Heya guys,
I'm gonna do a quick introduction first that you can feel free to skip if you don't care, then comes the question:
My name's Rathlord and I'm a looooong time gamer finally getting into Dwarf Fortress. I just got done with my first ever fortress. I've heard about DF over the years but just never got around to playing, and now that I have I completely see the appeal. So, I'm really glad to be here and hopefully you guys are glad to have another player enjoying the FUN. I'm open to any and all miscellaneous tips and advice. My first fortress died after 2 and change years to a zombie siege that destroyed both squads of my military (up until which point I hadn't lost a single dwarf). It was a blast though, and now I'm back at it keen to survive longer with even more fun. So, on to my question:
I noticed a surprising lack of
magic considering this is essentially a high fantasy game (which, sidenote, reminds me of AD&D2 meets SimCity). Obviously necromancers invoke some kind of magic, and it seems clear from the one Forgotten Beast I faced that they have some magical attributes as well, but the dwarves are very distinctly un-magical.
Now before I go on, I should say, I have no idea if this is
one of those questions for this forum. I know that in every forum for every game there's
that question that gets asked every day, so I hope this isn't it. Moving on,
Is there a reason we don't see magical dwarves? I could see the argument that we want to keep the dwarves mundane and "average" in many ways, facing very challenging odds. Is that the reason we don't see a "wizard" or even something like a "spirit healer" labor?
Assuming this
isn't one of
those questions, I'll include a very brief suggestion that I might improve upon later for the suggestions forum sometime. I'll spoiler it so it can be completely disregarded if needed.
Magical Professions- Any magical professions should be balanced around item/reagent use to offset any potential powers. All of their powers should be at the maximum a small buff to skills currently in the game, not gamebreakingly overpowered. I'd suggest keeping them fairly simple and not having many:
Spirit Healers can consume or smoke certain crafted compounds or plants that temporarily increase their healing and social abilities (so they could heal both the mind and the body). Should be a small increase, probably 1-2 levels higher in each skill, but can cause the skill to go over the normal cap of legendary+5.
Wizards use magic to aid in combat. They passively increase the combat prowess of dwarves in their squad by a small percent at all times (this bonus would not stack). They would have craftable wands with one-use abilities that could be stored like arrows in quivers. Some basic examples would be a fire wand crafted with charcoal, magma, and steel that burns one enemy, or an ice wand of ice, water, and adamantium that causes frostbite. These could also be used to temporarily heat or cool water in an area?
Thanks for reading, can't wait to get to know you all,
Rathlord