Balancing staves and the path of the mage

Nah...  Staves need +initiative bonuses.  If i'm making a mage I don't care what the weapon damage is.  I only care about how often the hero gets initiative.  That said, most hero's get daggers. 

Very nice idea. Would definately give more usefulness out of those staves.

I would also like to add that all staves should be a ranged attack. Perhaps not a strong ranged attack, but ranged so that when combat is setup, the Mage is on the BACK LINE. If this ranged attack were of elemental damage, then there could be attribute abilties along the path of the mage to naturally increase elemental damage of your chosen shard paths. This way, if you own a staff along the same shard path, it's elemental damage output would also be increased.

I really really think this will finalize and balance out the staves, making them useful once again.

Entire system with 3-5 skills that just add +10% to damage is stupid.

Why we cant have something interesting, like metamagic?

Yes yes, lets switch element of some spell, if hero have both fire and lightning, special spells can be unloked, like ball lightning or searing ray, if special skill also unlocked.

Overcharge, usefull, require magic staff to use, 2x damage (effect) at cost of 3x mana.

Bending\breaking rules skills, that allow to hit with magic othervice spell immune creatures. 

Silent cast, ignoring silenced condition, enemy (player) wont know what spell is casting, at some mana or time cost.

Instant cast, cast spell right now, but with decreased stats (usefull alternative to -1 turn to cast already exists).

Such skills will be interesting and will provide new tactical options, not just add damage to spells already here.

Also caster level+x will be exceptionally usefull as both feat and skill.

Magnar can use level+3 as replacement to 50% damage, thiw will help a lot. 

Yep, that is exactly the reason why i think that the evoker abilities should increase the damage of the overcharge ability of staves and the overcharge ability should affect the next attack or spell.

That is a great idea. Aeromancy, hydromancy and pyromancy should increase the damage of (element) staves by 25 % and there should be staves that inflict poison damage and geomancy could increase this damage by 25 %. The path of the mage could have the following trait lines:

(element)mancy (+ 25 % staff damage) > summon (element) > (element) rites (+ 25 % spell damage)

Yeah, those metamagic abilities would be great and remind me of my D&D or Pathfinder time.

I would like to see more staves with built in spells (with no mana cost, and a cooldown).

I would like to see more staves that provide mana on a kill.

I would like to see staves with casting related bonuses, such as cheaper spells, extra damage (eg to death spells), providing a bonus shard count to any spell cast with the staff, or maybe even reducing cast times.

Disagree, this would be of dubious value and really wouldn't want mage troops ignoring resistances, all it would accomplish is too punish the already rare units with resistances. Staves already come in different damage types, so if your worried about fire resistance, build cold mages.

This would work as an unlockable champion skill though, +100% elemental weapon dmg for a turn. Maybe make it a general trait so warriors could use it too.

YES.

However I wouldn't get too carried away with increasing stave dmg. Really you would only ever use staves for damage early game. End game you'l be flinging spells around too much to have time for tiny stave dmg. All staves need to be ranged and affect casting in some way, it would be cool if we could get a stave that uses wizard1200 idea of ignoring or lowering resistance to elemental damage for spells.

Initiative would likely take a big hit if staves were all made to be ranged - which would still leave daggers a better choice for casters. Perhaps a few options on staves such as lower mana cost or slight damage boost would make them useful.

For hero only staves maybe add a trait that allows the channeler to increase the elemental damage of the staff dependent on the number of shards. That will be a powerful combo... +1 cold damage per water shard and the like... or even +1 initiative per air shard.

That is exactly what i was trying to suggest, but english is not my main language

Overcharge:

- Costs one action

- The next attack or spell ignores the cold, fire or lightning resistance

- If the mage has the evoker ability the damage of the next attack or spell is increased by 25 % or 50 %