Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research

From: srt@aero.org (Scott "TCB" Turner)

Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1992 17:28:13 +0000

Caveat: I know next to nothing about the current implementation of the
magic system.  My feeling is that magic should be awesome and
fantastic - but also difficult to learn, difficult to control, and
dangerous.  I think game balance would suffer if there was too much
magic, but that's just my opinion.

(1) Specialization should be at the skill level, not the spell research
level.  That is, there should be a variety of magical skills: Weather Magic,
Necromancy, Summoning, Fire Magic, Water Magic, Earth Magic, Wind Magic,
etc., etc.  Using these skills would then research spells, which could
then be cast.  But someone who has been learning Summoning won't have any
chance to discover or learn a Fire Magic skill.  They'll have to study
the fundamentals of Fire Magic and start at the bottom.

To become a truly powerful wizard (skilled in many different aspects of
Magic) would require a lot of time and effort.

(2) It seems like there should be a rough hierarchy of spells, with a
requirement that you learn less powerful ones before more powerful
ones.  Or perhaps spells could be divided into 10 levels, requiring
skill equal to the level to research successfully.  I.e., Summon Lion
might be a level 1, and could be learned by anyone with Summoning 1
(after some period of research).  Summon Greater Demon would be level
10.  And so on.  This would motivate people to advance in skill levels.

(3) There should be some costs involved in casting spells.  Probably
this should be monetary, but I'm fond of a system where there's a
small chance you can kill yourself using magic, say a percentage ==
the spell level - 3 every time you cast a spell.  Spells at level 3
and below are safe, but above that...

References

Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 01:13:46 +0000
Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 04:02:44 +0000
Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 04:14:50 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 01:13:46 +0000
Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 04:02:44 +0000
Re: Olympia: opinions on magical research
hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)
Thu, 30 Apr 1992 04:14:50 +0000