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[Pie]

Yes, I do understand that magic is post-version 1, but I just felt like writing down some ideas... I've tried to work from the basic principle that magic should be special and interesting.
Here are my ideas about what magic should be, in order to fit with DF:

• It should be derived from the environment - this means that some areas will be relatively saturated in raw magical power, and other areas almost completely devoid of it. Certain areas may be filled with different types of energy, so you could be in a volcanoe and magma-based magic is particularly strong.
• The skills and knowledge of the magic user should be about the control of this energy - a skilled magic user should be able to scrape together a reasonable spell in a low magic area, and should be almost god-like in a high magic area. An unskilled magic user should barely be able to do anything in a low magic area, but if they try to do stuff in a high magic area they could get effects (though they are likely to be unintended or extremely damaging to the user or people around)
• Magic users should be highly specialist - just as an axe weilder isn't be very good with a crossbow, so should a guy who can posses others not be very good at setting stuff on fire or controlling nature.
• There should probably be a type of inverse bell curve for the effectiveness and danger of a spell - so more often than not, it works too well or not well enough and is more often dangerous than not.
• Catalysts are important and perhaps should have an effect on the magic. So if you choose the blood of an innocent to cause the rains to come early, the water may taste of blood (or be blood)
• More "interesting" catalysts should have larger/more interesting effects. So if you use an artifact sword in your ritual or imbue it with special powers, it should be more significant than a masterwork sword. If blood or a severed body part gets used, it should be important to whom it belonged to. Some issues arise where if you are using a normal dragon's claw for a fire-breath ritual it should be more effective than using the hair of the most awesome dwarven champion ever to walk the face of the earth.
• If someone uses magic regularly/uses very strong magic, there should be a fairly high chance of going crazy. Tapping into raw power should not be healthy (this would mean that magic can be quite powerful, without being able to be overused). Few characters should consider using magic regularly.
• Emotional effects - a depressed wizard should struggle to create life, or an angry wizard while trying to start a fire to cook some meat should instead cause a massive inferno, or instantly explode into flame.
• Magic could be linked to body parts - if you cut off a wizard's hands, should he be able to cast as effectively?
• Magic should be selected by theme rather than specifics. If you use a "life" spell on a dead tree, it might grow leaves, or it might grow taller, or it might come alive and attack you, or the man buried beneath it might come back to life. Only very skilled wizards should be able to control exactly what they want to happen. The gameplay idea of themes is to prevent people just repeating "shoot fireball" 10 times in a row. If they just selected "fire" 10 times in a row, likely hood is that one of those selections would result in something crazy or unexpected (like the wizard's gown catching fire).
• Emphasis on manipulation rather than outright creation. You shouldn't be able to just "poof" a troll into existance, you should have to summon it from the earth.

The main 'themes' of magic could be (and some of their more powerful effects):

• Life
  • Reincarnation (zombies or the original person)
  • Bringing dwarf-made objects to life
• Death
  • Draining life (perhaps enabling wizards to not die after using too much magic)
  • Demons (via sacrifices etc)
• Earth
  • Causing mud to rise up and swallow someone
  • Turning parts of the wizard into earth (for better protection, healing or harder hits)
• Air
  • Akin to telekenesis, ability to manipulate objects from afar
  • Tornadoes etc
• Fire
  • Ability to heat up objects quickly (e.g. the enemy's helmet)
  • Ability to direct existing fires (possibly an Air ability (wind)
• Water
  • Creating rain etc
  • Parting the seas ()
• Blood
  • Manipulation of life-forms (possibly intelligent)
  • Calling on the power of ArmOK

And then these could be combined (e.g summoning a magma man by selecting Fire + Life and then aiming at some magma, or selecting Air and Death to kill a field of crops/children). Please post if you agree/disagree/have other new ideas.

[Bricks]

What exactly do envision for dwarf mode?  Most players are against a 'wizard' or 'mage' trained like any other military unit, and a good number don't want to see dwarfs screwing around with magic in the first place.

As far as the different flavors of magic go, I assume that the "spheres" already in place (that define civ artwork, likes/dislikes, and deities) would influence and generate the magic for a particular world.  I don't think all magic users should derive their abilities from religion, however.  Perhaps, like many polytheistic mythos, the creation event of a world be should directly controlled by the universe's deities, and then, in a sense, 'left alone,' so the associated magical influences are permitted to grow, evolve, spread, and coalesce on their own.  I really don't want an Aristotelian-atomic theory of magic - its so overdone and naive, with clear-cut antagonistic relationships and predictable uses.  I know you have tried to expand that by introducing life, death, and blood, which helps, but it also makes a modder's job (and initially the coder's job) difficult because they have to consider how each type of magic interacts with the world and each other.

Assuming the "wizard tower" mode comes to fruition, either as a separate mode or a consequence of adventure/fortress modes, I want experimentation to be one of the main focuses.  If I have some herbs associated with nature and rain, and a flower named after the goddess of snails, and I cast a spell of courage over the resulting potion, what happens when I feed it to a puppy?  The game should be able to handle that without rolling its psuedodice, and there should be an intuition that evolves after playing within the world's magic.

[Neonivek]

Actually yes Bricks there are over a hundred (I think) Spheres already in place and the list will actually increase. Blood however isn't a sphere at the moment.

[Bricks]

Actually yes Bricks there are over a hundred (I think) Spheres already in place and the list will actually increase. Blood however isn't a sphere at the moment.

Weird.  Maybe Toady doesn't want anyone treading on Armok's domain.

[Neonivek]

I am sure it is because he didn't want a material to be a sphere so soon.

That and Blood is sorta vague in what it is supposed to exactly be. It could easily be paired with both evil and good gods.

[ArkDelgato]

In my opinion, wizards should be about as plentiful as Lord of the Rings wizards
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Wizards(HINT: ITS FIVE)

Fanboyish speculation time
After, say, having the king (by normal means) for a few years, a wizard demands lodging in your fort, perhaps to escape a great enemy.

Accept the wizard into the fort, or tell him to bugger off (HINT: THE ENTIRE MOUNTAIN WILL TURN TO OOZE OR SOMETHING EQUALLY VERY BAD).

Then you get besieged by a different wizard and his horrible conglomerations of hens and whales, with man-legs and the shrill cries of manatees.

And you meet your wizards demands of three virgins, a barrel of ant-man ichor and two-hundred pounds of black bronze, so he changes air into booze for a weekend.

WHAT A WEEKEND IT WAS.

[Pie]

Yeah, that would be pretty damn awesome... I think that the world should have a few more magic users than that, but perhaps there should only be 5 or so really powerful wizards. So perhaps there should be like 50 in the whole world, but most of them can only control their powers to the extend of levitating a paperclip (and then there might be a few more who occasionally notice that when angry or excited, stranger things happen).

Also, yeah the "Life, death, fire" etc were basically my idea for spheres. The thing is, that I think it might be difficult enough to figure out the inter-relationships between those powers, let alone the requirements for making tons of different spheres do the same. I just think that the themes should be limited to enable greater flexibility and unpredictable uses.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think that spheres should limit the spells avaiable, and perhaps how well do you tape some sources (IE: with no knowledge of death magic, it should be hard to tap into a... haunted graveyard, for instance, for power).

I think blood rather than a separate sphere should determine whether you can use blood as a source of power. Sort of like a joker card.

[alfie275]

My idea is to use power words such as 'burn' or 'goblin' , the player would complete quests to earn them, so 'burn goblin' would burn any goblin in the area, but you can also earn names and other types of targeting such as 'closest'.

[Bricks]

My idea is to use power words such as 'burn' or 'goblin' , the player would complete quests to earn them, so 'burn goblin' would burn any goblin in the area, but you can also earn names and other types of targeting such as 'closest'.

Could be interesting, frustrating, and/or hilarious.  I kinda like it.  Only thing that kinda sucks is that the surprises would be more like "Oh snap I meant to throw that giant boulder 2 tiles away at you instead of that tiny pebble 1 tile away" and less "Oh snap why did that spell turn my hands into muffins."

[Lord Dakoth]

I think this system is great for Adventure mode. But I don't think that the player should have as much control over what happens in Fortress mode. In other words, your fort's wizard should be mostly "off the hook."

But I like this system, especially the part about spells being dangerous and unpredictable. No Diablo 2 style magic.

[ChairmanPoo]

My idea is to use power words such as 'burn' or 'goblin' , the player would complete quests to earn them, so 'burn goblin' would burn any goblin in the area, but you can also earn names and other types of targeting such as 'closest'.

vaguely reminds me of Ultima Underworld.

[alfie275]

Yeah a meant for adventure mode, but for mis spells maybe if you use a spell word too power ful or you mistype it or you get your throat crushed you say the wrong thing, also if you type a word you have not learnt it should go horribly wrong.

[ArkDelgato]

"In other words, your fort's wizard should be mostly "off the hook."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I apologize.
I really do.

[Bricks]

Apologize?  That is genius.  The 'explicit content' warning makes it.