Elder Scrolls style make your own spells and magical artifacts

[Badmojo]

Its probably too late for P.E. but maybe PE2.  Something cool that was in the elder scrolls before skyrim was the ability to make custom magic spells and magical artifacts.  Combining different spells and creating a unique spell.  Its something I wish other games would implement, it was fun to make all these crazy spells and artifacts of doom. The only limitations was the cost to make and the mana needed to use it.  So you could create a rain draining fireball spell that could raze a city, while sucking up the lifeforce and feed all the dying life energy too you, but it would cost about a small kingdom, and you would need the mana power of a god to use it.  Stuff like that would be cool.  Especially for wizard type characters.  Its annoying that in most settings, the wizard is supposed to be the one seeking lore and also the scientist type, experimenting, trying and creating new spells, learning secrets of the universe..etc.  However, they never get to do that in games, they always end up being nothing but another type of soldier throwing boring fireballs at enemies and collecting other peoples work instead of creating their own.  Hope P.E. is different.

[Somna]

It sounds like the Chanter will have a system where you assemble songs together that might interest you. Probably falls under "needs more info!" though.

[JFSOCC]

I could imagine a whole quest-chain where your wizard has to go places to do research, to find spell ingredients, to mimic nature. Coming back to the lab where slowly and steadily your own spell is being developed.

 

And you could make it your own by making some choices during those quests, which leads to different quests and different elements to your spell

So if you're trying to get your life-force sucking dry-weather creating fireball, then you'd have to go out and study a fire imp at work, study a fire elemental, study dragons breath. Then you must go to the desert and study what forces create the drought there, you must go to the tundra and see what creates drought there, you must go to the parchment libraries of the Rothani tribe and see how they air-condition their library.

For the life draining effect you must consult with vampires and soul scientists, you must observe the suicide and rebirth rituals of the Merendini tribe, you must train with the paintakers, and observe a master weaponsmith imbue a weapon with his soul.

 

And then you have to do experimentation (this is where the spells power, rather than the effect, gets determined.)

 

And at the end of it, you have your own spell. With research quests for the type of spell and it's function

And experimentation quests to determine things like target, shape, size, sequence, duration, power, costs , way to cast (maybe it's a ritual requiring several members cooperating) etc.

Player choice whether to involve others (spell will be known and you'd be famous for it and wealthy)

or not (spell would be private and you'd be known for your unique and special power)

 

It'd be cool if these opportunities were also bonus perks for the observing mage. IE: your party is tracking down a party of some sort of frostmonster, and after defeating them, you are 1/3rd of the way to understand cold and ice effects for spells

 

So the more questing/adventuring you'd do, the bigger your repertoire of spell elements with which to craft spells.

[Palmtuna]

I could not agree more. The item enchantment especially where you can beef up any weapon/armor with any spell allowed for a disgusting amount of customization for whatever you wanted to do.

I would however would like to make it a little tougher to make game breaking by ramping up the cost/skill needed to create them, or by even having to collect certain rare items in order to make epic level enchantments.

 

Because as fun as it is having a sword with +80 strength with +30 poison and fire damage for 5 seconds, no one should have have something that absurdly powerful unless they put in a disgusting amount of play time in.

[IndiraLightfoot]

It'd be cool if these opportunities were also bonus perks for the observing mage. IE: your party is tracking down a party of some sort of frostmonster, and after defeating them, you are 1/3rd of the way to understand cold and ice effects for spells

 

Very nice idea: If you happen to encounter and defeat certain elemental or magical monsters many times enough, you get a bit better in that field of elemental or magical power. In a way, it could work like you get certain perks in FNV - like 30 dead frost monsters, and it opens up better proficency in your icy spells somehow. It would be fairly easy for the game to keep track of such things, and it would make various playthrus a bit different, no doubt.

[Sacred_Path]

for the love of god, no.

 

TES games are hiking sims with no degree of balance whatsoever, so it's fine there. I don't think this would fit in anywhere in P:E though.

[mcmanusaur]

When backyard economics meet magic history!

[Lady Evenstar]

I could imagine a whole quest-chain where your wizard has to go places to do research, to find spell ingredients, to mimic nature. Coming back to the lab where slowly and steadily your own spell is being developed.

 

And you could make it your own by making some choices during those quests, which leads to different quests and different elements to your spell

So if you're trying to get your life-force sucking dry-weather creating fireball, then you'd have to go out and study a fire imp at work, study a fire elemental, study dragons breath. Then you must go to the desert and study what forces create the drought there, you must go to the tundra and see what creates drought there, you must go to the parchment libraries of the Rothani tribe and see how they air-condition their library.

For the life draining effect you must consult with vampires and soul scientists, you must observe the suicide and rebirth rituals of the Merendini tribe, you must train with the paintakers, and observe a master weaponsmith imbue a weapon with his soul.

 

And then you have to do experimentation (this is where the spells power, rather than the effect, gets determined.)

 

And at the end of it, you have your own spell. With research quests for the type of spell and it's function

And experimentation quests to determine things like target, shape, size, sequence, duration, power, costs , way to cast (maybe it's a ritual requiring several members cooperating) etc.

Player choice whether to involve others (spell will be known and you'd be famous for it and wealthy)

or not (spell would be private and you'd be known for your unique and special power)

 

It'd be cool if these opportunities were also bonus perks for the observing mage. IE: your party is tracking down a party of some sort of frostmonster, and after defeating them, you are 1/3rd of the way to understand cold and ice effects for spells

 

So the more questing/adventuring you'd do, the bigger your repertoire of spell elements with which to craft spells.

 

In Betrayal in Antara you learned spells by observing other spellcasters and choosing to study different spell elements. When you had mastered all the elements of a spell, you could cast it.

[Badmojo]

I just think it would be cool and it would allow people to create their own unique spells/items that they can all geek out too and post online.  I mean, you see all this cool stuff about this or that cool spell or item and think, I wish I could do something like that in a game.  Like create the one ring like sauron in lord of the rings, or how about being the one person who succedded in actually created an immortality drink, or accidently create a horrible failure that turns your character into a new type of monster that gives you immortality and power, but you feed of the blood and souls of people to do it. Or create a unique spell that rips out the souls of your enemies to feed your power while simultanously summoning fire elementals to possess the bodies of the souless husks now on fire attacking other near by enemies.  Perhaps a spell to both dominate and fore those to tell the truth.  you know, cool stuff.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

While I wouldn't emulate the TES system - it is, as mentioned, rather unbalanced - a spellmaking/enchantment system would be great, particularly if we get to use more... unconventional effects. I want to be able to dominate my enemies with the power of my Incendiary Teacup Storm spell.

 

I just think it would be cool and it would allow people to create their own unique spells/items that they can all geek out too and post online.  I mean, you see all this cool stuff about this or that cool spell or item and think, I wish I could do something like that in a game.  Like create the one ring like sauron in lord of the rings, or how about being the one person who succedded in actually created an immortality drink, or accidently create a horrible failure that turns your character into a new type of monster that gives you immortality and power, but you feed of the blood and souls of people to do it. Or create a unique spell that rips out the souls of your enemies to feed your power while simultanously summoning fire elementals to possess the bodies of the souless husks now on fire attacking other near by enemies.  Perhaps a spell to both dominate and fore those to tell the truth.  you know, cool stuff.

 

This. By Magran's holy left elbow, this.

 

 

 

When backyard economics meet magic history!

 

I might be being stupid here, but what do you actually mean by this?

[Alexjh]

I've been toying with how I'd go about making a spell system that let you customise spells to do all sorts of whacky things, but I'm not entirely convinced this is the game to do it in, not that it wouldn't be fun here, but to do that concept justice it'd need a lot of room to breath as a mechanic, and I don't really think that it justifies the time it would take to do such a thing properly.

[DreamingVoid]

For everyone saying no; he's not asking Obsidian to implement a copy of how Spellmaking worked in The  Elder Scrolls where it was intentionally made broken, as was Alchemy and Enchanting, and thus could be exploited for your hearts content.

 

OP. Perhaps it was a mistake to mention Elder Scrolls

 

 

Yes for spellmaking in PE! or PE2.

[TRX850]

I would love to experiment with this at some point; a sequel maybe, where it's polished with a "woohoo!" factor, and also made backwards compatible. In the meantime, spells in P:E should provide a wealth of entertainment, for IIRC more spells will scale with level and be reusable throughout.  For example, I hope we can have a measure of success casting Sleep at a group of 10th level enemies, and other spells that generally get discarded after a few level-ups.

[Jarmo]

It would be beneficial for the discussion if everybody tried their best to suppress the urge to immediately slash out when hearing Elder Scrolls mentioned. 

It's really not quite that slippery a slope, that a discussion on enchanting and spell creation would immediately turn PE into a 1st person action adventure.

 

Nevertheless... no. I would much prefer there to be very limited amount of customisation available.

Rather a limited amount of well balanced and tested abilities than a wild variety of infinite options.

 

Maybe for PE2. But for the first time around, just a single polished gem thank you.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Jarmo

[JFSOCC]

perhaps we were overly enthusiastic, but I still like the discussion

[Badmojo]

Oh, I do not want the broken unbalanced system of elder scrolls, I was just mentioning it because its the only game I can think of that allowed you to create your own unique spells and items.  However, I would love to have some kind of way to forge our own spells/magic that is unique to the creator.  We know that tomes are involved somehow, it would be cool to create our own tomes of X with our own uniquely created spells/abilities.

[.Leif.]

Item crafting is in the game already. I just hope it's better than the system in NWN2.

 

Crafting spells sounds like the job of a modder. Perhaps there is a quest chain to get you new spells that includes getting ingredients from rare magical beasts (eyes of beholder, tongue of shoggoth, etc) could get you new spells. Perhaps there will be talents that allow casters to subtly change the effects of their spells.

[Jobby]

Hmm i don't know, if its based on the TES system at all then all you get is different damage/mana costs for generic spell graphics, this i am not keen on.

What i would like to see however is some lost/forbidden spells unlocked through quests or crafting that have their own unique animations and effects, as long as the requirements to make said spells isn't cash but rather some hard to find/obtain reagents like rogue stones or frost wyvern teeth etc.. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Custom spells could be cool, but if PE spells scale with caster level(preventing 3 sleep/fear spells that work on enemies of different levels) and stay useful at higher levels, then it may not really be worth the time or be very effective.

 

Enchantment has already been promised as well, so we will probably get to create our own magical weapons/artifacts. I just hope the crafting systems are generally better than in D&D derived games and TES games.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I attempted to make a spellcasting system where a wizard could design their own spells, it was very difficult. Finding a balance where a spell wasn't underpowered or overpowered was nearly impossible. I ended up just settling with magic being very powerful, but having a draw-back mechanic where there was an X% chance (based on various stats/abilities/skills) to fail exerting their will over magic, and suffer various consequences.

 

I'm looking forward to the Chanter's ability to mix and match different spell elements, but I am hoping that the Project Eternity team does temper ambitions to make something very worthwhile, rather than overly ambitious and not fully fleshed out.

[Lephys]

You almost have to build it like character creation. And, of course, it's really difficult to make it not just be like the Elder Scrolls version, in which all spell effects/properties in the game are simply broken apart, then allowed to be assembled in a different fashion.

 

Without the spells feeling at all unique, you lose a lot of the appeal of a complete ground-up custom spell system.

 

I would love to see a spell customization system with pre-designed spells, though. Change how your fireball works, etc. It would be quite similar to many games' weapon customization systems, like Dead Space 3's (most recent game I can think of). The different weapon cores do different base things (like the Tesla Core producing lightning, the Explosive Core producing grenades or grenade-like canisters, etc.), and you change that as you go.

 

I mean, really, most of the RPG spells we see are just variants of each other. Firebolt? A simple fire projectile. Fireball? A more powerful (and costly) explosive, AOE projectile. Burning Hands? A fire spray rather than a projectile. Frostbolt? An ice projectile. Frost Nova? A radial ice wave.

 

You're just taking a form of magical energy, and applying specific behavior to it, really.

[Karkarov]

I would prefer if they went the Neverwinter Nights 2 route.  Elder Scrolls once it introduced crafting became insanely unbalanced and the magic creation system was always broken either resulting in god spells that required touch to hit but one shot killed almost everything or spells that were basically useless.  I would prefer they actually have no crafting period, unless you think bringing a smith a pile of materials and paying him to craft some armor is "crafting".

 

If you want to see a "skill" or "spell" system done a little better check out the recent dungeon hack Path of Exile.  It has a very neat system that lets you pair effects to abilities so you can do things like turn a basic flaming arrow shot into a flaming arrow that explodes, or tracks, or a spread of five, or even turn it into a turrent that shoots the arrows for you.  It is pretty neat.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Karkarov

[Lephys]

I would prefer they actually have no crafting period, unless you think bringing a smith a pile of materials and paying him to craft some armor is "crafting".

But, then how will my party make money on the side by creating dreamcatchers and whittling flutes, then peddling them in our downtime? o_o

 

Edited February 23, 2013 by Lephys

[Karkarov]

 

I would prefer they actually have no crafting period, unless you think bringing a smith a pile of materials and paying him to craft some armor is "crafting".

But, then how will my party make money on the side by creating dreamcatchers and whittling flutes, then peddling them in our downtime? o_o

 

By letting the bandits and random townsfolk do it then killing them and looting the crafted flute off their corpses.

[rjshae]

For me, build-your-own spells and items usually end having a generic, cookie cutter feel. They typically allow a fixed set of effects that you can only apply to a limited set of target types. Perhaps greater uniqueness can be provided by allowing a choice of one or more limitations? For example, a "spirit blast" spell is an explosive burst of spirit energy that only effects undead, and is half as effective against corporeal undead.