In the Book of the Swords series the elemental spells were pretty neat.

In the series, a wizard could summon an elemental which was not so much a creature as it was a piece of nature you cold command. For example, one time a wizard summoned a water elemental which carried another person through a river to their destination. It was like they had sat in the river and floated, letting the river guide and move them where they wanted.


So, in a game the player first has an elemental which can inhabit a piece of nature like a lake, or a cloud, or a campfire. then command it to do something.

Water Elemental
Exists in: lakes, rivers, water tanks, bottles of water
Does:
Saves people from drowning by lifting them to the surface
carries people from place to place through waterways
changes oxegen ratio of water to allow people to breath underwater
dampens the scent of people so sharks or sea monsters can't find them
changes surface tension of water to allow people to walk on the surface

sucks enemies underwater and drowns them
drags enemies away or moves them off-course
moves the scent of enemies around to attract sharks or other monsters to them


Fire Elemental
Exists in: Forrest fires, Volcanoes, campfires, candles
Does:
Regulates heat to keep people comfortable without wasting fuel
Provides greater illumination with less fuel, and provides less heat.
Ensures your toast doesn't burn
Halts its flames so that the fire doesn't spread beyond specified bounderies, even if there are dried leaves or paper nearbye.
Allows people to move through the fire it inhabits without being injured
Allows people to move in fire and touch objects like molten steel without getting hurt.
With proper fuel, can melt metals without needing a furnace.
Covers a person in flames which do not burn them but protect them from cold weather and can strike at enemies that get close. The fire needs fuel though.

Dims the lights in an enemies lanterns.
Causes enemies fires to flash, using up fuel instantly and burning everything within range.
Moving flames wander the area, consuming all flamable material it contacts. Doesn't injure allies but burns enemies. Needs fuel to survive and may go out.
By dumping fuel such as wood, the elemental can create an area of hot coals that prevents enemies from crossing while letting allies move freely.


Earth Elemental
Exists in: The ground, special sand
Does:
Alters traction to allow people to run faster on the ground
Creates hand-holds to allow people to climb up unscalable walls
Ensures that caves do not collapse
Alters quicksand so people are not endangered by it.
Makes it easy to dig up precious minerals

Creates stumbling blocks and makes it difficult for enemies to walk
removes hand-holds
causes caves to collapse
Causes loose soil or sand to liquify and pull enemies underground



Sigh, alot of ideas. Anyway, this would make it not so much that the wizard is manipulating energy to cast fireballs, more like they are asking/commanding pieces of nature to obey them. It would probably fit in as a specific school of magic called "NatureSpeak" or something.

Other spells working on this theory would be like commanding the wind to carry you from place to place. Telling trees to grow fruit for you. Commanding stones to turn into loaves of bread or telling your enemy "Just go away, believe me... you do NOT want to fight me."


Anyway, hope this gives some ideas.

If you don't like elements, why would you want to use elements? Changing the names and adding a new class or two doesn't mean you've really changed anything, and the result won't be any more interesting.

Personally, I think the problem is inherent to the nature of current cRPG systems - they're insanely limited in what they allow, so pretty much all spells come down to "directly help me kill my enemy" or "directly prevent my enemy from killing me". Basically, those are the only two actions the player can perform at all, whether it be via magic or physical items or whatever else, so it should not be surprising that magic seems so uniform and uninteresting.

If you want something more interesting, you really need to have a more interesting environment to interact with. If you want a good example of varied spells that allow for interesting things to happen without moving into the realm of "Do Whatever" systems (that aren't at all suitable for cRPG use at this time), look into GURPS. Specifically, you probably want GURPS Magic, or, if you don't want to spend money, you can get a chart of spell names and prerequisite spells for free as the Spell Charts.

[random opinion]
I've always found GURPs and Mage's spell systems to be quite fun, balanced and versatile in PnP. Mage's especially though, probably won't translate nicely to non-DM'd RPGs though.

Although it provides no mechanical advantages over, say, the "elements," concept, I've always liked the idea of a "Totems" magic where the different spells are indicative of a particular kind of nature spirit. You could have Hare magic to make things swift and. .. fertile. . . and Fox magic to be cunning. . . and Bear magic to make things rugged and powerful.

It would also help justify the seemingly arbitrary nature the way most games implement their spell systems. Making a spell work like an elemental force (like lightning) always seemed like it shoul be more powerful -- more so than the game balance would have liked it to be.

For a PnP RPG I worked on, I came up with a system that got away from the "Elemental" approach. All I did was Use the various Gods in the world and gave them command over different spells. A mage was just using the "gifts" of these gods to create the spells.

This aproach is good as you can jsut create a set of Gods for your world (or spirits if you will) and then assign them spells that corespond to the influence in the world (so a nature deity would have spells that relate to plants and animals and ground). This give more flexability than an elemental based system.

in chinese,we use gold/wood/water/fire/dust 金木水火土

in japanese&korea,they use 水火地风光暗,water/fire/dust/wind/light/duck

maybe in usa&more europe country use light/poison/fire/water

I thought I'd share what my RPG is shaping up like. Basically there are elemental effects and status effects. An elemental effect is nothing more than an attack or a defense bonus. A status effect is something like poison, slow, etc. that alters the state of the character or enemy.



We have eight elementals, split up into two types.

Metaphysical Elementals
- Fire (weak against water, strong against earth)
- Water (weak against volt, strong against fire)
- Volt (weak against earth, strong against water)
- Earth (weak against fire, strong against volt)

Physical Elementals
- Slicing (strong against slicing)
- Smashing (strong against smashing)
- Piercing (strong against piercing)
- Mauling (strong against mauling)


If I equip a sword with +15 piercing and I attack an enemy with +10 piercing on their armor, I only deal +5 piercing damage. If I use a fire spell against an enemy who is an earth type (weak against fire), I deal additional damage. If I used the same spell on a water-type enemy, I deal less damage. So the metaphysical elements have a circular dependency (which is intuitive based on the elementals), while the physical elements have a 1-to-1 dependency (because it would be intuitive to the player that "smashing" armor is weak against "piercing" attacks otherwise).



The motto here is: keep it simple. Fire, Ice, Earth, Lighting. If you think introducing more elementals will make the game better, I think you would be gravely mistaken unless you are really cunning about how the elemental system in your game is put together. As a player, I don't want to have to remember 20 different types of elementals and what is weak against what and what is strong against what. It just makes the game a pain in the ass, rather than making it more fun. At least that's my personal opinion. [smile]

Just an FYI to everybody in this thread: 'the four' elements are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
The four traditional energy types are Acid (for Earth), Electricity (for Air), Fire (for Fire), and Cold/Frost(for Water).

There is a difference, and it's good to use one set or the other and not half/half =-)

In one system I once devised, there were only three kinds of magic: Good, Evil, and Law and Chaos. In the first two, the wizard would have to cast a long ritual to contact the beings of good/evil. The effects were devastating, but very limited. A mage could, with ten minutes and a goat heart, create a huge gout of unholy fire. The amount fire was fixed, so he couldn't create just a little and use it to toast his bread.

Alternatively, a mage could cast spells by altering the balance of law and chaos in the area. This form of magic was extremely powerful, but couldn't be easily controlled. You could, for example, make it harm an enemy, but you couldn't choose to do it in a specific way. The enemy could turn into a frog, a meteor could smash into him, or it could just food he was allergic to.

And if you wanted a nice and reliable way to kill people, well, that's what swords are for.

I remember once trying to create a spell list based on Miracles in Genesis. I ended up with a bunch of nasty curses - Staff to Snake, Locusts, Frogs, Kill Firstborn and so on. If something like this was developed further it may avoid the whole elemental basis.