Magic

[Tokoshoran]

The gold is to make the spell, not cast it.
And I suppose you're right, penalizing the player more than costing twice as much mana is going overboard.

A sigil sounds like it would be an off-hand item, unless it's something you etch into armor using Ancient Writing or something. If it's from quests done by warriors, those warriors would sell them to support mages.

[Greatest]

I could see some type of items being needed to create a spell(some type of reagents maybe?) but adding a gold cost for something like that doesn't seem to fit the game. 

[Mongo]

Morrowind (and Oblivion) featured the spell-making system.. I think for each, you needed to already know a spell with the same effect. Ex: If you knew a basic fire spell, you could make any fire spell. It cost gold to make.


I would love to see spellmaking be its own crafting skill (maybe the same as the scroll-writing) that would be on-par with blacksmith in terms of needed dedication. It should require enough time and resources to deter every single mage from wanting to invest in it.

A big problem with spellmaking as a craft is there's no upkeep. With blacksmith, you always need to repair equipment or make new equipment if it breaks.

I'm hesitant to suggest spells deteriorating over time but it's along the line of what I'm thinking......

Just thinking out loud here, but maybe if you have a magic spell scroll, you can either use it as a consumable to get the effect on the scroll, or 'Research' the scroll to add the spell to your personal spellbook .. and maybe the player would have to level that spell ..? Eh... it would have to be a much lesser version of what was on the scroll otherwise there would be no point in NOT researching it.


HMM.. gonna get lunch and think about this!

[Mongo]

OK how about this.

The spellmaking (scribe) profession can make spell scrolls and spellbooks. Scrolls are consumable and will fire a spell and spellbooks will teach the player that spell.

To make a scroll, you must gather the elemental materials corresponding to the effect (maybe 3 fire materials and 2 wind materials for firestorm) and combine them with the skill to infuse a scroll.

Or, instead of creating preset spells, bring up a spellmaking interface where players can pick from a list of effects, spell amplitude, range, and duration. Mana cost would be calculated based on what they select.

Making spellbooks would be much harder and require some rare ingrediants.

Npc vendors can sell low level spellbooks and scrolls.


What I like about this: Its an intuitive system that allows for a powerful crafting skill while creating unique spells.

What I dislike about this: Suddenly mages either need to use consumable items to progress in their magic skills or spend a ton of time grinding up the scribe skill. Relying on consumable scrolls I feel cheapens magic.

[Greatest]

wow you took this a whole new way. 

there shouldn't be any restrictions on learning a spell.  if you add them people aren't going to be able to use the spells they want(or have all the spells they need).  your spells would be yours, not transferable to another person, making magic unique.  spell scrolls would cast that spell if you wrote it, but not let someone else figure it out(though they could if they played around in the magic interface?).

as far as gathering 'fire and wind materials' where would we get those?  are they craftable?  are they hard to get?  really would be nice if you'd add some details about 'new' items when you're talking about using them...

Or, instead of creating preset spells, bring up a spellmaking interface where players can pick from a list of effects, spell amplitude, range, and duration. Mana cost would be calculated based on what they select.

you do realize thats the exact thing I suggested 3 posts ago?  I just added more detail

as far as levelling spells, I honestly don't like that idea.  I've seen it in so many games, but it doesn't fit in RPGWO.  if a fighter has enough skill to use weaponY which is stronger than weaponX they don't have to use X before Y, you're forcing spells into that 'you have to do it in this order' thing that was never a part of RPGWO, and the absence of things like that made play style completely custom(which is why we love the game).

[Mongo]

as far as gathering 'fire and wind materials' where would we get those?  are they craftable?  are they tough to get?  really would be nice if you'd add some details about 'new' items when you're talking about using them...

That's silly. You know what an item is, the implementation of it is up in the air. That's not what's being discussed here, it's how they would be used.

you do realize thats the exact thing I suggested 3 posts ago?  I just added more detail

Yeah, was posting from my phone and didn't feel like navigating to find the post or who said it so I just repeated it instead of saying "Or the system that was mentioned a couple posts ago"

as far as levelling spells, I honestly don't like that idea.  I've seen it in so many games, but it doesn't fit in RPGWO.  if a fighter has enough skill to use weaponY which is stronger than weaponX they don't have to use X before Y, you're forcing spells into that 'you have to do it in this order' thing that was never a part of RPGWO, and the absence of things like that made play style completely custom(which is why we love the game).

Yeah, I'm not too fond of leveling spells either.

[Greatest]

as far as gathering 'fire and wind materials' where would we get those?  are they craftable?  are they tough to get?  really would be nice if you'd add some details about 'new' items when you're talking about using them...

That's silly. You know what an item is, the implementation of it is up in the air. That's not what's being discussed here, it's how they would be used.

actually when bringing up a new item(especially something you say should be rare) it should have more to it than just a name and that it should be rare...I mean you left it wide open, I need answers before I can really comment on the idea.

monster drop only?
craftable from some monster dropped item?
extremely hard to craft and needs some hard to get monster part?

I did bring up reagents(thought everyone knew what those were) in this thread with no explanation, but I brought them up in an earlier thread with a bit more detail.  they would be simple crafted items, made from simple to collect materials.  a reagent could be a gris-gris, made by a tailor and having some small trinkets such as rocks or flower petals placed inside(used on?) the bag.  an elixer could also be used as a reagent, maybe using some random items and alchemy.  you could also have reagents made using other skills, the more types you have the more skills you can incorporate giving more variety to crafts and crafters...

[Greatest]

need edit button:

if the items don't have to be rare(I don't think they should be for something like this) you could make them similar to the way you make mana stones, but using elemental oils on rocks instead of the mana charge.  something like that could make cheap elemental reagents, but we'd need more types of plants for the new oils...

[Mongo]

The point was requiring items of different properties in order to create spell scrolls. Before delving into what the items are, how they're made, what color they are when exposed to sunlight and any other detail, it should be decided if that's even the path we would want to go down.

There's no point in writing up all the details if the base idea isn't even going to be considered.

If you need some ideas, how about a generic fire element material that can be dropped from fire-based monsters or as a byproduct of harvesting fireweed. Use your imagination.

Their abundance is 100% relative to the system in question. If you're referring to the system I outlined above (which I still think should be addressed/fixed before discussing the semantics of it), then crafting materials for scrolls would have to be somewhat common to prevent players from not having any spells to cast but not showing up everywhere. As common as finding magnetite when mining, for example.
Spellbooks would require something more, either a generic rare elemental material (being an 'enhanced' version of the one used for the scrolls) or use the same elemental materials as the scrolls but require an additional reagent that would be more rare .. not quite as rare as quanth.

I'm at work so I can't spend all day on this, I just post my thoughts and I feel they cover what I intend to cover without going overboard on the details (especially if we're still looking at something from a broad scope).

[Greatest]

if its a generic craftable(or easy attainable) item I like the idea, if its a rare monster drop item I don't, guess thats what I'm getting at...so I needed more detail.

it seems you're getting really defensive about it, I just wanted a simple elaboration, thought my post put that point well.  I didn't need the full written out prospectus, just some general info.

as far as your spellbook idea(for learning a spell) I don't like it.  if we're getting a fully customizable magic its not something people will be using.  if we're adding new things I don't think we should be adding useless things, and this would be like read ancient is now.

[Mickey Kudlo]

The one time scroll use by any player sounds good. Making scrolls can just be making paper and pen then when you ink it, it costs you the mana to cast the spell cuz you are storing the mana and incantation into the paper to be released by the user. It is a spell in of itself to put a spell onto a scroll. Don't think it really needs another magic item. Hmm, maybe pour mana potion on the scroll first so it can store mana.

Spell books seem useful for lower level player to learn higher level spells that they can't in research. Doesn't mean they can cast the spell with lower level skill but it gives that extra nudge like a boost maybe. Hmm, probably not too useful unless some things hidden in spell research, like shadow damage hidden until certain levels or until you get hit with it, heh. Don't know. Does seem not-so-useful.

[Greatest]

lol mana potion seems a bit weird...I agree with Mongo it needs more than just paper and ink, but I think it should be something simple and easy(maybe even just an enchant spell?).

I mentioned spell books in a different way somewhere up there(lost track of this thread ) where the book works same way as the scrolls but can cast more than once.  could be as simple as using spell scrolls on a piece of leather(or some other item) to make the book, 10 pages/uses for a small book(tome?) 50 for a large(grimoire? could be 5 tomes used on another item?)...used just to keep your inventory from being quite as cluttered.

[Mickey Kudlo]

Sorry, I meant Mana Charge, from the Mana Plant, I think.

[Greatest]

  yea that would work, means few crappy spell scrolls too since most people wouldn't want to waste a charge

[Novibear]

That would also make sense for non fighters to occassionally use mana if they got their hands on a spell scroll.

Also wasn't their talk of using read ancient to write scrolls or something?

[Mongo]

Not really sure what to think without seeing a big picture. Right now I'm imagining:

• Players research/learn new spells through a replacement of the rune combo system (still to be decided?)
• Players can learn a limited number of lower-level spells through spellbooks (non-craftible, sold by NPC's?)
• Players can cast spells from scrolls free of cost. Scrolls are crafted by players (Read Ancient / Scribe / Whatever skill).

Is this right?

It might be nice to see a few spells in the game that can *only* be cast from scrolls (can never be researched/learned) to keep the scroll-writing skill useful.

[Mongo]

Sorry for double post.

@Greatest, sorry for sounding defensive .. as I said, I usually post from work and .. work tends to stress me out sometimes.

[Novibear]

Not really sure what to think without seeing a big picture. Right now I'm imagining:

• Players research/learn new spells through a replacement of the rune combo system (still to be decided?)
• Players can learn a limited number of lower-level spells through spellbooks (non-craftible, sold by NPC's?)
• Players can cast spells from scrolls free of cost. Scrolls are crafted by players (Read Ancient / Scribe / Whatever skill).

Is this right?

It might be nice to see a few spells in the game that can *only* be cast from scrolls (can never be researched/learned) to keep the scroll-writing skill useful.

Yeah That sounds good but what scroll exclusive spells could we do would these scroll exclusive spells be something that were good for everyday use? Like maybe light or a fire starter/stopper alternative. Trying to think of something that would actually make them want to write such a scroll.

Until the Research is done then the possible spells are made hard to say I think.

[Greatest]

• no research, you create your own spells(Mickey liked the idea when I threw it out there and noone seemed to object)
• there should be no limit on number of spells(and I think your spellbook idea was shot down)
• yes to the 3rd(no clue what skill )

if a player can only write a spell s/he knows on a scroll(general consensus of scroll writing) how would we get scrolls for spells we don't know?  I'll admit I do like the idea of some seriously awesome spell scrolls as quest rewards, but if the spells are only available as quest rewards they'll be hoarded by the people who can actually do the quests...I doubt some really awesome quest only scroll that boosts all attributes by 100(exaggerrated numbers to show point) is something anyone would sell no matter how much they're offered.  on the other hand if there was a spell a player could write to a scroll for the same/similar result it would be more likely to be sold/traded instead of being hoarded.

[Mongo]

• there should be no limit on number of spells(and I think your spellbook idea was shot down)

Oh yeah.

if a player can only write a spell s/he knows on a scroll(general consensus of scroll writing) how would we get scrolls for spells we don't know?  I'll admit I do like the idea of some seriously awesome spell scrolls as quest rewards, but if the spells are only available as quest rewards they'll be hoarded by the people who can actually do the quests...I doubt some really awesome quest only scroll that boosts all attributes by 100(exaggerrated numbers to show point) is something anyone would sell no matter how much they're offered.  on the other hand if there was a spell a player could write to a scroll for the same/similar result it would be more likely to be sold/traded instead of being hoarded.

Maybe when making regular spell scrolls, you can 'proc' a more powerful version of the spell... like a .5% chance. Or maybe not even a more powerful version but another spell altogether (although people might be pissed if they try to make a spell and get something completely different.. even if it is rare).