I hate how when you read a book about fantasy and so on, you have magicians pulling whatever spell they need out of their pocket. How magic is a science and they know how to put it together. Then when you play an MMO all you get is a series of spells. Where’s the creativity on the players part? Also, rarely seems to come from the caster, as they usually direct magic through themselves from some outside source. I’ve decided to design my own concept of a magic system for an MMO to try to capture the more literary style of maagic. Its quite long, and is broken into many parts. Free Form Magic Just one note...this idea does not in any way preclude putting in developer made spells, such as Infernal Death Magic of Lorgath the Wizard... But it does allow magic users to customize thier normal spells to a certain degree. As players level they gain Points to spread across items in three different categories. Elements, Targets, Effects. Inside each Category are different skills or abilities that the points actually go into. Elements - Basic to most games...I'll stick with the normal ones. (Earth Fire Ice Ligtning and of course there is an option of NO ELEMENT which is just pure magical energy...) Each element has strengths and weaknesses against different monsters...the basic idea of Ice Vs Fire, and Lit vs Earth...) Targets - This is where the general idea of where the spell hits is. General ideas are (Target, Self, Targeted AOE, Ground Target, Ground AOE, Point Blank AOE, Group, etc) Effect - What do you want the spell to do? In general the effects most games have for spells are (Direct Damage, Damage Over Time, Cure, Root, Buff, Debuff, Root, etc.) Now how does one cast a spell? Well first you can set up macro's that set the spell up ahead of time for standard one button casting. Basically you set the spell up, and you get the basic cookie cutter spell that the developers create. Give it your own nifty name. For those who like to cast on the fly it basically works like this. Step 1. Choose element. Learn what each element does what its strengths and weaknesses are etc. Generally a non-elemental spell will be weaker than an elemental one...but it could be useful at certain times. Step 2. Choose the target. Who do you want. Each target type adds a certain amount of MP to the cost, so choose wisely. Step 3. Finally what do you want the spell to do? You basically choose the effect of the spell. The interesting part here is this part of the spell casting process is filling up "Slots". What are slots? Slots are basically the number of effects you can place on a spell to make it more effective, or have more effects. You start off with one slot, meaning you can only choose one effect, and gain more as you progress. Once you have more than one slot you have the following options. If you choose the same effect multiple times, you get an increase in the effect. DD's hit harder, Dots last longer, Debuffs work better etc. Or you can choose to mix and match effects, naturally this weakens the overall potential of the spell, but you can get more out of the spell if you want. (Element)(Target) (Effect) [_______][______][_______ ________ _______] Lets take and make the DnD spell Fireball. The player has 3 slots Step 1. Choose Element: Fire Step 2. Choose Target: Targeted AOE Step 3. Choose Effect: Direct Damage x 3 This makes a potent area affect spell that hits a target and then explodes around them. Lets take a different idea though. Step 1. Choose element: Lightning Step 2. Choose Target: Enemy Group AOE Step 3. Choose Effect: DD + Root + Dot Now this isn't going to do as much damage as the fireball. But It does have the chance to stop the enemy for a short amount of time, and the dot will keep the damage going for just a little longer. Unfortunately none of those effects would be as potent as if it was used just by itself x 3. This is definately a free-form system, but not one that I think would be very difficult to balance. Of course it would be more difficult than one where the developers make all the spells. World Mana First...I've never liked how magicians don't interact with the world as much as I think they should...so I've come up with the following ideas. World-mana...All mana (MP) is generated by the world...whether pulled from the astral plane, or drawn from the planet itself, it is generated by the game world... What does this mean? When a player uses all of his MP, it regenerates like it does in regular games...however instead of it just coming out of nowhere this mana comes from a mana pool for the area that he's in. Now one magician is not able to drain away all the MP of an area..however, large amounts of magicians may deplete an area's magic supply...this of course will increase again over time back up to the max for the area. Certain areas will have more mana than others...and some will have little or no mana...so magicians may need to bring stored mana with them...a little planning goes along way. Mana Shift...Mana is a fickle thing... As a player casts mana linked to a certain element the mana in the area gets charged with that element. The more the mana gets charged with a certain element the Better spells cast with that elemement get. Of course spells cast of an opposing element get weaker...but they also tend to bring the mana Charge back into neutral order. Mana Vision and Counter spells First I'll introduce what I'll call manavision. Or astral sight whatever you want to call it. Players who are not magic users don't see anything when a wizard casts a spell until the end effect happens (i.e. the fireball flies across the screen) Magic users however see all of these neeto keen partical effects as a spell is being cast. This brings us to....COUNTER SPELLS (useful for PVP or certain PVE encounters) This part of the game relies very heavily on PLAYER SKILL and not character skill. As players put together unique spells, they get a particle effect that starts swirling around them that a trained player should be able to look at and figure out what type of spell thier opponent is casting. The element will give the spell its color, the effect will give it a certain set of particles (skulls, XX's, Eyes, Chains, etc) and the pattern of movement will tell its target type. A skilled player can then Match those parameters, and cast off a quick spell to counter the one the opponent is casting before they are able to finish up the spell. (For mult-slot spells the effect in the first slot will be the one used for the counterspell) How the counterspell affects the opponent i'll leave up to individual developers, though it could range from merely stopping the opponents spell, causing a loss of mana, or having the spell affect them.... Next we'll use mana vision to disect the astral space around wizards. Ley-lines A grid work of very heavy, concentrated mana. Spells cast while in a ley-line are vastly more powerful...though there could be some side effects...sort of like plugging your hair dryer into a 220v socket... These are visible to Wizareds as bright lines across the landscape some are so powerful they are visible to regular players as well. Nexus Points If you though Ley-lines were mean...wait till you stand in a point where those things cross.....YOWSERS. WEIRD MANA... Sometimes mana just isn't right...Casting in an area of WEIRD mana causes all sorts of oddities to happen. Wrong Elements come out of your spells, Weaker spells for more mana, stronger spells for less, Gain or lose a slot, Faster or slower casting times... Definately a way to keep players on thier toes. Ritual Magic One last idea would be Joining Magic. Where two or more players cast thier spells together to get an affect greater than the sum of the parts. This can be done with a simple button press ("Chain") before the casting of the spell. Every other caster in the area (area not yet defined) can then choose to ("Chain") thier spells together. Then they choose to cast the same spell (exactly the same) and the original starter of the chain casts say a VERY large fireball.

This has been discussed repeatedly on this forum and on barstools the world over. The great barrier that every system runs into is balance. Morrowind's magic system was the big experiment, and it had exactly the problem that everyone knew it would: Uberspells, useless, costly spells and spells that break the game.

There's an economy of balance and freedom. You seem to have found a pretty comfortable spot on the continuum with your first idea. The other ones are a little more nebulous, and will take some work.

You're right of course, but one thing about morrowind was that it was a single player game, where it was you against a computer.

I have no doubt that uber-spells will be developed, and then published on the game-sites. However, this system should also allow for players to effectively build up a defense against such spells. If someone publishes the spell combination for an uber fireball that stuns you're opponent, then I should be able to create a spell that protects me from Fire and stuns, effectively negating you're spell, also if you're uber spell takes a while to get off, I should be able to toss out a quick Ice spell that disrupts you and counters you're spell.

I truly believe that with this system if you can dream it someone can counter it.

But yes I do believe there will end up being worthless spells.

A complex rock-paper-scissors structure with many types of effective spells can be otained with simple negative feedback mechanisms: for example, casting a spell can temporarily increase the cost of identical or similar spells for every player, making popular spells inefficient and out of fashion spells more attractive.
The best players would try to stay ahead of fashion waves, changing spells as soon as the masses discover them and on the whole casting more effective spells for less magic points.

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A complex rock-paper-scissors structure with many types of effective spells can be otained with simple negative feedback mechanisms: for example, casting a spell can temporarily increase the cost of identical or similar spells for every player, making popular spells inefficient and out of fashion spells more attractive.

If you combine that with the World Mana and Mana Shift ideas you could end up with an interesting system. As mages use up a particular Mana Flavour (element) the others grow stronger. So casting lots of fireballs will weaken all the fireballs cast in that area, and make the Earth, Air, Water, etc spells more powerful in that area.

You cold also have a sort of "Gass" cloud that hangs around areas and is actually the source of mana (only mages can see them with their mage sight). As a spell is cast the cloud is drawn to the caster and when the cloud reaches the caster the spell is cast. This will create predictable by varied rates of spell casing times for spells. So if a mage cast a spell that paralises a person, all the manna clouds that are needed by that caster in the imediate area will be used up and the clouds will have to come from a further distance and so the spell will take longer to cast (also this could give some indication as to what spell is being cast for counter spells).

As a matter of fact, I had designed a system similar to what you imagined, for a PnP game. I had basically modified the Magic : the Gathering system to suit my needs, which meant that everything you walked past would produce mana (let's keep the vocabulary simple here). If you found living things, they would create RED mana, from animals to humans, anything producing heat created RED mana. GREEN mana was created from greenery, plants and trees. WHITE mana was the blow of the breeze and the rays of light, and could only be intercepted or destroyed by BLACK mana, which came from rotting or dead trees. Oddly enough, the cemetaries were full of WHITE Mana, because they were places of faith and of light. And of course BLUE mana could be found in any water course or pond.

You could transform some form of energy into another, like burning wood would create as much WHITE and RED mana as there was BLACK mana from the dead wood in the first place, or maybe combine two WHITE mana and one BLUE mana to create four WHITE mana (air and water combined into snow or ice)

But the point, here, is that if you drew too much energy from the green, you ended up with only BLACK energy from that point.

I now realize that it wasn't a good strategy, since the forces of entropy shouldn't really be shown, but rather felt, through the sucking of environing energy.

My point is that lines of energy could be created to fill the scene, to show to mages where the equivalent of laylines, or mana pools or any line, really, which would in turn be used, as reserves to cast spells requiring more energy (mana) than the caster can spend personally. Through this stratagem, you could have the caster realize something is going wrong when in magic combat, and prepare to resist the spell being cast, or maye, to lure the enemy, you could choose which lines to tap from, and cast a spell creating something different than the expected effect. That's what is interesting with magic, it is proteiform.

To cast a fireball, all you ha dto do was to draw all the RED mana lines to yourself, and then redirect then, channeled through WHITE mana lines, to your goal. There, the WHITE mana would shatter, and the RED mana would break loose, burning everything within a certain radius.

But, in terms of game creation, it means you need to create a graphic system which can handle such a feature, and I hope it doesn't become too quickly tedious to the eye.

You particularly struck me with your concept about MannaVision. This is a very interesting idea, and has been a core aspect of my own (nameless) game world where certain equiptment or powers reveal the irregular effects in the immediate area. It's interesting that your "ley-lines" are so very close to my "rifts" in my world. In fact, you and I share the identical concept and name of "Nexus" where the lines/rifts meet. It must be a very appealing idea. I too would like to see this kind of thing more often.

It seems odd that a master of powers like these would use the most flagrant and sparkly abilities which might give away position or attract unwanted attention. Of course, the reason why they are used is because they just look so darn cool. I suppose that it would also look cool if you could only see the end result (example - you see somthing floating or being blasted apart, but you can't see the scource).

Anyways, these ideas are not the most original (and mine sure aren't either), but they are extremley appealing. I don't see why they aren't used as much. Good idea.

You're right they aren't original...

They aren't meant to be. They are meant to help capture a magical world.

I would like to have a spot where through research at a library magicians and wizards could improve certain aspects of thier spells, or find out about how certain things work.

Actually, that sounds really good!

It might lessen the ammount of amulets and staffs and magical whatnot you wear in order to be more powerful, as opposed to what you know. The books/tomes could then be used on a point-assigned level of worth:

Certain longer books would yield larger quantities of information, and would be higher point-level of book.
Certain short books or pamphlets yield little or no information, and would be a lower point-level.
Certain encrypted or ancient language books require a knowledge (player skill) of the code, and would be harder to access (Perhaps gaining points in magic and transation skills).

When a book is read or partially read, it's points are consumed. Since it is less worthwhile to re-read something you already well know, you will gain far less (or no) points from re-reading somthing. Or you can gain hidden points from parts of the book that you may have overlooked before.