Magic and Spellcasters

[Phoenixphire]

Magic should not be a friendly happy kind of thing, as a general rule.

Magic should be dark, require the caster to draw deep from the forces of nature. It also should be a bit dangerous, having the potential to damage not only the target, but also the caster themselves.

A caster should know that playing with such powerful forces is not a light thing, and should only be used with caution and forethought.

A binding of "good" and "evil" should be applied as well. If one uses darker magics, they should be pushed further away from the lighter, healing forces. However, the darker magics should be more powerful.

If one uses light magic, they are able to heal and do "good", but they are not as able to deal out the damages of powerful "black" magics.

Black magicians should be more of a loner style of play, independent. They should have more trouble grouping outside of a "black" group, characters of a dark nature. Their magic should not only damage the target, but any "white" character in their group.

White magicians (priests, healers, etc.) should be more of a group oriented style of play, where a guild and friends are more necessary. They also should have trouble grouping and associating with "black" magicians, as their skills would be the antithesis of what a black magician would have.

I have always despised the idea of a Holy Priest healing a Warlock or Necromancer... Why would those two be even associating in the first place?

[CryeMoore]

Your ideas sound like they lean a little to the class based system, which might be a problem in this skill based game.

But, who knows, maybe the devs are working out certain skills that can not be used or learned together. This would take away from the freedom that is being advertised.

[Phoenixphire]

Originally Posted by CryeMoore

Your ideas sound like they lean a little to the class based system, which might be a problem in this skill based game.

But, who knows, maybe the devs are working out certain skills that can not be used or learned together. This would take away from the freedom that is being advertised.

Well, it isn't so much "class" based, but I am more concerned with mixture of "forces", if you will.

Let's say someone wants to learn healing abilities. The start gaining talents and abilities in "white" or "good" healing. This should, by its nature, start making "black" or "dark" spells and abilities less available, and/or less powerful.

It just doesn't make sense that a caster call down the forces of the "holy" gods for a nice health buff, then three seconds later summon up a couple of undead minions for a romp in the battlefield.

There should be a natural balance, that for every benefit, there is a downside. If you want to do major damage, you shouldn't really be able to skippity-do-dah heal up. If you want to be a major force of buffs and a "group" player, then you shouldn't really be dabbling around in, say, oh, giant cockroach mobs swarming from the nether, to feast on the flesh of your adversaries. It is just that some things don't really mix in one character.

[The Last Spartan]

I prefer Magic to be neither Good nor Evil, just there.

[Welwordion]

The difference between light and dark is only superficial, name the demons angels, let the undeads be warrior souls, given the chance to inhibit a body to fight for the forces of good even in their afterlife and let damaging attacks be holy fire etc and voila you have no problems of such things existing next to each other from a roleplaying standpoint.

If however we talk from a gameplay standpoint, saying players specializing in something should lose access to certain other spells and we enforce that all players have to specialize at some point, thats ok, thats a good idea that can be done.

Last I am a little worried about the extensive use of the word "should" , if you say "I think ... should" thats ok but otherwise use "could" or "would" or this might express a constraint, lack of choices or necessity, which is not really there.

[OMGPIE]

I think magic should begin neutral but it should adapt to its users purposes hence demons will have dark energies and druids will be able to you know gather stuff from nature and a regular mage will have shiny arcanite spells etc.

[Traceur]

so... you guys do remember that it is a class based game?
they've also mentioned that an alignment system may affect the classes. so this is within the realm of possibility for Mortal online.

i don't like either of them, i don't like class restrictions & i don't like alignment systems of preset good & evil.

for the first i don't like the idea of "freedom to be anyone you want... as long as we have a little class box for you" & i don't like the idea of "forcing player corporation & skill diversity in a group through classes [rather then tactical advantages]".
for the second: i don't like the shallow literature theme of "evil" in as an opposite of "the good guys" rather then a disagreement where both sides would be self-righteous, i think that the egocentric act of considering something different then you evil is the essence of evil itself, i don't like the hypocritical self-righteousness of those who'd call themselves good, and i don't like the immaturity of the teenagers who get their ego-boost of feeling empowered by calling themselves evil...

the only absolute evil IMO, is the mixture of those two crappy design decisions.

[Phoenixphire]

I use the terms good and evil just for descriptive effect, thus the reason for the quotes.

I personally don't believe in the ideas of good and evil as absolutes, due to the fact they are entirely subjective.

So, evil, destructive, malicious, whatever you would like to call it, versus good, constructive, social, etc.

I wasn't attempting to start a philosophy discussion here; I simply wished to express my opinion that Magic should be powerful, with potential negative side-effects for its use (ex: casting a healing spell on another stands to drain your own health), and that the usage of Magic should come to a fork, where one must begin to make choices that prohibit other choices. One should not be able to go both left and right at the same time.

In response to Welwordion, my opinion is that there does exist a necessity, in that the gameplay would be of lower quality if players were allowed to learn ALL spells in ALL classes. There would be no constraint, or purpose to the game, as players would eventually become "alpha classes", able to do any and all things the game provides for.

[Welwordion]

Ah but here lies the point of discussion are alpha classes , or to say classless you can do everything characters really that bad?
Personally, on the one hand I like to be not limited in my choices and have a great variety at hand but I also like having to deal with limits, having to plan, design construct my player with limited resources, character creation points or skill points or whatever.
I think the difficulty is that division in spell familys is a little arbitrary, if I choose ten spells of whatever and can have only these ten spells ok, also if I choose ten particular effects, which associated spells only vary in area target,duration etc thats also ok, but if i can not enter a certain effect cause I choose another effect and they were given the same label thats often annoying and unpleasant, although its sometimes a viable design decision to prevent certain imbalances arising from certin combinations.

So to summarize, the word opinion is why "should" is misleading,ah but thst not that important just disturbed me a little, and it depends on the design reason if there should be multiple or just one big forking(choosing a limited number of spells/ effects).

Magic having negative side effects, well I like double edged sword and I always thought magic was to profane in most games, so I agree on that beeing good and interesting.
The only problem of couse is balance the negative side effects have to be big enough that a non magic using char has a chance, can use them for his advantage otherwise mages will either win or cause a draw and never lose.

Well personally I have different solutions for that, like taking damage dealing and most things other skills can do out of the magic palette and only have special effects and tricks that indirectly affect combat.(invisibility,entangling spells short teleports, spells inflicting statuses), having your own spells also effect you, so you have to create the advantages by building your character specificially.
Giving really powerful magic only in out of combat situations in long and well prepared rituals,( whereas more people could join ,to complete a ritual faster and some rituals would lose progress at a certain rate per time so you would need enough people or a much longer time to complete them)
Oh and then there was also a concept where magic was more a spritual thing, dealing with dead player souls, supernatural beeings and manifestations of player emotions(I had thought of a system where an action or emoticon could create emotion energy, which attached to an object or person and based on this objects property and the total amount of energy in the object decomposed with a certain rate. If it accumulated enough, whereas contradicting emotions in the same object raised the necessesary amount, a manifestation emerged which also further decreased the decomposition.
Such cursed swords blessed places wicked spirits etc could emerge)
so the mages tasks was to purify places of emotional energy accumulations
, deal with manifestations, revive dead players, fight or negotiate with supernatural beeings and keep dangerous things sealed openings(spawn points for pretty nasty monsters, or triggers for bad events put in by the gamedesigners).
As a counterbalance for these spiritual powers mages where also more affected by spiritual beeings , could be hurt more eaily by them etc and had to obey a certain behavioral code to keep up their purity.(performing certain rituals when animals are killed for food avoiding purification loss(only if they meat is really eaten and did not just rot away), praying often enough having to beware of the affect of their emoticons and having personal rules they have to obey.(oaths)

[Traceur]

there was a (canceled) game -TOA- that planned on doing something like this, making magic into a rare thing.

basically, it was like AC's original magic system, but extended to include any item or object from the environment in addition to the type of components AC had.
the first major difference was that their couldn't be recipes like eventually happened in AC: every component had a completely different "magical resonance" (if any) for different characters. then you'd have to learn how to read it & how to channel the combination of resonances from different components to get a magical affect, and in addition to a backlashing system, you wouldn't' know what the affect will bring until you tried that particular combination, leading for things exploding in your face... take into account that it was PD game, so after enough fetal explosions you'd end up with having to reroll a new character, who'd get completely different resonances from the components.

this would make magic users into a rarity.

[Shinzon]

I tend to treat magic as more of a branch of science, or chemistry, as it being neutral from the offset, without any allignment; it is humans that give "Purpouse" to an otherwise natural effect.

"Sufficient advances in technology are indistinguishable from magic"

[Traceur]

i actually do prefer magic to have something utterly unscientific about it: a personal side. "both an art & a science" would be my favorite way fantasy writers approach it.

but i think it completely depends on what brand of fantasy the Dev's want to go with:

a sword & sorcery sandbox would be better off with rare but powerful magic.
a high fantasy sandbox would have magical skills just like any other skills.

i would personally like it if it combined a couple of them: let's say humans have very powerful but rare magic, while another race completely intertwines magic into it's daily life, but can't push it as many extremes.

[auutumn]

At first glance I like the poster's ideas then reading on, I realize, like others, that it does appear to be class based. I like that there are some spells which are considered "evil" such as 'soul sucking'. I like to think that these types of spells require more of the casters "soul" to use.

This shouldn't mean that the caster is forever doomed to evil, unless that's the path they take. They should have access to "good" spells but perhaps, given certain circumstances such as how much "evil" spells they've cast, the "good" spells may not work as well.

[Phoenixphire]

Originally Posted by auutumn

At first glance I like the poster's ideas then reading on, I realize, like others, that it does appear to be class based. I like that there are some spells which are considered "evil" such as 'soul sucking'. I like to think that these types of spells require more of the casters "soul" to use.

This shouldn't mean that the caster is forever doomed to evil, unless that's the path they take. They should have access to "good" spells but perhaps, given certain circumstances such as how much "evil" spells they've cast, the "good" spells may not work as well.

Well, that was my point.

If you focus your learning in one direction, you should not be able to perform in the other direction with as much ability.

I am not saying that a character who focuses on black magic can't use ANY form of white... rather, that the effects of the white magic would be less than that of a generalist, and much less than that of a white magic specialist.

To draw a real world analogy, if you choose to become a martial artist, you can be a generalist, looking to learn bits and pieces of different styles and disciplines. However, you would never become the master of any particular style, as your focus is spread out.

If you choose to focus on one style, say Jujitsu, then you would become highly skilled in the fine points of Jujitsu, performing the strikes with more accuracy and power. However, if called upon to use a strike from Taekwondo, you would be less skillful than the general martial artist, and much less skillful than the Taekwondo specialist.

I am simply saying that my idea of a perfect MMO, in regards to classes and abilities, is that you start with a blank slate (no cookie cutter classes), and as you start to focus your abilities into certain areas, you no longer are able to place your mental focus on other areas.

So, if you start developing your weapon handling abilities, you lose focus on magic. Within weapon handling abilities, if you focus on bladed weapons, then your abilities to handle maces proficiently would be less.

Now, I am not saying that a person who has specialized in daggers can't use a "white magic" healing spell, if they took the time to learn it. But, it should not be nearly as powerful as the spell of the white magician who has spent much more time and mental resources on learning white magic. There should also be greater risk involved for the dagger user, as he hasn't learned the nuances of the spell.

Now, I also don't think that this should be a permanent change. Just as in our world, if you decide to change your focuses and training, then you can gain skills in another direction, but your current skill set would start to degrade. So, if you no longer wanted to be a Dagger wielding assassin, then you could start refocusing on becoming a undead-commanding necromancer. But, since your time and energy is now focused on that, your skills as an assassin would degrade.

Basically, use-it-or-lose-it.