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[Seagoon]

I think there should be 4 sorts of magic in DF:

1. Superstitious magic : This magic is the most common, basicaly it is a conglomeration of little practices, traditions and rituals that effect a persons life in a minor way (or minor compared to other magic) this can be totaly civi based, so one might have different rituals and magical traditions to another.
Things like minor artifacts (dream catchers for instance might ward off fell moods) and tattoos, chants, potions, and so on might come under this catagory.
Your fort may attract a witch or other such person that will move around your fort randomly attending dwarfs, each time doing some little ritual or otherwise that would help the dwarf in a contextual manner, one dwarf might be sentanced to being hammered by a noble, but the witch gives him a lock of the hammers beard and if he holds this in his left hand during the hammering he will be protected.

2. Materialistic magic : This is your classic rune's, different materials have different magical propertys in the same way they have different physical propertys. Silver runed barrels might keep food better than a wooden barrel, A gold band with specific runes on it might make the wearer more active and require less sleep (maybe with bad sideffects?). This can be extended to gems and architecture. Golems would be a very high end version of this magic. A tallent for this kind of magic might come from a mood or maybe a high enough skill. Again more mostly minor magics.

3. Godly magics, these are more traditional high magic things, but they are only in the controll of the gods and demons, or other mythical beasts. An example of this sort of thing might be the ability of dragons to breath fire. Fairies might make alot of use of this kind of magic, I like to think of them as highly chaotic and random, so they might do somthing odd like turn the sky green or make trees grow upside down, change the colour of you hair, turn your pet dog into a sack full of  Pigtail socks...
This magic might effect fortress or adventure play through magical areas, and holy sites. A ring of mushrooms might be one, or a old temple, a very deep lake maybe a lost underground city etc...

4.Finaly, Epic magic :
Epic magic is there to provide intresting story elements in world gen, a classic example is the One ring from LOTR. Another might be a rare sword like excalibur or a well of eternal youth. This is the most powerfull of magics, but will be mostly out of the players control. However it makes great reasons for quests or adventures, game driven or player driven.

[Neonivek]

The One Ring's true power if I remember correctly is it allowed the resurection of a nearly unbeatable fantastically powerful demon who has only been defeated in combat by pure luck and even then only by legendary heros.

Its other abilities include
-Invisability
-Mutation
-Commands other powerful rings

[Mikademus]

The One Ring's true power if I remember correctly is it allowed the resurection of a nearly unbeatable fantastically powerful demon who has only been defeated in combat by pure luck and even then only by legendary heros.

Its other abilities include
-Invisability
-Mutation
-Commands other powerful rings

Well, yeah, the One Ring's immediate AD&D-ish bonii seems relatively modest: invisibility, see into the ethereal, and slow ageing. That it insidiously warps the mind of its bearer to his darker self is a long-term effect. It didn't mutate the bodies, rather that in Tolkien's mythos people's physical forms tend to reflect their spirit, thus Gollum ancient body is as gnarled and twisted as his soul became over the centuries The main power of the One Ring was rather that it allowed control over the other Ruling Rings, which is really epic and had somewhat apocalyptic consequences for that particular world but also relatively worthless from a hack'n slash perspective.

[varkarrus]

You know what I think? Wizards should be a labor, like mining, or wood-cutting.

You build a Wizardry Lab, and you can mess around with different types of magic. Mix Rock magic and Seeing magic, and you get a spell of Prospecting, allowing your wizard to detect rock types in an area.

And, as a comprimise, how about this. You find a Force magic, and a Fire magic, and you combine them, creating a spell of Magic Missile, which instead of firing 1 magic missile, allows your wizard to give him 25 magic missiles for use in single 1-1 combat.

These magics would float around until caught by a Magic Catcher, and then processed into a vial, or an orb, or something, then brought to the Wizardry lab for the making of spells.


Obviously, some mixing would get disastrous results.

Hydrogen Magic + Radioactivity magic = Instant explosion that takes out entire fortress.





There is another idea. Along with the wizard, there would be a runesmith that enchants items with runes. Put a fire rune on a bed, and you get a warm bed that keeps dwarves happy when it's cold, but unhappy when the weather's hot.

[woose1]

I never thought as magic as throwing fireballs and farting out lightning bolts.

When I saw, "oh, hey, there is gonna be magic in this game. cool." I did not think of it as artillery people in the back of your anti seiging forces.

On the embark screen you should have the option to turn one of your people into a shaman, with different schools of magic/professions.
Engobiotechnical school- The study of magic that most commonly affects a general population with a "Buff". It is also the most commonly used in the form of a ritual, ussually associated with a certain "Substance" or "Regent".
Certain examples include ritualistic dancing for a better plump harvest, or spraying magic pixie dust over an area to allow for increased vitality.
In higher levels, (such in a wizard) it is possible to create a new creature with say, five arms and nine ears. If it is succsesfull enough, it would reproduce and spread around the game world in time. (Think DF Spore (Which, by the way, sucked bawls))
Dark magic school- This magic most commonly affects a specific population with a "Curse" or "Ailment". It ussualy requires many different regents, but the actual casting time would be very short. Like a simple word or gesture.
Destruction school- (Ya, ok I wasn't very creative with the last two.) Would most likely be only used by wizards.
It includes enchantments, rituals over extended periods of time that affected people in that area in a negative way (Like making their lungs dissapear, or lighting them on fire). Will generally happen at random, just to annoy people that hate their wizard because he enchanted a -Copper Shortword- instead of your badass +Steel Longsword+.
Adds fatigue and requires time to rest, so dont expect your wizard to do it on a regular basis.

Magic jobs would not be considered a military skill, and would require you building temporary buildings for the shamans. SUCH as small altar, medium altar, etc.

To build up their skill, they could practice in workshop-like buildings, occasionaly taking random items from your fort to experiment on.

OH! almost forgot two things!

Religious school- just what it entails. would require a shaman or preist to build an altar and lead the ceremony, and the more people that pray, the stronger/more likely the blessing.
Armok's blessings would ussually be granted by sacrificing animals or other sapients.

And, Backfire.

If a spell failed, (AKA a peasent attempting a HUEG spell) there would be some sort of reprecussion, like the person getting blasted back 20 feet or spontaniously combusting. BUT they could temporarily take another entity to take the punishment for them, transfering that energy to say, a cat. Or goblin POW.

[TrombonistAndrew]

The One Ring's true power if I remember correctly is it allowed the resurection of a nearly unbeatable fantastically powerful demon who has only been defeated in combat by pure luck and even then only by legendary heros.

Its other abilities include
-Invisability
-Mutation
-Commands other powerful rings

Don't forget about it's power to allow extreme long distance sight, "spirit" sight or whatever it was, attracted certain evil beings, among the powers suggested by Gandalf and Galadriel in the books but Frodo never explored.

Seriously, I think that whatever Toady is brewing up for a potential magic system, it will NOT be conventional. If he were going that route, he wouldn't have created a fractal world generator, the detailed wrestling system currently in place, etc. In fact, I'd be rather disappointed if it copies the AD&D system or it's derivatives.

[commondragon]

Bah, people, I can think of something raws friendly.

New raws needed:
Mana_default (Spell effects)
Rituals_default (Ritual-spells)
Spell_default (spells you can cast)


Your levels of magic users:
Divine - Gods and Demons of course, given to creatures with the gods of the world/creatures with a [DIVINE] tag
Natural - Natural innate magics, given to creatures with [NATURALMAGIC:(sphere)] tag(s)
Otherwise - A learned magic skill(s), controlled by the game's spheres and a [MAGIC:(sphere)] tag(s)
Item users- Creatures with artifact items powered with a spell effect
Potion drinkers - obvious...

Your casting types:
Ritual - Requires all the items needed.  Items with a [CONSUME] tag beside them would be used up in the ritual, others would be reusable.  Would have to add support for multiple spell effects in one ritual (dont want your new zombies being breserk on you, now would you?).  Some rituals might need sacrifices of creaures with a certain [NATURALMAGIC] tag, so say, a full heal spell should require a live unicorn, with the outcome of a healed dwarf and a cursed caster.
Natural - Spells with the [NATURAL] tag can be casted if the creature has a matching [NATURALMAGIC] sphere tag
Manastone: A new rock tag, [MANA] would be given to a manastone type rock.  Creatures would need to harvest these in order to make magic with normals spells, defined by a [CASTPOWER] tag in the spells raws
No-limitation: You can make a tag for this for certain spells or not, the [GENPOWER] tag in creatures can be used to see how low a level a spell can be cast without requirements.
Item - A dwarf uses his artifact adamantine sword, but sadly in the randomness of dwarf fortress, the maker decided all it needed to do was turn the user green...
Potion - A class of potionbrewer should use plants with special magic-effect tags to make potions.

Kinds of effects:
Create - Obviously costly spells, creates things like water, food, and other useful/not useful things.  Your classic zombie making spells would be in this catagory, obviously needing a corpse as a component...
Blessing - Positive buffs.  Ranging from making one more lucky (The gods grant you a +2 on all random checks!) to simply making one more friendly (personality aspect +).  Segregated so a remove curse spell can be added.
Curse! - Negative buffs.  Ranging from making one quite stupid (like adding the [SLOW_LEARNER] tag) to making them quite impatient (personality aspect -).  Segregated for a remove blessing spell.
Mutate - Adds/removes bodyparts, changes colors, makes things insane/friendly (good for a control undead spell), and can change one into an entirely new being (therefore its a good idea to get a mutate-dragon spell on your hands, isnt it?)
Combat - your standard fireballs/lighting strikes/magic missles here.
Alteration - Healing, Teleportation, the like (that doesnt fit mutate).  Healing spells should be costly.

Artifacts:
(un)Sadly, this is something the raws SHOULDNT control.  When artifacts are being made, there should be a percent chance (possibly defined in the init.txt) of a manastone being used in the creation.  If mana stone is used the item is enchanted with a spell.  A spell effect flagged with an [ARTIFACT[ tag will be picked out and added to the item (only one per item/or one per manastone used).  Item enchantments are not in "charges", and are free reign. Obviously (at least by default) only low-level spell effects will be used, so you dont suddenly make the "Rose gold idol of create adamantine" or the "Iron ring of mutate-newt".

Casting should be a skill, preferably multiple (skill by sphere!).  You can only use spell effects that are known by your fort magic users/adventurer.  An arch mage noble should be added for fort mode, however they should make mandates at an increased rate and not do ANYTHING useful, the only benefit being that they will add a ton of spells to your effect "library" that disappear upon his/her death.

Spells should be given an incredibly low learning rate to keep multi-sphere legendary casters from appearing.


Any additions/modifications are welcome.  I hope I got out a complete thingy...I think I did.

[Idiom]

The more threads about magic where no-one can come to anything resembling a consensus but instead reveals a broader and broader range of ideas, the more I think that magic should be skipped entirely.

Or be completely customizable in the raws. But option 1 is so much easier.
Either way, it is entirely up to Toady One, and I'd like to see a post from him outlining how he thinks the magic system should work.

[commondragon]

The longer its not implemented/Today gives a final word of NO MAGIC, the more of these that will pop up.

The only reason for the above post is in case Toady actually READS it and uses part of it.  I agree it should be done in the raws, as it makes it more customizable for people who want low-magic or high-magic settings.

[Foa]

Ritual - Requires all the items needed.  Items with a [CONSUME] tag beside them would be used up in the ritual

Does this include actually eating the said object.

[Neonivek]

Ritual - Requires all the items needed.  Items with a [CONSUME] tag beside them would be used up in the ritual

Does this include actually eating the said object.

Goodness you seen that episode of Gargoyles too have you?

No complaint here about eating or drinking as part of the ritual.

[Foa]

Ritual - Requires all the items needed.  Items with a [CONSUME] tag beside them would be used up in the ritual

Does this include actually eating the said object.

Goodness you seen that episode of Gargoyles too have you?

No complaint here about eating or drinking as part of the ritual.

UUUH-WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT???

Anyways, like ADD clerics ritual → ? ? ? → ability to use x amount of now stored spells.

[Neonivek]

In Gargoyles this uber wizard finds the past version of himself and supercharges him by forcing him to eat a magic book (actually he swallows it whole)

TECHNICALLY in another movie I think was called Paper Crane... This guy became super charged with evil when he ate part of book. (This blind martial art master was making him eat dirt and then made him start eating pages from the book...) I only saw the last parts it was pretty cool! The Evil guy's weapon was actually a Bell you would see in a Belltower! He lost when the main hero put her flute inside his head and played it causing his head to explode and kill her too.

Actually that does add an interesting way Artifacts could be used... Injesting them giving you the benefits of their power whether you like it or not. It could be a method to gain the artifact's power without the risk of having it be disarmed.

[commondragon]

Umm...not actually eat!  It could be implied, but really...I meant that as the "use it up" definition, not the "eat it up" definition.

[Neonivek]

Umm...not actually eat!  It could be implied, but really...I meant that as the "use it up" definition, not the "eat it up" definition.

How mundane