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Original post by Anonymous Poster (Nicolas FOURNIALS)
I have a feeling that the UI Grim is describing would make things even longer and difficult for the player, although more exciting and interesting in the field of practical magic studies 101. You would end up with something like a catalogue of known possibilities listed in your spellbook, or something similar. The most practical way I can think of to mix those elements is a visual way, through click-and-drag icons representing the different parts of the spells you know or have learned through watching them performed.
From the point of view of the UI, it would make things longer in a sense as you'd need to organize the spells from the spellbook to the actual keybindings. However, you could still have one spell per key (or even a sequence of spells) if you wanted to, as long as you had studied the spells. Thus, it could even make it easier to cast the spells in real situations (i.e. if you have prepared yourself well enough, you'll have the right spells binded straight into the right keys in an actual combat situation). From the point of view of making the game slower because of having to learn or find the spells, it's just an alternative to the infamous Grind. If you want spells, you need to find them instead of reaching level 7893873. And personally I'd rather journey around the country trying to find the spells than gaining them by killing a thousand orcs and levelling up. It's much more in-game. I mean, why would you gain the Bless spell from slaying a thousand orcs with the Agonizing Death spell (or worse yet, by backstabbing them during the night)?
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It is indeed very interesting to see what happens if you perform the ritual for increased strength with a liver of a babboon instead of a heart of a tiger, but is the player in desperate need of an instant "buff" (I hate both the word and its meanings and implications, but we are actually talking about players, so...) going to be willing to try some research before being eaten alive by this spidery thing?
As far as material components are concerned, the rituals don't need to be exact. You could have some sort of measure (say, spell potency) regarding how well you performed the ritual and using the wrong ingredient just makes the spell potency smaller. As long as most of the ritual is going along nicely you can still get enough of spell potency in order to get some of the effect; the spell would only fail if the spell potency was under some treshold (in the latter model I described this would even be plausible in the sense that the ritual is a way of communicating with the spirits (or entertaining the spirits, if you have a cynical attitude), and just using one wrong component doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the message is turned into gibberish). In the example you could still get something like a lesser increased strength even if you used the wrong ingredient (as long as the rest of the ritual succeeds well enough). And if the character doesn't have the materials at hand and gets eaten by the spidery thing, well, he had it coming. He shouldn't have gone into that cave unprepared. Not a very epic point of view, but it's like a fighter going to a fight without putting his chainmail on. It's not really about research in this case, but rather being prepared.
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I have to admit that for ritual magic, this has a lot of appeal. I simply had not investigated the "ritualistic" side of magic in my proposed UI because I did not think it made much sense in combat situation, because it is something that must happen a long time beforehand. But on the other hand, I would love to see ingame mages and priest taking some time before a fight for preparing their spells, and rearranging their belt of components. This would make up for the fighters and their habit of sharpening their swords, or verifying the straps on their shoulderpads.
In fact, the ritualistic magic could be made into a buffing magic, happening before the action, even if it has to happen in the form I described earlier. It would be inovative and fun. I see it a little as Alchemy in Morrowind. You brew up to four different components with four different instruments, and possibly get something. Or not. Research could be a little boring, though. I still think I would like it.
All rituals don't need to be long, tiring rituals that take hours to complete.
For an examplary ritual: utter "um zoh graa" while sticking a runic dagger into the brain of a bat. Takes a couple of seconds. I'd say that's suitable for combat. Of course you need an assortment of bats and a runic dagger if you plan to use the spell in combat several times, but how is that different from using a bow for battle? With a bow you'd need enough arrows. You'd only need rituals that take a long time for something really powerful, like enchanting your robe with the Regenerate Life property or casting Mass Genocide or something. You could argue that you'd want spells that take no time to cast, but then we'd get an Diabloesque action game where the player's reflexes are more important than tactics (and we wouldn't be talking about ritual magic anyway, as rituals take time).
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And to some extent, the same processes could be used with the fighters interface, with having them prepare their combos before the fight by placing their moves on approximately the same "spellbook" in order to get prepared for the fight, and create their very own combos, placed in shortcuts, although this would definitely not be as amusing as ritualistic spellcasting. I can't imagine having a different interface for magic users and non-magic users. We should have to give it a use for non-magic users, then.
Actually I'd make it so that you can bind any sequence of actions to any key you want to — if you wanted to mix priestly chanting in the middle of a fighter action sequence, there is no reason why you couldn't (if you chant badly enough, it could aggravate the enemy and he would fight less efficiently... Think about Cacofonix in the Asterix comic [grin]). Still, a similar system of organizing skills in a book can be used for any skill set (e.g. if you have item crafting, you could have item schematics stored in such books etc.). You could even make the books real game objects. For something you memorize you could have a mental game object (say, a recollection of spells) stored in the "memory" part of the inventory... Then you could lose these mental items just like any other items ("The psionic warrior stabs at you with a mind blade. Your recollection of alteration spells is lost!") and you could have other mental objects as well and could interact with them if you had enough willpower ("You drop an obsessive-compulsive behaviour. You feel saner.").
