Please stop putting your responses inside the quote blocks, it adds unnecessary difficulty to reading the post and makes formatting my response more difficult :_(
Actually, there is: because "rare magical healing powers" that aren't much better than normal healing aren't very interesting.
Nor are magical powers that are completely safe, work always and not that costly
I disagree; a perfectly safe (for the user) superpower can be very interesting, such as if you don't have a 'full set' of them, but have to solve a range of problems anyway.
A small improvement in capabilities does much less of that. (A
+1 Longsword isn't much more interesting than a mundane longsword, but a
Flying Carpet is much more interesting than a horse)
1: Some magic might be. A Roc's ability to fly despite being four times the size of an elephant should not be. Magic {replacing / being part of} electromagnetism (but being similar enough to our electromagnetism in enough ways that the world doesn't look like complete nonsense to the casual observer) is the way I view it. (remember that electromagnetism is basically the force that defines all macro-scale physics that isn't done by gravity, and that an 'anti-electromagnetism field' would thus be a pretty nuts weapon)
Well, it's basically possible by using a counter force to counteract the first force. An antielectromagnetism field would simply cause all atoms inside to spontanously disintegrate. A Roc is a clearly magical creature, and probably uses magic to support itself.
Having anti-SPHERE fields (i.e., fields that weaken or negate the influence of certain [SPHERE]s) might make about as much sense as an anti-gravity field. I think I'd be okay with that.
Scenario (hypothetical, details subject to change to be better and make more sense):
A Roc is a megabeast associated with the spheres of SKY, WIND, and HUNTING. (presumably, it also has more spheres, like ANIMAL (because BIRD doesn't exist), but we're going to ignore that for a bit.
Let's say the Roc stays in the air because of the SKY sphere, moves laterally through the air at high speeds because of the WIND and HUNTING spheres, and can track its prey through the HUNTING sphere.
If you weaken the SKY sphere in an area (presumably by building a roof), it won't be able to fly as high, and if you weaken the WIND sphere (presumably by building lots of doors that close to subdivide the area into rooms), it will be slowed down, and ... I'm not really sure how you would weaken the HUNTING sphere.
2: In the case of, "this magic power fiddles with magic powers A, B, and C," then sure; in the sense of, "this magic power negates everything that isn't mundane earth-normal physics," absolutely not.
Kinda not. It should be possible to heavily hinder magica influences, but not easy, and not without consequences. Way more things might be magically influenced than they seem. And you'd need a pretty strong counteracting energy to stop it, of course.
The first thing I would expect it to require is knowing all the things you want to stop -- and you would need to individually negate each magical process and property, not just "turn the magic off". You'd also need to deal with the fact that hurting a sphere generally helps its opposite, and that CRAFTS is a sphere, and if you negate it, your device probably destroys itself)
3a: The idea is that understanding a magical power gives you and understanding of things related to how the magic power works. If you disagree with the relatedness, then we've probably come up with different explanations for how the power in question works. (I'll admit that having siege engineering come from the ability to aim and summon meteors doesn't make much sense)
3b: Why not? Admittedly, there are good reasons to have them favor certain themes in their magic, such as crafting, earth, and booze, but that's not the same as saying, "these creatures have no magical powers or properties. Mundane earth stuff only. Final Destination."
I'm not saying that they shouldn't have magic, and just seems like a strange thing for a dwarf to meddle with the occult. Though it's possible, I'd prefer it not to be a dwarven squad casting fireballs, but either a semi divine thing or a secondary industry. So rather than each industry having an accompagnying magical option, I'd rather have a whole magical system that the players can explore and exploit at their leisure (see, magical fields)
Throwing fireballs (that aren't actually some form of grenade) would probably be pretty exotic for dwarves, yeah, but I would expect them to have, like, some sort of stoneworking magic (that lets them carve masterwork stone thrones with their beards or whatever), and such.
The reason I want magically doing X to be associated with whatever skills are used to do X nonmagically, is because if magically doing X uses a
different skill, one of the following will be the case:
- Magic is better than nonmagic, and dwarves with the nonmagic skills are now basically peasants, which is bad.
- Magic is equal to nonmagic, and does the same thing, so why do you have both?
- Magic is worse than nonmagic, and dwarves with the nonmagic skills are now basically peasants, which is bad.
- Magic actually doesn't do X, which generally won't happen, and for a significant number of things, we probably want to have both magical methods of doing the thing and mundane ways.
...
Actually, now that I think about it, I think we're both mixing up two ends of a spectrum of magic, that goes from, "low-key stuff that people see as 'just part of the world'" to, "artifacts and ancient/forbidden/mighty secrets that will shake the world to its foundations (only exaggerating a little bit)."
The first should be balanced with the hospital system by
being part of the hospital system (whether it's RAW-defined, hard-coded, or procedurally generated), while the second should (generally be procedurally generated, but be RAW-definable, and...) be designed with the expectation that it
is better than the hospital system, but is one of:
naturally so risky that nobody wants to try it, impossible for most people, or really rare and if you have it people will beat a path to your door to try to get it(s benefits), whether by coin, sword, or stealth. I don't know if you should know better, but I certainly should have, because I've posted about this before.
I think that artifacts should generally fall into the second category.
Oy, vey.
No, this doesn't help. Giving broken things huge costs makes them either useless or still broken. It's nigh impossible for ANYONE, even someone skilled as Toady, to balance it. Just try something different.In addition, the fact that you can't really control artefacts would make it an incredibly annoying mechanic.
DF:Here, have a magic bed. Have fun battling the inevitable monster hordes
Player:But I was trying to construct a ((Insert non fighting goal here))
It also doesn't fit with the later idea of having fort goals, as each and every fort would end up under siege by magical creatures.
That's a good point. Perhaps the nature of the 'artifact hunters' should be based on the nature of the artifact... I do think that artifact hunters should come after your artifacts, though (if the knowledge gets out).
Also, getting rid of the artifact would presumably stop the artifact hunters, whether by trading it away, destroying it, or washing it away in a river.