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[mickel]

I loved the Ultima magic system too. I would have loved it a great deal more if it had let me make up my own spells...

I like this idea. Would it be too close to Ultima if there were material components too? Dwarves strike me as fairly material creatures.

[flabort]

Bury Burning Child!

Bake Chilled Cat!

Choke Crazed Creature!

Goblin Love Lightning Leach!

Minion Necro Mushroom Dragon Cat!

Mince Elf Mind!

Molten Deep Metal Marsh!

Kiss Ivy, the Laws of Lazzieness!

LOL, this would be a fun system.

[Felblood]

Why would you ever cast a spell that only chokes crazed creatures, when you can just Choke Creature Fiercely?

There's a reason they made Pargon the only adverb in ED. Nobody was going to cast "summon wussy creature". The ability to only vaporize hostile creatures would have been handy.

Mix n' match magic is all well and good for an adventure game, where every word you gain gives you an arsenal of cool new powers, but it's tricky to implement on a large scale, particularly in conjunction with a spellcasting NPC AI, which is a must have for DF.

NPC wizards need to know to cast Explode Head, rather than Tickle Toes.

As for the gods being spell resistant, I completely agree, particularly against powers within their own sphere. However, I'd like to see it possible to ward creatures against magics, though possibly only those of specific alignments, to keep people from just shrugging off magic. A magic skill that needs to succeed against your enemies spell resistance seems like the logical choice, so there's a way for mages to excell besides just having more runes and spell.

On the other hand, this just begs to pull non-specific effects from tables, which I believe is what Toady has espoused.

A cool thing to have would be the ability to have a word, but not know what it means. So if you hear a wizard cast a spell with three words, you can use them, but you don't know which ones do what, so combining words you learned in a healing spell with words you heard in an attack spell might not be wise, without more information.

If there are runes also (simply spells that are written instead of spoken, though possible parsed differently in that context.) You could even have both the rune and the word for a particular meaning, without knowing what either of them actually means.

How do you make a lower magic world? Make all the spells weaker, or make it so there are less words available from worldgen?

Having to get a useful effect out of the words you have when your world only has fourty known magic words could be tricky, but if your world get's a bunch of words like cut, explode, burn, fire, death, kill, bone, flesh, shatter, and sword. Wizards will be deadly, but otherwise pretty limited.

I propose that this be implemented in conjuction with a moodier more mysterious system of magic, like the one being discussed over in the astrology thread. Having wizards and heroes cast magic like this is well and good, but cultists and necromancers needs something a bit less casual.

Sometimes you need to cast a spell to light a candle, but sometimes you need to perform a magic ritual that requires a bucket of elven blood, and the skull of a demon, with what it actually does being something less than the actual point.

[Mel_Vixen]

Well like everywhere toady is surely applying his part Stock, part Random Strategy. So our Magican gets some dozen Stockspells and can "test" the rest in Worldgen.

[Faces of Mu]

How would this system work when meeting foes that can cast, too? Would their spells just be random? Would they keep trying to turn your shoes to icecream even while you are stabbing them senselessly? If the positions were reversed, I wouldn't be casting that spell!

[Felblood]

Okay, how about this. Divide words up into targeting and effect spells, a la ED's noun/verb system, but add in a second class of subtargeting words, that can optionally modify your targeting for better precision.

Under this system. Elf is a potential target, where face is a potential subtarget.

Choosing an easy to interpret verb for our combination: We can choose to either cast Stomp Elf, or we can cast Stomp Elf Face. Whether this targets a single, random elf, or all elves within range is largely academic, unless you are playing as an elf. Then it is hilarious.

"When Sarda cast's a spell that hurts you, if you cast that spell back at him, it still hurts you. --Black Mage of 8-bit fame.

*ahem* Anyway. This way, anyone with two words can stomp on elves, but if you want to decide what part of the elf get's stomped, you need yet another word.

Perhaps, another category of subtarget modifiers are needed, leading to spells as specifically useful as Crush Targeted Elf Spine, or as untrustworthy as Disarm Random Humanoid.

Heal Own Wounds and Explode All Dragon Livers (within range of course), are also tantalizing possibilities.

Speaking of range, a far modifier or something like that could boost your range would be useful, but would be effectively unique in the grammar, unless it supplanted the other subtargeting modifier, so you can't use precision at a distance.

A system of modifying the verbs is probably a good idea, though most players aren't going to use anything other that whatever the Pargon Equivalent is.

To limit that, you could have verb modifying words related to spheres, so that you could only effectively apply Violently to verbs like Explode, and not Heal. Putting the range modifier in here might fit too. Remotely Kill All Goblins.

Speaking of spheres! Spheres rock and they already have associations on the word lists. Flesh that out a bit, and you can have the power level and range of any given magic spell fluctuate based on a thousand different factors. Once again, I'm plugging astrology, but really anything from elemental lands to artifacts to gods could give this an extra element.

Necromancers can have a reason to live on the Blighted, Evil Death Lands of Deadliness, that sprang up around an ancient battle site. What better place to cast your Remotely Raise Many Skeletons?

Extra awesome, if a ring of chanting cultists and a demon skull totem also give bonuses to his range and the number of undead he gets. --Okay, a jumble of chanting cultists, some of whom are standing on each other; let's be realistic in our requests.

Still, Remotely Kill All Creatures Horribly? Who doesn't want a piece of that? It's like living out my childhood dreams through a videogame.

[Mel_Vixen]

Ok hows that approach. It would work nicely (maybe with some minor problems) with language.

An spell gets:

 Range: touch, in view, n tiles

An target Area: straight forward (n Tiles per round/ instant), Angle (n*degrees), Cube/sphere (an cube or sphere of n tiles)

what is Affected: Object ((sub)groups, type, Material, Age, State etc.) or Entity (Groups and Subgroups, bodyparts/Soul), World.

an Chant-time: How long you need to chant the spell

an endur-Time: How long the spells efects work if its not instantly. Also additional special stuff like "works once in a blue moon/at night/on the conjunction of star and b"

Material Components: objects Needed/aiding + gets consumed/changed/unharmed + Substituts. Gesture, language (?), special situations.

Sphere (with allinget effects tables): Firesphere as itself can make fire, light candles heat stuff. War/Murder-sphere could be cause damage. An spell could have more then 1 Sphere to determine how the effect works.

energyusage: Basic energyusage calculated from all other stuff.

To prevent nonsensical spells use the friend and Preclude tables of spheres.

This way you can create an Fireray (as seen in Eventhorizon) by using an range of 5 tiles, staight forward, generall Entity, low chant,intant endure time, gesture needed, War_sphere for damage and Firesphere for the type of damage. it would rather consuming.
By shrinking the targets say only to "enemy Goblinoids" you could lower the drainage of energy. For the drainage saved from that you could get an angle of 10 degree so your spell would affect all enemy goblinlike creatures in an straigtforward 10 degree angle.

For the generell use the first spell would be better but against an squad of charging goblins you would use the later.

We already have 130 spheres if every sphere gets 4 main effects and 4 the former/folowing/special spheres manipulating effects the number of the "usable" effects should be enourmous. Also you could now quantificate the dangerlevel and class of an spell (damage, powerup, fieldcontroll etc.) so an Ai mage can make good decissions.

[Felblood]

The AI has to be able to use the most deadly spell at his disposal, that will not kill himself or his allies.

Imagine a female guard mage casting Kill All Males, to stop a male kobold thief. She's got her target and not been hurt herself, but she's also wiped half the town and her horse.

[Mel_Vixen]

This is way atack spells ever should have an "Enemy" in the line.

Anyway maybe i didnt made it clear: The longer your range, the more broader your targets (males f.E) and more generic your spell is it becomes more energy draining.

Your kill (all) males spell would involve the half of all possible targets, for the Village an multiple Map wide Sphere. Such an spell would have an very minor effect with a way to long chant time or it would be draining as hell and would kill (or whatever backfire penaltys might arose) our "Guard mage" in the attempt of using it.

The idea was to make very specialised spells powerfull in theyr special field of use. The more specilised an spell is the cheaper is it - an Spell that kills enemy, male Goblins, with fire, at night, on 5 meters, by aiming at it and chanting while holding an firesnake should be avaibable for for examle 5 "manapoint". An damagespell that only says: wave at an Entity, aim nicely and say burn should on the other hand cost 50 manapoints.

An direct "Kill" effect is an specific which should be more expensiv then the damage effect (and would require and change from war to murder sphere).

Also if the mage can correlate the usage of her spell and the death of the village she could learn that this kind of spell is very bad.

The mage could also use spells from the stock universe first and do an sittuation annalyse. Why for one Goblin/Kobold bring out the Nukes? Bush didnt Nuke Afghanistan after 9/11 why should an mage do that on attemted theft? If it happens it would be hillarous to see.

[Tormy]

I loved the Ultima magic system too. I would have loved it a great deal more if it had let me make up my own spells...

I like this idea. Would it be too close to Ultima if there were material components too? Dwarves strike me as fairly material creatures.

Well yeah, the Ultima system was good, but I also like the traditional DnD system for example. So even if we gonna have high magic, I am not sure that which system should be used....perhaps we need something very original and unique, since the game itself is also unique. 

PS. Check out my Creating a magic system? topic, lot of excellent ideas can be found in that.

[Eagleon]

For AI, if they used the most refined possible spell they could in terms of targetting, augmented by skill a bit, it should balance out. An untutored barbarian that comes across a huge tome of arcane knowledge will have a lot of words at his disposal, but their access to sources of power would be limited. Because of his low skill he's likely to start to try simple spells first, if anything, and probably end up killing himself before he learns a word that excludes himself in the effects of the spell.

On the other hand, the person that created that tome is likely to have considerable resources and experience at his disposal. He'll be using the totems and power crystals, demon pacts and rechannelled ley-lines he's accumulated throughout his career that give his spells extra oomph, enough to overcome the rule of verbosity somewhat and burn that kobold thief (and only the kobold thief) up from the inside. Or capture him, put him in a cage, find or create his truename, and do various horrible things to his soul, mind, and body.

Choosing targets and goals is a problem. If a wizard has an intruder, is hungry, and enjoys plump helmets, I think it'd be good if they could turn him into a mushroom. A wizard is likely to favor a specific range of spell effects, based on his interests and personality, and some might not even know offensive spells at all. In their dealings with other wizards, they should be able to trade spellwords that relate to them personally.

So Yvan Marbudarf likes mangrove trees, and mangrove trees are related to the spheres of trees, swamps, water, earth, and sun. From past adventures and dealings, he's acquired the words for 'grow', 'delve', 'drown', and 'plant' (amongst others). A nearby hedge-mage happens to want the 'delve' verb, as he enjoys mining picks for their sturdiness, so he's willing to give Yvan the 'tree' noun in exchange for 'delve' and 'drown'. Since Yvan is given to impulses, he's likely to accept this deal, poor though it may be (two verbs for one noun? Maybe if it were the truename of the murderer of his beloved godfather!). The hedge-mage wants 'drown' because he's always been fairly paranoid, and he has no offensive spells available yet.

Now in a combat situation, since Yvan doesn't like blood and his only other combat verb is 'sever', he's going to use 'drown'. But how to prevent him from trying to 'drown enemy legs'? Make verbs like this only affect relevant nouns, and ignore any that aren't in the spell. So unless the legs have lungs in them (possible with modding), the next higher structure (the whole body) is checked for lungs. Since that's the first noun in the spell, it doesn't try to go any higher.

Obviously there are going to be special cases - the spell should work admirably on a magma man. The beauty of this is that if there's a scripting language, the check could be refined from one that just checks for lungs, to one that checks for any part that could be damaged by adding water into it. And if an intrepid modder were to add veins and arteries to body parts, 'drown' could replace the target's blood with water, making 'drown enemy legs' actually be useful.

It isn't perfect, but if you generally have a few simple classifications of verbs as hostile, benign, friendly, etc, hopefully you won't see wizards trying to kill you by making your heart glow orange or something.

[tigrex]

This is possibly the first DF magic suggestion that I've heard that I'm unreservedly in favour of.

Add a spell section in the legends mode, and I'll be in heaven.  ("Send Tigrex to Heaven")

And imagine the game tracking which spells were particularly powerful, impressive or entertaining, and having mages learning and using them, talking about them in adventure mode, etc.

Giving details of spells used in wars, especially by the leaders. 

[Silverionmox]

There are several ways to go about placing a check on spell power: the spell could draw energy from your body no matter what, so a spell that was too ambitious, or affected more targets than you expected, would knock you out or simply kill you. In that case, the most successful wizards would be those who applied their power most effectively (eg. tie shoelaces), rather than most wantonly (eg. fireball! fireball! fireball!).

[Felblood]

I'm all in favor of bigger spells requiring larger pools of energy. This has an added effect of allowing spells to get bigger as your energy supply grows larger. Remotely Raise Many Skeletons, in my necromancer example, could just keep raising skeletons until you run out of energy, or no more skeletons are within range. However, if casting a spell that completely exhausts your mana can be fatal, that won't work. Range could be determined by a spell using up juice just to travel. This would make cones and radiating waves much more expensive as they got larger, but even projectiles and effect at target spells could be effected.

An over ambitious spell should just use up all your energy, before accomplishing the effect, and thus peter out without any effect, and leave you with no juice. Creatures that just ran out of mana should probably be stunned or something to that effect, in addition to being totally unable to cast any useful spells, what with having no power.

This would give lesser wizards a reason to construct spells using downgrading modifiers, since several Targeted Small Flames, will be more effective than one Targeted Flame, that runs out of juice before it even hits the target. Even trying to hit a more distant target is risky, since your spell will burn up more of your juice with each shot. Casting flashier spells should be less effective, since juice getting used up in the flash isn't going into the bang. Fire and lightning are for wizards that like to show off. Crush Throat should be the more efficient variant used by their less powerful apprentices.

There's plenty of room to kill yourself with magic when you unknowingly cast, Anti-Heal Self.

I have two additional propositions for this thread:

As a stopgap, to prevent the AI from using magic stupidly, each race could be given starting spells in the raws. Until a better system of AI spell selection is developed, a Kobold mage could be expected to cast Targeted Insect Swarm at you, while goblins always get Lash All Enemies, humans get Stun Thief, and so on. Dwarves could only be given runes to start and those mostly having to do with picks, axes and durability. I know it's a hack, but it's one I could abide if it means we get to start casting our own magic, before the herculean task of making the AI do it right is completed.

I wanna be an evil wizard!

Eventually, of course, you'd want to hand more and more of the spell construction over to the AI, until this crutch was unnecessary, and civs could be given totally random word knowledge in world-gen and still find a combo that get's the job done, without murdering their neighbors. Choosing targeting would be the first thing they'd need to be able to do for themselves, followed by sub target, adverbs and verbs, respectively.

Secondly, energy. How is mana stored, regenerated, and channeled? Does a wizard need to channel the whole vortex of demon pact magic and leylines and energy crystal backup power through himself, or does he just channel enough of it to get the flow moving and then let the magic words shape it from there.

This is more than fluff, since somebody is going to ask how he moved all that energy through himself without catching fire. Is a wizard a spiritual superconductor, at room temperature? It'd probably be better if he just manipulated an aura of mana that followed him around, in addition to whatever ambient mana is present around him. This opens up more angles for where you cast a spell and what preparations you've made to alter it's power and significance completely. A wizard in his leyline tower, standing in some sort of magic focusing array, should have a lot more mana at his disposal than the same wizard out buying groceries.

If some of your mana is environmental, wizards dueling might try to use up as much mana as possible, so as to deny it to their foes.

A wizard's skill level and soul based stats should affect how much mana he personally radiates and unconsciously drags around wherever he goes, so that a wizard is still a wizard without his toys.

Some portable means of transporting mana would probably be important. Rene carved amulets or perfect gems might fit the bill.

[flabort]

a couple bigger spells that i thought of using the system(s) descride here:

turn Urist McFriend into the equivelent mass of butterflies, an then turn those butterflies into chipanzees, but maintain Urist Mcfriend's collective consience over all the resulting monkeys!

Enchant all copper pickaxes with levitation, and attach them to Urist McMiner's concience!

Combine all non-dwarf creatures in room into one creature!