Magic in a mature setting

[Playgu]

I hate how Dragon Age deals with magic. I partially agree with your point, magic should come at some cost, but not the "ultimate morally wrong choice which will make you evil and rebellious" like it was in Dragon Age.

 

NwN2: Mask of the Betrayer dealt with it in a great way (not regular magic, but the mask magic) - there was an awesome sense of balance between the power and the weakness of the mask. Being too greedy was bad in the long term. I hope we get something similar for the magic system in PE.

[1varangian]

In that case I wouldn't want to see constant camping and resting for 8 hours just to memorize a Knock or Detect Traps.

 

A game like Baldur's Gate was actually designed around limited resting and you can totally go through entire adventures without sleeping at all. Unfortunately, what consequences it offered for inconsequential resting were not enough. If you play a D&D game without rest spaming, the whole game improves, otherwise its kinda mediocre.

 

You do realize a stamina bar might just be called mana? Its another spell point system, which incurs the danger of too abundant resources limited by the poor cooldown mechanic. A real twist would be if you casted directly from hitpoints from the start, and then I'd reserve my own judgement.

The rest spamming is a problem and vancian memorization encourages resting whenever you need the "right spell". So best to move away from that.

 

If losing Stamina incurs physical penalties it's not the same as Mana. Stamina can also be universal for any class while Mana is not.

[Qumi]

Magic comes from the soul of the caster, as the devs stated. It actually reminds of Warhammer magic a bit. In time, a wizard that specializes in some magic is being affect by it. His soul, mind and body change because of his specialization. A red wizard becomes energetic, ginger haired and a bit agressive maybe, gray pretty much the opposite.

 

As such, magic could IMHO corrupt a wizard, but not always in a bad way. You have to remember that magic needs to be likeable by players to chose. If the disadvantages will be greater than advantages it has no right to exist.

[Delterius]

In that case I wouldn't want to see constant camping and resting for 8 hours just to memorize a Knock or Detect Traps.

 

A game like Baldur's Gate was actually designed around limited resting and you can totally go through entire adventures without sleeping at all. Unfortunately, what consequences it offered for inconsequential resting were not enough. If you play a D&D game without rest spaming, the whole game improves, otherwise its kinda mediocre.

 

You do realize a stamina bar might just be called mana? Its another spell point system, which incurs the danger of too abundant resources limited by the poor cooldown mechanic. A real twist would be if you casted directly from hitpoints from the start, and then I'd reserve my own judgement.

The rest spamming is a problem and vancian memorization encourages resting whenever you need the "right spell". So best to move away from that.

 

If losing Stamina incurs physical penalties it's not the same as Mana. Stamina can also be universal for any class while Mana is not.

Rest spamming is encouraged by the paltry consequences to pressing the rest button in the middle of the dragon's lair. If rest wasn't spammable, Vancian system would (and from personal experience, do) encourage strategic resource management. That's even a major design decision behind the Storm of Zehir expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2 (though wether rest was really limited or not, I can't tell, I played it as I am playing the OC and the IE games, limiting rest myself).

 

If you need the 'right' resources then either the game should give you means to find that out before hand be it by hinting at the dangers of a coming adventure ('There are trolls in those mountains!'; 'I want you to investigate a Prison'). The emphasys on resources is supposed to highlight that, no, a spellcaster shouldn't have means to solve every issue at his finger tips. This is a party based game. Think you're really going to need Knock / Detect Traps? Prepare it beforehand and/or get another party member to fill your shoes.

 

And I'd still reserve my judgement for your magic system. There are still too many questions left unanswered.

Edited September 17, 2012 by Delterius

[Wintersong]

Certainly in D&D a young warrior has a much easier time than a 1D4 wizard trying to decide when to cast his once-a-day Magic Missile. That said, your suggestion that warriors should peak in power earlier than wizards means that wizards would continue to grow stronger after other classes have peaked. That doesn't sound to me like much fun for the players who get to watch wizards continue to grow stronger while their swordswinger runs in place.

 

I also think that if you assign wizards major limitations not shared by other classes, you need to make them significantly more powerful than characters of those classes. If a wizard get less armor, has to memorize spells in advance (please, no), and places his soul at risk when he uses his abilities, he needs to be compensated by being made significantly more powerful. Personally, I'd rather heap fewer disadvantages on the wizard, but allow other classes comparable power.

Well, a mundane fighter specialized in sword&board would peak and then he could master another style, learn rogue/thief stuf... rinse and repeat as long as physical and mental cualities are still good enough. But the usual magic systems give the same value to the time needed to get a great weapon specialization in longsword than to learn to cast a high level spell that basically can grant wishes or shapeshifting into the Tarrasque.

 

Arcane Magic, unless we are talking about the Discworld's magic, is supposed to be superior to mundane means so I find fine to have magic users to be more powerful as loong as the pacing to obtain that power makes sense. Then balance comes and BAMF! you can forget about old wizards because yours will peak while being a teen. Unless he rarely adventure.

 

But just rambling because even if PE is a single player game, it's not a book and class balance is needed.

[MReed]

I agree that it would be nice to deal with the impact of magic on society, but... Honestly, I don't think you can unless that's the whole focus of the game. You run into something of a catch-22 situation here:

 

1) Magic is ultra-rare (there are a dozen people in the world that can cast spells) and has no consequences: Either magic is completely and utterly useless (thus, nobody cares), or the people who can cast spells rule the world, or at least large chunks of it. Having magic in such a scenario would be the equivilent of having a carrier battle group at your disposal (with unlimited resupply) being opposed by midevil type technology.

2) Magic is (potentially) common, but kills the pratictioners: Nobody but the insane, desperate, or evil (if there is some way to move the negative side effects to someone else) uses magic. Those few people who do wield absurd amounts of influence -- for however long the magic holds out.

3) Magic is common and has no consequences: Common here means "about as common as doctors are today" -- in this scenario, magic should be everywhere in society. If spells like "Detect lies" / "Detect Evil" / "Charm Person" exist, then trials are likely to be very, very odd from our point of view. All merchents (even the poorest) would have have devices that can detect illusions, and likely invisibility as well. Fights to the death would be commonplace, at least among the wealthy -- after all, just have a priest on hand to cast "Raise Dead" and everything is OK, right? Roads might be all but non-existant outside of towns / cities -- the reason for building roads in the first place was to expidite the movement of goods, and if teleportation is available...

 

#1 results in a game where the PC can't be a spellcaster (he/she would wield far too much power for anything approximating a normal plot). #2 results in a scenario where most players would be unwilling to play a spellcaster, which largely defeats the purpose of having the class in the first place. #3 results in a very, very alien culture -- something that would take considerable time to write up and present to the player. In all three cases, you are spending lots of time and effort explaining something that really doesn't have anything to do with the plot, and that's a losing propsition all around.

 

Fundementally, it is all about budgeting your time and resources: Is it really worth spending time and effort on "background" information when you could just say "Society is more or less like todays society, despite the fact that this is absurd" and getting on with the plot / gameplay?

[1varangian]

Rest spamming is encouraged by the paltry consequences to pressing the rest button in the middle of the dragon's lair. If rest wasn't spammable, Vancian system would (and from personal experience, do) encourage strategic resource management. That's even a major design decision behind the Storm of Zehir expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2 (though wether rest was really limited or not, I can't tell, I played it as I am playing the OC and the IE games, limiting rest myself).

 

If you need the 'right' resources then either the game should give you means to find that out before hand be it by hinting at the dangers of a coming adventure ('There are trolls in those mountains!'; 'I want you to investigate a Prison'). The emphasys on resources is supposed to highlight that, no, a spellcaster shouldn't have means to solve every issue at his finger tips. This is a party based game. Think you're really going to need Knock / Detect Traps? Prepare it beforehand and/or get another party member to fill your shoes.

 

And I'd still reserve my judgement for your magic system. There are still too many questions left unanswered.

You don't need Vancian memorization for resource management at all. Some spells can require rare ingredients or focus items to cast (pool, large mirror, portal.. things you can't take with you).

 

Spells that "solve issues" can be easily limited in this fashion. I'm not at all suggesting spellcasters should be able to do a Rogues work at will. I actually don't even think there should be spells to open locks and detect traps, I was just using them as examples. Telekinetic power to smash a door down.. yes.. pick a lock.. no. Want to get in undetected? Bring a rogue.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I just like gameplay and story segregation to be avoided where possible.

It's always possible.

 

The gameplay is part of the story; there very idea of segregating them is nonsensical.

[Alweth]

Some good stuff has been said in here about magic, but just because it's good doesn't mean it makes sense with the direction they're taking the game. In their Kickstater video they said (at about 3:50) that it's not like everybody in the entire universe is using magic, but that it's not rare. That it derives from people's souls.

 

Given those facts this is what I would expect of the magic in Eternity:

- It is a potential found innately in all humans. And maybe all sapient beings, creatures, or forms of life.

- Just because people have the potential, doesn't mean they ever learn how to use it.

 

Taking the above as given, this is what I would like it to look like:

- Magic is common, but mostly present in people, not in objects.

- Magic items, are rare and derive their power either by retaining a portion of a person's soul, or by drawing their power from the soul of their user.

 

- The ability to use magic does not come easily. Learning to cast a spell might be equivalent to learning to read.

- Therefore, magic is mostly used by trained specialists who rely on a handful of spells specifically crafted to make themselves way more effective. For example, a mercenary sword-fighter may devote large amounts of time to learning and improving a spell that allows him to divert missiles that are coming his way, so that he can overpower his foes in close combat. This may be the only spell that he knows, and has learned by rote, like someone who has memorized how to play one tune on a piano but can't read sheet music or improvise.

- A rarer kind of magic user is the wizard who devotes himself solely to the study of magic. A wizard understands the general principles of magic and is therefore able to cast many different kinds of spells and even improvise a little (eg. by changing an element summoning spell to summon a different element). He is able to perform metamagic, like canceling, stengthening/weakening, or redirecting someone else's spell.

- A third kind of magic user might be someone who is wealthy enough that they don't have to work and can pursue spells that strike their fancy. Already we see how this system of magic might mark the societies this world. Magic is pervasive, but belongs to the specialists and the wealthy.

 

- Spells might be mediated through guilds (that train in the specific and secret spells highly optimized for their profession) and universities (that teach theoretical magic rather than skill with specific spells). Thus we might have the groundwork for the traditional class system that Eternity seems to be using.

 

- What those classes would look like would depend heavily on what is easy or hard to do with magic. A "Warrior" in the traditional sense of a broad category of fighter who doesn't use magic at all probably doesn't make sense in this world. Anyone who fights skillfully is a warrior.

[Delterius]

I just like gameplay and story segregation to be avoided where possible.

It's always possible.

 

The gameplay is part of the story; there very idea of segregating them is nonsensical.

 

Worse, to use the concept of gameplay and story segregation to justify bad game design.

 

Rest spamming is encouraged by the paltry consequences to pressing the rest button in the middle of the dragon's lair. If rest wasn't spammable, Vancian system would (and from personal experience, do) encourage strategic resource management. That's even a major design decision behind the Storm of Zehir expansion of Neverwinter Nights 2 (though wether rest was really limited or not, I can't tell, I played it as I am playing the OC and the IE games, limiting rest myself).

 

If you need the 'right' resources then either the game should give you means to find that out before hand be it by hinting at the dangers of a coming adventure ('There are trolls in those mountains!'; 'I want you to investigate a Prison'). The emphasys on resources is supposed to highlight that, no, a spellcaster shouldn't have means to solve every issue at his finger tips. This is a party based game. Think you're really going to need Knock / Detect Traps? Prepare it beforehand and/or get another party member to fill your shoes.

 

And I'd still reserve my judgement for your magic system. There are still too many questions left unanswered.

You don't need Vancian memorization for resource management at all. Some spells can require rare ingredients or focus items to cast (pool, large mirror, portal.. things you can't take with you).

 

Spells that "solve issues" can be easily limited in this fashion. I'm not at all suggesting spellcasters should be able to do a Rogues work at will. I actually don't even think there should be spells to open locks and detect traps, I was just using them as examples. Telekinetic power to smash a door down.. yes.. pick a lock.. no. Want to get in undetected? Bring a rogue.

 

Some spells being limited isn't enough of a resource management for me - for one, its just some spells (so choice isn't global) and for another, game balance. If spellcasting itself isn't limited, then every spell that isn't is going to be nerfed in game balance. Which is why spellcasting is noticeably more powerful in vancian systems than otherwise.

 

Then again, you can't just limit the spells you won't use in combat.

 

I am not disputing that other magic systems can't be limited. But the only spell point system that has been lately is spontaneous Vancian. Nowhere else is spellcasting anything more than tactical.

[irishScott]

From what we've been told magic will be tied to the strength of a person's soul. So I imagine there'll be some karma-like system in place.

 

Personally, I'd like LOTR-style magic. Used only by a relative, powerful few and not what you typically find in RPGs (ie: No fireball spamming). Look at Gandalf, you didn't seem him mowing down rows of orcs with fireballs. His magical abilites were usually much more subtle, but still quite decisive.

 

I don't think any character should be able to play with magic alone. No "mage" class. Magic is a tool like any other, and like any other tool there are things its suited for and things its not.

[Tauron]

I really hope they won't use a vancian magic system.

 

Firstly, it encourages you to memorize only combat spells. You never know when you might need that Knock, but a Fireball will always be useful. And then when your mage has his time to shine with a utility spell, you simply don't have it memorized because of all the times it was a wasted slot.

 

Secondly, it makes no sense why you have the power to cast 3 different spells but not 3 casts of the first spell if it happens to be the one you really need. Suddenly forgetting how to recast that Fireball never made much sense to me. "Preparing" spells for single casts has a very scientific feel to it.. it's like an alchemist making a firebomb. Nothing wrong with that but I like my mages more flexible even if it would mean narrowing down their powers.

 

Whatever they end up with I really hope they only have one system for spellcasting. No arcane / divine / wizard / sorcerer / warlock / I couldn't decide how it works -kind of mess. Just magic and one way to use it.

 

I think vancian magic system is brilliant. But it is intended more for pnp. Maybe combination of vancian, point and power based spell system?

 

You have Spellbook and memorise spells you want to use. These cost less mana, less time to cast and chances are higher they will work as intended. Any spells that were not memorised need longer time to cast, higher concentration (easier to disturb casting) During casting one can use mana or stamina to empower spells for higher or added effect.

If a character is using particular spell over longer time period he gains it as permanent memorised spell or simply gets more proficient in that particular school of magic, it comes easier to him. There can be many ways to build this system.

[Alweth]

The problem with vancian systems in computer games is that they reward you for constantly resting and for having spoiler knowledge.

[Delterius]

The problem with vancian systems in computer games is that they reward you for constantly resting and for having spoiler knowledge.

 

You don't have to (and apparently wasn't supposed to be able to) spam resting in games like the IE ones. Resting wasn't well implemented.

[Tagaziel]

Wizardry 8 included an interesting take on spells - in addition to the standard spell point pool, it also included power levels, even for high end spells. It was an interesting alternative to memorization. Personally, I'm in the mana/health camp. I fell it simply flows better and doesn't penalize low level wizards as much as memorization does.

 

I also think we are working a bit from the ass end, mixing lore and gameplay. A good gameplay system from magic should be created, before building up lore to explain it.

 

Magic resources aside, what about limitations for mages? I always found the arbitrary "mages can't wear armour" rule kind of absurd, as it has no real rational explanation. How about removing limits, but tying failure possibilites to equipment? Eg. you wouldn't want to cast lighting wearing plate armour, or flame-based spells wearing highly flammable robes.

[metiman]

I believe the usual explanation fo the armor problem is that with arcane spellcasting you have to

and that a weak mage would have trouble making these precise and presumably spastic gestures in heavy metal armor. Of course if it were a strength problem then a warrior mage with high strength should be able to cast or just a mage with high enough points in his strength attribute. Regardless of the justifaction if mages can wear heavy armor then you could use them as tanks and arcane casters which might make them overpowered.

[Tagaziel]

The simple requirement of having free hands will fix that. Not much you can do with bare fists against, say, a wyvern.

[Entropious]

I think, at least conceptually, that what the Warhammer setting does with magic is interesting. It is powerful, but dangerous, both on a physical levels (mutation), psychological (insanity or, at the very least, quirks) and finally the corrupion of the soul, with the wielder being in constant danger of being seduced by the Dark Gods. Depending upon how the setting and its take on magic will be played out, it may prove fairly ease to implement such a dark, gritty approach to the arcane and occult.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Entropious

[Tagaziel]

I just recalled the following:

 

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/15,000,000_Gold_a_Day

 

Method

1. Cast Wall of Iron, creating a wall 55ft*5ft*2in=45.83cu ft of iron. This step costs 50gp in material components.

2. Cast Fabricate, converting 11 cu ft per cast into masterwork daggers. With 14 ranks in Craft (Weaponsmithing) and a wizard's crazy Int, you can't fail. Repeat until only 1-2 cu ft of iron remains. (4 casts). This consumes your 5th-level slots for the day, and takes 4 and a half minutes. The density of iron is 491lbs/cu ft. Thus 44 cu ft of iron weighs 21604 lbs. A dagger weighs 1 lb. Thus we create 21604 masterwork daggers, which sell for 151 gp each. That's 3,262,204 gp. Over 3 million gp. At level 11.

3. Profit!

[edit]Additional details

Teleportation will solve the economic problems; by selling to the entire world instead of just the local pawnshop, you can easily find a market. And then spend your money to set up lots of local branch offices, with people capable of casting Sending or whatever to keep you informed of how business is going and what local demands are. Use this to track warfare and sell your weapons wherever they are needed. You probably won't be able to sell the maximum output of a level 20 wizard, but you'll make a very, very good profit, not to mention a lot of friends in high places if you sell at a bit below normal price.

 

It'd be interesting to factor this in, should any Transformation spells be included in the game. Crashing the iron market? Magical economic terrorism? Awesome.

[MReed]

It'd be interesting to factor this in, should any Transformation spells be included in the game. Crashing the iron market? Magical economic terrorism? Awesome.

 

Yeap, absolutely (and this type of problem isn't unique to D&D -- it impacts every magic system that I've seen).

 

However...

 

Dealing with these sorts of things takes time and resources away from the core gameplay / story, and given finite resources... Unless the game is about the impact of magic on society, I think it is more or less essential to ignore the consequences of adding magic to an otherwise medieval society. If you ignore it altogether, then the vast majority of players will never notice and the remainder will sigh and accept it -- but if you point it out by dealing with some of the conesquences, then lots of people are going to say "But you didn't account for this" and it will make the game less believable.