Inspired by Ketchaval’s “+7 Wand of Instant Death! Fun?” Conflicting Magic This is what we had in an old design (trashed already): Every character has some Magic Skill. Every Magic Item requires some Magic Skill in order to “take control” of it, so you can use it. Some of the Items do have to be “controlled” only when Equipped (i.e. rings on the finger, amulets on the neck), others require “control” even if just sitting in your pocket (backpack, purse) like Magic Stones or some ancient Magical Relic. If you try to control too much items, that is if your Skill is less than the sum of all Skills required an Item might “malfunction”. Here’s an example: Character: Merlin, Wizard of Fire Magic Skill: 10 Magic Items (that require control equipped): Ring of Fire Walk, Magic Skill required: 2 Ring of Flaming Eyes, Magic Skill required: 2 Amulet of Burning Shielding, Magic Skill required: 3 Wand of Ignition, Magic Skill required: 5 Magic Items (that require control not equipped): Shard of Flares, Magic Skill required: 2 The Skin of The Salamander, Magic Skill required: 3 Total Magic Skill required: 17. Obviously, Merlin is controlling too much Magic Items. The ones, that he got (or equipped) latest might not work properly. Example: if Merlin got his Wand last, it may not ignite the enemy the next time he uses it or do less damage or even do damage to the caster. Also, some Items with PSI specials can render the caster in random state of will, like fear, rage… Using opposing Magic Schools’ Items, like Ice/Fire (this is odd, I know) could also change Item’s behavior, depending which School the caster has chosen to participate in. Example: if Merlin (with his current inventory equips the Ring of Freezing Breath (Ice magic), the ring will probably not work at all. Even if it works, it could do damage to the caster (that’s not just losing hit points – what if the ring freezes you in the middle of the battle, or invokes strong (and/or freezing) wind, while you’re standing on a cliff.), or it could randomly damage the surroundings, even enemies, NPCs, buildings, flora, etc. Also, an Item that won’t get off. A ring that you can’t take off your finger. Or, imagine you use a Staff for 2 years and when you sell it to another Character, you find that you’re losing your strength! Next time you’ll find a better Sage (with higher Magic Items Lore) to identify you a Staff. He didn’t found that the Staff puts a curse on it’s previous owner when it changes belongings. Or maybe a well-hidden nasty spell, to which you hero addicted like a narcotic and now that it’s gone he’s weakening. Just to start the discussion. More to come. Boby Dimitrov boby@azholding.com

Interesting stuff, but it might be good to have a Magic Isolation bag that the player can put things in. So that he doesn''t need to have so much power = when he isn''t even using the item. This would allow the player to pick up stuff as they went along. Instead of having to return to where they found it.

Maybe i did not explained clearly in my first post, but what you''re suggesting will ruin the whole point.

If an item NEEDS to be equipped in order to be used (functional), then it does NOT require "control" when not equipped.
If an item does NOT NEEDS to be equipped in order to be used (functional), then it DOES require "control" when not equipped, and probably cannot be equipped at all, or even if it can, it won''t change it''s status.

So one of the things this design is trying to prevent is the player walking aroud like a Mobile Magic Stuff Shop, having 50 magic item in possesion. Or even worse - only 3 Staffs, but most powerfull ones.

In a "not-so-high-magic-world", similar to Tolkien''s, only the gratest Mages had some kind of Magic Artifacts. Even if you are creating a high-magic world, it''s not convinient to throw around tons of magic stuff. What if a vilager found that magic ring and turned his wife to a cow? Well, he''d be pretty happy, if he notices the difference at all, but that''s another story .

Also, I think it''s in Magic''s nature to conflict with itself. So what what we tried to simulate with that design are those potential conflicts.


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com

I think that it would be quite disturbing if some magic items really affected the world / society around your character..

[Kind of like a localised version of Black & White? ie. if characters live in fear of their deity then they work harder and play less.]

So you could have magical items which exert different influences around them. Like aggression, peace, bad luck, good weather, prosperity etc. Maybe even a combination of these things.

If your game has been designed to incorporate character''s personalities into the way that they interact with the player and the game world, then their personalities can also be (temporarily) warped by these artifacts. [A bit like the leashes of Aggression / Compassion in Black & White]

Yes, that''s pretty much the best way to limit the "Mobile Magic Stuff Shop" problem. But if a magic item which needs not be equipped to be functional needs control, then the player will then have to store their stuff somewhere else.

Of course, you could lessen the number magic items but what fun would that be. Sure, Tolkien-like worlds would be nice but who wants to play a hobbit really?

Ketchaval, what you''re talking about is some kind of Aura (as seen in Diablo 2), attached to the weapon? This is not something new, but since now I haven''t seen a nice implementation (even in D2). The effect of a specific Aura, or any Magic that affects Mind, should depend heavily to the Characters'' Mind point (or it''s equivalent). A character with much self-control won''t be affected by the Aura of the Sword of Fear as much as a weak-willed vilager. Also, some monsters could have immunity to such kind of Psi attacks. Anyway, that''s old stuff, although, as I said earlyer, I haven''t seen a decent implementation yet.

On the Enchanted weapons: what if 2 characters meet and Char1 has a Sword of Fire, and Char2 has Axe of Ice, provided the weapons have some kind of behavior, depending on the Spell they have attached? Wouldn''t it be interesting if the two Chars are drawn into a fight by their weapons? Even if the Chars are friendly to each other, the only way to avoid the fight is drop the weapon. Or, even further, in the above case, when dueling the weapons do damage TO EACH OTHER, but not to the wielder. Just some ideas.

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I think that it would be quite disturbing if some magic items really affected the world / society around your character

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I did not quite understand what did you mean by that?
I think it is NORMAL the Magic to affect the world. Yes, and it affects is quite a bit. That''s the major reason pure Magic is seldom used. Or, in a high-magic setting, the world (that is Nature, Monsters, people) should be much more resistant to the Magic effects. Speaking of this, I now recon that a High Magic world does not mean higher damage or bigger effects spell. It means that Magic is used more often, even in a everyday stuff, like chopping wood, because the trees have become some kind of enchanted and cannot be taked down with a regular axe, so you need an enchanted one and in such a high-magic world, the woodcutter should be able to cast the spell on the axe on his own. Also this affects the Magic variety, so you can have a Spell for many different ocassions, not just Lighting Bolt and Magic Shielding. You could use the Repair Armor Spell on your War Hammer, so when kicking some Orc''s ass you can be sure the damage you do to his armor will be negated by the Spell, so you can wear it afterwards, or hide it and tell the Armorer in the village the location, so he can collect it and give you some cash afterwards. But that''s another topic.

Bottomline: one of the things we were searching for in that old design was a new concept for the Magic system. The ideas I shared so far are just the beggining. If some interest is generated, I''ll keep posting other thoughs on the Magic system, Item and Spell behavior and so on.


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com

I think that magic "holding" bags could add more "gameplay choices" to the game, as each bag would have a Containment total ie. 8 Octas (units of Magic).

So the player could choose to put a 2 octa Ring in there, and a 6 Octa staff. Or they could put something else.

They would not be able to put the Relic Of Holy Terror (10 Octas), or if they could it would only reduce the effect that it had on the other items, as opposed to negating the effect.

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Original post by BobyDimitrov

Even if you are creating a high-magic world, it''s not convinient to throw around tons of magic stuff. What if a vilager found that magic ring and turned his wife to a cow?

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What a great gameplay idea, I''m surprised noone has ever implemented it before. IE. Only mages can use magic in a "safe" predictable way.

So if you want to kill that room full of Orcs, drop a magic sword of fire in there and watch as it shoots flame everywhere and kills the Orcs.

> There would need to be a trade-off, ie. the sword might then need to be recharged with its Magic Potential Energy, which would almost all have been used.

Teach that villager how to cast the lightning bolt spell...

Anonymous, and what if the player get 18 Bags of Containment? We go back to the basics - hang around with tons of Magic Stuff. And as I said, there sould be confilcts - put in a bag Ring of Fire and Amulet of Ice and you can use the bag as a hand granade - just throw it away and watch it explode. What we''re trying to do is limit the Magic use reasonably. Which gets us to the point:

Ketchaval, this is the precise idea we had in that design. And it had a flip side: Mages using swords are more likely to damage themselves than the enemy. Also any use of Skill (for lack of terms) like Swordfight, Casting, Lockpick, Woodcut, Plowing, whatever, requires some expirience. If you don''t have it you could probably try, but the results will be unpredictable (actually they will be predictable, as they will have to be preset by designers, but anyway, the player won''t know them). This is some kind of Fuzion-like pnp rpg. There are Diffficulty ratings for ANY action the player could take, like Fight, Cast, even Drink, etc... Then there are the Player''s Skills. When the player issues a command for an action, the game engine should decide which Skill corresponds to the action best. I.e. "Cast a Spell" action - "Magic Skill", "Attack Monster with bare hands" - "Bareknuckle boxing Skill". Then the engine does the action with effect depending on the Skill. If a Player don''t have certain Skill for certain Action (like Woodcuting for Cut wood), how hard it is (the level of difficulty), then the engine should decide which of the present Player skills corresponds best to the action, like Sword fight - Cut wood. As sword fighting has little to do with chopping wood, the engine reffers to a preset Table of Difficulty Levels. This table describes how difficult it''ll be to do this Action with that Skill. So in our case, you will have -5 penalty to Cut wood action with Sword fight skill, but if you did not had the Sword fight, but only Cast and Lockpick, the penalty would be like -25.

This has become sizy. Anyone interesed check any of the Fuzion clones. And yes, it is surprising we don''t have an implementation of that (correct me if i''m wrong) yet.


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com

Quick thought on those bags on containment/holding. Those bags are magical too so they should require a certain amount of control to limit their numbers. An idea would be to have a bag requiring 6 control, and in return the bag would hold items whos sum would be, say, 12. You''d increase what you could carry but still place limits on it. I dont know, it''s just a thought.