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[Granite26]

But that's the point. You're basically suggesting a system where magic items convey advantages for no cost (inconvenience) for the user/wielder.

I simply think it shouldn't be the user who pays. The crafter of the rune, by all means, who should pour his heart and soul into the crafting, should suffer whatever penalty, but forcing the cost onto the user seems both unfair to your poor military, and potentially highly irritating (having soldiers run back for a snack every five minutes).

Also, the user pays system leads to issues in situations where the rune isn't actually wielded, say runes engraved onto statues or similar, whereas some X cost per rune created, payed during construction, has no descrepancy regardless of the runic substrate.


Quite frankly though, I'm in love with my own idea, like I'm sure you are with yours, so I doubt we'll ever see eye to eye. The important thing is that Toady sees what we've written and it helps him make our favourite game that much better. Now I'm off to bed. 40hrs is way too long between sleeps.

It seems like there's room for both sources of power...  Plus, there's a long history of less-than-good items requiring some form of sacrifice or power to continue operating.  (Could be through hunger or focus or whatever).

Townsaver is a good example (as are the others)

[bjlong]

Certainly! Right now, weapons and armor are made and that's it, end of story. However, I've heard rumors that there will eventually be a maintenance system that gets implemented. Then, in addition to having to do mundane maintenance like sharpening, replacing the bow limbs, or what-have-you, you would have to do some magical maintenance. Something like dusting the runes with diamond dust, or something equally expensive. As for difficult, perhaps there could be a failure option where the enchantment just falls off, and you're unable to enchant that weapon again. Or maybe the enchantment just falls off, or loses lots of power.

Maintenance is actually one extremely big balancing feature that hasn't been implemented yet, if you look at crossbows.

[Tormy]

Ah okay. That makes sense indeed. 
Well, I haven't heard about this maintance system yet...Hopefully it will be implemented eventually.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Maintenance is a nice thought... Under my system, you might have the priesthood of whatever god is the god of dwarf Runes, maintain them by chanting near the Wyrds, burning incense around them, etc. to keep chaotic energy and whatever spirits of chaos from disrupting the careful balance of energies.

Probably a lot of that would be assumed, but you might have to make regular monetary "donations" to the priesthood, to support them. This could even involve large quantities of food and other staples, in addition to monetary wealth. Priests might become just as annoying as Nobles, eventually, but with the additional caveat that, if you don't make your Priests happy, your entire store of magic could just fade away.

[bjlong]

Why fade away? Why not activate random runes in an uncontrolled manner, some horrifically strong, some horrendously weak? If you want the stuff to just fade away, there should be an option for you to tell the priests to do so. If you did that, then they'd destroy all the runes peacefully (or however we'd call it) and then slowly leave, one by one. If you made them mad enough, they'd just all storm out at once.

Anyway, just my two cents.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Good idea! Spite-induced random malfunction = another fine example of balancing the good with the bad.

[Mikademus]

Or make runic weapons (and items) demanding. They need to be stored in a special armoury engraved with excellent runes etc etc making them expensive to prepare for and upkeep.

[Tormy]

Or make runic weapons (and items) demanding. They need to be stored in a special armoury engraved with excellent runes etc etc making them expensive to prepare for and upkeep.

I am not sure that our stupid dwarves would understand what to do in that case... I mean they ain't able to equip the proper weapons&armors at all!  My suggested Equipping system revamp could solve this problem.

[Granite26]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I still like the concept of drawing mana out of the environment somehow (rather than drawing it out of thin air) which I added in these examples. It makes the cost/benefit a lot easier to balance, gameplaywise.

There could be a map of ambient magical potential for each kind/sphere/source of magic. For example, fire magic is easier/stronger near fire, so terrain features related to fire give a bonus to water magic nearby (obvious ones are volcanoes, geisers, wood, but also materials, shapes or symbols associated with fire in that world (eg. sulphur, obsidian; triangles; imps).
The result would be that fire wizards seek out places near volcanoes, wood, preferably with sulphur and obsidian in the underground and build a triangular dwelling there, surrounded with statues of imps.

The same for water wizards in swamp deltas, with drop-shaped dwellings and quiksilver bassins, or air wizards that would build towers on mountain tops and cliff edges, death wizards on elephant graveyards in deserts etc.
A random example: the power source is jewelry, the associated terrain features are oyster banks; the associated materials are precious metals and gems; the associated shapes and symbols are squares, lemmings and the color purple. Result: the magic-user sets up his camp at a place where the ocean has eroded a cliff: on the cliff are lemmings, in the cliff face silver veins are visible, and at the bottom are oyster banks. He erects a square dwelling, which he dyes purple to enhance his magic even more.

The spheres of magic would need to be predefined with the associated terrain features. All other associations can be randomized at worldgen, though it should always be possible to restrict them. This way the AI can use the symbolism as guide, and it will give a distinctive flavour to the various magic users a player might encounter - or play.

Necro Warning!!!

Anyway, I love this thread.

I was thinking about spheres, and sphere based magics.  I've also been playing a lot of Oblivion lately, with it's pretty damn cool alchemy system.

It seems like the two could mix.  Ramp spell casting ability up hardcore, so that it would take a truly epic wizard to even cast light, and then allow consumable alchemical 'spell components' to boost your levels.  Tie the boost to the spheres and randomly generate them. 

Use the alchemy skill to determine how well you can do this.

That is, alchemy is the gateway to true magick or some BS.

[Neonivek]

As for Necromancy

Bringing people back to life as a zombie is obviously a "Curse" so it would be controlling and creating curses.

So curses could be attributed to spells.

[BoldBlazed]

I have to admit I was initially rather hostile to the idea of "high" magic in DF, but there are some good suggestions here. Well here's my 2☼.

Wizards
I think that wizards should draw their power from some kind of ambient "mana pool" defined by the local environment. This could be set up during world-gen in by a similar algorithm as the one used to create mountain ranges, effectively a kind of magical geography. This gives wizards a reason to build towers in particular areas, in order to tap this mana. Mana would be collected using a collect_mana skill in which the wizard draws from a source (the environment) to a sink (himself). This process would obey rules akin to the laws of themodynamics, so it is easier to draw mana in high mana regions and some of the mana is lost each time (entropy). This entropic process could be abstracted in world-gen as a steady decrease in total mana across the entire world over time. Once the mana is collected it can then be used to enchant objects or cast spells using the magic_user skill.

The wizards themselves arise as a result of possessed or fell moods (again this can be abstracted during world-gen). All possessed and fell moods will produce magical artifacts but only a small percentage of these also grant magical abilities, this percentage would depend on the ambient mana level as would the chance of getting a possessed or fell mood. Wizards will be one of three types:
-Wandering wizards who have not yet found a school (this includes any of your own dwarves who become magic users). These can be given lodgings and act as a sort of noble practicing their magic and fighting off your enemies. If their demands are not met they would be likely to up and leave heading for greener pastures.
-School wizards who are part of a wizard school, each school will have up to half a dozen of these, as well as practicing magic they will act as field commanders and diplomats.
-Sorcerers who are the head of a school of wizards, each school would be about as powerful as a single civilization and would act as one on the world map. Sorcerers would emerge in a similar way to wizards but only from the existing pool of magic users.

Magical accidents
Occasionally the use of magic might result in catastrophic events ranging from the classic "thermomagicular explosion" to earthquakes magma rains or the - probably easier to implement - "resonance cascade" which spawns hordes of demons/undead and/or megabeasts. perhaps all megabeast are created this way?

Megabeasts
Speaking of which megabeasts are another thing which could be included in this system. Megabeasts would spawn in world-gen semi randomly in proportion to ambient mana levels. This means that like wizards their number would start at zero then increase and after - say 200 years - would begin to decrease as more are killed than created. This has the effect of dividing up time into an "Age of Legends" when magic and megabeasts reign supreme an "Age of Man(or dwarves)" in which magic is mostly subdued and a "Middle Age" between the two.

Mega-Artifacts
These would be rare and sought-after artifacts created occasionally by wizards in strange moods (including one produced every time a wizard becomes a sorcerer). They would be powerful enough for civilizations to go to war over, especially wizard schools. a number of these might get created during world-gen and scattered, lost in bogs/chasms, dropped in battle, stolen by megabeasts etc. These might re-surface periodically when found by adventurers or dug up in mines provoking a battle for their acquisition.

[Org]

I would think that moods either:

Super enchant-Something like make armor superly tough

Mega spell-SOmething almost impossible to do without this

[SirHoneyBadger]

An inquiry: Do wizards enchant dwarf artifacts, or are artifacts naturally magical? Something in between?

Any opinions/thoughts on that?

I kind of like the idea that artifacts can sometimes actually be supernatural all on their own, but can also be either enhanced, or activated, by the application of magic (or other methods).

And that some artifacts *must* be taken to a wizard, to reach their full potential. It makes it more "questy". But I'd like to hear some other viewpoints on the subject.

[Tormy]

Well, let's call the dwarven wizards "runemasters" or something, it looks more appropriate....and yeah that's it. Runes!
I think that enchanting should be linked to runes in the realm of the dwarves at least. [So for example human mages/enchanters should use different methods to enpower the various items.] I think that we've talked about runes already in this topic, so I won't explain it once more, that how should it work. 
Either way, I also like the idea, that some artifacts should be supernatural on their own. [Example: magical artifacts "created" during the worldgen should be like that.] It should be impossible to enhance these unique artifacts once more.

[Neonivek]

Artifacts should basically be perfect.

With exception to other artifacts or possible conditions ingrained in the artifact upon creation... Nothing should improve them.