ability to play as pure magic user would rock!

[fruithead]

here's a possibility: mages tend to benefit less from a spell like doom, since the base damage of creatures in their army is lower. i think it would be cool if doom increased base damage to the targeted creature by a percentage for each point of int, for instance .2 per point at lvl 1, .35 at lvl 2, and .5 at lvl 3. so a mage with 40 int would get a 20% damage increase if cast at lvl 3. (maybe even .75 at lvl 3 would be better.)

just an example of how i think spells might be made more beneficial for the "pure" magic user.

[Ryastar]

I think the thing here is that the spells you named - the ones that don't scale as much with int, or at all - are the spells that are meant more for warriors and paladins, whose intellect is far lower. I agree that it is weird that those spells don't seem to increase duration with int, despite the game saying that every 15 pts adds +1 to duration, i think it might be a glitch or oversight. However, many more spells DO scale with intellect, and i believe that those are the spells that are meant more for mages. Damage spells are the perfect example of this - the more int, there more damage, each point of int adding +10% to the damage and every 7 a bonus 10%. These are not the perfect solution, as it is impossible to only use damage spells, and win. You do also need troops to deal with the more annoying enemies. THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT DAMAGE SPELLS ARE USELESS, just not the perfect solution.

[Ryastar]

I think the thing here is that those spells you mentioned, spells that don't scale with int, are ones that are meant for warriors and paladins, whose intellect is lower. I agree that their duration should increase as advertised though. It must be either a glitch or an oversight, because i see no stated reason anywhere why every 15 int doesn't increase the duration of those spells.