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[ChaosFollowing]

As I mentioned in this thread's Dwarven sibling, I'm of the strong opinion that the playable races should have extensive differences covering virtually all aspects of playstyle, including Magic.

If Dwarves are naturally inclined or suited to Alchemy, Artifice, Runes, and Priesthood, what about the Elves?

Others might have different suggestions, but I'd be tempted to place the Elven Magic focus on Druidism, Life, Spiritualism and Weather.

Druidism

Trees

At the moment, it makes no sense that the elves abhor wood-felling, yet build virtually everything out of wood. We can solve this paradox easily with magic.

Treesong: Elves sing to the trees, which in turn grants them wood. (slower than woodcutting, but the tree remains. Trees would only be able to gift wood once per duration, or x times during their lifetime. Wood is technically dropped on a square surrounding the tree, allowing occasional accidents such as pet-crushing)

Wood generated by a Treesong would be marked in some way as "gifted"(or perhaps even "living"), and would be the basis of Elven Construction. Gifted Wood traded to Dwarves would of course be safe to trade back to Elves after turning it into a barrel, cage, etc. Gifted Wood should also have a value modifier allowing the Elves to build the nicest wooden structures.

Other examples of Druidic magic might be:

ley lines, discovery and channelling
shapeshifting(limited(stronger skin, etc.) or complete(animals))
tangleweed traps
transforming trees temporarily into treants(ents)

Life

Elves revere life, or at least that's what they claim. One of their more interesting trade goods is wildlife, and it makes sense that they would also be able to calm or even tame wild animals...possibly even through magic.

Calming Chant : An elf(or elves) targets a creature to be calmed. If successful, the animal no longer attacks on sight, but instead flees or even remains docile as workers wander past. With continued chanting, a calm animal has a chance to become tame.

At one end of the spectrum, you have a fox wandering around the forest. An elf proficient in Life magic wanders to its den and tames the beast without too much difficulty. On the other end of the spectrum, you have an elven village attacked by a dragon, with the player deciding whether or not to send in his archers or tamers. Twenty Elven tamers of various levels of talent approach the dragon, and many are killed before the dragon is finally subdued.

Other example of Life magic might be:

Bond - Elf makes a living animal their pet.
Wildness - reverse of calming
Resurrection(as Elves worship natural forces rather than Gods, there's essentially no Elven Priesthood)

Spiritualism

Elven spirituality is tied to nature, and could be the Elven equivalent of Dwarven strange moods. Unlike the Dwarves, the result of a "Spiritual Event" is not the creation of an item, but the transformation or transendence of the elf.

The transcended elf passes through some trial(such as a dwarf requiring specific items...), and then becomes a tree-spirit, river-spirit, etc....depending on the region. Nymph names might be suitable at least for the female counterparts, i.e. Nereid(sea), Naiad(river), Dryad(forest), Eleionomae(marsh)etc.

These spirits would be controllable, and have powerful(though limited in scope) uses. A wood-spirit for instance could be a powerful Druidic caster, a Naiad might be able to halt a river's flow(allowing for easy diversion), etc.

Weather

Fairly obvious, this gives Elven sorcerers control over (ultimately) all aspects of weather. Rain, snow, lightning, wind, hail, etc.

[Align]

Perhaps all Elf magic could be some form of singing.
I like the idea that sung wood stands out from normal logs.

[Tamren]

we had a gigantic thread about wood and how it relates to the elves and druidism and stuff. You can probably dig it up with the search feature. Anyway, the gist of it was that elves used magic to get wood without killing trees. They also would get a "supermaterial" which would fill the same function as adamantine but not as dangerous to aquire. If I remember correctly the name we came up with was "ambersteel".

Before we get magic in for the elves in regards to wood and trees the wood system as a whole needs a major revamp. We need different qualities at the very least, such as how obsidian compares to generic grey stone.

[Mikademus]

I basically agree with the OP, with the exception that "elves worship natural forces rather than gods, therefore there are not elf priesthoods". If we're going for implementability (that it, making the magic system both diverse, racially unique and actually implementable for Toady), then most, if not all, magic could in fact be implemented as priesthoods. Of course, they do not have to be called as such (call them all "druids" for elves?), or the objects of worship called "gods", but it would be the same system under the hood. I.e. elves build their shrines, one type might produce Treesingers druids, another Wildkin druids, a third Windsinger druids, and so on.

The same way goblins (and kobolds?) could have "shamans" (totem binders, spirit guides?) in place of priests or druids, and humans would have "mages" (elementarists, summoners, necromancers?).

[Relee]

Some tree-loving spiritual cultures only use naturally fallen wood. Branches, trees that died naturally, and gifts from sentient trees.

In some fantasy settings, Elves control nature by superior magic; rather than living in harmony with nature, they change nature to live in harmony with them. They make trees grow into building-shapes and force wild animals to do their bidding.

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by ChaosFollowing:
<STRONG>Weather

Fairly obvious, this gives Elven sorcerers control over (ultimately) all aspects of weather. Rain, snow, lightning, wind, hail, etc.</STRONG>

I have to say no to this. As explained by Belgarath

quote: "Yes, one tiny little storm," Belgarath said scathingly. "Your one tiny little storm in the right place at the right time came very close to altering the weather for the next several eons--all over the world-- you blockhead!"

Basically, if weather is taken into the hands of a person and not nature, things go askew.

[Mikademus]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>I have to say no to this. As explained by Belgarath</STRONG>

[Hague]

I'm naming my snakemen city Cthol Murgos.

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by Mikademus:
<STRONG>

  </STRONG>

That's a rather ineffective argument.

[Kusgnos]

If the elves could tame and untame animals, it would be a very unique experience if the elves were sieging a dwarven fortress with a lot of tame pets and animals. The sneaky elves would creep close enough to those vicious war dogs and "untame" them, unleashing gory destruction and blood-spattered havoc across the fortress, especially if the animals followed the escaping dwarves. Mauling all the innocent dwarves and their dwarf-babies, those dogs would consume all in their path while the crossbowelves relaxed under a tree, mysteriously relishing the dead dwarven guts scattered wetly about the fort. Losing is fun.

[mutant mell]

quote:Originally posted by Hague:
<STRONG>I'm naming my snakemen city Cthol Murgos.</STRONG>

Wouldn't they prefer Sthiss Tor?

[ChaosFollowing]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>Basically, if weather is taken into the hands of a person and not nature, things go askew.</STRONG>

Holy crap.   No offense, but have you ever seen the real world? Now(and before the advent of industrialism), the earth is full of drought, flooding, hailstones larger than golf-balls, hurricanes, twisters, monsoons, deluges...and now and then, it even rains freaking fish.

If that's not bloody askew I don't know what is.

[mutant mell]

quote:Originally posted by ChaosFollowing:
<STRONG>

Holy crap.     No offense, but have you ever seen the real world? Now(and before the advent of industrialism), the earth is full of drought, flooding, hailstones larger than golf-balls, hurricanes, twisters, monsoons, deluges...and now and then, it even rains freaking fish.

If that's not bloody askew I don't know what is.</STRONG>

Yeah, but thats all naturally-occurring, and doesn't tend to disrupt the natural order.  Introducing a storm means that you introduce a new low-pressure area, and make a high-pressure area around the storm.  Now, those could interact with the weather of the surrounding area, and so on and so forth, and could potentially change the climate of the surrounding area permanently.  So, while weather control would be cool, and probably should go in, it should not be, in any way, a commonplace thing.

EDIT: Anyways, no matter how much it has been bastardized in other games, weather control is risky business.  It should be a little dangerous and unpredictable.

[ March 27, 2008: Message edited by: mutant mell ]

[Mikademus]

You know, what this game needs is really a global weather simulation system, preferably one with extremely high-precision and accuracy. Perhaps we can get Toady to rewrite DF in FORTRAN, which is eminently suitable for such calculations. As for speed, no worries, I run a Beowolf cluster at home with some 32768 cores, so I should get a reasonable framerate, in the 10--15 region, and that's a good price to pay for dissuading elf druids from messing with the weather as well as killing fun and fantasy in the name of anal realism.

[mutant mell]

quote:Originally posted by Mikademus:
<STRONG>You know, what this game needs is really a global weather simulation system, preferably one with extremely high-precision and accuracy. Perhaps we can get Toady to rewrite DF in FORTRAN, which is eminently suitable for such calculations. As for speed, no worries, I run a Beowolf cluster at home with some 32768 cores, so I should get a reasonable framerate, in the 10--15 region, and that's a good price to pay for dissuading elf druids from messing with the weather as well as killing fun and fantasy in the name of anal realism.</STRONG>

K, you do that, and I'`ll just have fun explaining Torak's reluctance for weather-control.