Magic Primer

[Davairus]

I was looking at the helpfile for "magic" and it isn't really very descriptive of the force from a roleplaying point of view. So what I'm going to do is provide the basic outline here and we can work it into the helpfiles later. I don't want to change the helpfiles right now because the magic modules are just going to get my work undone.

If you want to suggest changes to this, hit the thread up.

What is Magic?

Its a "real" force that can impact the environment. Much like gravity is taken for granted in real world, magic is something that should be taken for granted in this one.

Where does magic come from?

There are two methods of channelling magic, one for clerics and one for mages:

1) Through the Gods. Gods are able to channel magic and frequently give it to their followers.

Any time you "commune" a spell, what you are doing is notifying a god you wish some of that agreed aid, and he sends magic to help you. The catch is you need to stay true to your path to uphold your part * of the bargain.

* Certain clerics should be fighting rival clerics pretty often, because they're serving opposing gods (right now, this is just a basic good vs evil). They can also be expected to recruit people to their cause. That is what influential clerics have done throughout the ages.. however, every cleric considers life sacred, and wouldn't shed blood needlessly. It'd be a very aggressive religion that killed anyone that didnt participate.

2) The mages. Mortals born with the necessary "spark" (and the intelligence to use it) are also able to channel magic. They do this of their own volition, without help from gods. Not everyone has the spark, and its stronger in some than in others. Mages are pretty much care-free as far as what goes for roleplaying, they can follow gods, but they dont have to.

Some clerics also consider magic a possession of the gods alone. They will be especially critical of mages using magic purely for amusement instead of in service of a god, or for an end they don't approve of.

Why can't I do anything with magic?

Limits are necessary for fun factor. If we let magic be all-powerful, so that you can slay dragons in one hit, it wouldn't be much of a story. So the gods wouldn't furnish anyone with magic strong enough to do that. That's pretty common sense. Meanwhile, mages are mortals, and while some amazing feats can be expected (hellstream comes to mind)... there's limits for any mortal.

[Mendek]

I could see mages having stronger defensive spells. In return for this they sacrifice a bit of themselves every time they case. Like if you hellstream someone for 100hp, you take 20 hp damage yourself.

[Erlwith]

Eh, I think this is good so don't get me wrong and once I mull it over and I'll post something of more us.

However I had a question upon reading your post, am I to understand that there are changes coming to the magic system?

[marsd]

That'd mean mages won't stand a chance. In this world where everything is decided by HP, taking HP whenever you cast a spell makes you die faster - A normal 3 rounds of decimate through sanc, with an additional wound to beat.

[Davairus]

Changes to the magic system have already been announced..

[marsd]

Ehh... where at I don't see any..?

[Mendek]

AR isn't set up for the type of magic system I see.

What I see is a system with only Hit Points and Fatigue. Fatigue would replace both movement and mana.

HP would act just as it does now. Heals with time, reduced by damage taken.

Fatigue would be reduced by fighting, walking, casting, flying, etc. When you case it a spell it would cost you fatigue instead of mana. This way casting makes all aspects of your character tired, not just his head which makes no sense to me.

To still make high int characters more desireable we could do 2 things. Either make their spells on average more powerful, or make their spells take less to cast.

[Davairus]

Uh.. sounds like magic the gathering.

[marsd]

It's more of the new type of "d&d" I guess, where it's actually Stamina and not fatigue. I've seen it before, but just that Magic has a totally different way of invoking rather than using up hp/mana. Just stamina.

It's really bg2/nvn emulation after giving it some thought, but oh well just sharing how it would go. How it would happen is spells are memorised with intelligence, higher intelligence means more spells memorised. When the magic runs in the blood and a spell is casted, it is "gradually forgotten" until the mage rememorises the spell. Each time a spell is memorised it gets easier the next time and so forth until the limit is reached.

Of course such a system would mean only high intel would be fit for mages, but not really. You see mages are supposed to be learned beings, and by that they must be able to write scrolls. This would mean changing the entire system of scrolls currently in right now to be able to fufil the "ranged combat" thingy too.

Back to scrollwriting: A mage can write scrolls so that he can contine to cast the spells even though he has forgotten them. There's no number to the limit of scrolls he can write, there's just rodeath meltdrop and unique to the owner until he delegates (sell, trade through a command "delegate <scroll> <new owner>") ownership to another mage.

This means any single scroll created can be read by any other mage created in existance, though it means that it's pretty abusable (eg. invoker reciting vampiric touch, necromancer reciting hellstream), but a "mage" is a generic term, because any mage can learn any spell in reality. It's only that AR seperated them into different classes or profession, and I'm sure AR won't be willing to change the current class system too. This could and will add to the versatility of mages, though it might make them too powerful.

There's also casting time and casting recovery, with skills called concentration and focus to help reduce cast time and cast recovery. Of course in AR where everything is round based this would be really difficult to manage, because time and recovery would be counted in miliseconds to seconds. A basic level 1 mage would take 1 second to cast, and 1 second to recover for example in AR's context where time is sped up by a lot.

A skilled mage in D&D realms (books and novels of whatever I won't name), takes an average of 3 seconds real time to cast a spell, and another 3 seconds to recover. A skilled mage in AR would have to take like 300miliseconds for such to happen, which is really diffcult for the player and AR system to manage. 300ms is too fast for human reaction anyways.

So that's some of the ideas that can be used in AR for a mage.. pretty far fetched realy. Heh

[Davairus]

Well ..the point of this thread was just to get you aware of how magic fits in the world of Thera NOW. We announced that there will be magic changes, not what they are going to be. If you search Burzuk's posts he may have dropped a teaser or two.

[marsd]

Heh got carried away. Its easier to continue writing than to start something up. Well haven't seen Burzuk posting anywhere for the past month or so too..