as it already has it's dual light-dark set up). Or retained it I guess. Shadow Dragon, and especially New Mystery, has enough mages as it is that they could get different classes. Like they outright invented the sorcerer class in Shadow Dragon only because there's no trinity of magic it's just another skin for the mage class with some slightly fudged stats. They also have Aura and Imhullu as spells present already that narratively fit into a light dark dichotomy (with Excalibur being obviously distinct from either for the existence of Anima). Considering how many classes they altered from the original game (and adding axes at all into New Mystery, yeah, Old Mystery didn't have playable axe users, or rather half of it didn't, Book 1 does but for Book 2 Kaga just decided axes were lame), giving us a dedicated light mage class in addition to sorcerer actually using dark magic, it wouldn't have been a big surprise at all. Hell they implemented the Weapon Triangle into Shadow Dragon when it didn't previously exist in Archanea, so implementing the trinity of magic would be inconsistent with what they were doing. So I'm going to go back on what I said about it being fidelity to the original game. Given the changes they were already making, other magic types is something they absolutely could have, and maybe even planned on, implementing (given the existence of the sorcerer class, though the reason for that existing might also be because they didn't want Gharnef to be a bishop). An alternative explanation might be that they just didn't see it as useful. Recall that the previous game in the series was Radiant Dawn which basically had the trinity of magic in theory but, like, not at all in practice given there's only two dark mages in the game and Micaiah doesn't fight either of them. That alone suggests they were beginning to lose interest in the idea.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Jotari

[Yexin]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Recall that the previous game in the series was Radiant Dawn which basically had the trinity of magic in theory but, like, not at all in practice given there's only two dark mages in the game and Micaiah doesn't fight either of them. That alone suggests they were beginning to lose interest in the idea.

yeah, i remember this, and in my eyes it only means that, if you lose interest in a mechanic that's been present for years into your game, you're just not good enough to know how to make it feel impactful and actually relevant (which is ironic of me since i like RD so much, but flaws must be recognised), although this is a different topic... except not so much, since we're talking about one of the FE series's core mechanics after all

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Yexin said:

Three Houses would've been the perfect game to bring back one Trinity of Magic, what with all of its """complex""" mechanics and the fact that Genealogy was a huge inspiration for it

Reintroducing the trinity of magic in the same game that they got rid of the weapon triangle would have been a strange decision. I can see the arguments for having both of them, neither of them, or just the weapon triangle; having just the trinity of magic seems much harder to justify. It also wouldn't really have worked with -breaker style skills that Three Houses uses as its weapon triangle replacement, since they'd have been far too niche and overspecific. Nobody is going to waste a skill slot equipping "White Tomebreaker" or the like.

Personally, I'm not really against having a trinity of magic, but I've never found it particularly interesting or impactful. Mage versus mage combatis generally fairly ineffectual, since mages generally have high res. Turning a 70% chance to hit for 5 damage into a 95% chance to hit for 6 damage (or whatever) doesn't matter often enough for me to care about it.

If they do want to bring back the trinity of magic, maybe they could go down a similar route to what they did in Fates, and just incorporate it into the main triangle. So, for example, it could be swords and light beat axes and dark beat lances and anima. That would let it actually come up in play a lot more often than the old system did.

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Yexin said:

honoestly, i'll never understand why they, someday, woke up and felt like the trinity of magic was just "not worth being a thing anymore"

Probably because mage vs mage combat is generally a waste of time and weapon durability. Going from a 80% chance to do 4 damage to a 90% chance to do 5 damage ain't enough to make it relevant to me.

3 hours ago, Yexin said:

Three Houses would've been the perfect game to bring back one Trinity of Magic, what with all of its """complex""" mechanics and the fact that Genealogy was a huge inspiration for it

I hard disagree, as 3H scrapped the weapon triangle, which was much more relevant than the trinity of magic ever was. Justifying the trinity of magic would be a very hard sell.

4 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

But yeah, we should have a magic triangle anyway

Why? It doesn't feel relevant when pretty much ten times out of ten, you're better off using a pegasus knight or someone with high resistance to take out enemy mages.

[SumG]

The big issue is that mages are not prevalent enough in Fire Emblem games, either in the player's army or in enemy formations, to justify such a granular magic system.  Mages might make up maybe 20% of enemy forces on a mage-heavy map.  If the devs decided to implement 6 different magic regimes, and could somehow make them all feel distinct, you might be able to take advantage of that once or twice on a map, if you brought the right type of mage into that battle.  That just doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

As others have mentioned, previous games have tried to implement more expansive magic systems (e.g. the magic triangle) and the results were... fine?  Certainly no bad, but there's a reason the devs have not bothered to bring back those systems in recent games.  As it is, I think there's a head nod towards giving each of the elements something of an identity.  Wind is light weight, high accuracy, but low strength (i.e. swords).  Fire is a middle ground (i.e. lances).  Thunder is high weight, high damage, low accuracy (i.e. axes).  Ice is very low accuracy, but high crit chance.  I think they could lean into these a bit more, but that's enough of an identity for my tastes.

In order to justify a more granular magic system, the devs would have to significantly increase magic-based enemies on maps.  But doing that would require a fundamental redesign of many of the physical-based classes in the game.  Most physical classes, aside from anti-mage classes, are not intended to be taking multiple hits from mages in a single turn cycle.  This isn't a problem when there's only a handful of mages scattered around a map, but if those enemies were ubiquitous, all of a sudden many of the classes in the games would struggle to have utility.

[Yexin]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Reintroducing the trinity of magic in the same game that they got rid of the weapon triangle would have been a strange decision.

 

38 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I hard disagree, as 3H scrapped the weapon triangle

whoops, i completely forgot about that, it's been a while since i last played 3H
so yeah, i take that back

 

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Personally, I'm not really against having a trinity of magic, but I've never found it particularly interesting or impactful. Mage versus mage combatis generally fairly ineffectual, since mages generally have high res. Turning a 70% chance to hit for 5 damage into a 95% chance to hit for 6 damage (or whatever) doesn't matter often enough for me to care about it.

 

38 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Probably because mage vs mage combat is generally a waste of time and weapon durability. Going from a 80% chance to do 4 damage to a 90% chance to do 5 damage ain't enough to make it relevant to me.

what i'm getting out of these statements is that Trinities of Magic are unnecessary because fighting mages with mages is boring due to the fact that generally all magic classes have high Res stats, and that it's less effective than taking them out with physical units, and i partially agree with this sentiment, but then why even having magic classes at all, if battles between physical units can still "make sense" due to the fact that not many physical units have a very high Def stat? would generally lowering magic units' Res stat really matter and justify a potential comeback of a Trinity of Magic?

Edited December 9, 2021 by Yexin

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

Personally, I'm not really against having a trinity of magic, but I've never found it particularly interesting or impactful. Mage versus mage combatis generally fairly ineffectual, since mages generally have high res. Turning a 70% chance to hit for 5 damage into a 95% chance to hit for 6 damage (or whatever) doesn't matter often enough for me to care about it.

Another solution there is to just massively buff the boost the trinity of magic provides versus the weapon triangle. I made a Binding Blade mod where magic advantage gave like a +10 damage boost and, I think +30 hit (the avoid the other way was more forgiving though). I also gave every promoted magic class two magic types. Much like the weapon triangle benefits axes most, this made dark magic more reliable, which otherwise kind of sucks in Binding Blade.

Alternatively, defense focused mages.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 12/9/2021 at 4:23 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Why? It doesn't feel relevant when pretty much ten times out of ten, you're better off using a pegasus knight or someone with high resistance to take out enemy mages.

It's usually a marginal effect, but I honestly like how, say, the Boat map in FE7 gives an incentive to bring Lucius over Erk. And in Sacred Stones, it provides a motive for Sages to train in Light (for WTA over certain lategame monsters). Without the triangle, magic types become even more samey. And to the common refrain "well magic types should be differentiated further at a fundamental level", I firmly agree, but having a WTA system isn't preventing that sort of change from happening. 

On 12/9/2021 at 3:55 PM, lenticular said:

If they do want to bring back the trinity of magic, maybe they could go down a similar route to what they did in Fates, and just incorporate it into the main triangle. So, for example, it could be swords and light beat axes and dark beat lances and anima. That would let it actually come up in play a lot more often than the old system did.

I think this is sorta what Heroes does, since tomes can be Red, Blue, or Green (functioning akin to the Fates triangle). I generally liked Fates' triangle system, but I'm conflicted - Shurikens were already useful, and WTA plus oft-high Res just made Ninjas perfect anti-mages, perhaps to a fault. Then again, that just made Calamity Gate all the more valuable as an anti-Ninja tool. Either way, I'd be game for more experimenting that further differentiates magic type, without establishing a clear dis/advantage hierarchy.