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Original post by lithos Type two: ley magic ...

I really liked this idea. I like how it can limit the possible spell combinations for the different areas of the map, so that you can control the gameplay a little more for quests. Cool idea

One idea we tried in a tabletop game was that the wizard characters didn't really fight -- they weren't the "medieval flamerthrowers" that they are in most other systems.

Basically we had them able to alter the chances of events happening -- so the magic users could make arrows fly truer (or less true for enemy shots). Cause the ground to be marshy to slow enemy advances. Stuff like that.

This didn't actually go down well with a lot of younger players who are used to Warhammer type battle magic but they weren't really the target audience. That sort of magic kind of bugs me because I can't see why anyone else would turn up to the battle just to get flamed by the wizards, and I certainly can't see why they'd form into easily targettable infantry blocks. It's like trying to use the tactics of Ancient Greece to fight the wars of World War 2...


Doing it in an MMO, you could possible even have this happening in real-time -- the wizard can "grab" arrows in midair and deflect them or pull them onto target.



I sort of like the idea that the magic depends on the environment; Earth magic is powerful in places where there are powerful earth spirits and so on. That could allow a decent "rock-paper-scissors" balancing system. The elements could have rivalries and alliances and be less effective if you're fighting a wizard of the same element and so on.

There was a MUD years ago, called GodWars. Had some unique classes, one of which was the mage class. This was a text based game, but I think the creators of these style of MUD's did a great job at making the classes have unique gameplay (within the text based environment).

The mage clases were completely unique, you actually could soft code your own spells using the scripting language built in.

What might be neat is creating a script language for mages, and then limiting certain aspects of it (repetition, strength of spells, how many instances of the cast can be completed, etc) by level. Allowing you to gradually enhance your magic as you leveled up, and became more knowledegable and had more access to the scripting language to complete more powerful and complex spells.

One idea is that of a Summoner. This type of Mage would summon creatures to fight for them. These can be Skeletons, demons, imps animals, spirits, etc or even effects (walls of fire, winds, buffs, etc). These summoned creatures would not cost manna to summon, but be a constant drain on their manna reserves. As the rate of drain matches the rate of regeneration of the manna, this would limit the number of such creatures (or even effects) that the mage could sustain. The mage could exceed their regeneration rate for a short time, but this would begin to drain them of manna and if they have no manna then all their effects fail.

You could then put in a risk factor that a summoned creature that is still summoned when the manna runs out become wild and will attack the caster (becomes an enemy and has a high aggro on the caster that summoned it).

Another idea is a Channeler. This type of mage draws their power from nearby sources (similar to the leyline idea), however as the mage casts spells it drains these sources (which regenerate slowly over time). Any caster in the area using the same source (element) drains that source too, so too many casters of the same type can quickly drain the manna from an area making those spells that rely on it much weaker.

You could then have spells that could reduce or limit the sources a mage can access, and have spells that break through these limits as well.

Sources could regenerate slowly over time, but could also be regenerated by certain events. Negative/Death energy could be regenerated whenever a creature nearby dies, and a caster might have a store of small creatures that they sacrifice to regenerate the energies near them (so a necromancer might have to keep killing to support their army of undead)

This Channeler idea can even be combined with the Summoner idea so that the Summoner has to get the manna to maintain their summonings from the environment, and increasing the skill level (and/or stats) reduce the amount of drain that they have (they become more efficient at it).

With different types of manna in the environment the mages could specialise in summoning creatures and effects from different sources, and others might act in ways to reduce the ability of enemy casters to work their magic.

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Original post by ShadowBit The most common way I've seen for characters to use magic when fighting is: * select target * cast spell * cast different or same spell * repeat casting until target is dead * get experience and loot * Now repeat N more times until level up, then go to a different mob and repeat again What I'm trying to find is a way so that the outcome of the fight is affected also by the player skills/knowledge of the game, not just by the character stats.

This brings to mind hunting. Can a person go forth into the world with the purpose of gathering some herb/oil/fat/fang/wing/etc, and be reasonably certain of success? And why would they want that ingredient in the first place?

Maybe it turns out that the Ice Trolls of the North could be defeated with fireballs. And fireball spells come from/use the oil of a salamander. And salamanders are found near the mouth of the volcano.

The consumed ingredient is more fun to me than a generic recharging mana point.

I have to disagree with AngelWyrm, magic that takes reagents is annoying!

When you run out you are just screwed, you invariably forget to get reagents sometimes and dont realize it til you are with your group out there ready to battle, and it's annoying trying to figure out what you need and finding it.

Maybe if nobody was primarily a mage, but could have limited use of magic via reagents (but then you still had something else to fall back on like melee combat), maybe then it would be ok but IMO reagents are so annoying!! hehe

A good magic system, regardless of how it's implemented, needs good balance between spells. Otherwise you're going to end up having players using only one surefire strategy to attack.

Instead of having confusing key combos, why not have an actual skill based system? Each spell has a counter-spell, or each spell balances with some other spell. For example, you can shoot a fireball at another fireball to cancel them both out. You could freeze an opponent in ice but they could counter with a fire spell to melt themselves out. You could fire some other projectile at the opponent and they quickly create a rock wall which blocks the projectile attacks. Etc.

Another thing to consider is spell power over time to cast. Perhaps a player merely taps a key to shoot a fireball forwards. But what if they hold that key before releasing? Then you can have the fireball build potency. It might grow larger or it might do more damage, or it might do both. Maybe if the player holds the spell cast long enough, it unleashes a completely different attack. While casting they would be totally vulnerable, so skill would be required to determine just how long you can hold the cast before needing to dodge or take cover. This allows you to avoid having to do silly things such as "small fireball spell, large fireball spell, medium fireball spell, huge fireball spell, etc" and instead just have one single fireball spell which the player can then turn into whatever it grows into over cast time.

Of course you can also have mana cost change depending on how long the cast is as well. Meaning now the player needs to think about conserving their mana. Letting out a massive spell might be great if you can pull it off, but then your mana would take quite a hit and you'd either need to replenish it or use some other tactic.

Giving players options in combat is usually a good thing. Though in order for this to work, you can't get too many different types of spells, as it will merely confuse people. After so many spells, players won't be able to keep track of them anyway, and will only use a handful of spells regardless of having dozens available.

This sort of system can work for both twitch and non-twitch. As you can have both offensive and defensive attacks, which don't require fast reflexes but merely fast thinking. Basically you want a sort of chess system but instead of game pieces you have magic spells. Using spells to counter other spells is about as good as it gets when you want raw skill to be a factor. Also reducing the gap between stats for attack power and such would also increase the skill involved.

It's not going to matter if you have the best skill based magic system ever, if a player can just overpower another because their tiny fireball does as much damage as the opponent's massive fireball. There needs to be balance in order for skill to really come in to play.

I tend to play MMOs with half of my brain switched off, since I consider it relaxation. For me, World of Warcraft is to serious gaming what chewing gum is to food. As such, I like the 'hit button, watch monster die' approach.

On the other hand, looking at how I play other RPGs, I have a few thoughts.

1) Gesture-based casting
Black and White, the Lionhead game, had the player drawing runes and sigils with their mouse to cast spells. This ranged from spirals to parallel wavy lines. By doing this, you did tend to feel a little more involved, but it was easy to fluff it when under stress. This is almost a good thing, I suppose. You can grab a demo from the internet if you look.

2) The Seventh Sea approach
There is an old pen and paper game called Seventh Sea, a swashbuckling system really, where magicians had less immediate spells. Most mages were fair-to-middling swordsmen who also knew magic. The spells were therefore buffs and support abilities, such as teleporting and storing small objects or giving temporary bonuses / curses to certain skills. A mage is more likely to enchant their sword before battle than to cast fireballs. One school even involves evoking archetypal heroes (even in combat) to take on their traits.

3) The Craft
Another idea would be to look at the Everquest 2 crafting system. The idea is that a player is given prompts, to which they must react with the correct button. In EQ2, this can cause damage (yes, a game where you can die of wounds incurred while making a table...) and spoil the item too.

In a magic system, you might have the player able to cast buffs and debuffs on friends and foes, with each spell throwing up feedback which can backfire onto the caster and maybe even break the spell. The more spells, the more of these events will fire up and so the ability to react to each event with the correct response can separate a newbie mage from an expert. (if you know EQ1, think of the twisting that a skilled bard could do)

An added measure of complexity might be abilities which can disrupt enemy spell-casting by adding new complications to their own screen. That way, two groups might have a physical battle between their tanks and rogues, while the mages are trying to buff and heal their own party, while debuffing the enemy tanks and disrupt the enemy mage's spells.

My 2 cp:

- current MMOG casting does take skill. Go try to get an Arena title in WoW. Good luck with that.

- fizzling is not fun. It was in EQ and people hated it.

- complex combo-based casting will be macroed (see Conan)

I'm not sure you are attempting to inject skill in the right place. Spells and abilities in a game should be generally reliable to cast. It would be annoying if you have to do complex repetitive tasks just to simply cast imho (equivalent to an FPS where you gun jams all the time). Inject the skill into the game via encounters, the environment, and teamwork. Pretty sure that's why don't see many games, MMOG or not, with arcane gesture mechanics.

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Original post by ShadowBit The most common way I've seen for characters to use magic when fighting is: * select target * cast spell * cast different or same spell * repeat casting until target is dead * get experience and loot * Now repeat N more times until level up, then go to a different mob and repeat again

Seems more like dumb AI and limited mob mechanics are what make it boring. Not the fact that you don't need gestures to cast spells?

What about allowing the user to charge a magic spell as much or as little as they want. So they could charge it very little to cast quickly with very little damage or charge a lot to cause a lot of damage but slow to cast. Each monster could have different attack rates and different recovery rates that would affect how long you should charge the spell. Finding that sweet spot of not overcharging and not undercharging could keep people more engaged without increasing the difficulty too much.


edit - It also is not very easy to script.