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[GlyphGryph]

Hmm... while that would definitely be doable, in some situations, with song of growth, a general break apart/decompose/break down spell would be pretty good. And it's made me think of turning stuff to dust which made me think of /another/ spell.

Effervescent Decomposition - Break a substance into its component parts, often accompanied by a release of the energy holding the substance together.

Symphonic Resonance - Vibrate a material at high speeds, causing malleable objects to generate heat and hard objects to shatter. Tuned correctly, most objects can simply be turned into a fine powder. Also used for creating magical music! Works better against more homogeneous substances.

[scriver]

And also start fires. By mistake. Use fire spirits with caution.

[Virex]

Wait, I'm not entirely sure how this works. You essentially define an action and then activate that action through a spirit? So, one could define combustion as an action and channel a spirit into it to set fire to a piece of wood?

[GlyphGryph]

Yes.  The spirits nature may alter the effect of the spell slightly (depending on how well you cast it), but essentially - Magic is a power tool, spirits are the battery.

Some smaller, basic spells like combustion would probably be a good idea... Maybe with an associated decrease in casting difficulty. Hmm...

[Virex]

So, what exactly is a spirit? Are they sentient beings, or just raw power floating around? And how does summoning them work? Do you just rip them from the astral plane and browbeat them into working for you?


Another thing to think about is, how do spells come to be. How do you define what a valid action is? Does it depend on what the spirit can do, on what the caster imagines happening, or something else entirely? Can a caster imagine a corpse coming back to live and find the right spirit for the job, or are there other restrictions on what she can cast?

[Darvi]

's booze man!

Actually that's my headcanon now. Dorfs have to consume booze to function and, logically, cast spells. MAKES SENSE!

[Kilroy the Grand]

Hate - a low level spell that you can get early on that causes pitiful damage, but when you use it for the 100th time, you instantly die.

[Darvi]

Now wouldn't that be an easy way to kill Kefka.

[GlyphGryph]

So, what exactly is a spirit? Are they sentient beings, or just raw power floating around? And how does summoning them work? Do you just rip them from the astral plane and browbeat them into working for you?

Generally, all of the above. They exist, going about doing there own things, and they have their own intelligences, but they are... simpler, than human intelligences. And skilled caster will overrule those completely. Their personalities mostly come into play when a caster /fails/ a spell - in which case the spell succeeds, but the spirit ends up in charge of it.

Another thing to think about is, how do spells come to be. How do you define what a valid action is? Does it depend on what the spirit can do, on what the caster imagines happening, or something else entirely? Can a caster imagine a corpse coming back to live and find the right spirit for the job, or are there other restrictions on what she can cast?

All spirits can power all spells, though they may influence the effect of the spell (especially if the spell was designed that way). Actions, then, should be spirit independent (though results might not be). An example is Induce Emotion - the action of the spell is basically overwhelming the targets emotion  so that the spirit can influence it. In less extreme situations, certain spells may be easier to cast with certain spirits than others.

The result of the spell is largely a component of the casters willpower, desire, and casting ability. To continue the analogy, the spell is the drill - but the caster decides where to put the holes.

To animate a corpse, a caster would need a spell that would serve the purpose - if there was an "Animate Inanimate Object" spell, that would serve the purpose. Then, they'd probably try to pull in whatever spirit is appropriate for their purpose - something energetic and stable would be easiest in this case. But really, any spirit would do - unstable spirits tend to get harder to control over time though, so if this is a long-term corpse raising, best to avoid them.

Once that happened, you'd essentially have a spirit in a corpse as a vessel. Since it comes with a bunch of bits that make animating it easier - nerves, muscles, etc, the spell would probably be easier to cast than an equivalent spell used on a bunch of rocks. And it would need a far less powerful spirit to work effectively.

One sec, let me link the documentation in the first post.

[Trapezohedron]

We need a doppelganger illusion spell, one where you create a clone of yourself, position it elsewhere, and hopefully get an idiot to hit it instead of you.

As for the spirits discussion, are all of them simpler than humans, or are there 'equals' to humans among them?

[GlyphGryph]

Spirits are simple, because their world is much different than ours, but they are quite capable of learning and becoming more complex when given a suitable environment and tools. For example, the spirit in that corpse? If it stayed in there long enough, it would probably, eventually, start using the brain to accomplish things, and expand it's own understanding, maybe do a bit of housekeeping. As it interacts with and explores the world, it will build up understanding and expand.

Even without that, the longer spirits spend in our world, the more complex they become - and the less inclined they are to let anyone interrupt that complexity, since it is believed being banished to the spirit world again will remove much of it.

The entire dwarven race is non-mortal - they are all fragments of spirits powering stone to flesh spells. However, they are just as intellectually complex as other races.

Particularly old spirits and spells generally develop at least basic complexity, even if the spell was simple, so long as there's environmental pressure to do so. The Storms, mentioned as potential gods earlier, are spirits, and they are intelligent, far more complex than when they arrived, but still not terribly so, because they haven't needed to or had much opportunity to.

tldr; Spirits are almost always simple, but they are also very adaptable, meaning they can develop complexity if it suits their purposes.

[GlyphGryph]

It should be added that there are very powerful, fairly complex "Named" spirits floating around in the spirit world.

They are generally treated as things to avoid, since they will wreck spells they are used in and usually kill the caster, as well as many of those nearby. Some hypothesize that they steal the souls and minds of those they kill, and this is how they maintain such complexity even in the spirit world.

The truth is that this is not needed - Most are predators, and will destroy and devour other spirits as readily as mortals. These can easily be as intellectually and emotionally complex as humans, should they have any desire to do so. Some may call them demons, or gods.

[Trapezohedron]

Just thought about this while eating dinner. Might be a good, workable concept.

Word of Shattering - Shatters weapons, armor, wands and more. You can also use it on mundane stuff like shattering lamps, rocks and bones. Also, the spell can also be used on spirits themselves, it would remove a spell's effects. It does not undo spell effects though. If you're partially petrified, you'll still be partially petrified when you use it to break the spell. You can also shatter concepts of reality too, like life or even death, possibly making you immortal or something like that.

The spell becomes harder to cast on magical and smaller objects. It's especially hard to cast on concepts, like life, death and physics, bordering on the impossible.

[RedKing]

Huh. Have you ever looked at the magic system Ars Magic had? It was a "Verb/Noun" system, and allowed you to put your points in either Techniques (actions) or Forms (targets) or both.

Techniques:
Creo -- create; includes healing or "refining" an object into a purer form
Intellego -- perceive, understand
Muto -- change
Perdo -- destroy, weaken or "devolve" something into a more base form
Rego -- control, manipulate

Forms:
Animal --animals; note: the world is considered to be accurate according to 12th-century learning, so germs don't exist -- cancer and other diseases would be considered evil spirits.
Auram -- air, sky
Aquam -- water
Corpus -- the human body
Herbam -- plants and plant products
Ignem -- fire
Imaginem -- images and sounds
Mentem -- the human mind
Terram -- earth, minerals, any unliving solid
Vim -- raw magic, demons, spirits (although ghosts of deceased humans fall under Mentem)

Rather than having set effects, you more or less described what you wanted to do, and the GM would assign a Technqiue, Form and difficulty, and then you made your roll, modified by your skill in the relevant Technique and Form (and other sundry modifiers like using focuses--we had one characters who used cheese as his focus. People learned to cringe at the sound of Creo Ignem Gouda!, better known as Fezziwig's Flaming Frommage)

It was a good, flexible system as long as your players didn't try to rule lawyer. It was an awesome setting too...12th century Europe has a TON of adventure hooks.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   There should be a spell that instead of being a counter spell would instead let you switch another spells spirit with another spirit. For instance replacing the spirit in an emotion spell that was meant to calm with a spirit of fire or what have you would make the spell cause anger instead. Of course just replacing the spirit should not instantly warp a spell. If the caster had enough power or skill put into the spell it should still continue on even if it has less power. Also since you mention the named spirits this type of thing should not be a "place name spirit in opponents spell to kill them", the named spirit should go after the caster of the swapping spell. Also the displaced spirit from the spell to be swapped should require something to either banish them or put them to some use or something bad should happen.

Edit: The swap spell should be as difficult as the spell itself plus the difficulty of the target spell