Magic in Project Wish Options

[Darkfaith]

So I have an idea that is a lot a part of what a lot of other people have suggested but also adds some and takes some away from everything... maybe...

I know there s no set in stone understanding of what magic is so that is what I think should be defined first and foremost. Just as a background i've ALWAYS liked playing mages in all the games I played like Oblivion/ FF11/ UO/ NeverWinter Nights and just about ALLLLLL the games I've ever played.

Magic to me comes from a combination of both inner and outer strength. This means that magic comes from within a person depending on their ability and inner strength. This means that yes magic does TAKE something from them. This is normally represented as mana.

Since I believe magic also comes from the environment based on the area that you're in and the type of specialty you prefer that is how much of a "bonus" that you might acuire. An example is a mage of whatever sort prefers to use lots of fire magic and as such when in a volcanic or area where there is lots of fire and other heat types of environments their magic will be especially potent.

As for the magic system here is what I would like to see.
First there is no class of mage. The ability of a mage is based on their use of it. if a mage likes to cast lots of damage magic then their ability lies in casting damage magic. I think it should be broken into the genrally accepted categories. Or 4-5 magic categories and then down into smaller categories. Examples would be Damage, Healing. Buffs, Curses.... or whatever classes are applicable. Then there should be sub categories like Light, Dark, Chaos, Fire, Wind, Water, Spirit, Summoning. Each spell would have a main category as well as a sub category.

Now to make magic even further complicated there should be spells that are built into the game. But when you learn and advance in levels you should be able to customize your spells to how you wish. Such as Oblivion. I enjoy the idea of being able to customize a spell for duration effects and such. Also I think you should be able to combine spells.

This gives a lot greater fuctionality and flexibility for mages.

As for the case of reagents and foci. Each mage should be allowed to have foci and reagents if they wish. What this means is that certain materials and items will be able to focus magic from the outer world more effectively increasing duration or in general effects. They would have a "slot" within their profile to specify if they wanted a foci or multiple foci. Multiple foci might be something such as an idol in one hand and a fire gem in another. This foci would be non-consumable as well as reagents unless chosen to do so. This means there is a toggle feature that a mge sets up and a hotkey that they used to choose wether something is consumable or not. Something that is consumed when used greatly increases the effects of a spell. This would and could be used such as a situation where a player or group was in serious danger of dying so a mage throwing caution to the wind summons all the energy they can muster and risk losing their foci and reagents.

The option for a player to choose wether to use it up or not both helps the economy and flexibility in being a spell caster. Lets say a mage is out fighting and only has a few reagents left. in such a situation they would turn off the consumable option and thus reduce the effectiveness of all their spells till they began using them. this makes sense because most mages will want to be the most effective but in a situation where they are in a group and might not need their full power OR where they screwed up and traveled out to somewhere far away from town and are fighting and simply don't have the ability to head back just to buy some reagents. But on the other side it gives the player the option of using something up and buying a lot of it should they reach higher levels. This wil make it possible for someone to make an entire living just on gathering difficult and rare reagents.

As for casting a given spell I think it should follow as such. The higher the spell the more likely it'll fail. If you're at level with the spell you should always be able to cast it as long as somethings not hitting or you're moving and the like. But the more something hits you the less likely you'll cast. As you grow in level the lower level spells become more easily casted and less interuptable.

I think using that above suggested system would make it very attractive for a mage to be playable as well as economically benefical.

YAY... oh also there is a lot of other things that can be taken into account for other magic stuff that I have ideas on... BUT... ran out of time..

Feel Free to comment and let me know what you all think of my idea.

[Minthos]

I've done some thinking on spellcasting, and I figured this is a good place to write it all down.

First the basic stuff:
Spells require reagents to cast. Reagents can be stored in suitable containers in backpacks, or in pouches and pockets for easy retrieval. The number of pouches and pockets your robes have determine how many different reagents you can have accessible in combat. Each spell requires a number of reagents, say between 0 and 5. More powerful spells require more reagents.

And the more intricate details..
The act of retrieving the correct reagents from different pouches isn't easy, especially in the heat of battle. This means spells take a long time (say, 20, 30 seconds maybe for the advanced spells) to prepare before they can be cast. To avoid this, I propose two things that can be done:

1. Spells can be prepared ahead of time and stored in a suitable container. For dry ingredients a paper container would suffice, compare to a tea bag or something, but for liquid ingredients you need bottles or something.. Preparing spells like this requires an alchemist's lab, and the details aren't really important. What matters is that you can then pull out a spell from your pocket and cast it immediately, but only if you have prepared that spell. Casting the spell will of course consume the reagents, so you may want to stuff your pockets full of your most used spell..

2. Staves and wands. They consist of a focus attached to staff or rod (for some I imagine the staff/rod itself can be the focus), and are enchanted with one or more spells (type and number limited by the focus used). Enchanting is an expensive, difficult, and time-consuming task. Once enchanted, a staff can be used as focus for casting the spells it contains without using reagents. Yes, that's right. A staff is a source of spell reagents. Now, the staff isn't an unlimited source of course, but it can hold significantly more than your pockets do. To recharge the staff, simply prepare the reagents you would normally use for that spell in an alchemist's lab, and do some enchanting stuff on the staff using those reagents. Wands are like staves, but smaller, cheaper to produce, and cannot be recharged.

[GageEndal]

The only problem I have with mages in 99.9% of the games (CoH/V don't have this problem) is that it takes so dang long to cast a spell. And on the off chance that you run out of reagents you are totaly screwed. This is really the big reason that I generaly play a big stupid warrior (as seen below).

Warriors have a huge playing advantage over mages, most of the time I figure mages as the elite class, you need to really know what you're doing to play a mage and get any power. Warriors aren't this way, to play a warrior you just grab a sword and slash. If/When your sword breaks, you just buy a new one for a few bucks. Mages have to spend hundreds of thousands on reagents to survive while a warrior only spends about 50 gold pieces every month or so.

On top of that, warriors do instant damage and they can do it for as long as their HP last. Mages have two delemas asside from just HP. They have their Mana and their Reagents. When a mage runs out of Reagents they are forced to flee, there is no other option. They must leave the scene right away.

The idea of giving mages different types of casting works on many levels. Mages who would use reagents solely would be more of Alchemests than mages, but they would still have the powers of a mage. Mages who use mana and reagents are more of wizards, they put some of themselves into the magic as well as their studies. Pure mana wizards are sorcerers, and don't tell me you haven't had the urge to stand atop a cliff and hurtle lightning bolts down on the sheep.. I mean gnomes below.

While I do agree that Reagents are a strong way to encourage the economy in the game, it's not the only way. It gives warriors a huge advantage on the battle field that could be given to mages. And while preparing a spell is helpful (and very AD&D) I just can't imagine having every spell you would need ready to go.

In the end I guess my original idea of the three types of casting was there to make it so anyone could play a mage. They would still have a rough start, but once they get some spells and mana under their feet they could be in the same league with warriors if they chose to.


Anyways, that's my $.02 on the whole thing.

[Jerky]

Wow Darkfaith and Minthos, I really liked both those ideas. The best ideas to me are the ones that make sense on almost every level of play and just seem to mesh well with how I see the game being. I think both of your ideas would work great and provide a way for all our ideas on magic to be encorporated into 1 whole magic system. Very well done, imo.

[Minthos]

While I not completely disagree with your post Gage, I would like to point out one thing.

While I do agree that Reagents are a strong way to encourage the economy in the game, it's not the only way. It gives warriors a huge advantage on the battle field that could be given to mages. And while preparing a spell is helpful (and very AD&D) I just can't imagine having every spell you would need ready to go.

You wouldn't need that. You keep the spells you need to cast quickly prepared as spells, and you have a selection of reagents ready for the other spells you want to cast, so you can cast a wide selection of spells in less than 30 seconds. You'll have even more reagents in your backpack, so if there is a spell you need that you don't have the reagents for in your pouches, you can still cast them but it will take you even longer to prepare it.

[Jerky]

Very good point. Check out our economy thread started a few weeks ago. That was exactly what spurred my encouraging Jaramar in starting up a reagent-based magic system.

P.S. I love you avatar!

[Dwilf]

I'm also for all spells needing reagents. I was of the impression being a Mage would be hard work in wish but that we'd also have them being a lot more powerful then in some other MMOs where spellcasters are just throwing off wussy little spells every few seconds.

So our Mage might only cast one spell on a short adventure, a fire ball. It'll cost them in stamina(or mana, whatever) the required reagents and any additional booster reagents. But it will kill four of the 7 goblins and injure the rest so that they are easy pickings for the group's fighters.

[Hankellin]

There is a question:

Will friendly magic be able to distinguish between friend or foe?

ie: The fire ball mentioned above.. The fighter is busily beating on the goblins when the mage's spell finnally sets off...

Does the fighter get burned as well? or just the stinky little goblins?

[Dwilf]

Ah, well if we have full PvP then an AoE like fireball should hit all in range, even the mage if he drops it at his feet.
Now a highly experienced mage who know the ways of magic better than the back of his hand might pick up the trick of creating gaps in AoEs so allies and self are safe.

If we don't have full PvP then no friendly fire either.

[Hankellin]

Ah, well if we have full PvP then an AoE like fireball should hit all in range, even the mage if he drops it at his feet.
Now a highly experienced mage who know the ways of magic better than the back of his hand might pick up the trick of creating gaps in AoEs so allies and self are safe.

If we don't have full PvP then no friendly fire either.

Fireball = Friendly Fire He he he he....

[greendots]

I don't like the idea of full PvP in an MMO. First and most importantly, with 10,000 players it would require too much admining if players could attack other players in their group. Also I don't think friendly fire is something that is not expected in an MMO so it may happen more often. And, noobs will do it by accident. If the attacking player and target where to get hit by splash damage attacks he might think before casting; I don't really know how I feel about this idea but its definitely better the the first option.

As for regents... Theres two ways we can handle it (That I like that is ).
1.
I think any spell should be able to be casted even when a mage is naked and with out any foci but the damage will be limited to maybe 0.5%
If the mage has foci and or skill enhancing clothing the attack can do 3-5% of the attacks potential.
If the mage has regents the attack can do 75-80%
If the mage has regents and foci the attack does 95-100%
With special foods and/or loots- 104-110%

Regents can differ greatly depending on what its made of and enhance with (loots)
Specially made clothing helps out the mage a little but nothing close to what foci can do.
foci should be limited use and probally decrease in intensity as it decays.
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2.
Basically the same as above but very low level spells can be used at their normal damage rather then all at drasticlly lower levels.
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The reason I like this is because a mage would not be fully susceptible all the time. I guess, now that I think of it a mage could always use his staff to bash small creatures that are attacking him. I know no one is going to like this but, I have this idea of being a mage with maybe a couple rings and a necklace as foci and some enhancing robes. Using foods to enhance the power of attacks and maybe some special loot to decrease the mana drain. So maybe doing 12-18% of an attack as an Elder Mage (or equivalent.) I think that this type of thing is something that makes a person stay with the game long after they have "beat" the game. It would of course require a person to spend alot of money, spend hundreds of hours leveling their character, and collecting valuable and very rare loots.

[Honis]

I would like to know the game that makes a mage job cheap. Cause I'll stop playing everythng to play that. Here's how mages contribute to the economy in FFXI.

There are 4 ways to get a spell.

Buy from NPC: prices change with the amount they have "Stocked" (alot of people buy the spell that day/week price is higher. There is a cap price for prices to prevent someone from screwing with the NPC economy.

Buy from the Auction House (the PC store basically). Prices are set by the actual demand and/or difficulty in attaining the spell.

Questing. My favorite way to attain a spell. Most quests require a high local fame. This is hard and or expensive to attain if you don't do quests for that city. (Costs money to buy the items that are requested for repeat quests, as I understand the dev team of PW is really trying to avoid these types of quests.)

Regular and Natorious Monster drops: Scrolls that drop off of regular mobs are sold for cheap and are usually pretty worthless in partying situations. The NM drops are hard for people of that level to attain so some find it easier to make money and buy it. I prefer trying to fight the monster because I'm poor.

I think mages contribute more towards the economy than melee types. They buy robes with higher defence and boosting stats to stay alive and improve themselves. They buy weapons maybe alittle less often because they aren't used for melee, usually, and are normally there to boost stats. On top of these expenses melee's have, they need to buy and find scrolls. Very rare scrolls can cost millions of gil in FFXI (lots of money). These scrolls are usually what sets your mage off from the others in terms of firepower (cure power etc), and how the mage makes its huge contribution to the economy. A mage is not a cheap job because everyone wants it at some level (skill level whatever) for its strengths.

Now if an alchemist was to party with a mage. Throw some reagent on the mob to make the mages next fire spell do more damage that would be cool, but I don't see a mage running up to the mob to throw something at it run back to get out of the mobs reach and then casting some spell on it. I like the idea of having pernent items as a focus for your spell and it being able to wear out over a great deal of time. This would force mages to buy weapons in a more regular interval like the melee types.

Before we talk about reagents I think we should talk about how mages learn spells. In FFXI you read a scroll and learn the spell. In Flyff you learn new spell as you skill your earlier ones. I didn't play as a caster in EQ2, but I think you learned them as you leveled. I happen to like the idea of a mage keeping a book of spells (copied from bought or found scrolls). The mage prepairs themselves to cast certain spells and they can only cast those spells until they meditate on a new set of spells. Meditation takes time, mastering a spell takes use, and learning new spells are difficult to aquire through hard quests, hard/rare monster drops, or expensive NPC prices.

I can't tell you guys how much I don't want to refill on items because I got nuke/cure happy while out and about. I play a mage to cast spells to do massive damage while someones protectiong me or I cast spells to heal the guy protecting the one doing the massive damage. Keep mage jobs with the spells, keep the buffers/debuffers with the those types (using items, magic, songs, etc.), and the melee/meat shielding with the melee's/meat shields. This will keep partys looking for people of varying skill types to make supperb partying to accomplish what ever quests that are thrown at them.

[Honis]

Had a magic related idea the other day.

When you cast an elemental spell, you can't cast another spell of that element until the recast time of the cast spell is at 0.

Ex:
You cast Fire on a mob. Your recast counter is 10sec. During those 10sec you can not cast another spell that uses the flame element.

I role play recast times as the time it takes for you to regain the "elemental energy" used to cast that spell. Unfortunately, most games let you cycle through a barrage of the same spell element.

Having an elemental recast counter will require spell casters to think about what they are casting since a good portion of a "spell book" will be counting down after 2-3 spells. Another way to make this interesting is to make duel element spells (Magic The Gathering is the only game that I noticed has this). In one cast you can take out half the spells you can use... I would think duel spells would be quite effective and worth taking out half a spell book, but thats for spells, what they do and what they are. (sounds like a new thread...)

[vedomec]

a newbie idea (so do not jump on me because of that fact).

floating an idea as follows:
magic depends on your mind and/or training.
to be able to act magically, you must not be normal (i will explain)
there are two ways of magic on the same magic scale. one way goes into a highly intellectual studying magic the other one into totally intuitional uninformed magic. try to imagine a highly disturbed scientist as one end and a dangerous autistic person on the other end of this magic scale. in some way they are both "mad".
the so called "scientist" can predict what will be the results, has wider range of actions, the so called "wilder", cannot predict (weel, can maybe guess), but the results are stronger.
there are no reagents, scrolls, talismans etc. to make you better mage. there are no schools or predefined spells. you have to grow to make that all. you can develop spell for frightening mice only, if you prefer to...

but what can help you (or hinder you) is the power of the earth (think ley lines, weather, haunted places,) and the mind waves of your surrounding (think of being in the middle of people who all visibly hate you or want to kill you) or "berserker mind mode".
more you develop into scientist, wider is your range. more you develop into wilder, your range gets smaller, but much more powerful.

just a thought

[Pandra]

This is what we were wanting People's ideas without any argueing. When the time comes to work on the magic system we'll look back at the magic threads to see what was suggested, see what's fessable, unquie, and fits with the project. Not everything is going to get in obviously, but it's awesome to see all these ideas none the less.

[ni1s]

I would like to see magic having a underlaying fabric, a chaotic randomness.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." --Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)

And I think this should be true in the world of PW. You might be able to be able cast spells, brew potions and such, but you might not grasp the true meaning of magic, what makes it all "tick".

A lot of RPG's treat magic as science, with exact predictions and methodical research. BORING. Magic should be larger than life.

[echorev]

i also like the idea of chaotic randomness, makes it more interesting

i think consumable reagents should not be required for all spells to function, but should just increase the power of range or effectiveness of a type of spell. certain reagents might be required for a certain, long-lasting spell to work, but reagents for spells cast often would be too big of a hassle. however, using a certain reagent on a spell (take fireball for example) might double the casting range, damage, or something to that effect.

[glibdud]

There was a little chat going on in IRC tonight that hinted that an elemental system is being leaned toward. While I'm not against elemental magic, I don't think it should be the basic framework; rather, I think it should be one single face of magic.

PW will likely be based in a low-magic world from what I've read. That implies that magic is not well-understood. I envision a system with an underlying model that's not fully known by the players. In itself, it's not even a mechanism for "casting" magic. It's simply a source. And since it's not fully understood, there are several theories for how to tap into that source. All of them work to some extent. And because of the varying ideals and goals of their practitioners, each face follows slightly different rules regarding reagents, casting rules, etc.

As mentioned, Elementalism is one good candidate for a face of magic. It would likely be heavily tied to reagents, as it has a very physical nature. Elemental magic would likely be an "easier" route to magic. Easier for the layman to grasp, and easier for someone to dabble in without diving headlong into the study.

In addition, some of the more brilliant scholars of the age would likely take a more academic approach to magic. They would treat it as a science, studying and experimenting to great length. Following their path would be a much more rigorous endeavor, requiring a significant time commitment. Such magic would be quite powerful, but would likely require a lot of preparation.

Then there may be others who have discovered how to channel the source through their own being (think "Sorcerer"). This magic will be more primal than the academic magic, but more amorphous than the elemental. Material components/reagents aren't necessary (although some sort of focus item might provide benefit), but channeling the magic comes at a cost of self.

Magic has many faces. All work in different ways and excel in different uses. Ideally they would be made as different as possible while preserving maintainability. But they are all guided by the same "rules" and principles... principles that should not be divulged in the game. (They don't have to be rules like physics, but a general purpose that guides magic.)

And that, in a nutshell... is my vision.

[jaminben]

I like where that's going glibdud. It would be cool to see different communities view magic from different perspectives. It would be pretty cool, and new as far as i know, if there was no one set 'system' for spellcasting, and your spells would come from how you learn them. I envision in some areas with acadamies and whatnot that people would learn magic from learning spells written on scrolls and stuff. In this area, magic may be presented in the traditional elemental fashion. However, if someone was learning druidic magic, sure, they could maybe read a little bit about it in a book, but to truely become adept, it would be learned from a druid deep in the woods (which you of course cant just walk up to and train). Also, there may be small sects living in isolated areas who practice other magics (whose spells and stuff are not derived in the traditional manner). On that note, maybe there are small sects who practice "forbidden" magics. Maybe some cultures would view the magics of other cultures as forbidden. There is a lot of potential depth and dynamics here I think.

I think avoiding set skill trees across the board like this could help avoid power gamers, because different perpectives would have different strengths and weaknesses. If you keep enough about them hidden, it would take a player a loooong time of learning different magic styles to find what is strongest, and at that point, maybe he/she deserves to have the powerful spells.

[Brotoi]

I have read both threads that Jerky linked to early on in this one. I have now finished this thread. The most recent post in this thread is dated a year ago. I have also read the thread that Jaramar started a few weeks back about crafting spells.

So then, are these all the current threads on Magic?:

(this thread)
First thread listed by Jerky
Second thread listed by Jerky
Recent thread on spell crafting

I need to work up (and get finalized!) a functional magic system so I can begin outlining how Kandonda's local magic system will relate to the whole.