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[DarthCloakedDwarf]

I don't see it as being so different from a tantruming dwarf smashing a priceless work. A wizard just wouldn't need to be provoked. And it doesn't have to be "magma" fire. Just mundane fire that burns wood, cloth, leather. So he might target a lot of things that his magic wouldn't have an effect on. Or have a minimal effect, like torching one garden plot out of the five you have, so it doesn't produce that season.

Torching that garden plant will cause adjacent garden plants to ignite. This in turn will catch your growers on fire. Then they die, and everyone rushes to grab their !!clothes!!. The result? All the work you put into that fortress was for nothing, all because of your idiot wizard.

Smash my legendary artifacts all you want. I can't even sell them. But don't set everything I own on fire. That's just uncool.

[nenjin]

Well, the fire mechanics are a little....rough? right now, so maybe fire isn't the best example. Maybe one day when fire doesn't spread virus-like through your fortress, and your Dwarfs are sensitive enough to care about burning to death or wearing flaming clothing...and are willing to put out fires...maybe random fires set by the Wizard would have a place.

Still, in the name of "Fun", I wouldn't be opposed to that being a possible wizard you end up with, not only one that has fire spells, but likes to use them inappropriately as well. (Say, tries to help the Cook work by shooting a fireball into the kitchen.)

Make it suitably rare that you get a wizard with just that kind of personality/combination of spells....but cmon. This is DF. You stick your nose into HFS and you can doom yourself easily. You make the decision whether or not to play with fire there....there's no reason the Wizard can't fall into the same category.

Be famous within your realm for being so opposed to sorcery, you threw the wizard that showed up to your fortress into a bottomless pit before he could even get an "Abra" in edgewise.

And if people are violently opposed to even having to deal with a wizard at all....you can set specific conditions for the Wizard to show up. (I.e. must have Magical Library built, x or greater pop, certain number of artifacts...for homegrown wizards, traveling ones or royal ones to appear.) It's almost as good as a "I want Wizards Yes/No" toggle.

[BlazingDav]

One thing I would say in general which is the difference between your comparison case of an artifact in meeting area and wizard randomly ending the fort is: control

Sure you chose to put the artifact in the meeting area, you can't blame anyone but yourself for the tantrum spiral occurring when a dwarf was having a bad day. Though you could purely blame a wizard if you couldn't avert him setting your cloth stockpile on fire.

Means to control in an indirect fashion like we control happiness already is important, namely indulging the wizard's interests, kicking him out the fortress if his personality makes him out to be a liability, literally bribing him (ought to be a slippery slope), looking after them well. If doing that could prevent major disaster (ones that would wipe the fort off the face of the map), then it would be ok if they could do such things. Or not overworking them for a magical rune industry =P

Though really before deciding what they can and can't do you would need to decide how you would even have magic in the first place,in order to have an idea of their limits.

Anyway, what would motivate a wizard to come to your fort? Well ultimately that would depend on the wizard you are looking at if we allow their personality to have major effects on what they do =P

You might get one if you haven't had any deaths for x years, so they can safely sit back and do what they like. You might have other nobles present which they seek to serve and gain title by (I can see this being very likely to happen when you get a king if you haven't already, almost demands that duels should take place so an upstart wizard can take yours on if you already have it =P). The wealth of your fortress naturally, such as if you have alot of ores lying around they might help themselves to it and magically smith themselves powerful weapons for their own use. You simply might be in a biome not previously possessed by your civilisation and a wizard wants to explore it (I can imagine wizards and alchemists arguing alot). You may even simply be very close to another civilisation and your wizard will be gone most of the time exploring the other civ nearby trading and such and giving you free stuff when he gets back.

Alot of possibilities as per usual =P Almost would have to put the entire idea on hold till personality effects are fleshed out more.

I can imagine init settings being much longer in future in relation to magic

[Wiiking]

I have been thinking about this myself for a while and I have thought that in order for the wizards to fit DF, they have to:

1. be non-dwarf. Dwarf mages is just... no. Dorfs imo can make rune enchantments on items, but that's it. Humans are good. elven mages are gay. A possibility to get a demon mage from a HFS or equivalent would be awesome too. This would have to be very rare though.

2. Be loners. Like Gandalf. You have to agree that ANY story with just one wizard is much more awesome than any with a group of mages. Ofc the wizards would join other parties, including your fortress but there would always be just one wizard per fort/town/retreat/evil tower. The mage tower could be an expection.

3. Wouldn't look at the fort's race. Human and Demon wizards would be in towns, forest retreats, fortresses, dark towers and some would just roam the wilds. The race they pick should depend on their character.

4. Would wear personal clothing. One could be cowered with a lot of scarfs, while some might just wear buckets on their heads.

5. Couldn't be commanded. You should have the option to say: "Oh no! The goblins are seiging, help us oh mighty Hummie McWizard!" he could say yes and go kick some ass or say "But I'm working on this spell that could double the foam on our beer, you hear me? DOUBLE!"

6. Would have a skill level. The starting ones would do lot's of accidents, but they wouldn't be so bad as they are only able to use weak magic. The more experienced ones wouldn't do many mistakes but some experiments could go wrong... with catastrophical consequences.

7. Should use procedually generated spells. Yes. I know. It would be extremely hard, but at least I hope this game will be worked on for a long long time. Wizards should be released before the procedual spells too. They would just use some pre-made ones.

8. Should be very personalized. Very. And it should affect pretty much everything they do.

9. Would be able to do great things once powerful. Things that could affect more than just your fort. The Demon ones could do apocalyptic things. Even the end of the world should be possible, in it's very literate meaning, aka will probably never happen to anyone, but is should be possible. Even the weakest of the wizards should be able to do huge things by making accidents. Wizards could turn spheres to evil/good and all kinds of things.

10. This one isn't actually about the wizards but ten things is just so much better than 9. So, dwarven enchantments. That's what I want to talk about. The most simple ones could enhance the blade's sharpness or the weight of the weapon but some should also be able to cause heat or cold. Different things should be done too. Like a rune could turn an item  into a living thing. maybe it could do stuff by itself or maybe not. Then you would ofc have those buckets that hold infinite number of water etc etc. Structures could emit light, heal troops, and do other awesome things. Runes shouldn't be too complex. Pretty generic RPG stuff with a few expections. Also combinations should do nice things. There should be artifact runes too. THOSE would be your crazy "turn the enemy to a sheep" or "awaken the dead"(You don't want to put this on a sword) That's about it.

tl;dr: Dwarf Fortress is a unique game and we should keep it that way. Wizard armies are (imo) lame. Yay for weird stuff!

[BlazingDav]

1. No, harsh if you ask me, I'd say runic magic is just one form and while dwarves may or may not have a greater natural skill for it, while I'd agree it shouldn't be common as a dwarf's digging ability it should still exist even if its just 1 dwarf in an entire civ that has to go learn under a human mage or something.

2. Agree with you on questions of epic, would definetly be a way to turn away from mmorpg party meat shields and DPS classes =P, though implying magic trumps over the sword or bow is not what is wanted overall I think, though admittedly wizards having a loner nature should actually be considered a serious disadvantage to them.

3. I can agree there if there isn't a wizard of your race, whats the harm in having a wizard from a trading parthner (or firm ally for the sake of not ending up with a spy in the base making it easy pickings for an army to swoop in and wipe you out)

4. Eccentric style would be interesting, like the dungeon master, though considering others wouldn't bat an eye lid for it being out of place is a bit of a let down for now.

5. Agree, though promising to feed them and protect them from the harsh outside world ought to persuade more if you ask me, especially if they have a sense of honour and wish to keep agreements

6. Personally I like the idea of a master wizard and apprentices for training them up, but I more or less agree, question is when do they leave the fort if they were to be skilled enough to leave by the time they're 12 (unlikely, but for the sake of argument), would they leave or wait till considered a fully fledged adult.

7. Can agree on procedurally generated spells, though it'd be nice if they were born from a wizard's will to solve a problem before him (such as smooshing into the ground) rather than random inspiration (though thats good too)

8. Due you mean their personality? Sorry bit lost with that

9. Not so positive about this one while yeah possible, I'd almost be inclined to say it should only be born of very special circumstances though demons doing it and stuff sort of seems reasonable (as long as you can fight back with a sword and not be purely at the mercy of your fort's mage)

10. 10 skeletal GCS are oh so better than 9 ~, agree on the whats rune magic could do, though I'd say I vote for the 'no magic industry' thing, no artifact runes either because them runes being made by wizards on a 'whim' in a mood like state appeals more to me

[nenjin]

On race, I think it's kind of a human conceit that dwarves don't do wizardry, or that people over 4 feet tall are the only one who feel the need to don the wizard's hat and robe.

Plus, there's no precedent for going outside your race to have a fort personality, other than the poor bastard that's become trapped there. I can see a lot of players getting unhappy that they *have* to have a non-dwarf wizard. I know I would kind of be.

Also...do spells necessarily need to be procedurally generated? Part of the fun of magic is actually having a grasp of what is happening/how the rules are being broken. Procedurally generated spells, unless they include a big description when they are cast, might leave a lot of players scratching their heads. I mean, can you figure out what tantrum bucket or gnashing wall means? Or what it does when it's cast? So I think handcrafted might be the way to go. Procedural might be cool, eventually, but only if it gets a ton of work. And that might be effort better saved for a less...frivolous? use of magic. Like I said, I'm not interested in getting to play a fully-fleshed out wizard, complete with an internally consistent magic system and procedurally generated spells in DF. Something much simpler, but still just as fun, is what is called for, for that mode. 

[h3lblad3]

LITTLE PEOPLE DO MAGIC, TOO! 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[nenjin]

Heeelllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooo new avatar.

[Detoxicated]

Well, I'd like to see procedually created spells.
At the beginning the wizard can only cast the basic spell, which cleans his body or something simple. As he ascends to at least competent, he starts to experiment, and out of his experiments come new spells which are created procedually and saved in a magic book. So before a new spell can be created by one wizard, he has to learn all the other existing spells. Also maybe the first five spells could create schools of magic...
Schools of magic: lets say Urist McMagic created a spell which creates vermin, as he uses the spell, much to annoyance of the pueblo, he learns to create higher life forms which creates the school of Bioconjurism, so later he can create cows, dogs, dragons, all of which are untamed, but tameable.

[nenjin]

Don't get me wrong, that sounds cool as hell and if Toady really wanted to go there, double-plus cool. A list of known "effects" that they can produce though sounds a lot easier to dev, and can stay within its own, and DF's, arc.

[Detoxicated]

Don't get me wrong, that sounds cool as hell and if Toady really wanted to go there, double-plus cool. A list of known "effects" that they can produce though sounds a lot easier to dev, and can stay within its own, and DF's, arc.

It really isnt impossible to have known effects and creation...

Say you have a list of ten different effects like: Temperature Alteration, Changing of an element, damage, heal, etc...

these effects are the basics but the outcome is recreated with every world gen. for instance you could have a fire ball in one game, which alters the air in one spot to be so hot to burn, while you could have an area fire in another (this changes an area of land to be so hot it burns) while both spells alter temperature to such a high amount it changes to fire, they both are different. One is acting like a projectile while the other merely starts a fire which can spread... idk id be happy with stock spells for now, i want to have magic in the game ASAP, but you could upgrade it to be procedual when time goes by...

[nenjin]

I get that, but are we talking your average player or someone that is going through .inis and looking at the guts of the game? I'm thinking more your average player, who isn't going to know about the dozens of inputs spells could have. Effects that are more iconic, and are handcrafted, could end up being more interesting than a lot of spells generated procedurally by an alpha model too. And again, probably a lot easier to dev.

[Wiiking]

Yes we should have pretty basic magic with premade spells at first. The procedually generated ones should be like the ultimate goal. Well maybe not the ultimate one but something to look forward to. Not the first kind of magic. Also, as there is so much difference between people's opinions about magic and dwarves, the civs could have a [CAN_DO_MAGIC:YES/NO] tag or something. and if it was set to no for dwarves, they'd get a wizard from another race?

Also the appearance of a wizard could require some weird stuff to be found. Maybe in evil places they could just come to study the monsters, but in normal zones you'd need a chasm or a HFS or something new magic-related. Or maybe this would just affect the character of the wizard that comes to you. As in cowardly ones would come to good places etc.

[Detoxicated]

Well i think that your biome should influence what kind of wizard you get, an evil area gets a necromancer, a forest gets a elemental mage, a good area gets a healer etc... also every wizard should grow magical abilities when they become more powerful (a necromancer grows a bone arm which cant be hurt unless broken, or a elemental wizard gets barkskin or dragonbreath... things like that...)

[nenjin]

Sure. Area danger level could add or subtract from the kinds of wizard personalities you could get.