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Original post by landagen What about allowing the user to charge a magic spell as much or as little as they want. So they could charge it very little to cast quickly with very little damage or charge a lot to cause a lot of damage but slow to cast. Each monster could have different attack rates and different recovery rates that would affect how long you should charge the spell. Finding that sweet spot of not overcharging and not undercharging could keep people more engaged without increasing the difficulty too much. edit - It also is not very easy to script.

I suggested pretty much the same thing. I don't think it would be hard to script at all.

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Original post by bardbarienne Suggestions! These may not be remotely useful, but they might at least be food for thought. -Use ritual magic. You could go with the standard pentacle/candles/athame/cauldron route, or make up a magic system for a different world. Ritual magic would emphasize the need for other people in casting, which would certainly make different classes play in different ways - casters would develop a tighter social network than thieves would.

This and lithos' comments on ley magic seem like interesting ideas to me. I was also thinking about something like the casting of the spell getting interrupted. If your candle gets knocked over before the spell's complete, what happens?

This could also help with what I think a lot of people find disappointing about magic in games: how weak it is. In stories and imagination, it's often very powerful compared to what can be done without it. Make the spells very powerful, very slow, and interruptible. If you want your mage to get that spell off, you better keep the enemies back and give him the time. Or maybe the magic is much more effective based on position (near a tree, fire, whatever) and orientation (facing North or with your back to the sun), so it becomes a matter of clearing a path for your mage to get where he needs to be. You could make mages very powerful but very dependent on teamwork.

Of course, this puts most of the interesting work on the teammates.

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Original post by Atrix256 I have to disagree with AngelWyrm, magic that takes reagents is annoying! When you run out you are just screwed, you invariably forget to get reagents sometimes and dont realize it til you are with your group out there ready to battle, and it's annoying trying to figure out what you need and finding it.

Good point, and perhaps it has something to do with the implementation.

Running out will always happen, whether it was using up mana points or it was using up reagents, so it's not so much the being out of spells that is at issue. It's the memorizing and carrying of some intermediate component that might accidentally be forgotten, or not immediately available, is that about right?

If so, then how about this: Instead of having a magician carry around a pouch of ingredients, they carry only completed spells. A spell would be like a scroll, a one-shot consumable item.

I like the spending of ingredients because they generally require effort to get. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to haul in-betweeny stuff around. If ingredients could be used in several different spells, then turning it into a spell/scroll would also be a purchase of sorts.

Planning becomes important, forecasting what the wizard will need in the immediate future. Player skills, and isn't that the goal?

I'll have a little more to say later, but this is all I have now. Instead of getting stronger by doing the same spell over and over again, you can only get really strong by learning lots of new spells. It's like learning stuff in real life. You can practice something until you get really good at it, but:

1. There's a limit to how strong you can get without pushing yourself to do bigger harder things. The same applies with physical exercise, and it should apply to magic as well.

2. When you do the same thing over and over without learning anything new, your brain starts to rot (figuratively speaking). Getting stronger and better at magic is about learning. You learn to learn better when you learn new stuff, say, learning a new class of fire spells, or transformations. You can't get any stronger with the stuff you know until you go learn something else, too.

Thank you to everyone for your answers; here is what I've put down at the moment about how a mage character would play the game:

[please note the numbers are mostly random, they just help to make examples more clear]
1) learning spells
1.1) buying them from npc [and/or: receive them for completing quests]
1.2) find scrolls that teach you the spell [and/or: 1 scrolls contains part of the spell, and you have to find all the pieces]
[not everyone will have the same set of spells, some could be easier than other to find]

2) preparing spells
2.1) the mage will collect/buy the materials (herbs, minerals, monster drops...)
2.2) in a mage tower / mage school / ... the mage mixes the materials, performs gestures and the spell(s) get added to his pool
2.3) there isn't a fixed set of ingredients, for example to prepare a small fireball there is a list of 10 that can be used, and any combination of 4 is acceptable
2.4) depending on which materials and on quantity/quality of the materials, the mage will obtain some "fireball charges" to put in his pool
2.3) the pool has a limit on the number of charges and the number of spells (for example, up to 6 spells and up to 100 charges)

3) casting spells
3.1) a mage can cast spells from his pool, deciding how many charges to use
3.2) a mage can cast a spell directly from the materials in his inventory: slower and less efficient (for example, the reagents that would put 10 charges in the pool, will generate a spell of 6 charges power)
3.3) a mage can cast spells from scrolls: these spells will be weaker, but scrolls are easier to carry around, and can be a lifesaver for unexpected situations

4) creating spells
4.1) the mage combine known spells, modifiers (direction, targeting, chaining, ...), power levels, ...
4.2) every basic spell or modifier has a default value (let's say in the range 5-10), and the new spell can't have a total greater than 50 <br><br><br>And this is how a fight would work, if a magician decides to attack a goblin:<br>*lvl0: select target, bash it &#111;n the head with your staff (not very magic, but still an option when all else fails :) )<br>*lvl1: select target, cast spells (using pool/scroll/materials)<br>*lvl2: select spell, allocate spell charges and possibly other balance options (lvl1 is the same as this, just using some default values)<br>*lvl3: perform gestures, increase chances of critical hits (if performed correctly)<br>*lvl4: aim at different areas of the opponent body (freeze an arm, entangle the opponennt legs, …)<br>*lvl5: use personalized spells<br><br>What I've marked as levels 0-5 is basicly how much effort the player (rather than the character) is putting in the fight: if you feel lazy, you can just go with the usual "cast default spell", but you have the option to use/combine any of the other available tactics.<br>

Personally, I think magic systems should be complex/diversified while being easy to understand/use on a basic level. I agree with the previous posts about how a spell should interact, alter, and be altered, with/by the environment. This includes the actual environment as well as any NPCs or objects nearby. An indepth element system(more than just air/fire/water/earth probably) where each NPC and object has its own affinities for elements, etc., would do nicely. The usage of reagents should not be required to perform the spell, but rather complement it, enhance it, alter it, etc. Gestures are about the same, but maybe have a bit of a lifespan. i.e., I could perform a complicated gesture before a battle that might last 10 minutes.

As for spells themselves, I'd love to see a natural magical language. Instead of having a set of spells that everyone uses, or a script which would be only useful for preparing spells before you needed them, an actual language. Each word would follow a set of rules depending on the other words in the spell(not directly, but rather the set of rules each one has), the part of the spell(akin to the noun/verb/adjective/etc. of the English grammar), any reagent/gestures/environmental/religious/objects'/ritual/astrological effects would also have an impact on the spell. A base set of words would be known to the learner schools, as well as the general layout of the "sentence" of the spell. Advanced words could be learned by trial/error, old tomes/inscriptions found in ruins, going to advanced schools(which would have requirements, such as citizenship, loyalty to a faction/guild, etc), or from other magic users.

This would be beneficial for multiple reasons. Firstly, learning new spells would involve some form of actual research other than "being taught" by some NPC. Since each word follows a set of rules based on the above mentioned, a spell could have differences, minor or major, depending on the environment/reagents/etc. Taking the example of a fireball. If you had a spell composed of words that would sent a fiery projectile towards your target, it'd likely be a more powerful fireball in a hot/fiery area, such as a jungle or near a volcano. If, however, you're in an arctic area, it would have significantly less damage to deal, unless you had some fire reagents to enhance it.

Secondly, the usage of scrolls and magical objects by both magic users and non-magic users. In the case of scrolls, the spell could be imbued within it, and released when the trigger word/phrase(printed in common on the scroll) is spoken. The trigger word/phrase being printed on the scroll(if it is at all) vs. the spell being inscribed allows a higher magician to share spells with lesser without the fear of informing the lesser ones of an advanced word(both for the safety of the lesser magician and also so the higher magician can use words that a university/guild/city/cult have a monopoly on(only *they* should know it) without getting in trouble).

And Lore wouldn't be a common skill, so any yahoo could tell you what this magic broach did. Rather, it would reveal the word(s) that you've used/seen before of the spell, leaving the unknown words blank or marked in *'s. A lower level magic user might be able to tell you that Blan's Traiterous Amulet looked like it "gave the user's companions health", while a more advanced magician would know the extra words and could tell you that it "gave the user health from his/her companions".

Heh, I see I'm going on a rant. Best stop now, but I hope my point/idea is clear enough. :3

nerd_boy:

Great point. If it's required to collect ingredients, people will hate it (you mean you have to farm for all that crap, just to cast?). If it enhances what you already do, they'll be a little more motivated (you mean it makes that big boomy spell bigger and boomier? Let's go get some!). Unfortunately, in-game, that'll eventually result in those enhancing ingredients being a social requirement for team play (you mean you don't have salamander oil? What the hell kind of mage are you?). The best thing to do is to make those ingredients un-farmable somehow, so that having them is really special, so that it's completely possible to be a competitive mage without them. I think that last one is the key. If you want a game based on skill, enhancing ingredients should be an advantage, not an insta-win.

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And Lore wouldn't be a common skill, so any yahoo could tell you what this magic broach did. Rather, it would reveal the word(s) that you've used/seen before of the spell, leaving the unknown words blank or marked in *'s. A lower level magic user might be able to tell you that Blan's Traiterous Amulet looked like it "gave the user's companions health", while a more advanced magician would know the extra words and could tell you that it "gave the user health from his/her companions".

Excellent ideas, if only the Internet didn't exist. Nobody's going to bother with asking upon the arcane wisdom of a local wizard when they can instantly pull up YourMMOsFanWiki.com, the online Physician's Desk Reference for virtual worlds. Le sigh.

Not that fans with time are a bad thing, but if you're trying to create a bit of mystery, the ones doing the research figure it out once and then the skill of Lore becomes useless. To counter the factbases, randomize the effect. Many players may complete the "Leon's Second Cousin is a Werewolf" quest, but all Leon knows about the talisman he gives you as a prize is that it's been in his family for centuries. It could do anything. And it does - for your friend Lisa, it causes poison when she wears it, but for you, just having it in your inventory has kept you from entering the town of Morgan's Point. But as a developer, of course you don't want newbies with magic items that double the range of all their spells, so there are different categories of magic item effects - perhaps for this game, there are weak, moderate, and strong effects. So all the fanbase can tell you is that you have a "strong magical amulet" item, and how the magic item system is randomized, so you ought to check with a loremaster before you try it on.

This can be a little bit more detailed - perhaps all non-weapon magic items are divided by what they do, how powerfully, to whom, and under what conditions. Let's say Leon's Family Talisman will always have a chance of causing a moderate poison (how powerful/what) when you attack (only to enemies), but the condition is randomized. Lisa's amulet only poisons enemies when she's in Morgan's Point, but mine only affects goblins, though it applies to all goblins, anywhere. Or, you could reverse it - maybe whatever the talisman does, it only activates its moderate effect when you're in Morgan's Point, but for Lisa it hastes everyone in her team, and for me it curses random enemies.

Perhaps, upon inspection by a loremaster, some items hint at a greater power when combined with certain other items. The effect that is amplified is the random effect, which may cause interesting specialties among players - because of the laws of chance, my goblin-specific poisoning amulet is amplified when I add Blan's Purple Diadem, giving me a Goblinsbane title on the Looking for Group/Team/Crew screen. If there's a team heading for the Goblin Dens, there's a really good chance that I'll be their first pick.

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As for spells themselves, I'd love to see a natural magical language. Instead of having a set of spells that everyone uses, or a script which would be only useful for preparing spells before you needed them, an actual language. Each word would follow a set of rules depending on the other words in the spell(not directly, but rather the set of rules each one has), the part of the spell(akin to the noun/verb/adjective/etc. of the English grammar), any reagent/gestures/environmental/religious/objects'/ritual/astrological effects would also have an impact on the spell. A base set of words would be known to the learner schools, as well as the general layout of the "sentence" of the spell. Advanced words could be learned by trial/error, old tomes/inscriptions found in ruins, going to advanced schools(which would have requirements, such as citizenship, loyalty to a faction/guild, etc), or from other magic users.

I really like the bolded part. Everyone learns certain words, which is perfectly okay. Maybe some laypeople have heard of some of them too - "isn't one of them mhala? I heard it once, I don't know what it does, though." But for stronger words, for stronger spells, I think those words should be different for everyone. With a complex magical system like the one you're suggesting, if the words are the same for everyone, you can spoil powerful words by looking up how you get them online. If you randomize them a little, it makes the word itself different for each person, as if the magic has chosen you, instead of the other way around.

I hope Svalorzen doesn't mind my spreading his idea everywhere, but I can't help thinking of this recent thread where we kicked around the idea of a magical language.

Svalorzen's Rune System.

In short, I agree heartily with the idea of a full magical language, graphical or otherwise. It gives something for the player to actually learn. Your character's strength determines how big a spell you can cast, with strength being increased like in my previous post.

How about a more mysterious system than a rune based system. It would essentially be the same, but it wouldn't use "runes". Instead the system would use gestures, totems (materials), consumables (materials) words, and yes runes as the basis of the "words" of the magical language.

So what might be a system that uses 3 runes clicked on by a player instead uses throwing the ash of a fire giant at the target, saying a magic word, and reading a sky rune to do the same thing.

In a Neverwinter Nights mod I did, I created a "Rune Gate" system that allowed a player to click on various objects scattered around the place to "write" in a destination. Once the player had entered a valid destination "phrase", the rune gate would activate and any characters within a certain distance form the gate, would be transported to the destination. One extension I did add to it, was that certain objects in the player's possession, if used within range of a gate, would also enter these "words" into the destination "phrase".

How this worked was that the rune stones scattered around the place and the items when used would add a word to the destination phrase of the nearby rune gate. Once the final word had been entered into the gate it would check it's list of known destinations to see if it was a valid one and then run the script to transport the creatures.

In an different game, you could use different actions (not just the items or objects) to specify these words. All you would need to be able to do is to detect these actions (which you have to do anyway as part of the game) and then have them enter a word into the spell system.

Even if the action ultimately doesn't get used in the spell, you can still have actions specify these words, but just have them time out after a give period of time, or when another incompatible gesture (ie: one that doesn't fit the formal language syntax - see below) or a "begin spell" or "reset" action.

Also you could have the casters as crafters. What they do is craft magical reagents for their spells. You could have it that these reagents are more effective if you make them yourself and are less effective if bought from someone else (and this can be taken through the whole chain from gathering the raw materials through to the finished crafted reagent). You can still use bought reagents, but your own reagents would be more effective for you.

So a mage would spend time "farming" the raw materials for their reagents (eye of newt, etc) and then crafting them into the final reagents used for their spells. These reagents might be like Ammo for weapons, in that they give you a certain number of "uses" of the finished reagent (but that is just details).

Also, there could be certain environmental effects that could effect the power of these reagents. Like if you make the reagent in a certain location (say a goblin cave) it makes any spells cast with it more effective against a specific target(s) (say goblins). This way reagents are not as simple as "eye of newt is good for spells cast against goblins". It might be that "Tongue of Dog" if crafted in a goblin's cave is better for casting spells against the goblins.

All this would need is a tag on the object (maybe hidden form the player, but you might allow it to be revealed to that player through a detect magic spell) that has these details on it.

So the first tags might be who gathered the raw materials, the next could be who crafted it, and the last tags would be the environmental conditions of the crafting. It does increase the amount of data needed to be stored about an object, but storage is not as expensive as it once was, and there would be ways of compressing the data (eg: throwing out certain details in place of a single value multiplier or such).

As for the language, you could use certain "words" (be they a simple rune system or a more complex one) to represent range, target, effect and so forth.

One idea is to use a formal language (although a simple one). Programming languages are a formal language, but you would not have to make anything nearly as complex as that.

To start off with you would set out a phrase syntax:
[Subject] [Verb] [Object].

This would be like A cat sat on a mat which would be:
[Subject: A cat] [Verb: sat on] [Object: a mat].

Each of these is a phrase: "A cat", "sat on" and "a mat".

For a Magic system, the [Subject] and [Object] phrases could be substituted from specific named object (creatures, NPCs, PCs or items). The real interesting things will usually occur when no direct target is specified, or the player has to work to specify a target.

In these situations there could be a set of "words" that describe the target (ie: 6 metres directly in front of me and on the same level). With a "rune" based system, this could be done with numerical values, but with a gesture based system, this could be handled by the direction that the gestures are made in. There are many ways that this could be handled.

If the player has to work to get specify a target, they might need to get the "true name" (which might change over time or might change from caster to caster). This might require another spell to be cast which enables the caster to detect this property that they can use to identify the target specifically (and there might be spells to obfuscate or even change these details). I sort of think of the series "Death Note" where a person could get the eyes of a Death God and this would enable them to see the true name of a person (but could not see the name of another Death Note user).

As for the Verb phrase, this would actually be the specifications of the spell. This can be as simple as a single "word" for the spell (eg: a Fireball rune), or it can be a description of the spell.

I would look at a description of a spell, but have specific effects that the description modifies. You might have a word for Fire, then have a word for at range (and the value for the range), then a word for area (and the value for the area).

The spell system would then calculate the resources the player needs to expend to cast the spell calculated from this (manna, reagents and such) and if the player meets these requirements they can then cast the spell.

The main difficulties of this kind of system would be being able to detect the actions of the player (you have to do this anyway), providing enough variety in these actions and making the whole system non-trivial.

Detecting the actions would not be too hard, and providing enough variety in these actions (items and what you can do with them) is not too difficult either. The real difficulty is in making the whole system non-trivial.

I have given a few ideas in this post about making this kind of system non-trivial by having the reagents' effectiveness vary due to its crafting history and the environment it is crafted in.

The other thing that makes this kind of system non-trivial is having multiple ways to specify the same target. A player might start out having to specify a target by stating the vector (or such) to the target, but they might then learn the spells to enable them to see the specifics which enable them to target it directly.

As a last though on making the system non-trivial, you could use a Scissors/Paper/Stone system (but not exactly as you might think). Early spells might be poor at defending against mid level spells, but be useful against high level spells. Mid Level spells might be good against low level spells, but be poor against high level spells. High level spells might be good against mid level spells, but be poor against low level spells (thus completing the S/P/R relationship).

the idea behind this is low level spells are taught to initiates as a defence measure against the "Dark Arts", but the mid level spells are designed to combat these defences but are not powerful enough to defeat the high level spells themselves. The High level spells are powerful enough to defeat the mid levels, but as the low levels are designed to defend against them they are not as effective against them. This creates a natural progression and allows the spells learned early on to be useful throughout the game.

The other difficulty is in the formal language, but with enough work you can make quite a decent. One way to think of the formal language is by thinking of a beat-em-up game (yes it might not seem all that obvious- but it does work). In a beat-em-up you have a series of moves that achieves a desired effect: a combo. Each "word" in the formal language is like a single move of the joystick or press of a button and each "phrase" is a completed move. A set of moves that build up into a combo is the whole "Spell" in the formal language.

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I created a "Rune Gate" system that allowed a player to click on various objects scattered around the place to "write" in a destination.

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Once the player had entered a valid destination "phrase", the rune gate would activate and any characters within a certain distance form the gate, would be transported to the destination.

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How this worked was that the rune stones scattered around the place and the items when used would add a word to the destination phrase of the nearby rune gate. Once the final word had been entered into the gate it would check it's list of known destinations to see if it was a valid one and then run the script to transport the creatures.

Sorry - I thought the similarity was really amusing. :)

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Also, there could be certain environmental effects that could effect the power of these reagents. Like if you make the reagent in a certain location (say a goblin cave) it makes any spells cast with it more effective against a specific target(s) (say goblins). This way reagents are not as simple as "eye of newt is good for spells cast against goblins". It might be that "Tongue of Dog" if crafted in a goblin's cave is better for casting spells against the goblins.

If reagents stack in the inventory (which I'm sure they do), how do you differentiate between goblin-killing dog tongues and the regular sort? Do they appear in a different slot? Could you potentially have a whole inventory full of dog tongues with specific strengths? How do you make this system so that wizards don't need to go crafting in four different areas to get bonuses for all the enemies found in one dungeon?

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The other thing that makes this kind of system non-trivial is having multiple ways to specify the same target. A player might start out having to specify a target by stating the vector (or such) to the target, but they might then learn the spells to enable them to see the specifics which enable them to target it directly.

The system is trivial if you are giving the mages a language only to have the language result in the same effect as clicking the spell's picture in WoW. The system is useful if you give them the ability to customize the spells a little. Instead of [Subject][Verb][Object], try this instead:

[Energy Type][Spell Shape][Target, if applicable]

[Energy Type] denotes what type of spell you're casting. This implies that there will be a whole lot of Energy Type words - not only Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, but also Ice, Dark, Healing, Esuna, Life, Poison, Drain, Paralysis, Treachery, Confusion, Control, Flight, Summon, Illusion... Certain energy type words can be combined with others to simulate different elements - for example, Water + Earth = Mud, Fire + Earth = Lava, Water + Wind = Storm. And perhaps higher levels result in being able to combine more energy type words - at level 25 you can start combining using two words, three words at level 50, four at 75. Maybe Water + Wind + Illusion creates the illusion of a storm to throw off anyone in the air, maybe Control + Flight + Dark lets you control one of your enemies while it's flying, and gives all its attacks the Dark attribute. Maybe Fire + Earth + Summon lets you summon the spirit of a volcano, Erfworld style!

[Spell Shape] is nicked straight from D&D. Spells can come in rays, cones, splashes, spheres, cylinders, walls, bursts, emanations, and "touch." Ray spells are straight lines from the caster, that usually stop once they touch something. Cones start at the caster and spread out, usually with a short distance. They affect multiple enemies. Splashes are usually magic items that you drop, and then the affect "splashes" out to the immediate area. Spheres, cylinders, and walls work like the shapes they describe. Bursts and emanations start from places other than the caster, but emanations continue to spread after the initial casting. Touch spells require the mage to touch the target - usually these are healing spells. Spell shapes are learned over time just like energy type words are - in the beginning, you only have rays, but as you go along, eventually you get things like Body, which creates a physical copy of the caster made of the specified Energy type.

[Target] is basically a [Spell Shape] word. You don't select the name of something, because you might be fighting fifteen goblins, so "goblin" won't give you an edge - after you've selected the target, you add the Target word in (it might be Monstra or something), and the spell only affects who you've targeted.

Distance and point of origin for spells, I would say that's handled by point-and-click and targeting. You can be as far away from the point of origin of your spell as you like, but being farther away takes more mana. Some (monstrously rare) items might be able to let you use certain abilities from an infinite distance, like Life or Teleport. If you want to increase the radius of your cylindrical spell, just keep holding the mouse button down. For some shapes, holding the button lengthens the spell duration instead - if you're shooting a ray of lightning, Palpatine-style, you can't really change the range once you've hit someone, so instead you just keep shocking them until something interrupts you or you run out of mana.

Other possibilities with this system:

-Order matters. Perhaps Fire + Water makes water "rain" from the sky, while Water + Fire makes a cloud of blinding smoke/steam. Order may not matter all the time, but it would be a nice way to emphasize the finicky nature of magic.

-Special combinations have a word attached. Perhaps the first time you use the Ice + Wind + Cylinder combination, you are alerted somehow that you or nature recognizes this phenomenon as separate from the usual jumble of raw power by wizards, and calls it "Hailstorm." Whether you instantly learn the word or need to consult with a higher-level mage to determine its name is up for grabs, but this means that every time you use Hailstorm, it's the same as Ice + Wind + Cylinder but with some oomph behind it. This would be the case with summon spells especially; once you've summoned a djinni, you know to Summon + Djinni from here on out.

-Certain combinations fail. Sometimes, you just don't want to code every possible combination of energy types.

-Unique scrolls for a more diverse magic market. To buy a scroll, you search by the words used. Let's say I wanted an Earthquake spell. I'd probably search for something like Earth + Ray. I'd most likely face a lot of results - would I want to shoot a spike of stone? Throw dust? Once I found the earthquake spells, I could organize them by price, or duration of effect, or accuracy, or mana provide... and finally buy one based on what I might need. Scrolling itself would take mana from the wizard/scribe with a slightly slower regen time than normal. The wizard can put as much mana as he/she wishes into the scroll, which changes how long the spell lasts when it is used. Using the scroll takes half the mana allocated in the scroll from the "end user," so that one mage can't use an inventory full of powerful scrolls without some cost. Perhaps more powerful scribes can reduce this cost to one-fourth of the mana needed to create the scroll.

-Spells to release at a later time. As the dev team, you can always plan to release new words or combinations later on, which represents how scholars of magic have been researching the findings in an ancient ruin. Or something. Perhaps these releases are somewhat player dependent - certain repeatable research quests with the NPC mages add up until they announce a new discovery.

[Edited by - bardbarienne on August 23, 2009 5:01:40 PM]