In thinking about my RPG idea I have considered many magic systems. One thing I hadn't really considered though was simply not using a resource at all. I've been playing Super Smash Brothers: Brawl lately and realized that fighting like in brawl would be a big improvement on the fun factor of a game like Oblivion. In considering how that might work it occurred to me that special attacks like spells or special abilities really wouldn't need mana. Brawl doesn't use mana or any other resource to limit how you use the abilities. Instead its how those abilities themselves work that balances them. What they do, how long they take to finish, and how vulnerable they might leave you is the balancing factor there. Also, in many games that don't add fatigue to swordplay as a resource (or to be "realistic") you have fighting with weapons that takes no resource usage. So, why do we have mana in magic systems? How would you balance an RPG battle system with fighting moves and spell casting that didn't rely on resources?

It would be difficult. Problem is, it would mean you had to remove the most extreme spells, which would in a way remove some of the most fun perks to spellcasting. For example, a non mana using Time Stop or "Ball of disintigrating Insta-Kill" would be kinda unbalancing. And it would be hard to prevent the classic weak mage at start -> all powerful at end from becoming weak mage at start -> nobody plays it.
But, if someone made a game like that, i'd love to play it.

perhaps Jade Empire could be a good example - although it does use resources, removing the resources (and the whole slo-mo focus thing) and then rebalancing the styles could make such a game fairly easily i think.

It could be done. In fact, it wouldent be so bad at all really, and some RTS's actualy DO implement them that way. You would need to do some major rebalancing though. MP is a variable statistic, something that changes through use (similar to HP), and thus is an easy stat to raise/lower to balance out what people can and can not do. In brawl, the concept of leveling doesent exist, so they have to balance things out like that, there is no character progression. You will need to lower that aswell.

i found in many cases those huge orbs of instakill are unbalanced anyway. This is mostly because unless the game keeps you from making incredible amounts of money to buy mana potions with, you can simply suck down mana potions like water and keep shooting the big spells. That is of course a problem with the implementation of the economic system and the games balance, but none the less, it just shows how easily mana gets circumvented as a limiter.

As for leveling and progression, I would think you could work that into a brawl-like system by opening up new moves and allowing the older ones to become more powerful. The increased resources method of progression is a little less exciting I think.

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Original post by Mathmo It would be difficult. Problem is, it would mean you had to remove the most extreme spells, which would in a way remove some of the most fun perks to spellcasting.

Brawl has Final Smashes which are far more entertaining and extreme than anything in most RPGs I have played. (granted they are limited by a resource, the Final Smash orbs that let you use the move. Maybe a blended system would be best)

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Original post by JasRonq So, why do we have mana in magic systems? How would you balance an RPG battle system with fighting moves and spell casting that didn't rely on resources?

You've already mentioned the techniques I'd use. Mana/Magic Points is used to balance out the power of the magical ability, so if you remove that you'll have to balance them out some other way. So you'll need to play around with:

• The level of utility of the magic effects (damage power, extra status effects, etc.)
  
• The time costs in using them (slower -> stronger, faster -> weaker)
  
• Any other additional negatives or cost (reduced defences)

I was thinking the main problems would emerge in a classic sort of rpg context - where in order to make the spellcasters actually capable of fighting back at high levels, they get some seriously powerful spells. But, I was also thinking of D&D, baldurs gate, which to me is the seminal rpg, and in which of course, you have no mana anyway, the resource is completely different. oops.

so, on to diablo - yes, you bought s**tloads of mana potions, and the game compensated by making all the classes more hardcore by the end, and in which noone half good ever ran out of mana - so removing it would probably not have fundamentally unbalanced the game, as most classes used it heavily, and the spellcasters developed mana regen skills, which made things so very convenient.

and then, TES. Well, removing mana from TES would suck, because then you could (once getting good) spec out some insane spells, which would unbalance everything. because the point there was more your mana limit, than your total at any point.

but, of course, you have the most important resource entirely at your control.
Time. So, for more powerful/large area spells, make them slow to cast, so that spellcasters are again a hard class to play, because to effectively hit a barbarian or equiv. they would have to use some spells to slow them down, maybe evading for a while and then time a huge spell right to finish them off (as being hit while spellcasting would stop the spell. I quite like it. sounds very smash bros tho... but you could make an awesome rpg - and when you levelled up you could put points into increasing speed (at cost of small amount of dmg) of specific spells, or increasing power at the cost of some speed. and, of course, there could be more complex button combos to cast spells more quickly :-)

Mana is an important balancing factor because magic without limit is ridiculous. It makes every non-mage player obsolete and thus renders the entire game absurd.

However, if you want to do without mana, you can still try balance power with casting time or cooldowns. The more powerful a spell, the longer it takes to cast, or the longer the cooldown (or both). Combined with the possibility to disrupt a spell by hitting the mage, this might give back some balance.

Lord of the Rings Online is an example of a game which makes extensive use of the cooldown strategy for "magic-like" effects in addition to mana ("power").
However, in my opinion, LOTRO is not a role model for a good game. I remember few games that annoyed me as much as this one did (due to its explicit no-fun gameplay and its constant punish-the-player-for-playing design).

Ryzom is (or rather, was) an example of a really cool magic (or generally action) implementation which would let you freely combine your "credits" for an action using sap ("mana"), life, casting times, cooldowns, range modifiers, and a few other factors.
Unluckily, despite being one of the most fun-to-play games I've ever seen, the broad public didn't seem to share that opinion, it's pretty much dead now...

You don't need it.

Manna is simply a resource, and better players simply spend resources more wisely.

A Resource that is used in combination with manna is time. Cooldowns, casting time, and such are just as much a resource as manna. I think you could do a magic system with time as the only resource. For instance, you have the capacity to fire off one epic fireball one after another as long as you like, but the time it takes to cast might limit your ability to do so in combat.

Another 'nicer' version of manna is focus. Something like this:

When you cast a spell, you take up some of your focus. When you release the spell, your focus is instantly regained. Some spells, like a magic wall or something require you to maintain focus, which continuously uses say, 50% of your focus as long as the wall is active. It's just like manna, except you do not need to sit down and drink fluids over the period of 3 minutes to recover it.

-Humble Hobo

Mana's sort of problematic -- and you see this more in some older console RPGs. Final Fantasy IV comes to mind, or at least the non-easytype version we got in that PSX compilation -- but you often have such a limited amount of mana and such a relatively high cost for spells that spellcasting is effectively useless for everything but bosses, and your mage characters are basically dead weight all the other time, which isn't particularly fun.

You could come up with another method of limitting the number of spells you can use -- either buy spell charges, in other words, buy x number of fireballs spells for casting (FFVIII, Mystic Towers, any game with a heavy inclination towards using scrolls) or, like in Albion, buy some sort of medium that you use to cast any spell in the game, or go the D&D route and have x-number of spells you can cast per day (or the alchemy ingredients in, say, Ultima or Secret of Evermore). May still have the same problem as above, though.

also, you could limit the numbers of spells used each battle, but recharge the spells at the end of battle. Chrono Cross did this but I can't, off hand, think of anything else that did. You can actually balance this fairly easily, especially if you introduce the idea that certain spells don't recharge after every battle but, say, after every three. Also, you can kind of come up with a conic spell allocation thing -- you can cast a bunch of weak fireballs every battle, but only two or three of the stronger spells every battle, and maybe the best spell only once every three.

Mm. Actually, Square's recent "The World ends with You" is sort of close. Spells don't recharge every battle, but basically every attack is a spell, they each have a limitted number of uses before they need to recharge, and different recharge times. This isn't annoying because you can move around when stuff is charging or take control of the fighting on the top screen, or just use spells slow enough that charging and usable phases are staggered.

Another idea which a few games have done is the "everyone's a mage" approach. Chrono Trigger, for instance -- everyone gets some sort of magic or MP using skill. By the same token, everyone's a fighter approach. So that when your wizards DO run out of MP/are conserving their MP, maybe they're not necessarily AWESOME attackers, but they COULD be doing more than three damage per hit.