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[Lord Shonus]

Here's my ideas on the subject.

Every intelligent creature gains three extra statistics:

MAGIC_STRENGTH
MAGIC_SKILL
MAGIC_STRENGTH_MAX

All creatures start with a skill of zero. Strength and max strength would eb determined based on values in the creature raws:

MAGIC_STRENGTH_AVERAGE
MAGIC_STRENGTH_MAX_AVERAGE
MAGIC_STRENGTH_DEVIATION
MAGIC_STRENGTH_MAX_DEVIATION

Maximum strength is a hard limit that can not be easily increased. These stats can only be determined indirectly.

Every season in fort mode, or certain time period in Adv. mode, all creatures get a chance of boosting their strength. After reaching a certain level, magical abilities have a chance to manifest while the dwarf is working. The manner in which it manifests is based on strength and the task being done. A cleaning dwarf might some or all of the contaminants in a radius dissapear, summon large amounts of soapy water, or (if strength is very high) disintegrate the wall he's trying to clean. A dwarf making a sword might get a nice magical weapon, or the sword may fly around and attacking things, or (again only with very strong persons) the forge might explode. In any case, this would be a zoom-to event. Assuming that the individual survives the manifestation, he will become a semi-noble like the sheriff, in that he will do any job he's assigned (sometimes using magic to complete the task) but can have mandates and requirements. When not working he will experiment in his rooms, increasing both his magic skill and discovering new effects. As power will continue to increase (and high power makes accidents more dangerous and low skill makes them more common) it would be advisable to allow the dwarf plenty of time off. If another dwarf manifests, the more experienced wizard will teach her what sh needs to know, allowing skill to gain faster.

[Soulbourne]

Domestic

War

Transmute-Changes material properties Teleport-moves object/pers from point A to point B instantly Enchant-Adds arcane effects to an item Mend-Heals a wound Alchemy-Creates potions(?) Craft Spell-Performs various checks ending with the adding of a new spell to the mages spellbook Conjure-conjures an item(AKA, water or food?) Flight-applies levitation Sterilize-Multiples target animal pop but prevents further breeding(I just felt like having something like this)

Paralyze-Prevents movement of creature Ice-adds an ice effect Fire-adds a heat or ignite effect Force-adds a physical effect to a spell Electric-Adds an electric effect to a spell Damage-adds a damage effect to a spell AoE-Causes it to hit multiple targets/squares Summon-summons a creature Wind-adds a wind/weather effect Projectile-makes it ranged Barrier-makes it a shield effect Arrow-ward-defends/cancels out projectiles Sword-ward-defends/cancels out melee Reflect spell-redirects an incoming spell Counter-disperses a spell Drain-Drains X from an enemy Raise dead-raises corpses

I see that as one possible list of effects...needs work though.  Such as the domestic is more spells than effects.  Would likely be some crossover, but basically when you craft a spell into your spellbook, you perform 2 checks, with a third being performed later.  First check is a skill check to determine what effects your level reasonably has access too(could even be sub levels of each effect).  Then, you pick a couple effects, and meld them together, with another skill check determining the "base" str of the spell.  Then if you ever cast it, it performs a skill check then that modifies the base strength.

I can also see mages battles being...interesting.  When a spell is cast, a check is made to see both if the victim can counter the spell, as well as what damage is caused if he doesn't fully counter.  This can lead to spells flying and being dispersed or redirected all over.

On the combo effect...certain combos could end interestingly.  Like a mix between counter, projectile, and force.  When the attacked succeeds in a counter check, they send out a force shock that collides into the incoming spell, more than likely causing it to explode as the force drives the energy outwards.  Drain and raise dead would likely be highly advanced though.

Could even throw in "combos spells" like say charging a fire and lightning projectile spell and then teleporting for an ambush strike with it.  Or unison spells, with 1 or more mages channeling there power through a focus to amplify the spell he casts.


There are other effects that could be added, and modifications made.  But, that's my general take on it.  *Casts catsplosion teleport, disappearing in a swarm of cats*

[Naes Draw]

There could additionally be a knowledge/education factor, where various of these magical Runes were discovered by our dwarfs, through whatever means, and at different stages of the individual gameworld's timeline, again randomly, which would give you different access, and a different experience, with each Fortress. 

It seems like spheres could influence knowledge there.

EDIT: GAH that's not where I posted it.

[nenjin]

The idea of effects combining, at the code level, sounds pretty fascinating. It would be interesting to throw states/materials/effects together in a mixer and see what the code produces. (Other than crashes.) Like...what ARE the dynamics on a fiery liquid with poison properties, when it hits an area of zero gravity that also happens to speed up time? What happens when most of that happens simultaneously?

It'd be awesome if the game could generate something rational yet totally random out of those kinds of chaotic combinations. Like, I dunno, on a weird fluke a new Mega-beast/Demigod is born from the conjoining of several powerful magics. And it's born in the heart of your fortress. Hungry.   

[Soulbourne]

I can picture artifacts working rather well too.  Forging advanced spells requiring rituals to forge or spellsbooks.

And fell moods would likely be bad.  A spellbook would likely be nice, since it'd likely have some powerful mojo from the dead dwarf that would be channeled into any spell cast from it...or an item that summons the dead spirit of the thing to attack his foes...but, I mainly see fell moods producing summonings.  Summonings that require the flesh and blood of a living dwarf to cast a ritual to make a pact with.  And if this dwarf ever goes beserk, you may find a greater demon in your midst >.>

But, it's all in good fun.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, and also souls, which I guess our dwarfs are getting...
I could see something like a "fey mood" event, or events, determining a given dwarf's magical potential. Whatever the souls or spirits that dwarf has contact with, could influence and help determine what magic means for that dwarf...or that dwarf's kids, even.

It's just one more possible layer--and I think this kind of "layering" of what magic is/means holds a key to giving us a magic "system" that can be exciting and different enough, both DF game to DF game, and also compared to all the other crowd of magic systems out there.

I also think it's very important to the DF theme and style, that magic not be entirely safe. There should be some...feeling it out, and hesitancy, with the creation of each new game world, to even get into magic in the first place, some anticipation but also trepidation, and then with each new thing you learn, a maintaining of the excitement, and the risks involved.

Ofcourse, once you've got it, it should be a powerful tool, but I'd like to see a tradeoff between the limited, but well-understood, technology present in the game, and the more fluid but also, potentially, far more catastrophic, magical "technology".

Not everyone's going to necessarily want to mess around with magic in the game, when it gets here, and that's fine, that's good, it's a perfectly reasonable standpoint, and there should be real factors in the game that lend some credence to that stand.

For one thing, the game should run perfectly well, from beginning to end, without (much?) more magic than is present in the current game. You should be able to get a very satisfying result, without ever having to bother fooling around with all that stuff. And if you do choose to go the magic route, that choice should give you from a somewhat different, to a very different, game experience.

That's the kind of thing that directly increases replay value.

[Soulbourne]

personally, I considered all strange moods with spells/spellbooks.  Fell...well, directly evil something or other.

Mysterious would just be being struck by inspiration, something rather nice popping out, but not exactly top end.  Fey would be the top end stuff, as they have a magical connection to fey energies and do something epic.  Possessed...well...that'd be interesting.  You may be possessed by a spirit of a past mage who seeks to help...or some great demon of spirit that wants out

[SirHoneyBadger]

Fell is where you start getting things like The Necronomicon, bound in human skin, Herbert West, Reanimator, magical tattoos, like in Planescape: Torment, and dogs and cats, living together.

The gooeyer forms of necromancy, in other words. 

[praguepride]

I like the OP's suggestion pretty much as is. Sure the actual effects should be tweaked but at this stage, I'd much rather have a dwarf wizard running around doing crazy random stuff rather then not have any magic in the game because people get obsessed about stating and micro-managing everything.

I like wizards described as random FUN. They don't have to be useful. I mean hell, what benefit does the hammerer have? Or even a king? Saying that making a wizard not helpful means he shouldn't be in the game because people will magma pipe him is a terrible arguement.

There are two kinds of people who play this. Those for fun and those for FUN. The "fun" ones will magma pipe any and all nobles as quickly as possible because of the pain they cause. They demand stuff, they issue mandates and forbid random stuff, the hammerer kills/eats people. They lock them in a room and are done with it. Wizards would be just another noble to them, except perhaps they can teleport away from danger?

Wouldn't that be a b****, you have a wizard who loves to set fire to your booze stocks and you can't kill him because the b****** keeps teleporting out of danger.

Anyway, the wizard in the OP could be randomly useful as well. He just made it rain indoors? Great, you have an impromptu tower-cap farm.

He created a golem? Awesome watch as it rampages through the goblin invaders.

He turned your plants into hostile planet-men? More experience for my Axdwarf Squad.

He set fire to your base? F***...oh well.


edit: read up on the whole thread, lotta different ideas being thrown out.

Organic Spells: Dwarf encounters a problem. Dwarf casts a spell. Problem solved.

For example. Urist McWizard wants to cross a river but there's no bridge. Urist McDwarf casts a spell to create a bridge. Urist McWizard accidentally vaporizes the river. Urist McWizard crosses the now bone dry riverbed.

That would be an awesome ideal to strive for, but dwarves are very simple creatures. The game can't say "this is a problem." The game won't try and pathfind a dwarf across impassible terrain so at best the only things that could come up as problems are the error announcements:

-Interrupted by creature
-Object missing
-Too injured
-Dangerous terrain (why isn't fire considered dangerous terrain? /shrug).

So you're only looking at 4 "problems" and while it might still be interesting, it'd also be very limiting and old. For the short term, just having him randomly do stuff is fine. The OP had a lot of great ideas for stuff ranging from horribly FUN to harmless mischief to very useful.

In the longer term though, having wizards identify problems and try to fix it would be awesome. On a back end you'd have a list of problems, solutions, and outcomes:

Problem: Not enough booze.
Solutions: Create booze, improve crop production.
Outcomes: Create booze - clones existing booze, summons booze out of air, turns something else into booze.
Crop Production - increase harvest size, turn something into plump helmets, create seeds, turn something into seeds, create a farm plot.

The actual result (positive or negative) would be solely up to the player's opinion. Let's say wizard decides to solve your booze problem by turning stone into seeds. Player A, who's seeds were all accidentally used up in cooking and is desperately trying to keep things together until a merchant comes along would think this guy is a godsend and praise him on the forums. Player B, though, who's fortress is low on booze because almost everyone was slaughtered by a rampaging megabeast might find that a little less helpful. Finally, player C might think the wizard is a demon for transforming his valauble obsidian/bauxite/iron ore into seeds.

I don't think there should ever be a hard coded: "Good result/Bad Result" It should all be situational. Sure doubling your crop output might generally be seen as good, then again that draws a bunch of hauling jobs and if you're busy or low on dwarves, coudl mean a lot of rotting crops creating clouds of miasma.

Spells: There should not be pre-built spells. they should be generated and stored on a wizard by wizard basis. The end development ideal would mean that a wizard could name his spell and teach it to other wizards for solving problems. So building on the above system, Urist McWizard discovers the spell "Evaporate Water." He bumps into Urist McImaWizardToo. McWizard teaches the evaporate wate spell and so when McIma runs into a "crossing the river" problem, instead of coming up with a new way, she just evaporates the river.

This has an interesting effect of spell migration. So if one powerful wizard comes up with a dangerous way to cross a river (like shooting fireballs at it until it evaporates) then suddenly magic becomes dangerous as wizards use fireballs to solve everything. Compare that to a world where wizards instead tend to just summon stones to create a bridge, or better yet, summon an actual bridge. Then magic becomes peaceful and reliable, a tool to be used.

Plus you get the fun-factor of randomly generated names. So you'd have "Urist McWizard's Mighty River Draining Explosion"

As a player, you wouldn't be able to tell what a spell does until you see it in use (and even then you might not know exactly what it does, just what the aftermath is." but you can get a guess at it by the name. So descriptors like "fiery" would clue you in to how dangerous a spell might be, even if it's "Urist McWizard's Spectacular Fiery Table Summoner". Sure it summons tables, but it also sets off a fireball in the process.

Biomes: Definitely should have an impact. Definitely. Be wary of wizards you encounter in scary places.  Perhaps also magic level could be a trait on a map, like vulcanism or savagry. So you could mod the parameters and create a high/low/none magic setting, and wtihin the map itself there would be deviation. So you could find a low- or no-magic zone in an otherwise high-magic setting. Perhaps this would block magical effects completely, so no walking undead or megabeasts, no goblin wizards throwing fireballs, and no magical artifacts  On the flipside, a low- magic setting woudl probably be mostly low- or no-magic zones, but there could be a few places where faries and pixies are everywhere, and seemingly everything is magical.

Randomness: Magic should not be controllable. Period. No setting up magic guilds and training wizards and researching spells based on user input. User shouldn't be able to tell a wizard to do something any mroe then any other noble. They should wander around and be helpful/harmful on their own time. Perhaps at best you could tell your wizard to charge into combat, but you better hope he has some kind of combat spell or else he might just start whacking gobbos with his staff (and probably die in the process). ON the flipside, you'd better be careful about sending in a wizard who likes to summon volcanoes to solve bad guy problems.

Now, the downside is what happens when you have a guy who's answer to everything is to cause a huge explosion. Maybe you can tell a wizard not to use certain spells. You can open up his spellbook and disable spells. If you keep him happy, he'll listen to you and not whisper the words that kills every dwarf in a mile radius. But if you piss him off, give him an inferior bedroom or study area, or not listen to him when he demands 15 glass windows then he might just cast a spell out of spite.


Artifacts: I like the idea that wizards are capable of creating more artifacts, but also how about not having a set preference on artifact type. So normally a dwarf goes by their highest skill or does a craft artificat by default. Your wizard, despite being an expert carpenter, gets hit by a mood and creates an artifact weapon instead. Add to that the much higher chance of an artifact created by a wizard being magical and I think there'd be quite a few people willing to let Wizard McBlowsStuffUp live in case he creates the DF version of a chainsaw (i.e. adamantine artifact axe).

Frequency: 1 wizard per fort. They should be treated like a noble that gets triggered when certain factors occur. These factors should be at least partially controllable by the player, so maybe something like:

50+ dwarves + 5+ artifacts  + low-level of magic or better in region + have an unnassigned royal quality level study.

So if you really don't want wizards, just don't build top quality study and leave it unassigned. This is just a thought on the PROCESS, not the actual system. Don't really care if you think there should be more/less dwarves or more/less artifacts etc.

[nenjin]

Wizards as scientists....that would be sweet. A problem/solution framework isn't hard to conjure up, and there are many, many places where error and chance can be inserted into the process.

For example, a "threat" is a problem. Solutions are understood as removing the creature from the map, adding it to the deceased list, or maybe something else..like immobilizing it.

Of course because creatures have different attributes, one solution (making it explode, lighting it on fire, freezing it solid) won't fit all, and each attempt to solve a problem would require different experimentation.

[hiho216]

I think wizards should be similar to nobles in many ways, but much more rewarding, FUN, rare, and difficult to maintain.  There should be no more than a handful of wizards in a civilization at a time, if there are any at all and their numbers should not be static (if a wizard dies it should not be immediately replaced, if all wizards die they should have the potential to resurface.)  Not all fortresses should qualify for a wizard, at least not without significant work or luck.  They should come and go based on character specific conditions.  For instance, a wizard who likes Orthoclase and hoary marmots for their whistles might be particularly attracted to your fortress if you have a site that includes both.  A wizard who has killed many elves might come if you've pissed off an elven civilization.  A wizard who likes helping people might come to a fortress that is unhappy.  The possibilities are basically endless.

Once they arrive they should make mandates, similar to nobles.  However, these should not be 'make x objects' or 'ban exports of object', they should be something pertaining to magical research.  A wizard might want a caged animal in his laboratory to experiment on, or better yet a caged goblin or dwarf.  A wizard working on enchantments might want an object of x value, or of a certain type.  A wizard that wants to summon a whale might ask for a pond of a certain size to be dug out.  If these mandates are not met, then after a while the wizard will just move on to a place where his mandates might be met. 

Another way this could work is to have it work like making artifacts.  A wizard might demand a caged creature, some valuable gems, and some bones.  Once he finishes his research (think dwarf constructing artifact) he casts his spell which turns the caged creature into the creature that the bones once were.

To keep the wizard balanced it would do things that it wants to do, not what you want it to do.  It should never be able to destroy a fortress (though it might cause it damage if in a particularly bad mood) and it should never give you an advantage that you have not earned.  The results of any spell could be good like turning a bar of steel into adamantine, bad like throwing a fireball accidentally inside your fortress (though the wizard should be able to extinguish this somehow), or neither like bringing the corpse of a dead raccoon back to life.  In any of these circumstances the player should not be given much indication to the end result.

If the player would rather not have magic at all, perhaps it could be switched off in the init file, just like economy and temperature.

And those are my two cents.

[praguepride]

The results of any spell could be good like turning a bar of steel into adamantine, bad like throwing a fireball accidentally inside your fortress (though the wizard should be able to extinguish this somehow), or neither like bringing the corpse of a dead raccoon back to life.  In any of these circumstances the player should not be given much indication to the end result.

I'd really object to just flat classifying a spells as "good" or "bad" as I feel that's not the point of DF. Good and bad are just subjective. Sometimes your dwarves are good, helping rid the landscape of evil critters, sometimes your dwarvese ARE the bad guys, slaughtering humans/elves/dwarves by the 100's.

Like I posted above, I think that whether a spell is good or bad should depend on the player and the game. I don't think there shoudl be any universally good spells (like converting steel into adamantine) nor universal bad spells (throwing fireballs at friendlies).

Instead, it should depend on context. So perhaps instead of converting steel into admantine all day long, he converts other martials into iron. Great if you have surplus of copper or nickle. Not so much if he's converting platinum, gold, or even already polished steel back into iron again.

It has it's plusses and minusses inherent to it. Perhaps his mood will effect things, but I think it'd be fun and FUN to try and prevent your crazy wizard from entering your steel stockpile with his crazy "iron touch" but instead trying to redirect him to your buttload of copper stockpile.

As for the fireballs, having him on the ramparts throwing fireballs at invading goblins woudl be great. Having him chuck a fireball at a kobold thief sneaking around your booze stockpiles...not so much.

I think that makes it more random and wonderfully fun, turning the positives into the negatives and the negatives into the positives.

One dwarf's invading army is another dwarf's wandering iron deposit.

[hiho216]

That was what I was trying to convey in my post.  The results should be random, though the random results should range anywhere between those extremes.

[Bishop36]

I think they should be like the wizard from the black sabbath song of the same name. If everything is going wrong in your fortress like: goblins just killed your last marksdwarf and are pouring through your front hall, or you just broke into an extra horrible HFS, maybe you are just on the verge of fort wide starvation.

That's where the wizard comes in, driving off the goblins, epic one on one combat with the head clown, making plump helmets spring from the ground then leaving without a word.

Maybe this goes against the nature of the game, but I make my forts for fun not FUN (with no long-term success thus far).

[SirHoneyBadger]

The reason I don't like magic being (completely and comprehensively) uncontrollable is primarily because DF is in large part a game about not only surviving in a hostile world, but learning through difficult trial and error to impose your will on that world.

Magic--in whatever form--should both enhance, and complement, the rest of the game.

Making magic some incomprehensible, untameable, un-mine-able, variable, rather than a resource, goes against the nature of the game, in my opinion. For variables, we've got volcanos, Nobles, gremlins, and we're getting flying thieves and horribly mutated god-monsters.

That's not to say that magic might not produce such things, and/or their actions, or far more sinister complications...But that really shouldn't come about without some level of input from the player.

Make magic dangerous. By all means, make it difficult to understand and deadly to abuse, chaotic and sinister and fey.

But don't turn it into some Deux Ex Machina to undo us all. And please don't build random havoc onto something that's already too often a chore (Nobles). We honestly don't need Mayors throwing fireballs, turning our Hammerers into ironmen and our Legendary Armourers into frogs.