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[frandude]

Hey guys, i just joined the forums so i could tell you that I'm working on a magic mod. This mod will essentially allow you to have the mage profession. Also, i would appreciate it if you didn't steal this idea. Also, if someone else happened to think of this before me, (which I'm sure they have) i would just like to apologize beforehand. Thanks for reading!

[Bricks]

I don't think "wizard" is an idea you can steal from the fantasy genre.

Anyway, good luck, it will be tough.  There aren't really any good tags right now for even approximating magic.  It will work a little better in the next version.

[frandude]

Well it seems to be working so far, except one thing that might kill this whole idea. I can't seem to find a way to add a skill. Is there any?

[PTTG??]

Well it seems to be working so far, except one thing that might kill this whole idea. I can't seem to find a way to add a skill. Is there any?

No, NO, one thousand times no.
Don't tell me you're going to try a steampunk mod next...

If you take a look in the Suggestions forum you will find that Magic and Steampunk are the two most wanted things and also happen to be the two things farthest away from being implemented (other than, perhaps, adding a UI).

Magic won't appear until near or after DF 1.0 (ETA: 5000 AD) and Steampunk will only appear when Toady One wishes it to, which is not something I am able to predict. Certainly both of those will/would require a major restructuring on every level.

The only thing you could do is give Dwarves Firebreath and Webspitting and say they are casting spells. Don't give them Flying or Amphibiousness, because they will only get stuck in the air.

I suppose you could give those abilites to a wizard creature and then allow dwarves to bring them as pets. Then you could have them guarding the fortress, accompanying hunters, or just wandering around.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

If you look around you can see many failed magic mod's in the past. the only one that has worked in anyway so far was more of a ritual magic kinda thing where it was all smelter reactions.

[frandude]

Actually, i wanted to do a fairly minor mod with this. And i knew that flying dwarves wouldn't work, so i decided just to essentially make a mod where you could cast fireball or something and maybe in the future get an enchanter to make armour a little stronger.

[PTTG??]

Actually, i wanted to do a fairly minor mod with this. And i knew that flying dwarves wouldn't work, so i decided just to essentially make a mod where you could cast fireball or something and maybe in the future get an enchanter to make armour a little stronger.

Ok, well those are pretty reasonable. You can't add a skill, but you could make a current skill be called a different name, and in the next version (if it ever comes out) we will be able to create custom work shops. You could thus make a "Enchanter's Shop" which uses the Conversationalist skill and I think you will be able to have high-level Conversationalists be called Novice Wizards, Wizards, Legendary Wizards (though the skill itself would still be called Conversationalist.

Then you make a reaction that consumes steel armor and creates Enchanted Steel armor or Steel Enchanted armor, and uses the Conversationalist skill. Tada.

Unfortunately, you cannot use "spells" in adventurer mode, simply because the UI isn't there.

[frandude]

That was my thought, but i kind of wanted something so that just talking wouldn't make you better at magic. Maybe next release. And how would spells not work in adventure mode? How would you make a spell? I was thinking of a ranged weapon called "tome of fire" that uses "fire mana" for ammo.

[Bricks]

That was my thought, but i kind of wanted something so that just talking wouldn't make you better at magic. Maybe next release. And how would spells not work in adventure mode? How would you make a spell? I was thinking of a ranged weapon called "tome of fire" that uses "fire mana" for ammo.

I think he basically meant you can't use any of the fire breath attacks.  Your fire ammo can be made to appear to do fire damage, but the only thing HEAT does is change the combat text.

[Demonic Gophers]

I've made 'staff' weapons that can be used to fire things like runes of fire and runes of frost.

(The flying Iron Rune of Fire strikes the ratman in the upper left arm!  It is cracked by the heat!)

[Deon]

I think almost any modder made staffs, special "unarmed" attacks and firebreath/web/dragonfirebreath/paralyzing touch mages. So nobody will steal it from you because they've done it years ago . Have fun with raws. With the new version and poisons it will be easier to make "fake" magic attacks.

P.S. There was one "magic" mod which was about rituals and offered various smelter reactions, and it was really unique and flavorful. Others (even mine! ) are quite similar and don't offer alot. The most "magic" creature I've ever made was a beholder mage who had about a dozen of magic attacks with eyes + various tokens, and it was not too impressive anyway.

[frandude]

I see, what is this about the new poisons though?

[Bricks]

From the dev log:

I'm going to go with contact/injected/inhaled poisons that cause syndromes in affected classes of creatures involving pain, swelling, oozing wounds, bruising, blisters, numbness, paralysis, fever, bleeding, coughing/vomiting blood, nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness, necrosis, impaired vision, drowsiness and dizziness as a starter set, with some possible extensions as they arise.

Lots of evil things to do there.

[Arrkhal]

Magic won't appear until near or after DF 1.0 (ETA: 5000 AD) and Steampunk will only appear when Toady One wishes it to, which is not something I am able to predict. Certainly both of those will/would require a major restructuring on every level.

Version 1.0 should be so infinitely moddable, that there'll be dozens of steampunk mods in the first couple days.

-------------

You could give the dwarves an unused weapon, and change the name accordingly.  I did that to give slings to Kobolds.  Make slings use the crossbow skill and BULLET for ammo, add ITEM_AMMO_BULLETS to item_ammo.txt and the entity file, have kobold crossbowmen called slingers, and you're done.  Give humans "bullet crossbows" plus bullets for ammo if you want to be able to buy bullets in adventure mode.

You could do the same for magic, which I think is your idea.  Very easy.  Make a "spellbook" weapon which uses the bow skill, and have Dwarf bowmen be called "wizards."  You can add new classes of ammo no problem (works 100% for bullets, anyway), so the spellbook would essentially be a bow which can only fire "spells" or "scrolls" or somesuch, but not arrows.  You could even have multiple types of "spells," doing burn and ice damage and stuff.  Only issue would be dwarf wizards walking around with "+iron spellbooks+" and a quiver full of "+«*groundhog bone ray of heat spells*»+".

On the other hand, a metal spellbook and metal scrolls would be very dwarfy.

[frandude]

So this poison thing is out already?