Looking through my memory of games and stuff, I've realized that the magic systems in almost all of the RPGs that I've played have been, in essence, the same. Pick a spell from a rigid list of pre-set spells. This got me thinking of how to make a magic system that would allow you to cast spells of your creation (Not like Morrowind, though. I mean on the fly during battle), but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone got some ideas on how something like this would work?

I've thrown around an idea that originally came to me with Final Fantasy Tactics "Geomancer" class: casting spells by actually using the nearby landscape. Water magic isn't "summon a flood", it's "summon a wave from a nearby source of water". Fire magic requires wood or oil, earthquakes can be summoned if an enemy is on land...

Consider mouse controls and a top-down view:

If I click a body of water and drag, it will create a wave that follows my mouse. The harder I drag, the bigger the wave will be. The wave will flood over the edge of the lake and damage anyone in the vicinity that it hits.

If I click the ground and drag a line, it will create a crack in the earth that damages enemies around it. If I drag a circle, the ground might collapse in and take down a whole group. (If you didn't want fully destructible environments, these could be stylized).

Click and rub on a tree (drag mouse back and forth quickly to "rub") to create friction and set it on fire, then drag from it to send rains of flames outward.

The possibilities go on...

Casting totally new spells during combat sounds like a very dangerous thing to try!

Magic users with any sense of self-preservation would first test a low-powered version of each new spell in much safer conditions, preferably with other magic users around to help out if something went awry.

Enemies also aren't likely to stand around waiting whilst you fumble your way through a new incantation.

It would be damned fun, though.

If you could adopt Mage: The Ascension's spell system to a videogame, you'd have the most flexible magic system of all time. That would be incredibly difficult, though, and I wouldn't want to try it.

Players can do everything with it from standard D&D magic to turning pavement into liquid lightning to creating a squid tree. It's all good fun.

EDIT: Eh, stupid page doesn't really explain the system. They divide all of reality into nine categories, and then rank each of those nine categories into five tiers of affectability. If you have enough dots (one per tier) in a "Sphere," then you can do everything covered by that tier and below.

Example:
Life 1 - you can sense life
Life 2 - you can affect yourself in minor ways that do not involve massive restructuring; you can affect simple lifeforms in moderate ways
Life 3 - you can affect yourself in moderate ways (addition of limbs, etc.); you can affect others in minor ways; you can transform simple lifeforms at will
Life 4 - you can transform yourself into any living creature at will.; you can modify others as you could yourself in 3; you can alter the functioning of simple lifeforms in ways that are impossible
Life 5 - you can transform yourself in ways that are impossible; you can transform others into any living creature at will

So... um... examples...
Life 1 - You can detect life. *nodnod* Hell of a lot more useful than it sounds.
Life 2 - Self-healing, minor adjustments to own metabolism, grafting extra heads onto insects
Life 3 - Sleep, Damage (via internal hemorrhaging), Healing
Life 4 - Polymorph Self (with some risk of losing yourself after extended transformations), engineer bacteria that will turn crude oil into hydrogen, giving someone gills
Life 5 - You can turn yourself into anything without any risk. You can alter yourself so you never need sleep or food. You can move your internal organs around. You can give yourself multiple hearts so that someone would have to stab you in all of them to kill you. Fuck that, you can survive a bullet to the heart, if you happen to be concentrating on survival when the bullet hits, or if you have a particularly powerful enduring spell set up (which would probably take a toll on your energy levels, but hey, immortality is worth it). You can turn other people into pigs, or armadillos, or trees, though you'll need to take the extra mass from somewhere or convert it into something if there is any mass discrepancy whatsoever (though Prime 2 lets you circumvent this by creating matter from your raw magical "energy"). They do not have the same innate knowledge of biological energy that you do, so unless they have Life 2 or higher (I think), they will be at risk for losing their minds in the pattern of the new form.

Combinations are what really make your power in the game. Life 5 Matter 4 (I think?) will let you turn someone into stone (or margarine!), for example. And so on, and so forth.

That's an oversimplification from memory. I'll post the actual text from the book if need be, but I'd rather not. Unfortunately, it all requires common sense to adjucate, an attribute which is not currently programmable into computers.

[Edited by - DuranStrife on August 8, 2006 8:25:01 AM]

I had worked on a similar idea once. In addition to the real game screen, the GUI incorporated a matrix-like screen where symbols of power would flow around and could be selected using the spellcasting keys. The available symbols would depend on what was around you: every living being would provide its own symbol set (this would allow targeting), some symbols would be always present while others (elemental, for instance) would require you to have some given material neaby. Some artifacts would allow unique symbols not found anywhere else.

For example, you are in grassy plains fighting a boar with your trusty amulet of flames. Thus, you have access to the following symbols:

• Plant, Wind, Earth, Calm (from the grass)
  
• Animal, Strength, Fury (from the boar)
  
• Fire, Heat, Magic (from the amulet)
  
• Hand, Self (from yourself)

You would cast a spell by finding the required symbols and then grouping them together in the right order in a "spell space", which would work like grammar. An example "spell space" would be "Transform [A] into at [C]", where the power is reduced by distance between C and the player, and by difference between A and B. You would then fill in the slots with three symbols and the spell would be cast. For example,

• Wind, Wind, Wind: create a gust of wind (not a very powerful attack, but there's lots of Wind around).
  
• Fury, Fire, Animal: causes the boar, or the nearest animal, to burst into flames (a very powerful attack, because Fury and Fire are fairly similar, but you have to get close to the Animal).
  
• Fury, Fire, Wind: cast a firebolt. Deadlier and ranged, but moves slowly and depends on wind.
  
• Fury, Fire, Hand: burning hands spell, very deadly.
  
• Plant, Fire, Earth: wall of fire (well, a small column of fire) in front of yourself.
  
• Earth, Calm, Earth: calm the boar (earth and calm are close, so the transformation is powerful, and the earth is nearby).
  
• Earth, Calm, Self: put yourself to sleep (not very smart thing to do).

This would add an element of strategy: do you wait for the rare but powerful symbol of Death to appear, or do you use the frequent but mediocre symbol of Pain right now?

Look at your titled. Now think about that some more. I get this feeling that using liquids in a magic system in which they can be combined in different amounts and orders could be really cool. You'll have to think of the details becuase that's as far as my mind could get.

Two things occur to me:
1) Ultima's system where syllables are combined to produce effects
Ultima 6 magic

2) Using gestures (with wand, stave, hand, or whatever)
Wikipedia mouse gestures

EDIT: Better yet, combine them. Say "flam" and raise both hands for a wall of fire, point finger/wand for a fireball, do a spiral motion for a vortex of fire, etc. Utter "mani" (for life) and pointing at someone heals them, etc.

reana1

That would work well, but imagine that combined with voice recognision, if anyone was able to accumplish that, i garantee athe no.1 RPG (if not game) of the century!

on a serious note, you idea could work well, the player types a word into the chat box and casts that spell, although you have a manual of spellcraft in your inventory, so the player knows what to say :D

good luck on this GairenKarrandeas

I wrote a post a long time ago about a 'unique' magic system. Check it out -- tell me what you think:

Linky.