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[de5me7]

What games have good or interesting magic systems?

Il start by saying what i think is a bad or uninteresting system - the system employed by the eldar scrolls series(and is probably the most popular system in rpgs cause its easy to understand). You buy a spell which is classed. If you have enough mana (energy) you can cast it (a die is thrown to see if you fail) then some blue/red/green crap shoots out of your hand and u do about a 5% damage to ur oponent if u hit em.

Im being a bit extreme in my description, my point here is that magic is basically reduced to an alternative to a gun with rainbow coloured graphics. There are other spells, summon characters, see through walls, move objects, boost stats etc.

are there any games (any genre rogue like, rpg, strategy etc) that have tried radically different systems? Or use different types of spells, so rather than lightning, a horde of rabid chimps attacks the target instead.


the only one i can think of is a hl1 mod called wizard wars, actually wizard wars uses a very unoriginal magic system (literally replacing guns with magic graphics, but it was funny.

[janekk]

Master of Magic hands down has best magic system I ever saw in game. There is simply so much to do in there. Personally I love casting simple fly spell at my warships.

[Virex]

MoM still uses mana and learning spells, no?

[janekk]

Yep, nothing wrong with it IMO because what counts is how flexible system is not if it uses mana or whatever. To clarify I'm not claiming MoM system is best period, its best I ever saw in game.

EDIT: Oh wait a second, best magic systems are found in pen & paper role playing games.

[Akura]

Right, not all D&D spells are rainbow pistols(with the exception of Prismatic Spray, which most certainly is ). You could do some pretty awesome things with spells not intended for combat if you're creative enough and the DM lets you get away with it.

[janekk]

It works other way too, you can use disintegration to make hole in the wall or some fire spell to light camp fire, its all about creativity.

[Mindmaker]

Everything based on D&D has nice, powerfull and creative spells.

When you play NWN1 as a warlock alone, you feel like a god

[forsaken1111]

Everything based on D&D has nice, powerfull and creative spells.

When you play NWN1 as a warlock alone, you feel like a god

NWN1 had warlocks?

[Virex]

I thought Warlocks were 4th edition?

[forsaken1111]

I thought Warlocks were 4th edition?

Warlocks were in 3.5 edition as well, but I am fairly sure they weren't in NWN1. They were in NWN2 however.

[Astral]

Get Oblivion, install Midas Magic and Supreme Magicka; the vanilla system sucks, but Supreme Magicka rebalances it (and adds some new things) while Midas Magic adds a huge number (I think it states somewhere around 200) spells to the game, with the catch that you have to earn them in a different way (by gathering ingredients).

Summon a meteor? Check.
Summon a balrog? Check.
Summon a carpet? Check.
Flip your enemies into the air? Check.
Disarm your enemies? Check.
Make an atronach out of pumpins? (Or watermelons? Or cheese?) Check.
Create magical projectiles that automatically seek out enemies? Check.
Shoot a death beam that can automatically store the souls of your enemies? Check.
Raise the dead? Easy!

Shoot a mini nuke from the palm of your hands in the middle of the Imperial City? Goddamn priceless.

[Mindmaker]

I thought Warlocks were 4th edition?

Warlocks were in 3.5 edition as well, but I am fairly sure they weren't in NWN1. They were in NWN2 however.

Hmm maybe I got the name wrong.
Let me look it up.

Ok I meant Sorcerer.

[a1s]

Everything based on D&D has nice, powerfull and creative spells.

When you play NWN1 as a warlock alone, you feel like a god

Care to share a few stories about creative magicking in NWN?

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, playing a wizard or sorc in nwn1 was an absolute blast.

[janekk]

Oh I always want to dust of my not used for years oblivion copy and get all those awesome mods but I always give up halfway through. Either there is simply too many mods to check out and there is no way I can decide what to get or simply downloading all this stuff would take ages. Now if there would be some convenient big mod..