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[NW_Kohaku]

OK, apologies to the Footkerchiefs out there who prefer we keep things neat and organized, but I feel this rant is long enough and different enough to warrant a seperate thread.

I'm going to link to the threads most relevant to my having written this in the first place:

Captain Failmore's rant
Suggestions for Dwarven Wizards

Introduction
Or "Hey guys, like my fanfic?"

The monsterous humanoids crouched in the alcoves of the ruined fortress.  The scouts had spotted a lone figure - another foolish adventurer - trudging towards the abandoned halls of the dwarves.  Adventurers often came this way, the vaults were still heaped with gold and gems and coins and masterwork armor and weapons.  Adventurers often believed they would be the first to figure out the combination to the locks and pressure plates on the vault that would give them access to its riches, rather than a swift magma bath, and a reset of the mechanism.  Adventurers often wound up the meal of creatures like these.

The loudening series of clanks of metal slamming into smoothed stone rang throughout the empty halls of a once proud bastion of dwarves, announcing the arrival of a very well-armored adventurer... Of course, this was of little concern to the demonic creatures, as no adventurer would even have survived the trip here alone were it not for such protections.  Plate mail came into view, then the shield, behind which a very oddly small blade, as well as a closed helmet.  Stature told the monsters it was a dwarf, but all they could see was a solid shell of masterfully worked steel.

"No bow! Fire away! Fire away!" the little monsterous men sent arrow and bolt down upon the adventurer, who showed the usual surprise, but a more practiced response of placing his shield before him, and crouching behind it, deflecting many of the attacks against him.

The monsterous men cackled with glee - this had been a dwarven trap - raining bolts upon attackers from behind protection along the only enterance, and it now served to ensure few dwarves could reclaim their former home.  He may deflect the first few volleys, but running the gauntlet that would be required to reach the protected defensive positions would surely allow for, if nothing else, raw luck to let an arrow find its way past the dwarf's defenses.

The dwarf, however, muttered something, and hefted something in his non-shield bearing hand.  Suddenly, the right half of the fortifications flooded with a noxious green smoke, and the monsterous humanoids began to hack and caugh, tears welled up in their eyes, and their last meal seemed eager to come up and greet them once again.

"*caugh caugh* A WIZARD?  Out! Out! Rush him!" 

And so, the systematic defense, relying upon the notion that one could shoot out, but not in, was abandoned, and the monsters saught to rush him at the first open point, which would allow the creatures to rush the dwarf in numbers all at once. 

When the dwarf came, however, he kept back, always ensuring that he had either a wall, his shield, or a dead enemy between himself and another enemy, his shield flicking back and forth with superdwarven speed, the runes on his shield flickering on and off.  Still, the monsters could sometimes note with some encouragement, the shield seemed to dull and grow heavy, more often and for slightly longer periods of time.  Was the dwarf tiring?

This, however, was not their only concern.  The dwarf's oddly-shaped dagger, a strange, two-pronged affair, with a bizzare sapphire-like object near its hilt, that the dwarf kept discarding and replacing with a practiced flick of his thumb to a pouch at his hip was devastating the creatures' numbers.  Though the dwarf's nimble thrusts would do enough damage on their own - a quick jab at the spleen forced a creature to double over in pain, and the opening it provided left its throat exposed to a swift stab - but rather, that each cut produced a deafening thunderclap as the victim of even minor scratches would suddenly be rocked by what appeared to be a bolt of lightning suddenly originating from and ending in their own body.

Soon, the remaining creatures were throwing each other onto the blade of that dwarf, a brief distraction that would allow them to run past the dwarf, and abandon the ruins and their former allies alike in a desperate bid for survival.

They looked over their shoulder, and thanked all the demons in the bowels of Hell for their luck that the dwarf did not follow them.

----

Urist, having finally seen what he hoped was the last of them, had no energy but to fall flat on his back, lift up the visor to his helmet, and pant uncontrollably for breath.

He had been lucky, the whatever-they-were-men had charged him after he had only used a single noxious cloud.  That had been his last, which unfortunately meant he would again have to hunt down another Giant Desert Scorpion for its poison gland if he ever hoped to cast that spell again, and its ability to bleed through fortifications ensured he would.  He had also gone through at least two dozen of his rune charges for his blade and shield, although he was fortunately carrying enough of those to last him a while... those were sold at virtually any respectable outpost, after all. 

Finally catching his breath, he looked down upon the creatures.  Pulling out his wizarding toolkit, his mailed fingers traced down the pouches until he found the familiar shape of his trusty eye-spoon, and began plucking out the glowing eyes of the slain creatures.  Probably, these would be more valuable in his line of work than the treasures that supposedly awaited in this so-called vault.  Gold could be found anywhere, but he had heard research on the spells these eyes enabled would allow for magma-filled chasms to spring open at a whim.  Preposterousness if he ever heard it, but surely, there would be something valuable that he could learn about it.

Yeah, yeah "don't quit your day job", I know, but I just wanted to give an idea of how magic could also work, rather than your standard... well, open a linux book from astride a meatshield's shoulders.

I want to first go over what I don't want.  I don't want us doing something just because it's the way it's always been done.  Dwarf Fortress is loved for the things that it does that other fantasy games or stories don't do.  It is, however, also chained in many ways to the legacy of Tolkien, which has been quite thoroughly explored, to the point where one of the favorite pasttimes of DF players is lampooning the notion of Tolkienian elves.  To that end, I've already started ideas on ways to try to change the narrative of a Human + Elf + Dwarf + Demon-led Horde fantasy world, but magic, since we already have it, if in a fairly limited way, is another means of trying to explore new territory.

I don't want, nor have ever really liked, the notion that wizards are virtual Gods sitting in judgement over the world from atop crystal towers.  I don't want wizards as megabeasts.  In fact, unless they are exceptionally trained, exceptionally prepared wizards, they shouldn't be all THAT more dangerous than a normal dwarf.  And when we talk about champions, we already have dwarves taking down whole armies while equipped with nothing but a backpack, so yeah.

To that end, I'd like to explore the different ways magic has been handled in the past in different games, novels, and myths.

I also, naturally, have my own two cents on the way that magic could be implimented.



On Tradition
Or "Yes, I know I just said that we souldn't just copy other people, but... Umm... SHUT UP!"

First and foremost, we have the looming shadow of D&D. 

This is, after all, what Captain Failmore seemed to be most concerned with.  Of course, I have some disagreements with the way that classes were created.  Yeah, wizards were made to be awesome, and so were thieves and rangers, but warriors are the way they are (or were, pre-4th ed) because there were people who demanded that they play that way, even when it meant allowing them to become weaker than other classes. 

This is also something I think we should avoid at all costs - a notion that magic MUST be more powerful than... non-magic.  Or that we have to divide everything into "uses magic, can blow up mountains" or else "completely no magic at all".

Failmore goes on to talk about how we should have a limited number of dwarves who can even start using magic, because naturally, if magic is going to be overpowered (I mean, it's magic it HAS to be overpowered, right?), then it should be limited in access.  I'll get into this in a little bit, though.

D&D also was the torch-bearer of that sadly much-maligned form of magic, Vancian Magic.  This meant in the game that a wizard COULD do pretty much whatever he wanted... provided he planned it out beforehand.  A wizard was more powerful than a fighter in a fight where both were fighting under ideal conditions, but a fighter did, at least, have the advantage of never having to worry about running out of ammo on a sword, or not selecting the right spells for the problem at hand, or needing memorization time.

Another fantasy standard of D&D's was the notion of the meat shield - wizards get powerful magics, but are squishy wizards, and need those big damage sinks to stand in front of them.  It should be noted that this was actually part of a purposeful design strategy - every character was supposed to have a role they played in the party, and the party was supposed to be mutually dependant, which meant that they all had weaknesses that others would have to cover for.  This system was built because of the express purpose to force players to work together for mutual survival in the format of the game that they were playing, not because of any hard-coded aspect of wizards or fighters in myth or legend.  There is no reason we have to respect this tradition when we are working on a game in another format.


JRPGs, MMOs, and the Nuker.

JRPGs came along, and sort-of-copied D&D, but did not feel such a need to restrict their fantasies to the shadow of Tolkien as western RPG makers did.  Thanks in part to this, you get Fighters with insane physical attacks or limit breaks that let non-magical fighters rain meteors on people, and can, in some ways, just make the difference between a physical and magical fighter just what defense stat the enemy has to use.  With damage caps, wizards even become fairly useless, for if a regular attack deals 9999 damage, why bother spending MP?

Magic in these games were basically nothing but Direct Damage.  Yeah, sure, there were some token spells that would inflict status affects, but we all know never to use those.  So it's just another flavor of damage, without the wonderful odd utility spells that D&D provides.

MMOs came along afterward, and they wound up picking up the JRPG style of gaming, as well.  In the brutal crucible of PVP, the idea that fighters should only be able to use strength of arms alone, fighting like Conan the Barbarian against super-powered ninjas who could kill with a thought or mountain-leveling wizards was finally put to rest when people realized that winning was more important than keeping their might and their magic seperate.  Still, for the most part, MMOs had nukers, which did that direct damage stuff, often to the point where they were more capable of dealing damage, but less capable of taking it, leading to the same hiding behind meatshields that people demanded, or else kiting.  They did, however, at least seperate out heal bats from buffers.  Now there were people whose job it was to make everyone stop bleeding, as well as a person who just made everyone else do what they were doing a little better (A D&D wizard job, but not a JRPG wizard job.)

I think games like Guild Wars deserve special mention, however.  The Mesmer is something of a personal favorite magic-using class, as it changes the name of the game of a magic user.  A Mesmer isn't just some character that inflicts massive amounts of damage, they are there to alter the way that other people can play the game.  They are damage deniers.  They can curse a warrior so that his axe swings deal damage to himself as well as his enemies, so that he has to either find a way to remove the curse, wait the curse out, or inflict massive amounts of damage upon himself.  He can similarly curse magic-users to prevent them from casting spells.  He can then cover effects so that removing the first curse he placed would require triggering another, even worse effect.  They don't dominate the battlefield, they just prevent other people from dominating the battlefield.


Now, I want to talk about different ideas that I think bring something to the table, even if they are not quite the same sort of notion that most people have about wizards...

I would first like to reccomend that people who are JRPG enthusiests at least look up the works of Gust, such as the Atelier Iris or Mana Khemia series.  Atelier Iris is a game focused upon "alchemy", which for all intents and purposes replaces magic.  In the first game, your main character is a staff-weilder who has no actual magic (aside from having a magic-type basic attack), but is instead able to create magic items with his alchemy.  He must go out and collect ingredients laying around town, buy them from shops, loot them off enemies, but mostly, make a run into a dungeon, dig up some herbs, pick fruits, mine an ore, and then run back out (and back in again if he still needs more).  He can then use his alchemy to turn them into his weapons, armor, healing items, one-use attack spells, or various other things.  In the first two Atelier Iris games, he also could duplicate existing one-use items by dissolving items into mana, and replicating things like healing potions en masse, making such items "cheap", so as to help encourage your continual use of single-use items.  This also leads you to play by basically ramsacking the land for every spare item you can get your grubby mitts on, turning them all into fuel for your item-lust. The later games like Mana Khemia also feature perhaps the most complex and involved crafting systems I've ever seen or greatly enjoyed, (as you need to make basic items to be ingredients for intermediate items to be ingredients for advanced items to be ingredients for legendary equipment, until you're needing something like 160 units of Legien Steel PER ALCHEMY SESSION, even though you can only carry 99 of them at a time) but that's beside the point.

Another example of magic use is what I'll call an "Elder Scrolls" system.  Games like these focus on a single character who can learn virtually every skill in the game without any kind of restriction, including magic, which results in very few players ever deciding to be "pure fighters" or "pure wizards", instead winding up with, well, platemailed, sword-weilding warriors with a few specialties in magic plus some stealth abilities who are guild masters of the fighter's guild as well as archmages and the guild leader of the thieves' guild.  Frankly, given what we have for a system in DF, this is the way that I expect most adventurers winding up, either cherry-picking their favorite abilities from among the list without regards to "tradition", or else going the Morul route, and maxing out every skill they can train and killing every living creature in the world.

Another tradition, which may perhaps not be much of a tradition, are the White Wolf "Mage" games, which ultimately may look a little like the "Elder Scrolls Method", but essentially involve a very unreliable type of magic, as well as a good reason to keep it hidden.  Spells are rarely matters of simply blowing things up, but rather ways of secretively having your way, while you rely upon your other talents to generally have your way.

You'll notice I'm not touching very much on books, here.  That's because fantasy books don't need rules or need balance.  Magic can be whatever they need it to be whenever they need to be it.  They use magic to serve the plot.  We use magic to serve a role in game balance, and allow alternate options to problems, so that every problem does not always have the same solution (although magma DOES still solve plenty of problems).

Magic in any of these, however, ultimately serves the purpose of the role that they want it to fill first, then its reasoning is backfilled afterwards.  For example, we have Adamantium, which is pretty much literal unobtanium with no real backstory (other than Tolkien did it), and has been a frustration for people demanding "realism" in their game about dwarves and elves with generally amusing consequences when they try to rationalize it.

So then, I would like to start the conversation off talking about what role, exactly, magic is to play in a fortress life, or in an adventurer's life.  I'd also ask that people who chime in talking about how they want magic to work in the DF world (or if it works at all,) to recognize that we aren't necessarily trying to live up to some book's or past game's standard.


NW_Kohaku cancels continue post: Interrupted by "Damnit, NW_Kohaku, stop making 50,000 character posts!"

[NW_Kohaku]

Planning Magic
Or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Jack Vance"

I've seen plenty of posts about why we shouldn't exclude Adventure mode from this, and a possible "wizard tower" mode, so I'll try to keep this all in mind when talking about the way the game will work, but in general, my idea is thus:

Magic in the universe of DF should behave in a manner that makes sense, compared to the way that the rest of DF works.  How does the rest of DF work?  Well, you start off with raw materials, maybe something you plant, maybe something you mine, maybe something you chop down over the cries of hippies, maybe something you took off the corpse of hippies that got too annoying, anyway, you start out with something useless, ram it through a workshop, maybe ram whatever comes out of that through another workshop, and ultimately wind up with something that has plenty of value.

More importantly, how does DF play?  Well, in Fortress mode, you don't really control much directly.  You set things up.  If you set things up well, it all works properly, and nothing Fun happens.  If you screwed up, like, say, carving out a diagonal on a well, then enjoy completely ruining your entire fortress and killing all your dwarves, because there's pretty much nothing you can do once the stuff has hit the fan. 

So then, what is that core essence of DF that makes it... DF-ey?  Well, I think the best way to describe it is "Engineering".  DF is different because it revolves around pre-planning, careful construction, attention to details, and can generally explode in a horrible ball of Fun if you didn't test out every possible consequence beforehand.  It is a complex system of interdependent parts.

And magic for a game like this should reflect that.  You shouldn't get the sort of "Oh God! My fortress is flooding with magma thanks to a random bad die roll!" that nenjin was talking about.  Magic, if and when it has negative effects, should have consequences which can be forseen and prepared for... even if that consists of making all magic take place in a "wizard's tower" on a set of supports hooked up to a lever that is labeled, "What happens in the Wizard's Tower STAYS in the Wizard's tower, OR ELSE!"


Magic should instead not be just another weapon, but rather a tool in your inventory, like drawbridges or floodgates.  Look at the myths of dwarves - they may not be wizards, but they crafted magic items all the time, such as the norse gods' sun-boat, which was made of solid gold, massively huge and flew in the skies, but could fit in someone's back pocket if you folded it up just right.  That is not simply magic spellcraft, that is magic engineering.  And engineering requires not just knowledge that you can get the same effects time after time, but also that you can base other, contingent effects upon those initial effects, the way that we currently make dwarfputers based upon water and pressure plates.

Now then, what about those other creatures?  Surely they aren't going to be engineers!  No, no they aren't.  Still, we really do NEED magic-using enemies in this game.  Just look at what we currently have in the game, and how we basically need to make superpowered orcs just to challenge a dwarf.  Most giant creatures have no real stat that makes them different from a creature of a similar size.  A horse is about as dangerous as a bear.  That's why we need to make a magic system that would at least let monsters be a little less predictable and more Fun. 

This creates a somewhat paradoxical requirement that magic be predictable, but at the same time, unpredictable.  I do have a solution for this, however...



The Color Of Magic
Or "What do you mean someone already used that title?"

Much of the problem with dwarven wizards, people will keep telling you, is that dwarves aren't meant to be magical.  In fact, they often get Steampunk'd (TM) in games like Arcanum, while elves are staunch defenders of the mystical arts. 

I kind of agree.  I don't want dwarves waggling their fingers, adn making magic come out.  Magic should come from magical creatures.  But how do we do that?  Get an elf to cast our magic for us?  Well, kind-of.  We just need to find an elf's magic, and make it power the spells for our dwarves!

I would suggest there be three kinds of magic:

Innate Magic: This is the magic of monsters and creatures like elves.  They are capable of casting spells from a certain, racial pre-selected list of spells they can use.  This means a dragon can use a "breathe fire" magical ability, a gorgon could have a "petrification gaze" magical ability, and elves could have a "sing koombaiyah" "heal nature" magical ability.

Such magic would have a cost that would prevent its continual use, such as causing exhaustion or hunger or thirst, using just metrics we already have.  We might just be having an "innate mana" stat, anyway, so it would use that, instead, although I do like the Failmore suggestion of making magic exhausting.

Prepared Magic: The Vancian magic!  These are spells that are "constructed" ahead of time.  You have to use an alchemist/wizard/runicist to produce this kind of magic ahead of time.  This also applies to enchanting your weapons.  Magic is built out of physical materials, and it is powered by a transferable, interchangeable power source.  Many single-shot spells are not entirely unlike a healing potion or a frag grenade - you have to prepare them ahead of time, and they require reconstruction as soon as they are consumed.  This is not to say that they are exactly the same, however, as a spell, once prepared, still takes skill to use (properly).  This type of magic would be the most suited for adventurers, or if you wanted to make your soldiers magically-amplified.  Soldiers would need to recharge their magical equipment with use, and combat wizards would need to either take time off to prepare their own spells, or rely upon alchemists in the safety of the fort preparing the reagents of their magic for those wizards on the front lines.

Pool Magic: This is the “mechanical magic”, the kind of magic that goes into building a true “Wizard’s Tower”, or into making magically-powered machinery, like a boat of the Gods, or into making golem or undead armies, or other lasting effects that require constant power sources.  This kind of magic is set up beforehand, and once set up, can be automated to some extent, by a careful designer, allowing dwarves to create truly magnificent feats of engineering.



Energy Sources
Or "What to get for the Blood God who has everything."

In order to power your magic, you can use that innate stuff, but I’m just going to assume that’s mostly for the monsters or elves.  If you want to cast spells that aren’t innate to your race, you need to have reagents constructed into spells, and a power source for the magic.

Here are some suggestions for magic sources.

1.  Mine it – Raw lyrium powder materia vespene gas kryptonite magic rocks (native Phlebotonium), mined from the deeps.  Oh come on, do I need to spell this one out for you?  Dig rock, use as fuel.  It’s coal for magic.

2. Grow it – Make some plants, preferably with a more complicated system for agriculture, so that these plants are more difficult to farm than normal crops, that can be used as raw magic fuel.

3.  Extract it – Hey, if those other creatures are so much better at magic then dwarves, then just take the magic right out of them!  If you want a fire spell, extract it from a fire imp!  Toss your excess kittens into the pits to fuel your arcane defenses!  Make it a shrine to Armok if you really want, and drop your prisoners into the mana pool from 10 z levels above, splattering their juicy magic fuel all over the magical repository. 

These pools are basically the “batteries” of your magical energy for the magic your continuing magical effects require.  It is worth noting that I am talking about two separate things when I talk about “mana” and a spell component.  One is just an interchangeable fuel energy, while components are specific requirements of casting a particular spell.  Mana can be extracted from all these sources, but a given spell might require a suitable creature’s components, or a rare type of magic ore or high-end materials (such as, say, clear glass) in fair sized quantity. 

This should, incidentally, be the limitation on spellcasting and wizards – while maybe or maybe not anyone could perform magic, the material costs of magic would prevent anything more than a small percentage of dwarves from undergoing the training to become useful magic-users.  After all, why train multiple carpenters on a woodless map?



Methods of Casting
Or "Laser is not difficult"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Innate casters should keep on working fairly similarly to the way that they work right now, with the special attacks that they have, but with an limit to the amount of energy they can exert.

Adventurers should have a supply of prepared spells, which can be used to cast their spells.  Adventurers should probably be capable of preparing their own spell components, and possibly making it have enough mana from an energy source to be used once, making it a single-shot item with no strain on the user, like a healing potion, or else simply a key component in casting a spell that also takes energy out of the caster.  To supplement this energy, however, adventurers might have mana-replinishing potions. There should be logical limits to the number of spells that can be prepared or cast.  Adventurers should also have access to limited-use magical equipment, such as axes that, when charged, burn their opponents as well as inflict regular damage.  These charges require replacement, so that they are effectively ammo-dependant.

Fortresses, however, will likely be more complex.  First, single-use spells, or charges for spells are going to require a “Wizard’s Lab” type of workshop.  This is where their spell components are prepared, and the rituals performed to make raw materials and energy ready for use in magic.  This creates those single-use spells, as well as the charges on magic equipment. 

If you want a mage to cast spells at their enemy, you’d need one of two things:  One, you could have a mage in the military.  These guys would carry around the prepared spells like a marksdwarf would, and would fling spells upon their enemies.  I’m actually not all that fond of this, however, nor would I expect there to be a terribly large number of other players who would.  It would, however, be effectively the way that adventurers would do it, and it would just be, you know, without direct control from you, except as to which spells you allow them to carry.  Two, you could have a “majicking cube” (What do you mean it looks like a circle! It’s a cube! Don’t bother me with your three-dimensional thinking!) which would behave somewhat like a siege engine.  Wizards would sit in their circle, which is hopefully back a ways from the danger, but still with line of sight to their target, a handful of prepared spells, a link to their mana pool, and, as a team, launch prepared spells at designated targets.  This is the boring, military magic, however.

More to the point of being actually USEFUL in a fortress, however, spells could be prepared, and then “constructed” somewhere in a fortress.  This would require access to a mana pool, which would need to be replenished, as active spells would continually drain from your mana pool.  This means you prepare a continuing-use spell in a wizarding workshop,  (maybe different workshops for different kinds of magic?) then construct it like furniture is, where it must be linked to a power source, like pumps must be powered.  This means your magic-using dwarves will likely be running around, setting up their spells like a mechanic sets up mechanisms.

Coming up in the next exciting episode of NW_Kohaku posts: Spell schools and suggestions for magic spells.

[NW_Kohaku]

The School of Primalism
Or "I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that make the peoples fall down!"

Fireballs from your eyes and lightning out of your a** sort of thing.  In other words, BORING magic.  Stuff for monsters who are too stupid to know better, but who are suddenly much more dangerous with the ability to actually perform unusual ranged attacks on your adventurers or dwarves.



The School of Relativism
Or "Now you're thinking with Portals!"

Magic dealing with space and time.  Sorry, the secrets of time travel have generally been considered lost since the non-time the last wizard accidentally un-birthed himself by drinking the mead his great-great-grandfather would have to have drunk to consider sleeping with his great-great-grandmother... or I think that was the last one?  Maybe that was the third-to-last if you consider the cross-chronological causality of Caldwell? It all gets very confusing, really.

Anyway, these all relate to making lasting effects that can have odd or even game-breaking effects if used creatively enough... and likely an awful lot of Fun. 

Because they are lasting effects, they would require constant upkeep.

Gates - These create two-way portals, whose possible uses are, naturally, almost limitless.  I think the best way to handle a gate is to make it face a given direction on construction.  Objects entering the tile the gate is built upon will link up with the other gate, and come out of that gate, being projected into the tile that the destination gate faces.  You can, for example, set dumping of objects from one section of the map, like stone, to fall out of a gate in your stone stockpile.  Alternately, you can make food be ferried to your soldiers on the parapets faster by linking up a gate between your defenders and your kitchens and food warehouses.

The Hole of Somebody Else's Problem - Our latest invention!  You see, you can take the hole around wherever you want, and when you stuff something in it, it comes out somewhere else?  Where?  That's the best part! You don't have to care, it's someone else's problem!  No, of course we don't know where it goes, you see, as an added safety feature, this portal is only one-way!  Stuff goes in, but nothing can ever come out!

This sends items "somewhere" off-map.  Effectively, it can work like dropping things into a bottomless pit, deleting it from the list of things in your fortress, although maybe for added Fun, it can actually still save these objects in a list of things that have been "misplaced", that can appear later, randomly, like in pits of HFS, or out of random backfiring spells. 

The Hole of Problems - Created by a wizard who was asked to find more ore once the mines were starting to run dry in an ancient kingdom, this is perhaps the exact reverse of The Hole of Somebody Else’s Problems – things just keep appearing out of it!  This can be a random little Fun factory for those who really feel the need to challenge themselves – turning one on can let one find rare metals, random junk tossed in a Hole of Someone Else’s Problem, or outright turning into a little clown car for all the clowns to pop out!  Maybe eldritch horrors never before encountered will appear!  Who knows!  It’s fun in a handy travel size!

Haste/Slow – Yeah, yeah, this stuff too.  Good for magic circle type stuff, slow the invading hordes.



The School of Enchantment
Or "BAH! Forget all this MAGIC nonsense, all we need to do is trust in our good ol’ reliable flaming magical warhammers, men!"

Basically, as enchantments seem like they are potentially going to be part of artifacts, or even masterwork equipment, I thought that making it an actual skill would be a good idea.  This school lets you put those enchantments upon high-quality equipment. 

Potentially, enchantments could have quality levels, as well, making enchanting have the same quality multiplier on its effects (if applicable) as the weapon itself.

Enchantment should take something really special to add into a weapon, however.  A good enchantment might take something like 15 different component objects that get subsumed by the spell, added in as a sort of “decoration” of the weapon.  Potentially, enchantments might even take lesser enchantments as component parts, making higher-level enchantments become exorbitantly expensive.

Remember that these also take magical charges, which would have to also be crafted by the enchanters, although they should potentially be fairly cheap materials, or at least, the sort of thing that shouldn’t be too terribly difficult to churn out en masse.  These charges may also make a good training material for your enchanters, the same way that smoothing stone is training for making engravings.




The School of Pacts
Or "Hello, helpdesk?  What's the password to open the door to my tower, again?"

Pacts are special magical bonds wizards can form between the state of a magical sensor, and a trigger that enables other spells.

OK, maybe making this an entire school might be overkill, but the principle aim of this would be to make logical triggers for other effects.  Basically, this is the pressure plate of magic.  Spell triggers can be set up to turn other spells (like portals) on or off.  They can be used to toggle modes on golems.  Truly industrious wizards will likely use them like pressure plates to create "Magiputers".  For example, timing seasonal changes in golem behavior could be based upon using "carp clocks" based upon carps falling to the bottom of a series of retracting bridges, triggering a single step on the next phase of the carp clock while portalling the carp (and its water) back up to the top of the stack, so that the process can continue at regular intervals.

Hopefully, these magical triggering conditions could be more complex than the current "is something on top of it" that pressure plates provide, but then again, with proper logic gates created out of magical triggers, one could theoretically do quite a bit with just the things we have now...

Speaking of complex systems, however, I would actually like something along the line of a "runic circuit board".  As mechanical systems in the current game work, every switch (which operates by magical telekinetic powers anyway) would require an unsightly space within your fortress for the water and pumps and pressure plates and gear assemblies it takes to make simple things like repeaters or basic logic operations.  A runic board might be able to contain some (still fairly simple) basic logical operations, such as a few AND operations or a NOT or a basic repeater that would trigger other effects.

Or, you know, it could just be linked to make a fireball fly out if someone steps on the wrong tile.

Actually, you know what, I would have made this a seperate skill, but why seperate it out?  There will also need to be a form of "runic power line" that fuels lingering constructed magic effects, like portals.  These would work in a manner similar in effect to axles currently - they transfer power from a mana pool into a magical effect, sustaining their effects.  This basically involves tracing a layline or a runeline or some other term you want to apply to it over a floor, a beam over empty space, or through a wall. (A wall can be engraved with runes/ have a layline pass through it, so that power can be transferred through solid walls, without the pump trick.)

Potentially, one could also lay such spell triggers on oneself if you were an adventurer, and be able to make effects take place automatically upon reaching certain triggering conditions, such as dropping a healing spell if you take serious damage.


The School of Animism / Necormancy
Or "What, you say that you have problems with the "living doll" I made for you?...  But it IS completely life-like!...  What?... Why would you want an animated life-sized clay elf doll to have a workin-- OH ARMOK! YOU SICK FREAK, GET OUT!"

This is a way to create golems and undead.  Animism basically brings life to not-living things.  Or Necromancy brings unlife to dead things.  Essentially the same thing.  Like, say, one is constructed out of clay or iron or something and powered by mana, and another is made of your dead son’s soul attached to this frankenstinian monstrosity that is going to strangle the rest of your family to death.  Enjoy.

Golems might be constructed as pets, as gimmicks, or as war machines (stuff a puppy’s soul in there, and make it a war golem that follows your soldiers around), but I think it would be spectacular if we could get a way of programming a sort of robot into this game through magic.

Golems would have no food or drink needs, but would constantly be running out of energy, requiring recharging on a tile set up to give power to golems.  Because they are so heavy, unless you want to deconstruct powerless golems, you would need to program golems to find their charging stations before they ran out of juice.

Golems might have a special interface that allows for a set number of programmable instructions.  This could have some sort of simple if statements, or the like, but basically, you could tell them to walk to a certain tile, or a certain stockpile or workshop, and then haul the resultant object to a given tile, stockpile, or workshop.  They wouldn’t be capable of crafting, but they could haul, or perhaps set something up for milling on a powered millstone, or just manually operate a pump (using magic energy instead of mechanical energy).  These instructions could be put into rune tablet objects that might be something like a programming script placed on a golem.  That previously stated pact magic could potentially cycle through installed rune tablets, making golems change instruction sets based upon outside inputs, such as magical or mechanical clocks.

Golems are, however, complete idiots, and will stand and get destroyed by attacking forces if they are not programmed to fight back.  In fact, it is only by attaching an aggressive animal’s consciousness to a golem that you can even make a combat-worthy golem at all.

Golems might also be buildable in a “static” form.  These would not be human-shaped golems, but rather just mechanical engines powered by magic.  You could even have a simple magically-powered turbine that powers axles or mechanical objects from mana, or directly magically powered pumps.  (This would take channeling mana directly to the objects from a mana pool,however.)  There could be other potential uses, as well, such as a magical piston that might force objects to move off a ledge when powered.  They might power moving walls, or elevators, or walls that close in from both sides to crush invaders.  Technically, these aren’t true “Golems” but they are powered moving objects that operate on similar principle.

With a complex enough set of golems, it might be possible to really automate quite a bit of a settlement, being perfect for a “Wizard’s Tower”, where everything is automated, including having golems programmed to dump continually bred sacrifices to their deaths for the purposes of recharging the mana pool that sustains their own power.  This would require golems to be smart enough to farm if animals start dying of old age, or requiring food, however.



The School of Transmogrification/Transmutation
Or "I, for one, welcome our new sentient psychic carp-elephant-demon-dragon overlords!"

Alters things.  Become small.  Become Huge.  Become Strong.  Become Tough.  Become a dragon.  Make them become a newt.  (They got better.)  Generally speaking, fun magic. 

This might also be used to alter certain aspects of creatures, potentially creating fantastic new “guard animals” as chimeras from all the most fearsome beasts you can collect!  What could possibly go Fun?!



The School of Illusion
Or "For five hundred dwarfbucks, baby, I'll be whoever you want me to be."

This is a school that I expect would be of more use to the enemies of dwarves than to dwarves themselves.  Basically, this creates interface screws for you when playing your dwarves on fortress mode. 

Possible effects may be randomly giving orders to dwarves within the zone of effect, altering the way that tiles appear, or else generally just having two seperate sets of combat take place - a real one you can't see, and a fake one that you see, but which dissapears after a while.

In the less trippy department, we could have enemies that make mirror images of themselves to confuse your dwarves, or make themselves invisible (which we already have, but could be made a magic effect).

In Adventure mode, this could be used for ambush predators, like, say, a Giant Trapdoor Spider, which makes itself appear to be part of a wall, before suddenly sprining out upon you without warning!

Fortress runners could use this ability to create "reverse traffic" spells.  That is, something that would let your dwarves walk through a "wall" while keeping monsters out.  (What do you mean "door?"  That hasn't been fixed yet?)

This may also be the “Enchantment” school – which would allow illusionist monsters to suddenly berserk your dwarves, or force them into being temporary allies.

This might also be useful (if it were not put in the Transmutation school) to use the sort of "curse" magic that could be useful to make enemies more tricky.  Similar to the sorts of things



The School of Blessings
Or "Wait, you want to REDUCE other creatures' suffering? What are you, an ELF?!"

Obligatory "kiss it make it better" type stuff.  What, are the rusty hacksaws of your dwarven chirugeon too good for you?  BAH! Well, if you want to go the prancingly little elfy way of doing things, you CAN just drink a healing potion, but a REAL DWARF would just walk that missing leg off!

Basically, these make healing potions/spell triggers, or other damage or poison or status-ailment type stuff.  I really would think it would better showcase the upcoming medical system if this was only used by the enemies of the dwarves, or by adventurers, however. 



Magic Resistance
Or "I cast Disintegrate." “I save. I cast Wrath of God.” “I save. I cast Finger of Death.” “I save. I cast…”

Not complex stuff here, but there should probably be a skill for, basically, saving throws, the way there is for dodging physical attacks.

----

OK, I kind of spent all day writing this monstrosity, and I kind of bounced around back and forth as things occurred to me, so I might have actually left off in the middle of a sentence somewhere when I wanted to write down something that occurred to me mid-thought, so tell me if I need to explain something more fully.

[Nivim]

 You seem to have forgotten to factor in the large number of people saying "Let magic be magic!" at varying levels of coherence and eloquence. Magic should not be another industry or science, and although it needs to have a defined system for it to exist, that system should not be usable like any other tool. The sphere system we know will make the base for magic (even if we know little else) supports a set-up vague and mystical to the player. One which supports the story-generator of DF and enriches it...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You'll notice I'm not touching very much on books, here.  That's because fantasy books don't need rules or need balance.  Magic can be whatever they need it to be whenever they need to be it.  They use magic to serve the plot.  We use magic to serve a role in game balance, and allow alternate options to problems, so that every problem does not always have the same solution (although magma DOES still solve plenty of problems).

Magic in any of these, however, ultimately serves the purpose of the role that they want it to fill first, then its reasoning is backfilled afterwards.  For example, we have Adamantium, which is pretty much literal unobtanium with no real backstory (other than Tolkien did it), and has been a frustration for people demanding "realism" in their game about dwarves and elves with generally amusing consequences when they try to rationalize it.

...very much like that of a book. (I was pretty annoyed with this part; not all authors choose to make their magic like that. Some have it even more solidly defined [Imager Series by Modesitt] magic than most video games; needing "game mechanics" prepared for a setting comparable to real life instead of game life. Books where they (authors) only have to answer "a wizard did it" when a physicist would have to answer "because it does".) When you read Three Toe's stories, you can tell magic will not be something that can be measured accurately or sold commonly. Nor will it be divided into specific schools and specific effects (even if such effects would need to be coded in specifically). {Insert general ranting like this for another paragraph or two; wouldn't help.}

[NW_Kohaku]

It's not that I am trying to slam fantasy books (although I haven't read the series you are talking about), but rather, that I think magic should be defined first by what gameplay elements it should bring to the table, and only then backfilled with rationale.

The schools thing I had was just a rough way of dividing up the way that magic could be used, so that there could be different skills associated with it.

Even if other people are arguing for magic being something totally different (like nenjin's effectively making wizards nobles idea), that only means that if I disagree, I should lay out a well-reasoned alternative.  Maybe this isn't what Toady has been thinking about doing, but the Developments section itself says "nothing has yet been nailed down", and this IS, after all, a Suggestion forum.  Why should we sit here trying to guess what Toady is going to do anyway, instead of offering up ideas that Toady has perhaps not yet thought of?

[The Bismuth]

It's not that I am trying to slam fantasy books (although I haven't read the series you are talking about), but rather, that I think magic should be defined first by what gameplay elements it should bring to the table, and only then backfilled with rationale.

I strongly disagree with this approach. There are some elements of the game, like the industry cycles, which involve very little emotional investment. Other aspects, such as births, marriages, deaths, the happiness cycle and relationships, have the potential to make good stories. If it is done right magic has the potential to do this too.

If you want to see a tabletop rpg that does good things with magic you could do worse than look at Glorantha. If you can get your hands on it I would particularly recomend the King of Dragon Pass computer game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Dragon_Pass

[NW_Kohaku]

Why do I feel like this is getting bogged down in the unimportant parts?

I'm saying that rationale and good storywriting can be built out of virtually any system, provided you give people enough time to work with the concepts involved.

What is important, however, is the way that magic actually changes the game for the player.  I am proposing a magic system where monsters (and other creatures, like elves) can pretty freely use magic from a small pool of racial spells (hence making monsters more individual), while adventurers could potentially be wizards if they grind the skill for it and keep a focus on supplying themselves with spell components, wheras there is a kind of magic that isn't just a liability for fortress mode.

I guess I'll have to go back and write in a bit about the cultural impact of magic, which was one of those things I forgot to put in there...

[Lmaoboat]

Why do I feel like this is getting bogged down in the unimportant parts?

Probably because the sheer amount of text would make even Proust's head spin.

[sonerohi]

Why can we not have the scientific magic, with the power it entails, along with a stronger, magic-be-magic type. Calculating a fireball at 47% flamocity using dragon tongue or whatever alongside just pumping raw tons of energy and hoping it turns into fire instead of another elephant.

[NW_Kohaku]

Probably because the sheer amount of text would make even Proust's head spin.

You don't have to tell me, I spent most of a day typing it.  Still, if you're going to cherry-pick parts to read, skip the introduction, not the actual suggestion...

Why can we not have the scientific magic, with the power it entails, along with a stronger, magic-be-magic type. Calculating a fireball at 47% flamocity using dragon tongue or whatever alongside just pumping raw tons of energy and hoping it turns into fire instead of another elephant.

Having multiple kinds of magic co-existing is pretty much what I'm trying to do, here. 

I want dwarves to have restricted access to the sort of magic that is involved in enchanting equipment, or operating golems or other, generally "scientific", or rather logical and predictable magics, while adventurers have a path of wizardry, even if it is difficult to keep oneself stocked with spells if they have to find components, while monsters or elves could use more unpredictable and flashy forms of magic that occur spontaniously.

The thing is, as silhouette said in this post, if a wizard is a liability that will just cause disasters you can't even prevent the way you can at least mollify a noble, then the first act of virtually every player with a wizard is to send him straight to the magma pipe.

Such a type of wizard just doesn't suit the playstyle of DF, where everything is a matter of careful foreplanning, and disaster management is virtually impossible.  A simple burning sock is enough to wipe out whole forts while players watch on helplessly, how can you have wizards "accidentally" making volcanic eruptions inside a fort?

[Capntastic]

Why do I feel like this is getting bogged down in the unimportant parts?

Probably because the sheer amount of text would make even Proust's head spin.

One of Proust's major themes in his work is that of involuntary memory.   This thread reminds me of all the other magic threads.  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but all you're doing is rehashing the other threads.   

"Magic should have different sources and different schools of effects" is the core of what you're saying.   You can reduce your entire rant into that, I feel.   All you've really put work into is the examples.  Describing the potential effects is unhelpful, because magic will pretty much be able to do anything conceivable in the game.   Toady doesn't need examples that amount to 'a spell that teleports you' and 'a spell that makes a thing into another thing'.

Toady isn't looking to tear pages out of D&D books and anecdotes from MMO spellcasting classes.   DF's magic will be a system for making procedural magic systems.   All that needs to be said about it is that it will make anything possible, and it will be possibly anything.   Don't take this personally because I know you put a lot of work into this, but there's just nothing that innovative and exciting here to discuss.

[Nivim]

 I thought I conveyed what I was trying to say, but apparently not (mangled or running sentences?)...or maybe it did, and I need to solidify the channel.

The schools thing I had was just a rough way of dividing up the way that magic could be used, so that there could be different skills associated with it.

The rough way of dividing it up would be [SOURCES:*:*:*...] [STRENGTHS:*:*:*...] [EFFECTS:*:*:*...] [TARGETS:*:*:*...] and possibly [DURATION:*]. You're talking about gameplay mechanics for a procedural game in which mechanics can change from game-to-game, with modding or world parameters. Although nothing is set in stone, and nothing ever is; we can gather from devlogs, forum posts, and DF talks what direction the game will go in, and what mechanics are being used as bases.
 We know the current version's biome system of Evil-Neutral-Good (for undead, unicorns, ect.) will be replaced by the Sphere system that gods use. Where some areas of land will have a list of spheres (storms, rainbows, and rivers)(death, decay, and blizzards) that determine what kinds of magical creatures will spawn there. Although no official has said this system will be used for other magic, don't you think will be? Being versatile, already successfully implemented (gods, cultures, creatures), and can even support the system you outlined; it sounds like the most likely prospect, and thus a good starting point.
 Oh, and Kohaku, you outlined things that have already been used in other games, and spoken of often in this forum. You can't say Toady hasn't thought about them yet.

I'm saying that rationale and good storywriting can be built out of virtually any system, provided you give people enough time to work with the concepts involved.

I need to object here; you know (your giant posts show you know) that there are many systems out there inconducive to storytelling.

 

What is important, however, is the way that magic actually changes the game for the player.  I am proposing a magic system where monsters (and other creatures, like elves) can pretty freely use magic from a small pool of racial spells (hence making monsters more individual), while adventurers could potentially be wizards if they grind the skill for it and keep a focus on supplying themselves with spell components, wheras there is a kind of magic that isn't just a liability for fortress mode.

And such a magic system is very limited and focused. Monster magic should vary based on the sources of that magic and should conceivably include all spells and effects; not just a small pool. The same goes for wizards, in that they should not be limited to spell components or the slot&formula based magic. What if you generate a world in which such ingredients are too few and far between to even bother with? A world where rituals and spirits are the way of magic instead? The system does not account for enough variation or improvisation.

Probably because the sheer amount of text would make even Proust's head spin.

Who is Proust?

Spoiler: Captaintastic! (click to show/hide)

Why do I feel like this is getting bogged down in the unimportant parts?

Probably because the sheer amount of text would make even Proust's head spin.

One of Proust's major themes in his work is that of involuntary memory.   This thread reminds me of all the other magic threads.  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but all you're doing is rehashing the other threads.   

"Magic should have different sources and different schools of effects" is the core of what you're saying.   You can reduce your entire rant into that, I feel.   All you've really put work into is the examples.  Describing the potential effects is unhelpful, because magic will pretty much be able to do anything conceivable in the game.   Toady doesn't need examples that amount to 'a spell that teleports you' and 'a spell that makes a thing into another thing'.

Toady isn't looking to tear pages out of D&D books and anecdotes from MMO spellcasting classes.   DF's magic will be a system for making procedural magic systems.   All that needs to be said about it is that it will make anything possible, and it will be possibly anything.   Don't take this personally because I know you put a lot of work into this, but there's just nothing that innovative and exciting here to discuss.

Yes, exactly. So, Kohaku, can you imagine what idea-work would be useful? Considering the work you put into this I'm sure you'll find it...

Edit: Readability.

[darkflagrance]

I agree with Nivm.

No matter how you think of it, magic will at some level have to have a programmed system, even if its laws are highly mutable. At some level there will be mechanics to govern how procedural magic works, whether each sphere has a list of hardcoded or raw controlled effects, or whether a set of fundamental mechanics, are combined to create 'spells' and other magical effects.

Therefore, when something magical happens, there will probably be a [SOURCE] such as a sphere interaction with the creatures or land, that will have to be quantified in the code. It will may occur over a few frames or many, which is [DURATION]. The event will somehow have to choose legitimate [TARGETS] and so on. Even if it is possible for a world to be generated where nothing is ever [TARGETED], perhaps if every magical occurrence were environmental, the other mechanics would be required to make events sensible to the computer and the player.

The difficulty is in balancing procedural effects with the necessity of interpreting magic to the game's code.

Another potential problem for those with a vision for what DF Magic will be is, from an entirely procedural set of interactions, generating a system robust enough to allow magic-enabled megaconstructions such that one might find in high fantasy, such as flying cities kept aloft by crystals, and enchantments blanketing a forest that can only be undone by laying the feather of a chicken on the heart of a wolf - in other words, what might be called 'magical steampunk'.

In other words: I am writing this after not having slept for the entire night. I mean to say that I doubt procedural magic can allow complex interactions that would allow for such common fantasy tropes as 'magical technology' or 'heavily magical flying cities'.

[Nivim]

 Note that [DURATION] modifier will need to include more than just instantaneous/frame-number. Such as permanent effects, effects that vary with time, or recurring events ('at night', 'during a full moon', 'at the winter solstice', ect.) although those might be better placed under [CONDITION]...or perhaps a combination of the two. Time is generally important with magic.

 Also, what was your last paragraph trying to say? It seems to change format halfway through.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, not the responses I'd hoped for, to be sure, but hey, thanks for the straight answer, at least, Capntastic.

"Magic should have different sources and different schools of effects" is the core of what you're saying.   You can reduce your entire rant into that, I feel.   All you've really put work into is the examples.  Describing the potential effects is unhelpful, because magic will pretty much be able to do anything conceivable in the game.   Toady doesn't need examples that amount to 'a spell that teleports you' and 'a spell that makes a thing into another thing'.

Toady isn't looking to tear pages out of D&D books and anecdotes from MMO spellcasting classes.   DF's magic will be a system for making procedural magic systems.   All that needs to be said about it is that it will make anything possible, and it will be possibly anything.   Don't take this personally because I know you put a lot of work into this, but there's just nothing that innovative and exciting here to discuss.

... While I would undoubtably be ecstatic (so ecstatic I wouldn't even stop being ecstatic if an elephant ate my family) with an "anything you can possibly imagine is possible" system... My innate skepticism somehow finds it extremely unlikely that Toady will be able to rawify such a flexible system into the game.  That's no insult to Toady, mind you, but I've been promised the Moon before, and I've learned not to hold my breath. 

Reading this and most of the other responses, I think that it was certainly a mistake to have made a post so long that people apparently completely misconstrued what I was arguing for or against, and what I wanted to open discussion on.

I'm not married at all to the "schools" thing, it was mostly the second post that I was concerned with, and I just had some fun with the third post.  Looking over that "Suggestions for Dwarven Wizards" thread, I felt I should try to make a combined system of creature magic that was spontanious, a sort of Vancian magic system for adventurers, and a more mechanistic system that makes sense in a fortress setting.

I thought I conveyed what I was trying to say, but apparently not (mangled or running sentences?)...or maybe it did, and I need to solidify the channel.

Honestly, yes, I was unsure of what, exactly, you were trying to say then, and here as well.

The rough way of dividing it up would be [SOURCES:*:*:*...] [STRENGTHS:*:*:*...] [EFFECTS:*:*:*...] [TARGETS:*:*:*...] and possibly [DURATION:*]. You're talking about gameplay mechanics for a procedural game in which mechanics can change from game-to-game, with modding or world parameters. Although nothing is set in stone, and nothing ever is; we can gather from devlogs, forum posts, and DF talks what direction the game will go in, and what mechanics are being used as bases.

I really can't say I understand what you mean by "Let Magic Be Magic!", or what you mean by "procedural game", nor would I really like to assume I know what you mean with some of those tags, especially considering the supposed flexibility of such a system.

We know the current version's biome system of Evil-Neutral-Good (for undead, unicorns, ect.) will be replaced by the Sphere system that gods use. Where some areas of land will have a list of spheres (storms, rainbows, and rivers)(death, decay, and blizzards) that determine what kinds of magical creatures will spawn there. Although no official has said this system will be used for other magic, don't you think will be? Being versatile, already successfully implemented (gods, cultures, creatures), and can even support the system you outlined; it sounds like the most likely prospect, and thus a good starting point.
 Oh, and Kohaku, you outlined things that have already been used in other games, and spoken of often in this forum. You can't say Toady hasn't thought about them yet.

Maybe, but I have problems with such magic.  Dividing magic into "fire" and "water" is bad enough, but "rainbow magic" goes a little too far.  I'd rather divisions along the ways that magic is cast, and along the types of effects that spells have.

I need to object here; you know (your giant posts show you know) that there are many systems out there inconducive to storytelling.

Then object.  Better yet, come up with your own storytelling. I'm just trying to say that I don't care what the backstory on magic is. 

Diverting this into something I've said many times is something I'd rather not be talking about, without putting up any sort of way to start a conversation about how to improve it, what you would like, or in any way bieng helpful simply frustrates any attempt at meaningful discussion.

And such a magic system is very limited and focused. Monster magic should vary based on the sources of that magic and should conceivably include all spells and effects; not just a small pool. The same goes for wizards, in that they should not be limited to spell components or the slot&formula based magic. What if you generate a world in which such ingredients are too few and far between to even bother with? A world where rituals and spirits are the way of magic instead? The system does not account for enough variation or improvisation.

That is exactly opposite what I have been talking about.

Monsters get a small pool per type of monster.  I am saying that blizzard men should have blizzard-related spells, while fire imps have fire or magma-related spells, while leprechauns have illusionary spells.

As for adventurers, I am not advocating that only creature components should work.  Preferably, monster components of very powerful monsters could give you rare, powerful spells that one would want to hold on to until you hit desperate fights, but I would also rather players be able to just buy more regular components, or pick plants, or maybe be able to break down other items into spell components. 

We could have, for example, an invisibility spell that operates off of piece of glass as a component, but which is interrupted whenever you make an attack or stand next to someone, and have shorter duration.  A leprechaun component invisibility spell, however, would allow for fully rummaging through a creature's inventory without being detected.  Alternately, it could be made into a spell that would allow for a charm that makes that target believe you were an ally.  Or maybe you can just use it to summon a pot of gold coins.

It would give players a reason to stop and pick the flowers... then grind them up into a nice paste for a spell.

I agree with Nivm.

No matter how you think of it, magic will at some level have to have a programmed system, even if its laws are highly mutable. At some level there will be mechanics to govern how procedural magic works, whether each sphere has a list of hardcoded or raw controlled effects, or whether a set of fundamental mechanics, are combined to create 'spells' and other magical effects.

Therefore, when something magical happens, there will probably be a [SOURCE] such as a sphere interaction with the creatures or land, that will have to be quantified in the code. It will may occur over a few frames or many, which is [DURATION]. The event will somehow have to choose legitimate [TARGETS] and so on. Even if it is possible for a world to be generated where nothing is ever [TARGETED], perhaps if every magical occurrence were environmental, the other mechanics would be required to make events sensible to the computer and the player.

The difficulty is in balancing procedural effects with the necessity of interpreting magic to the game's code.

... I'm sorry, from the way you started this, you sound like you are disagreeing with me, but nothing you have said actually argues against anything I've said, so I am really confused.

I've talked about sources for magic, I even had a big yellow banner that said "Energy Sources"...  It's one of those things that I was proposing was to make multiple types of sources for magic, whether it is an "innate" ability, or something you draw out of living beings.

Or are you saying something to contradict Captaintastic's assertion that magic will be able to do anything, and are saying that the magic system will be very limited?

If that is the case, then I would only say it makes my attempt to lobby for these sorts of magic be included.

Another potential problem for those with a vision for what DF Magic will be is, from an entirely procedural set of interactions, generating a system robust enough to allow magic-enabled megaconstructions such that one might find in high fantasy, such as flying cities kept aloft by crystals, and enchantments blanketing a forest that can only be undone by laying the feather of a chicken on the heart of a wolf - in other words, what might be called 'magical steampunk'.

In other words: I am writing this after not having slept for the entire night. I mean to say that I doubt procedural magic can allow complex interactions that would allow for such common fantasy tropes as 'magical technology' or 'heavily magical flying cities'.

Sorry if I get a little sarcastic, but considering as we already have a game where we can support whole mountains on a single bar of soap, how much more difficult could it be to just make the mountain levitate?

I'd really like you to restate that second-to-last paragraph/sentence again, because I think you basically had a really long noun with no verb in that sentence.  From what I think you are trying to say, you are saying that it would be very difficult to impliment the sort of thing I was suggesting for the more mechanical types of magic.  This is, however, the portion of the magic that I believe I most thoroughly detailed how it could be implimented... and I think I got complaints for how similar it would be to the mechanical power sources, although I'm not entirely sure.