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[texmith]

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.

I think the point is, the power granted is very much dependant on the wearer: enhancement rather than a few d&d style special abilities. In the hands of a hobbit (or gollum) who are unambitious, and value security and safety above all, it just helps them stay unnoticed, the evil creeping very slowly, not really having much to work with. Notice how the ring stays hidden in the hands of hobbits for many generations. The visions and potential seen by Gandalf and others who are tempted by the power of the ring are very different indeed. Certainly it had a very different effect on the hand of Sauron, the only other creature we know of wearing the ring. I don't think he was invisible was he?

[Neonivek]

Hmmm... artifacts that give different effects by the user's personality are vastly interesting with respect to Dwarf Fortress

Anyhow the answer is that I don't know... Though when Golum bit off Frodo's finger (Like ANYONE here didn't know this happened) it did go visable again. So I guess it does make it plausable.

[Mikademus]

Invisibility seems to be if not a necessary then at least a very common "gift" of the Ring. Gollum too was made invisible by it or he wouldn't have been able to haunt and hunt the Orc caves where Bilbo found him, where he apparently had dwelled for a century or so.

[Tormy]

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.

Yeah, there are lot of topics about magic. I agree that if a "serious" magic system will be implemented, it must be customizable in the raws. In fact, if someone would like to turn it off completely, let him do so even.
Actually perhaps I've made this topic in the wrong subforum...but I really don't know. Basically this isn't a suggestion at all, this is just an awesome wall of text about the basics of a good magic system. I hope that Toady has found it useful. 

[Granite26]

The problem I have is that there's really two discussions going on...  The first is the mechanics of the system, and the second is it's flavor.  If you get the mechanics right, you should be able to tweak the raws to get the flavor you want.

People seem to be obsessing over flavor though...

[Fieari]

I think the idea behind Terry Pratchett's magic system would be very suitable for dwarf fortress:  "it takes the same effort to do something with magic as it would to do it mundanely" which means that there are very serious consequences to using magic at all, especially with major effects.

Of course, my general taste runs towards low magic and high death count, and YMMV.

The nice thing about Terry Pratchett's system is that you can either spend months charging up the spell slowly, releasing all that energy at once to do something (which is what staffs are for), or you can direct the energy at something else and more or less have it explode from the sudden exertion.

[socially_inept_butterfly]

I'd like low magic, with any spell that really does anything worth doing needing a complex ritual and maybe 3 spellcasters. Making it so that doing most spells would be nearly impossible, as having more then one mage is rare.
It would also be nice to have being able to cast spells a sort of "inherent" thing. Only some people can do it, maybe 1 out of 150 or something.

[texmith]

Invisibility seems to be if not a necessary then at least a very common "gift" of the Ring. Gollum too was made invisible by it or he wouldn't have been able to haunt and hunt the Orc caves where Bilbo found him, where he apparently had dwelled for a century or so.

Its alluded that gollum was once a hobbit or at least a very similar sort of creature. He coveted the ring and used its power to hide in a cave without any ambitions of power or glory. The 'ambitions of men' don't seem to play any part in gollum's behaviour.

[Yaddy1]

My humble opinin says no magic because it just gets on my nerves...

[Tormy]

Lads.. just keep in mind...many people would like to see high magic in DF. So, how to make everyone happy? Toady surely has plans about magic regarding the vanilla game itself, but there should be a controllable magic system in the background. Modders could "create" spells, rituals, spellcaster entities [sorcerers, wizards, summoners etc.] etc. that way.

[commondragon]

Dont talk about how you want magic given in the vanilla game.  It will be implemented in the raws when it is made, and will be customisable for high or low settings, obviously.

If you notice, my magic has no "schools" or any specific "type", but is explained as something that is easily moddable to fit whatever style one has (with a few examples), and keeps the vanilla game from being too heavily changed by it.

Magic wont come by for a very long time, so be quiet already.

[irmo]

The problem I have is that there's really two discussions going on...  The first is the mechanics of the system, and the second is it's flavor.  If you get the mechanics right, you should be able to tweak the raws to get the flavor you want.

People seem to be obsessing over flavor though...

In a good magic system, they're not separable. The mechanics should reflect the flavor and vice versa.

This is true of other systems also, but especially of magic, because magic is about symbols and concepts driving reality. If the symbols could just as well be completely different symbols with no change in mechanics, then they are not driving reality.

For an illustration of how this should work, look at the color system in Magic: The Gathering. Each color has a particular attitude which is, technically, flavor. It's not in the rules anywhere. But it heavily shapes the mechanics, to the point that you can tell a lot about how a deck plays by knowing its colors.

The nice thing about Terry Pratchett's system is that you can either spend months charging up the spell slowly, releasing all that energy at once to do something (which is what staffs are for), or you can direct the energy at something else and more or less have it explode from the sudden exertion.

The problem with Pratchett's system is that the simple rule falls apart when faced with anything you can't do mundanely, which is exactly the point of magic. (Even for things that can be done by mundane means--how do you calculate the amount of "effort" required?)

Lads.. just keep in mind...many people would like to see high magic in DF. So, how to make everyone happy? Toady surely has plans about magic regarding the vanilla game itself, but there should be a controllable magic system in the background. Modders could "create" spells, rituals, spellcaster entities [sorcerers, wizards, summoners etc.] etc. that way.

Toady made a number of changes, with the release of the 3d version, that frankly suck. Most of them haven't been fixed yet. So I'm not so keen on the idea that Toady is going to do everything right and make it even better than we can imagine if we just give him time. User feedback is an essential part of the development process, no matter how brilliant the developer is. Another essential part is listening to user feedback, and given how long farming and morale have been broken, I'm not sure that's happening here.

"Doubt is the chastity of the mind."
-- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

Dont talk about how you want magic given in the vanilla game.  It will be implemented in the raws when it is made, and will be customisable for high or low settings, obviously.

The vanilla game exists and we ought to talk about it. I'm tired of the attitude that DF can be all things to all people through the magic power of modding. The instructions to get started with the game should not go "1. Download Dwarf Fortress. 2. Edit the raw files to your liking."

If you notice, my magic has no "schools" or any specific "type", but is explained as something that is easily moddable to fit whatever style one has (with a few examples), and keeps the vanilla game from being too heavily changed by it.

Your system is "easily moddable" because it's barely a system at all. You don't give any mechanics. And you do reference "spheres", you just don't say what they are, which means that (1) they'll be chosen randomly and we'll have guys walking around with French Toast Magic and Tuesday Magic, or (2) you're expecting someone else to think of that part.

Magic wont come by for a very long time, so be quiet already.

Would you rather we hold all our comments until after Toady has done all the work? Then instead of constructive input, all we get to do is whine about how much it sucks.

[TrombonistAndrew]

Magic wont come by for a very long time, so be quiet already.

Actually, elements of magic already exist. Consider tags like [FIXED_TEMP], and [COLD].

[Granite26]

The problem I have is that there's really two discussions going on...  The first is the mechanics of the system, and the second is it's flavor.  If you get the mechanics right, you should be able to tweak the raws to get the flavor you want.

People seem to be obsessing over flavor though...

In a good magic system, they're not separable. The mechanics should reflect the flavor and vice versa.

This is true of other systems also, but especially of magic, because magic is about symbols and concepts driving reality. If the symbols could just as well be completely different symbols with no change in mechanics, then they are not driving reality.

For an illustration of how this should work, look at the color system in Magic: The Gathering. Each color has a particular attitude which is, technically, flavor. It's not in the rules anywhere. But it heavily shapes the mechanics, to the point that you can tell a lot about how a deck plays by knowing its colors.

I completely and thoroughly disagree with you.  The tapping cards to get effects (in this case adding points to a mana pool) has nothing to do with the flavor (the different colors generally meaning different things).  You could easily deconstruct the entire color flavor and rebuild the game to have fire, earth, air, water and void as the 'colors'.  Or 'build points' in Tech, Magic, Influence and Money.  (Mech costs 3 tech, Mage costs 2 magic, fireball costs 1 magic, Soldier costs 1 influence).  These games would have the exact same rules set with extremely different flavors, and if done right would be just as good.

Want to change the point values?  Give every creature in the game +1/+1 and all of a sudden it's a completely different focus.  'Magic' is weak, but the creatures are strong.  Vice versa, add 2 pts of damage to all direct damage spells.  That will make big creatures significantly weaker, weak creatures won't change, and damage spells become popular. 

Saying you want a weak or strong magic system is about how you assign and cost your abilities, not how you work out the mechanics.

Back to your point, shaping the behaviours by putting the right abilities in the right color is a matter of flavor, not of mechanics.  It works because they got the mechanics right and built a good flavor on top of it.  You can take any magic system as-built and change the cost around to change the flavor, but only so far as the original structure takes you.

[Tormy]

Magic wont come by for a very long time, so be quiet already.

Would you rather we hold all our comments until after Toady has done all the work? Then instead of constructive input, all we get to do is whine about how much it sucks.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I was like commondragon about this, I've found it pointless to talk about things what won't be implemented for years, but I've realized that it's much better to talk about these things now. I am pretty sure that these discussions will help a lot to Toady in the future.
I am also sure, that in the upcoming years, there will be lot of new topics about magic, but ah well. It will be up to Toady that what's gonna happen anyway.