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[Voltaggia]

Well, one does not simply become a wizard. I think the only way you could get a wizard in the fortress is either by one coming to your place (adventuring wizard who wants to settle down or a master wizard awed by the riches of the fortress) or an apprentice getting trained as one. Or maybe a very rare strange mood, though a dwarf that would become a wizard that way would cast severly unstable spells and probably bring doom to the fortress, since he'd have no training in the ways of magic.

[Toastergargletop]

An idea - if your civ has one wizard already, you should be able to send a dwarf as an apprentice (if the wizard doesn't have one already). You would send a message to the wizard via the liaison, and if the wizard accepted, the dwarf you designated as the to-be apprentice would go there with the caravan (along with a number of dwarfbucks specified by wizard. It's not a cheap trade). He would then come back a few years later as a wizard of his own, and could perhaps take apprentices (they would arrive with immigrants and leave once their training is done).

Or, you could make it completely random - you would just get a message "Urist McRichkid has left to become a wizard's apprentice" (we can't have poor dwarves becoming wizards), and he'd come back few years later as "Urist McRichkid has finished his apprenticeship and has become a wizard".  Then he'd take apprentices of his own and so on...

i reckon dwarves should get assigned like the fortress guard.

[BlazingDav]

I don't know wouldn't a mood that results in distinctive magic capacity sort of have flavours like normal moods do? fey, secretive, possessed, fell and macabre? Maybe magc could be its own mood, but flavours would make it more exciting, though a dwarf gaining magic in such a way would be able to learn and write a new way of magic as he pleases, moods like this could be how magic disciplines are born.

Going back to the witch hunting thing which is a good point, but if executed at the first sign of magic, they ought to be dead ducks (unless they are those prodigies which would be good story telling) straight away, since the beginning of world gen, sure you could interfere as an entity especially if they do witch trials ("Throw the warlock into this lake! If he drowns then surely he is a wizard of great evil!", "The one with that floodgate drain we installed?", "... Yes"). Though witch trials would be more of a religon thing I guess (some would burn at the steak, other behead, other drown, others throw into a pit of roaring kittens), but I think religon comes before magic anyway.

I guess prominent wizards would also demand a certain number of apprentices that also double as servants =/

[Detoxicated]

i think only some civs should hunt witches, sadly i can only picture dwarves as witchhunters if you look at the civs we have right now...

[nenjin]

Ok, the new update is going to add somethings which make core Wizard stats a total and complete possibility.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AT8EQVUjrv96ZGc5cnBwOHZfMjgyY3FzZHFtanA&hl=en

-> Attributes/Skills

    * The attribute system has received an overhaul. There are now 19 attributes split across physical and mental. They are:
          o Body:
                + STRENGTH
                + AGILITY
                + TOUGHNESS
                + ENDURANCE - this'll take some of the weight off of toughness and control your exertion.
                + RECUPERATION - somebody suggested "resilience". I don't really like any of the names... in any case, this will control the healing of your physical wounds.
                + DISEASE RESISTANCE - the more time I spend on infection and venom, the more this will matter for this release. There will also likely be a notion of specific immunities, some of which you could gain with exposure or whatever ends up making the most sense.
          o Soul:
                + ANALYTICAL ABILITY - thinky stuff.
                + MEMORY - remembery stuff.
                + CREATIVITY - being able to make up neat stuff.
                + INTUITION - being able to get stuff.
                + FOCUS - being able to get into stuff.
                + WILLPOWER - being able to keep on with and cope with stuff.
                + PATIENCE - being able to handle not doing stuff.
                + SPATIAL_SENSE - sense of surrounding stuff.
                + KINESTHETIC SENSE - sense of own stuff.
                + LINGUISTIC ABILITY - all of the wordsy stuff.
                + MUSICALITY - musicky stuff.
                + EMPATHY - being able to feel other peoples' stuff.
                + SOCIAL_AWARENESS - being able to manage and handle social stuff.
    * Creatures now have souls, and these souls serve as storage for a creature's mental attributes and skills
          o Creatures can have multiple souls, though there is no such use in the current version

So there you go. Core Mental traits. And SOULS to boot, so the dwarven grandmother's aren't just blowing pipe smoke up your arse when they say you're gambling with your soul, playing with magic. Possible outcomes of failed summoning rituals: A demon doesn't appear but it does eat your Dwarf Wizard's soul, leaving him as a drooling, mindless sack of flesh that wanders your fortress.

"Urist Spellstuff's soul has been devoured."

Muwhaha. Haha. Ha.

[Detoxicated]

wow, come to think of it, imagine a demon eats the soul and possesses the dwarf, giving the dwarf unlikely strength, demonic wits, and the ability to deceive other dwarves into becoming his servants

[nenjin]

Mega-beasts will actually try to do that in the world gen...(rise out of the depths and try to pass themselves off as gods, becoming the leaders of civilizations) so there's no reason it can't be abstracted to Dwarf mode too.

[Detoxicated]

Mega-beasts will actually try to do that in the world gen...(rise out of the depths and try to pass themselves off as gods, becoming the leaders of civilizations) so there's no reason it can't be abstracted to Dwarf mode too.

Heh, you could have attacker demons, who gather five dwarves and then throws a tantrum, and you would have strategic demons who run off with a couple of weak-willed dwarves to build their own fortress which will attack you eventually

[BlazingDav]

Failiure and the wear and tear of magic was something else I also considered in my notes (really!), consider it, in races where magic isn't an everyday thing (a simple tag setting the chance of a species member being born with magic is all thats needed for some races to be 100% composed of mages).

Lets see...

Given that a spell needs focus in order to cast it properly, naturally it requires brain power, maybe even a significant amount of development in the brain is needed for those races where magic is simply rare and their minds rarely can be capable of handling such output in a way (I have been aware of the new stats, but forgot them and the location of the file). So over time as they use magic more their brains would develop new synapses and such, the begin to use magic with more efficiency for longer, though as this goes on the output of chemicals in the brain increases somewhat, such that they develop an addiction to the higher levels, but to do that they need to use the synapses they specifically developed for, they become addicted to magic.

Sure thats ok, not like they aren't supposed to use it aren't they? Though this means as the addiction becomes more severe they need to use magic more frequently and their morals about how their spells should be used become somewhat warped (as expected evil mages might not mind so much...). Eventually from a long life of using magic they go mad and beserk everywhere with their magic gaining happy thoughts galore until they die.

Naturally though the way to deal with this is to treat the addiction (MUA?), by not using magic so frequently they don't get so many cravings, but are not so useful as before. Though there is another underlying cause, reaching beyond their own capacity to use magic that demands greater mental resources than they can give corrupts the spell they cast reducing the likelyhood of it casting (something we already established I think), as a result though their brain increases the output of the synapses dedicated to magic and makes more of them, to increase 'brain power' to increase the magic user's competency.

Other consequences of their minds being warped is that they also loose coherency and rationality, meaning they panic and worry about their own mortality and so are inclined to accept offered deals to ensure immortality. (Hopefully the demons will only give them immortality after they have wiped your fort out =P)

I find the idea of demons eating your soul and maybe taking the body over interesting one as well though.

And stats related to the use of magic... recuperation sounds like a good subject for recovering from the use off magic and 'recharging the batteries', focus and endurance together sound like the primary points of how long magic is used for, while toughness and willpower sound like good candidates for 'overtime', I can see the other stats having varied use, not all used at once, but for different kinds of magic (on the casting and effect end of these sticks). Though I guess analytical ability,  memory, creativity and intuition would be more about learning, remembering and making spells.

Though admittedly with all the core stats having their uses I guess talking about what ought to qualify a mage to use magic is also important. Could be something at the level of the soul(s) I guess

[nenjin]

Given that a spell needs focus in order to cast it properly, naturally it requires brain power, maybe even a significant amount of development in the brain is needed for those races where magic is simply rare and their minds rarely can be capable of handling such output in a way (I have been aware of the new stats, but forgot them and the location of the file). So over time as they use magic more their brains would develop new synapses and such, the begin to use magic with more efficiency for longer, though as this goes on the output of chemicals in the brain increases somewhat, such that they develop an addiction to the higher levels, but to do that they need to use the synapses they specifically developed for, they become addicted to magic.

I'm not sure about "magical addiction." There are already enough proposed penalties (that can get worse the stronger a Wizard gets) I'm not sure we need to make Wizards need to fulfill a biological imperative to cast magic. That's going back to "setting fires just for setting fires' sake" and that will turn a lot of people off. Plus, we'd have no control over Wizard spellcasting for the most part, so there's no proactive part for the player to take in stemming/controlling addiction.

On the other hand, "skill rusting" will be introduced in the next version. "Rusting" is really just a short hand for what you just described (growth of synapses related to the tasks you undertake most, consumption of unused synapses to foster growth of used synapses.) In a way "Skill" is already a reflection of that. But what could be done is that the Wizardry skill could slowly leech away other important stats, including the physical ones, other unrelated job and social skills, ect....There should always be a price to pay for using magic, and the risk of death and insanity only covers half of it. A life dedicated to the study of magic should take something away from the other possibilities.

Though admittedly with all the core stats having their uses I guess talking about what ought to qualify a mage to use magic is also important. Could be something at the level of the soul(s) I guess

Like averaging the total of their mental stats, giving that value to a soul, and saying Wizards are only generated from dwarves with a soul > or equal to x?

Yeah, that works. Given that stats are usually not average at generation (they tend to exhibit extremes more often than not) you'd end up with some seriously strong, but seriously flawed Wizards. They may have great spellcasting potential...but they may not have the chutzpah to deal with it. They may be able to grasp magic easily....but a simple spell leaves them exhausted. That's more interesting that requiring they have many stats at x level...because you'd end up with largely mediocre Wizards who get the job done, but don't bring any chaos or excellence to it.

[BlazingDav]

I was thinking more like an on and off switch like the high magic distinction, but a general average being a power rating for the wizard would be interesting, combine it with stat leeching, every spell you use would improve the stats it uses and drains from the others not used. So if a wizard useud a telekinesis spell or something he'd use spatial and kinesthetic senses probably, improving those while degenerating the others, meaning having to train those other areas regularly to keep everything in check would be important.

I was suggesting the magical addiction thing as more of something to keep magic users consciencous of not over using their talents, whilst allowing them to, as I said the warping the addiction creates (resulting in insanity) gets worse when they push themselves too much (be it in a spell complexity sense or too many spells over time), which they can do to save their lives (think of it like a dabbling wizard acting like a legendary wizard), which isn't even guaranteed, but they might still end up losing their marbles anyway. The warping and addiction I figured would be just as vulnerable to the skill rusting as skills though to balance it off so a wizard that takes a holiday gradually recovers and returns to a norm

[nenjin]

I think you can abstract some of that decision making down to what's in the game already. Besides being on fire, dwarves have a decent sense of what states they don't want to be in. It would be trivial, I would think, to add an awareness of their own capabilities, and of the value of insanity (i.e. how unwanted a state that is for a dwarf). They can take all that information (what they're capable, what could potentially happen to them) and run it against their personality traits.

Reckless wizards would disregard both the risk and their lack of skill when making decisions about spell-casting. More self-aware or cautious wizards would use magic more judiciously.

So I think the controls are already there. Degeneration, or an addiction to magic (over indulges occasionally?), these things already mimic what's in game.

[Skid]

A new room: Spell Testing Area. A bunker deep underground in a remote area of the map, several Z levels tall, isolated from the outside world by a shell of magma and only accessible by a complex airlock system.  Fortress wizards are instructed to provide a three day warning before performing a spell, and a full squad of guards is to be stationed at the entrance at all times.

More simply, could be designated as the wizard's "office".

[BlazingDav]

Good point about the self preservation and over use, personality is going to be used alot for magic at least it sounds

A wizard's testing ground makes sense, if a wizard wants to test his spells, he is going to need areas for it, though he probably needs more than one for the different sorts of spells some would need lots of room above, some would require liquids maybe (well he might want to test a walk on lava spell), with a well designed room it could all be put into one room, but still worth noting he could require room with specific features as opposed to any sort of quality. I would agree a guarding function may as well be supported given that it should be a recognised quality, though some dwarves would definetly be upset that a wizard is being allowed to play with his spell. Makes me think though that these things should be based on the history of a civ, if things go wrong they become more inclined to witch hunting to avoid disasters past, but nobles could easily be swayed to protect them I guess, spell of immortality anyone?

I can imagine a wizard playing a political scene for some reason to advance his agenda, possibly with bias in favour or against corruption

[Dvergar]

I don't get why we have so much focus on the wizards themselves, the mana/magic/energy/whatever should come from ancient and mysterious artifacts/runes/anything not a dwarf, with long running histories.  A wizard would be an average run of the mill dwarf who experiments with these artifacts/runes and consequently has an extremely high chance of dying a premature death compared to your nobles/woodcutters/Soapmaking recruits.

Wizards could be some kind of statesmen noble or whatever, but I disagree with giving a dwarf the ability to summon the magical energy through his body, or even having him migrate in.  The wizard should be 100% mortal in my opinion, and the only thing seperating him from his fellow dwarves is his experience in dealing with magic, not some super-natural abilities, such as being master of the elements.  They had better have better intellectual stats though, otherwise they won't last long.