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Happy to announce the latest update: v1.9.0

• The Magical Enchanting feature has been introduced.  Enchanting offers mages the ability to further refine and empower any piece of equipment. To get started, you can find the research options under the "Magic" research tab.  There is also an in-depth tutorial in the in-game tutor menu that will guide you through the process.
  
  
• Several new mod options have been added for further tailoring of AI abilities and game features.
  
  
• Summoned creatures and structures have been reworked to increase the reliability of their intended behavior and improve functionality.  Existing summons will be unaffected.
  
  
• Undead mental states and resistances to human weaknesses has been increased and these anomalies should no longer affect their behavior.

I meant as a semi-permanent spell with a persistent mana cost like the Necros undead. And thanks for explaining your risk/reward goal.
As an aside, dose anyone know how ranger and sniper interact with non vanilla weapons? For example is an arbalest from Medieval Times gonna work for snipers now that there is a restriction on sniper weapons?

Sniper weapons can't be tagged as neolithic.  That's pretty much it, so if the Arbalest for Medieval Times uses other tags, or no tags, then a sniper would be able to use it.
Rangers have quite a few filters - if the name of the weapon has "bow" in it, or if it shoots arrows, or does damage of type arrow, it's considered a bow and can be used by a ranger.  If the arbalest shoots something like a "bolt" and uses a custom defined damage type, then it won't match any of those criteria and wouldn't be considered a bow.
Both classes will tell you if the weapon doesn't meets the criteria if you try using weapon specific abilities (arrow storm for ranger and any of the shots for sniper).  If you can use arrow storm, the bow mastery buff should also apply.

Quite the repertoire of updates, Harry.  Nice work.

Here is a minor QoL suggestion:

I find myself using the magical heaters a lot (it's -50°C half of the year on this map so it helps my power a lot lol) but I have to manually uncheck "Use as a gather spot". Is it possible to make them spawn disabled by default?

I think the magical heater works more like a standard heater and less like a fire so I think this is a fine option for default and I'll look at changing it.

As a QoL suggestion, is it possible to make the heaters and coolers sustained instead of fire and forget? Maybe as a second spell so you could have both or something. its just i tend to lose them right after a big fight or something and several times I've had people die from heatstroke because of a heatwave that happens close to a raid

Not quite sure what you mean 'sustained' instead of 'fire and forget', do you mean they incur a constant mana drain while active instead of an "up front" cost?  These currently last for about half a season and should help get through the worst temperatures (or save food in an eclipse or power loss).  But a complete reliance on magic is intentionally risky - you can use buffs and utility spells to help develop the colony, or save it for a raid that may not happen.  That balance of risk vs reward is what causes the player to deliberate when and where to use magic and is exactly what I'm shooting for 

I don't mind mages exploding on death, but do they have to kill everything in range? Reduced damage would make the feature more interesting. Maybe mage-type themed damage would work (i.e. fire for fire mages, hypothermia for ice mages).

I'll add this as another option so the amount of damage done can be reduced.
One of the purposes of the retaliation was to limit the amount of fully trained mages that could be acquired from prisoner recruits, bypassing the difficulty in capturing a mage reduces the worth of mages in general.  While I have no problems adding options to reduce threat risk of the death retaliation spell, the concept of preventing a mass influx of mages will still be adhered to, though it looks like I'll need another method to help shape this.

Incidentally, the mod option to turn off explosion on death doesn't work. Explosions generally kill everyone standing near them, too. Not fun.

Hmm, there's not exactly an option to turn it completely off, but I did push out a mini update to steam today that allows the option to be set to .1, which should effectively only ever hit the caster (edit: or pawns in the same tile... darn those kamikaze mages) as a means of avoiding capture.

I feel like Paladins and Necromancer's should get into fisticuffs a lot more often if you have both as colonists. I think I saw in the thoughtdefs that a lot of people don't like necros as it is, but this could be some even more added flavor

In fact, an entire DnD alignment system could be fun, maybe for some other mod.

Torann do you plan to add more interactions among the different classes? Also, what do you think about "combo spells?" Something like a druid could get a tornado going, and a fire or lightning mage supe it up, and now you've got a fiery tornado or a tornado that shoots out bolts of lightning. Anyone ever play ChronoTrigger will remember all of the awesome double and triple skill/spell combos. Could also have a cross "fighter/magic" skills/spells. Maybe have the mage's buff up their non-magical brethren with active or passive timed buffs. Like a fire mage could make X% of a fighter's melee attacks also cause additional splash fire damage in Y radius of their target for Z time.

Yep, definitely looking to add more social behavior revolving around mages to the mod.  I kind of consider this more fluff than core so the stuff completed so far has been more breaking ground than full implementation.  Plus there are still have several core features I want to push out, hopefully before 1.0.  Same goes with the overall balance rework, seems somewhat pointless to start a crusade to balance spells when core features like magic items and enchantments that will offset casters isn't even in yet.  That being said, I've got some idea's, and a class or three, that I feel will really liven up the social scene.

I haven't really looked at dual mage combo's, but do have a theory class that would be able to perform combo's themself - tip of the hat to Mass Effect Biotics.

A few things I noticed when playing and some suggestions:

I appreciate the feedback Prince Kasta, thanks for taking the time to post.

Summoner (and elementals) were recently nerfed a bit, do you feel they are still OP?  What makes them OP?  Cheap spells?  Ability to stay out of danger?  The summons themselves?

Oddly enough, summon was also reduced recently, but I agree that it definitely has a lot of creative uses.

I like the idea's on resurrection and really like the nullification field idea for paladin. 

Some minor updates this week for 1.8.4

• The order of events has been changed when using abilities.  When an ability is used; experience gain, side effects on the casting pawn, and mana/stamina consumption all occur following the cast timer rather than before.  This also prevents spell stacking.
  
  
• Abilities used when the target is out of range, or if the target is not visible to the caster, will generate an error message and abort using the ability; mana/stamina will no longer be consumed in these cases.

Let me know if you find any bugs related to this change, I haven't had a chance to test all abilities yet.

Update notes for v1.8.3:

• Minions and Elementals should no longer generate errors from frostbite or hypothermia.
  
  
• Elemental Rift event will now end correctly following a reload.
  
  
• The Necromancer skill "Cheating Death" will also add a reduction in undead upkeep cost.  Undead should no longer attempt tasks they cannot perform.
  Feeling singled out, Necromancers have begun returning the social distaste expressed by paladins, priests, and druids.
  
  
• Mod Settings have been added to allow players to adjust the rarity of magic traits.
  
  
• The Arcane Fold, in response to increased threats against their caravans and colonies, has increased the training and equipment of their guards.
  
  
• The Magic pane displays points required to learn class spells;  spells that haven't been learned yet will no longer give the option to upgrade a related skill.
  
  
• The mana cost for Summoner skills has increased slightly. Each minion now requires an upkeep cost that reduces the amount of mana a summoner gains each turn by 20%.  Unlike undead, minion upkeep costs are not shared, and each summoner may only have 4 minions at any given time.  Summoning additional minions over this amount will dismiss the oldest minion.  The duration of a summoned minion has doubled and its cooldown has been drastically reduced.

Sounds great! I'm excited in whatever direction you decide to take your mod. Do you plan on making any special items?

I only mention that class thing since it may be some time before new classes go into development, but I'm certainly not ignoring or discarding class ideas.

For items, I probably will only have a very limited amount of items, particularly weapons or armor or robes that have their own graphics. 

I'm planning a few 'unique' items/item types that will have specific properties to A RimWorld of Magic.  An example would be an item that grants mana cost reduction to all spells used by the wearer.  Other flavor of items will create a magical effect when used, like a belt that allows the wearer to blink or cast a small heal.  For those types of items, they will fill an existing slot type so you'll have to choose between the magical item or maybe a tech superior with better stats.
Some artifacts may do both (magical effect + passives).

notfood gave permission to use "Infused" as a basis for enchantments so I'll be able to build on an already considerable mod.  Enchantments will come before items.

I think the totem concept has real potential.  I see the class as a more utility focused version of the summoner and I've already added it to my design manual as a class type.  Right now, that list has about 12-13 new classes that could potentially find their way into the mod.

That being said, I'm putting my focus on refining the classes that are in the game as well as introducing some new features.  The Bard is in the works now, but that will be the last class for a bit while other aspects of the mod get developed.

O Glorious ModMaker,

I enjoy a certain Rimworld stream, so I'm going to test this mod with the mods the streamer's using, per below:

HugsLib ; Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering ; Basic Bridges ; Medical Tab ; B18 More Furniture ; Relations Tab ; Blueprints ; Change Dresser ; Hand me that brick ; EdB Prepare Carefully ; Rimsenal Storyteller ; Rimsenal Rimhair ; Area Unlocker ; More Faction Bases ; Medieval Times ; MJ MiniMap ; Hospitality ; Sunlamp power ; ResearchPal ; A dog said ; SS researchable stat upgrades ; Archipalago ; More Trade ships ; More trait slots ; Wall lights ; Animal Tab ; Razzle Dazzle! ; that garden mod whose name I'm forgetting ; that extra stones & minerals mod whose name I'm also forgetting

I may add in a few more for testing. Any requests, O Modmaker? And any particular features you'd like tested on this mod? ^.^

Nothing in particular I suppose.  I'm not 100% clear on what you're looking for in your test.  If it's immersion, the necromancer and summoner are the roughest and have the most 'social' impact on a colony.  The priest and ranger are the newest classes, and thus have had the least feedback on playstyle, power, etc.  If you're looking for bugs/conflicts, I don't see anything there that should cause an issue and I use most of those mods myself.  I'd be curious to know how 'SS researchable stat upgrades' affects this mod.  I don't have a built-in custom scenario yet, but if you're using EDB prepare carefully then I'd recommend a "magically gifted and/or physically adept" trait for 1 (crash landed) or 2 (tribe), if you want a faster start, select one of the advanced traits to start with (Lightning Mage for example).  Other than that, let me know how it goes!

Hi, just started playing with the new classes, and I have another class suggestion:
The Pysker

Really like this idea, ill add it to the list of possible new classes.

Can any heal spells heal scars? 

Yes, the priest spell "purify" can heal scars, brain damage, age related or genetic weaknesses (like asthma or frailty), and reduce or remove addiction withdrawal.  You can actually cure someone of luciferium, though it's hard.  Purify is a high mana cost spell and drains the priest, and even at maxed power, purify will only cure .2 luciferium severity each time it's used.  Consuming luciferium once starts a pawn at .5 severity, and each additional dose adds .1 severity... so certainly not an easy thing to do and the clock is against you.  The priest can not heal missing limbs.

The Druid spell "cure disease" is only for curing infections and diseases, it does nothing for genetic failings or scars.  The regeneration spell from the druid acts as a "heal over time" which heals small amounts of physical damage (cuts, bruises, etc) each time it ticks.  The Druid gets "regrow limb" and, like the name says, regrows limbs only (feet, hands, legs, arms), but does nothing currently for eyes, nose, etc.

Between the two classes, you should be able to cure pretty much everything though.

Any way to lower the cost of the upkeep on zombies undead?  Seems like the mana cost reduction for casting spells probably doesn't help that.

You know, that's a great point.  Right now the only thing that really helps a necro out is the global skill "Clarity" as it increases amount of mana gained.  I'll probably add a reduction in upkeep cost through the "Cheating Death" skill.

Killing my colonist zombie so I could rerevive them after I level the undead passive caused massive social penalties for my Necro.

Well that's not supposed to happen, I thought I'd gotten all the negative thoughts from an undead dying, can you tell me what the caption on the mood penalty is?

Also agree on the item stuff, it's coming in the near future - along with enchantments and useable, magical items.

I notice at all these world events, the rewards allways was Torn/magical scripts. Not a single combat style.
Is this just unluck or did you didn't add them as reward.

I think just unlucky, I double checked and they're definitely in there.  They don't have "torn" versions so that reduces the chance for the class book a bit.

Torann I was curious about the Ranger. To get the boost from bows, does the game know if you are using a bow but it's from a mod?

This goes through several filters to (hopefully) be as flexible as possible without allowing non-bows.
I just checked and can confirm the forsaken bow is recognized as a valid bow to use with the ranger and the damage bonus is applied as well.

Anyway, I was thinking of having a class called the Tactician/Engineer. Thoughts?

I'll have to see, I'd like to try to keep any mechanical skills out of the mod so that people playing on low tech games can easily use the mod; this is why the sniper can't use skills without a gun. Also very similar to the summoner class.  That being said, you won't mind if I use some of the idea's for stand-alone spells do you? 

At 1.8.1 When a pawn leave the map with the gateway, the bed don't get unassigned. Not a major issue, but when you can fix it.

What? If that's true, how is that possible Torann?

Interesting.  I'm sure it has to do with the fact that I bypass all normal "exit map" functions when moving a pawn through a portal.  But it sounds like there might be some merit to the behavior to look into, though I'm not sure what the disadvantages would be but I'm sure there are some...

What is the difference between a Woodsman and Ranger?

Ranger, like Sniper and Bladedancer, has multiple stages to their trait.  Stages can be advanced through training.
Ranger: woodsman->hunter->scout->ranger