Mixing magic

from Elemental Forums

As I don't know how spells work yet, here's an idea:

It would be interesting if you could mix different types of magic. Mix fire and earth and you can shoot magma bolts or comets, mix water and fire and you have acid. Water and earth and you can cast mud, and so on. Mud elementals, flaming undead, all kinds of crazy and great things could be spawned.

 

Dominions had this kind of system, and it was incredibly nice.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Yep, dominions had a ggod way of doing it. But it could be improved.

Take the flaming skeleton. It's just a skeleton.. with flames. Why not ice? or acid? or whatever? I mean most spells could have a (or some) "minor" tweaks available. When you cast the skeleton spell you can choose the minor ice or flame or acid or etc...

In dominions you don't have suh choice. And choices are always a good thing.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I still think someone should do a magic system along the lines of the Pen and paper role playing game ars magica.

 

Basic premise: magic is changing reality through language. Therefore magic is categorized viatechniques (the verb) and forms (the noun): 

So all magic can be described as a combination of these two:

 

In Ars, the Arts available are as follows:

Techniques: Create, Destroy, Change, Perceive, Control

Forms: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Mind, Body, Animal, Plant, Image, Magic

 

This is a great system, because it gives you enough permutations to create tons of interesting spells

 

some of the archetypical spells would be:

 

fireball : Create + Fire

mindcontrol: Control + Mind

Levitate/Fly: Control + Air OR Create + Air OR Control + Body

Invisibility: Destroy + Image

 

etc. etc. etc. A whole mini game in itself, with tonnes of interesting decisions. Magic as a building game, instead of basic commands.

 

Might be slightly complex to implement though, but if anybody could do it, it would be stardock!

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd like to see something like this as an option during avatar creation. Perhaps an avatar could begin with a set of shards that determine the types and levels of spells you can learn.

I think someone else around here already praised that aspect of MoM, and specifically called out how neat it was that you weren't guaranteed access to the same spells every game even if you chose the same books. Methodical variety yields greater replayability, IMO.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Ars Magica! That was a blast as a PnP! And the magic system was really impressive. The freedom to create spells was really excellent.

don't forget to add that you could raise the difficulty of a spell you create to add properties to it.

For instance you try to learn a levitate spell. Control + air.

But the basic spell can just throw small things like rocks (you in fact created a "throw stones" spell)

But if you raise the difficulty level of the spell you could lift a person or fly or make ston flying at a very very high speed, thus creating a "1000 shards" spell.

A very excellent system.