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[Rowanas]

Having read other posts and threads, I think that magic should come in two forms. They both depend on spheres, but one is arcane and dwarven, invoking effects on command (though the effect and command would be ever-shifting and whimsical. Spells would be about as specific as "calling on fire for X purpose, leaving you with an almost infinite room for epic screwups).

The second type of magic should be lower key, requiring you to build an altar and designate a temple from it (like a bedroom or office) where dwarves would pray to the god assigned to that altar. If you have an awesome temple with lots of worshippers then the god will bless you a fair bit (or smite your foes) in imperceptible ways, the god of famine might pass your fortress without word while your foes have a harder winter while a god of fire might keep your water from freezing, and your magma ever-flowing. These things would barely even be noticeable (unless you know what to look for) but could be so important (I've had many dwarves die because I have no water, and starving a goblin siege could give you that one extra month to prepare yourself which saves you from a fallen fortress).

[King_of_the_weasels]

It would make the traits of how much they worship something come into play.  But, they'd constantly be praying *if there into praying a lot* instead of working, plus if a dwarf doesn't worship the same deity he'd probably get an unhappy thought unless his deity also has a temple.

[Rowanas]

Yep, probably. Both of those things are issues, but you can just refuse to set up any temples at all and ignore the religious "magic". If dwarves spend less time doing and more time praying then the effects will have to be worth it. Maybe you could set a prayer timetable (squads are getting yearly timetables, crops get yearly timetables, why don't gods get one?) which would dictate when dwarves pray and how much favour the god offers.

[King_of_the_weasels]

The gods have little time for your logic.

[ArkDelgato]

I don't think praying would have to be a separate job.
It seems like it could be extrapolated based on how devote a dwarf is.

They should get a prayer job for religious ceremonies, but it seems un-necessary to have dwarves spending days pathing to a temple to go, spend a day praying, and turn around to path back to work.

[Vester]

Actually when magic makes it into the game, I don't want it to be the kind of flashy explosive magic that's common nowadays - we have magma for that. I want to see magic as in influence, like crop benefits, martial benefits, so on and so forth. Which is why prayer-based-magic is pretty good.

[ArkDelgato]

I wasn't dismissing the idea of prayer based magic, but the idea of using pathing resources on it.

There's enough pathing lag already.
The prayer could be based on the personality traits (devoteness?) and jobbed in the morning-tissue-cleaning-ritual.

I loved the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, what with the creation of winter and what not.
Praying for crops was in that at the beginning, right?

Although, I love the idea of explosive and uncontrollable magic.

Wizardry should bestow a form of madness on the wizard.

[Neonivek]

For the most part I want "Prayer" magic (Please don't attack this based on the name) to be uncontrollable in the results.

It is the god afterall, or some proxy, who is doing the work not yourself.

Not to mention who ever says gods work for free, are entirely beneficial, or even obligated to help you in their miracle?

You are about to be killed by a hoard of goblins, maybe you will just explode taking them all with you. Maybe you will owe the god eternal servatude. Maybe you will turn into a Dove for the rest of your life.

Though that is only for miracles, not for lesser boons like good crops.

[Joakim]

I support the ritual magic idea.
I mean, magic is an excellent new reason to build mega-projects. Imagine building a giant magical ritual ground that actually works!

Some of the things I'd like to do:

Summon a demon that is trapped by arcane masterwork engravings to use as the ultimate gate guardian. The demon cannot path over tiles that has these engravings, nor destroy them. If someone or something destroys any engraving, the demon has a path into the rest of the fortress and will use it. The demon regularly promises untold riches to anyone (especially invaders) who will break the sigils for him. I have no idea if he speaks the truth or not.

Force the possession of a dwarf to make an artifact. This forced possession is far more dangerous than a "natural" one. The dwarf in question has a much shorter time before he goes crazy and will have much more specific demands like requiring magnetite rock, giant cougar leather and crystal glass. Even if the dwarf succeeds there is a large chance he will go nuts anyway. Not necessarily the blabbering kind of nuts, but heavy personality changes. Sure you got your artifact hammer, but your weaponsmith now has a grudge with *everyone* in the fortress. Or the ritual fails and the dwarf simply dies.

Regenerate the cut off hand of my champion by channeling the life energy of at least a dozen sentinent beings into the dwarf. They will of course die, slowly and painfully. Again, if the ritual fails your champion dies. Or he gets a third foot instead. Very hard to get right, so practice on prisoners or "volunteers" is necessary.

If I carve out the hearts of a hundred prisoners with a masterwork Obsidian sword and throw them all into the magma pit while they are still beating and then stab a dwarf's heart with that sword, there is a chance the dwarf gets magma-proof. Or dies because he was stabbed in the heart.

Chance of success is increased if done by dwarfs with higher skill (dunno which skill though) so practicing before the real deal is a must.

[Rowanas]

Joakim, hell no. I don't think we should be able to control it, or that it should have the effects you describe. The blessings of gods would be a semi-permanent low-key affair, while magi as we would think of them could just be told to "do magic" at a certain spot. The effect, the duration etc would all be fairly random, so if you wanted big effects you would have to gather lots of magi and tell them all to "do magic" in one spot (simulating ritual magic) to ensure that there's always something going on.

[Vester]

Hmmm, yeah. If there's gonna be magic it shouldn't be loud, for one thing. It should be pervasive, but not the dominant feature.

Also, gathering a huge amount of wizards/sorcerers/magi/offenses against the gods together and causing them to do something that would essentially disturb the spheres or break the natural order should have dire consequences.

Like regular consequences, only dire-r.

[Rowanas]

Well, that's fixed quite easily, because if you have 10 magi all causing different effects then that's going to get a bit chaotic, and if they all match up doing one kind of magic then you could suddenly find that not only are your crops receiving water, so are your magma works

[alfie275]

I think that it would be best to have all types, with certain types only avaliable to certain people like, everyone can pray, 1 in 5 dwarfs can do rituals ,say 1 in 15 can do wand/gesture based magic and 1 in 1000 can do verbal magic.

[Rowanas]

First: NO. We don't need more soapmakers ritualists.

Second: how would that impact in any way on the magic proposed? Having magic be done by sphere, where magi learn spheres of magic and can put their spheres to whatever use wouldn't be affected at all by whether it's verbal or anything. The rituals would be performed by having many dwarves all casting single magic effects that seem to the player to build up (having 5 dwarves all increasing water flow by 10% is going to grow exponentially, seeming like a ritual. It's a much simpler, easier to code, and more..magical solution.

[Joakim]

Joakim, hell no. I don't think we should be able to control it, or that it should have the effects you describe. The blessings of gods would be a semi-permanent low-key affair, while magi as we would think of them could just be told to "do magic" at a certain spot. The effect, the duration etc would all be fairly random, so if you wanted big effects you would have to gather lots of magi and tell them all to "do magic" in one spot (simulating ritual magic) to ensure that there's always something going on.

We can control what material our swords are made out of, how each and every piece of furniture in our fortress is placed and exactly which cow lives and which dies. So there is some precedence when it comes to fine control. Still that level of control is a bit too much for magic, I agree. But putting some guys in a room and just waiting for them to come up with something doesn't feel very magical either. Magic should be about stubbornly spending years and years struggling in a tower or dungeon searching for the answers of mysticism.
Rituals should have to be researched. While searching for the solution the magi will need all kinds of peculiar ingredients, live specimens and books which will probably be in when it's magic implementation time. All randomized of course. And you do not know what he will come up with, or have only a rough idea. A permanent mood if you will.

And when it comes to effects, raising of the undead is a powergoal. So replacing maybe the regenerated champion with resurrecting a champion as a death knight seems reasonable.

Demon summoning is in the Moclem story, so that's in too. Or not definitely out anyway.
Another thing to consider is summoning demons to make deals with them, like in the "Summoned to Darkness" story. In that story it doesn't seem to be that hard to summon a demon just to have a chat. Though we do not know how long he had to search for the blasphemies to perform. A deal can either be a "When I do X I get Y", like in the story. Or "I really need Y *now*, I'll promise you'll get X". Then you'll be indebted to the underworld, which can be an interesting cause of Fun.

Actually I think various kinds of summoning and godly intervention only would make for a good magic system. There would be an intelligence behind every spell, which is an excellent reason why things might work sometimes, sometimes not, sometimes once, etc.