Spell casting

[Rend]

I've posted this idea before, but since then their are alot more members so i'm posting this idea again.

Basically i hate having five spells to represent the same fireball spell(each one being a different strengh spell) My idea was to have the magic user learn the base spell at a young age. So a weak mage knows "fireball" he just isn't that good at it and dosen't really understand it that well. As he gains xp and learns more about the spell(buying books on the specific spell) he can cast a much more powerful "fireball" spell. To represent this a casting bar could be used (EQish). You could press the hot key for the spell and hold on to for the power of the spell you desire. Leting the bar fill up once gives a weak "fireball" and holding longer casts stonger "fireball"s, giving many different spell strenghs from one memorized spell. This eliminates casting huge spells on little enemies just becuase thats whats handy. A real magic user could control his spell power.

Well thats my idea...

[Dyson]

I really like that idea, Rend. It just makes sense.

[Dogmeat]

Great idea Rend, however, I think for the really powerful spells, especially those more powerful than the caster can handle, it should have random effects, because they are not really adept at controlling the power levels on their spells. Also, I think this would have to be applied to all kinds of spells, including small buffs that used a very small mana amount, or huge heals that used up all your mana. A.K.A. the sliding bar you talked about would have power and mana cost/concetration required directly related.

[Morte]

In the FAQ they clearly state that the spells will increase in level as you do, as opposed to being able to access a more powerfull version of the same spell.

I like the sliding bar idea, and I thought it might be interesting to be able to overpower spells. With that I mean that you put more mana in the spell than you can safely handle. It would result in a more powerfull spell, but an instable spell, getting more instable as you put more mana in it. An overpowered spell could get instable and cause all sorts of random effects, or could just destabilize all together and blow up in your face or do something equally disastrous.

[Dyson]

I really like the idea of "overpowering" spells.
Fits with the archetype of an overly ambitious mage who tries to cast a spell WAY behind his abilities.

"Hey, I heard Fingolus just learned to cast FireCube."
"Yeah, I hope he keeps them small for a while, 'till he gets better at Pyromancy."

*muffled explosion from outside*

"Um... do you smell barbeque?"
"Damn. Someone find a Healer. I'll go gather up his pieces."

:)

[Shinta]

Sounds like Slayers and Lina's always casting spells that leave her beat until she's healed. (Ragna blades and such.)

[Dogmeat]

The idea of overpowering spells is nice. It would also be nice to be able to 'jab' with spells, using many low mana low power heals or attacks, say if a newbie runs to you for help with a goblin you would only need a tiny bit of power for.

Could have some interesting strategies with this.

[Kintoun]

Someone call for a healer!?

I REALLY like the idea of being able to charge spells! I'm not so sure on the "more you put into a spell it gets more powerfull but unstable" idea tho. I mean, if I was to put more points into a spell why wouldn't I ALSO become more proficient at being able to control that spell? Especially since I've been using that spell so much (to improve it).

But going back to the charging spells...
Lag wouldn't be an issue since client side could take care of the "charge" and then send the result to the server which acts appropiately, so I see no reason why not to implement this idea. And best of all THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

[Morte]

I think that for each spell you have a maximum amount of mana you can put into it without destabilizing the spell. This amount should indeed go up as you become more proficient in that spell and with that particular form of magic in general. So a very experienced mage can put more mana into a spell thus making it more powerfull, while maintaining its stability. I do think that there has to be a breaking point, which essentially means the maximum amount of mana you can overpower a spell with. So if you were to put more mana in it will certainly go horribly wrong. Not that it is very safe just before the breaking point, of course, This probably should be a percentage of the amount the caster can safely put into a spell. So if a mage can safely put 100 mana in his summon gelatinous cube spell, and the percentage is 20, he can overpower to a level of 120 mana before there is certainty of casting failure, resulting in the cube being summoned on top of the caster, or something.

[Wrentia]

Perhaps there can be a system like this.

You have a certain amount of mana to expend. You can choose how to expend that mana. To improve as a caster, you have to stuff a bit more mana in each spell than you have previously.

Example: You want to cast Lightning Bolt. When you were an apprentice you had expend 1/10 of you mana to cast this spell. As you strove to improve there were times when you would put more mana into it. Sometimes the spell fizzled, sometimes it worked but missed your target, and once or twice it backfired. But you learned how to control more power, and have become more skilled. So now you get 1/3 more damage from expending 1/10 of your mana due to your skill. You have achieved a higher rank in the School of Magic.

So I guess what I am saying is you can slowly improve in casting ability by being safe, or you can improve quicker (with some risk) by experimenting.

-Wrentia

[Rend]

I really like wrentia's idea, it fits with the whole learning skill idea. Magic users in group would be more careful trying to cast the spells the havn't practiced yet. Its also a new idea on learning magic, vering away for the basic cast, cast, cast, "ohh look my skill went up" This king of skill learning could be carried over to weapons too. having to trying the more advanced moves to get better, as opposed to just auto attacking all day.

[karoo83]

Awsome ideas... I love them. But I think there should be a "standard" or something. So at a particular skill level you'll use the standard amount of mana. This way, if you don't want to cast a weak spell or cast a huge spell, you don't have to do anything you can just hit the cast button and it'll cast the standard size spell. Just a thought.

[Neville]

I also like the idea of putting more mana into a spell and thereby "overclocking" your output... It makes magic come alive as a calculated risk taken by a mage every time he pushes the limits of his Art...

I believe that the standard spells _should_ dish a certain set amount of damage (or perhaps randomly rolled damage on every creature in a set radius or whatever) but that a mage should get the option to throw extra into a spell if he wants to try something special.

To that end, I suggest a new Skill (yeah, I know there's another thread :)) called Spell-Artistry that would allow a mage to play with the parameters of his spells.
He might, for instance be able to tweak range, duration, intensity of the damage, colour of the sparkly lights, etc... Specifically in terms of casting spells beyond his skill-level though, I am thinking of two things:
1) Can we ask for a system to cover a FAILED attempt at boosting a spell: for instance, if he tries to double the effect, and over-reaches his power (fails his skill roll, eg) and the spell escapes him, what happens? Does the power simply fizzle, is there a corruscating gyre of Power that scours the Land, and incidentally strips all remaining Mana from the caster, leaving him unconscious...? It might make sense that someone trying this and failing would automatically summons a CM to handle the event...
2) Can we get a system that allows us to "underpower" a spell as well overpower it: this seems obvious but I thought I'd ask for it explicitly: it seems to me that if I can cast a spell that levels a playing field of soldiers, I might want to cast something a little less taxing using the exact same spell idea, but just hitting a single unit over there on the one side.

And now back to work again for me.
Neville

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Great idea Rend. Good suggestion with the overclocking spells Morte. Neville, I would like to see spells able to over and underclock.

Some good points Sis.

[Kintoun]

Rend's orginal idea encompasses everything we are looking for here. The ability to "charge" a spell, so that a quick release will be weak, while a longer release will be stonger. As for having "standard" casting... All you would have to do is to set the property of your hot key for a certain spell to be cast at 100% (assuming thats standard power) And then you could even make hotkeys for 200% or 50% for stonger or weaker casts.

[Dyson]

How's this as an approach to "spell scaling:"

There could be a "power bar" for each spell. By default, the bars are set at 100% (in the middle), but the bar can extend all the way to 200%, or all the way down to 1% (though 1% will probably be useless or very nearly so). Adding specific skills to modify spells seems like an unnecessary complication to me; magic-users shouldn't have to learn another skill in order to control their spells. I also like Kintoun's idea for HotKey capability.



[Edited by Dyson on 02-25-2001 at 08:35 PM]

[Kintoun]

Just a few more points that make Dyson's idea so great...

As stated in posts as well as the FAQ there are not going to be 50 different versions of the DD spell fireball. There will just be the one DD fire spell that you start with, and as you gain exp you better that spell. A nice thing about this is what if a newbie is running by and begs you for help from a monster following him. Well since you have no "low level" spells your definatley not going to want to waste half your mana to take out a weak monster by using your nice and powerful DD fire spell. So with Dyson's idea at least there is now a way to help the newbie without wasting your precious mana, cast the spell at 10% and fry the weak MOB in a matter of secs.

This same idea can be applied to healing and buffing spells. In most games as a healer you have more than one healing spell readied. One for emergency situations when a big heal is needed, and one for micro-management when less mana can be used to top-off someones health. By implementing Dyson's idea, only one spell needs to be readied (there will only be that one spell most likely anyways), and the micro-management of a healer opens up to many more directions. Friend need to be healed of approx 50HP's? Well if you know that your healing spell will heal 100Hp's then some quick math will tell you that you should cast a 50% power heal spell on him. This uses your mana to the best potential possible, by not having to cast a full heal spell on him and wasting mana. This is whats know as micro-management.

Why make 4 different versions of a resurrection spell? Just make one rez spell, but make the more powerful versions (aka 100%-200%) not availible until further training. The higher the % the better chance you have to rez someone as well as lifting away a higher amount of the death-penalty.

Just an extreme idea that I want to throw out there would be to eliminate Area Effect spells alltogether. Just make Dyson's "slider"(tm) look like the following:
0%----100%----200%--AE0%----AE100%
AE being area effect version of the current spell. This would make ANY spell an area effect spell if charged long enough. Maybe later on there are quests which one can complete to rid the slider(tm) of 0% to 200% so that the slider(tm) only has AE0% to AE200%(changed from AE100% to a new max of AE200%) on it. Thus effectively making the DD/AE spell into a AE spell only, with a bit more power.

[Indigo]

I like the idea of having a sliding power scale on spells.. nothing is worse than overkilling something:).. also at a 1% you could zap your friend and not really hurt them.. hehe. I also love the idea of a single spell getting stronger as you get older..and wiser..and more powerful. These are great ideas!

But I feel that magic spells and magic items should be rare things. They should not flood the world and make nonmagic characters tanks or nothing... Not everyone should be able to buy every single spells, and hopefully with no automatic respawn, then there will not be camping for items, you will have to find them.. For casters it would make a variety of casters if the spells you found, won, or quested for werent in the spell books of every other caster. Even within the same class not everyone should be exactly the same. Unique makes for better rp because everyone has their specialty:)

Ahh in a perfect rp.. trouble is ya cant really do that many spells in online..

[Dyson]

Thanks to Kintoun for such praise; I'd like to say I think the AE idea is great. I'd like to see a "toggle switch" for the advanced AE spells, so even the highest-level caster can throw out a 1% single-target spell if they want.

Indigo, I agree with you about not having a flood of magic items or being able to buy all the spells. I'd push for a system where only a 1/4 (at MOST) of all the spells from low-to-mid level were available for purchase, and high level spells weren't available at all.

Of course, I refer only to NPCs and such; players can and will sell whatever they want. However, if someone knows they're the only source of a particular spell in the area, they're going to be very careful who they sell it to, if it all (as that person could become a supplier).

I'm flatly against "spawned" magic items of any sort, with the exception of potions and other "one-shots." All magic items not made by players should be personally placed by a CM, hopefully with at least a bit of storyline in mind (it makes sense to give an Orc Captain a magic sword or dagger, or to drop a minor magic ring on a skeleton in some dank dungeon corner).

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Aye, I like that idea Dyson, and Kintouns AE adjustment, sounds like just what we're looking for.

[Dogmeat]

I have another idea on spell casting. How about you can take up a crafting type skill that lets you store spells in an item with expendable or if you become powerful enough, unlimited charges. You could also set the power level of the spell. The more powerful the spell (and the more charges), the more expensive the components of the stored item.

[BelDragos]

That would get into magic item creation and I havn't heard much on the topic yet.

Good job on the over/under powering spells. I wish I had suggested it myself.

[Kintoun]

Also Bel, I read the partial post of teh 2nd Dev chat, and Rolfe said that the magic system they were planning is similar to what has been written on here.

[Kymeri mac An Iolar]

Aye, In the DEV Chat, Rolfe and Rich stated that the spell bar is exactly what they were thinking of. So sounds like that is what we'll have.

[BelDragos]

Unfortunatly I had to be at work while the 2nd chat was taking place and I havn't been able to get to reading up on it yet.

[Kintoun]

Well, we're still LOOKING for readings on it Bel, so most of us are in the dark right now too =( So once again if neone was AT the chat plz go read the "Dev Chat March 1st" thread, I gave instructions there on how to check if you have the log or not, thx.

Or if you know you have the whole log, plz post it asap.

[BelDragos]

I havn't had time to look for it yet.
Waiting like the rest.