Quote:

Original post by LorenzoGatti It seems that you want every player to have equal resources and raw power, with in-game experience and training adding more options but not strictly better ones. This is necessary for balancing a sequence of duels, and it is the way of M:tG (available resources are ultimately the 40 or 60 cards in the deck, "training" means swapping in new cards into the deck). In a "RPG-ish" game there can also be strong environmental influences (e.g. a necromancer can have a little more mana, or more corpses, in a graveyard than in the street).

That's pretty much the direction I'm going. I also considered the terrain aspect. I won't have a chess-like grid as in Tactics RPGs, but I'll have weather control (rain, storm, day, night, etc.), which will generate more mana of a particular type or render certain creature types vulnerable.

Quote:

Even if you want to reduce the inherent randomness of random card drawing, you can still have the players spend actions or whole turns obtaining (until the end of the duel) mana sources (starting from very little or no mana). This way you would have progressive growth, like with the land mechanism in M:tG, and the important strategic choice between playing something now or obtaining the mana to play something expensive later.

That's a good point. I already have spell preparation (read: card drawing) consume stamina based on the utility of the spell and size of your spell deck. I guess it wouldn't be much different if I made mana sources spells, but it feels too much like I'm ripping off M:tG. Well, I guess they're successful game designers for a reason.

Quote:

Are you sure you want to allow players to select any known spell at every action? Even if most of them are inapplicable or too expensive, the player will still have to consider too many alternatives and/or to stick to the same old combos.

That's actually a big deal for me. A lot of magic games are lost due to the luck of the draw, which is something I'd like to avoid. In CCGs, there are a glut of alternatives, and it doesn't seem to bother most people.

new proposal:
You've actually given me a good idea. How about this: leveling up still gives you mana sources, but you have to "channel" them in battle in order to activate them. That way, leveling up still helps you, but you reach the point of diminishing returns and everybody evens out.

The only problem is that gaining a level becomes unrewarding fairly quickly, and you can't save mana between turns. My original idea was that you could save mana for several turns before casting a large spell, but with this in-battle activation system, everybody will just spend their first five turns channeling, or else they'll run too short at the end of the battle, because the benefits of extra mana sources increase exponentially.

For example, with mana retention, let's say I have 3 mana sources over three turns, I end up with 9 mana. If my opponent took extra turns in the beginning and has 5 mana sources, he has 15 mana. It just wouldn't be an effective strategy to not channel in more sources.

The solution to that problem is to not allow mana pooling and discard mana in excess of your mana sources each turn, but then it's not only a complete M:tG ripoff, but it also removes any tactical benefit from waiting.

Thoughts?

What about adding another stat called synchronization. A wizard has to synchronize with their places of power or the astral plane before they can draw power. Each turn their synch increases by their focus skill and they can only draw mana up to their synch level in a given turn. So turn 1 they can draw 1 mana turn two they can draw 2 and so on. A wizard's skill in in given color of magic determines their mana capacity in that color. So if they have skill of 3 they can only use up to 3 red mana at a time and can only store up to 3 red mana for later use.

So if their synch is 5 and they have skill of 1 in red then could cast 4 spells that each use one 1 red mana and save 1 mana. But they couldn't summons the fire beast, which costs 4 red mana because their skill isn't high enough to channel that much red mana. Like wise if they had had a skill of 4 in red then could store the mana they can draw on the first two rounds to summon the fire beast at the start of round 3 and still have two mana left over to use later or to defend themselves on the opponents round.

It also adds another dimension because players can level up their focus skill but to draw more mana per turn but at the cost of not increasing their mana capacitity that level. Allowing for better balance of power of spells, number of spells per turn, and ability to defend.

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth synchronization and so on

That may be the best idea I've heard in this thread! Ratings++

So, a synchronization rating (maybe I should just call it "channeling"? how about "focus"? focus sounds good) determines how much mana they can draw in a turn regardless of their elemental ratings? Would they have to determine out of a "focus" of 5, 2 fire, 1 water, 1 air? Or could it be automatically determined by the ratios of their skills? Hmm, this is getting more complicated every time I talk about it.

You know, I remember a time when design was easy and programming was the hard part. [lol]

Well, your "focus" would channel raw mana in to your mana pool. Then your skill levels would determine how much of that raw mana you can control in a given element at a time.

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth Well, your "focus" would channel raw mana in to your mana pool. Then your skill levels would determine how much of that raw mana you can control in a given element at a time.

So, you're saying mana should be neutral (colorless, in M:tG lingo) until it is used? You know, at first I didn't like that idea, because it makes saving up large pools of mana almost useless if you don't have large elemental skills. Now that I think about it, you could gear your wizard toward fast combat (high speed, low element skills, small deck of low-cost spells), or high-impact combat with specialization in one element skill, a large (slow) deck, and high-cost spells.

I think this is a good direction to move toward.

Thanks, everybody!

I don't think 'levelling up' should make you have more kit at the start of the game, except possibly more 'cards'. The thing that makes MtG so fun is that you improve as you play more, because it's a surprisingly deep game; the thing which makes it accessible to newbies is that you can beat the best guy in school if you have the right cards and know how to play.

Both keeping 'oldbies' and keeping newbies are important. If a newbie gets squished the moment he starts a game, he's not going to stay.

So I think a starting player ought to get a choice of a small (random) selection of cards, and as you 'level up' you 'buy more packs', i.e. get a choice of more cards. It shouldn't affect the actual game mechanics. For the RPG/competitive element, you can keep a score, levels and a record of wins/losses or something.