Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Fancy Admiral]

Ideas for at the Wizards' Shop

One could (in my mental image of how magic might work):

• Prepare Magical Reagents
   (Take mundane stuff and mark them as magical.  Body parts, plants, stone, wood, barrels of blood, cloth, and so on can be prepared in this manner.  This could remove them from general stockpile use, maybe.  These don't really do anything on their own.)
• Prepare Simple Potion
   (Combine 3 available Magical Reagents to some effect based on a master list of things that can be done, the Spheres of the workshop worker's Deity, and their Personality Traits.  Generally, a dwarf who worships a god(dess) of Mining and Metal and Mountains and such should be more likely to create a device which allows auto-mapping a vein of ore or gems in a limited range instead of brewing a love potion; the followers of the Deity governing Families and Love and Fertility and all that would be quite the opposite.  Dwarves who value Tradition would be more likely to make some set of potions, where as those who cast it aside might be more likely to do something maybe outside the morals of your civ.)
• Prepare Advanced Potion
   (As above, but with 5 Reagents, more powerful items, of course.)
• Summon Outsider
   (Allow some attempt to call forth something from the nether.  Regardless of when you attempt to summon something, it will arrive, if it deigns, at the turn of the next season.  What you call forth is dependant on all the above mentioned possibilities, plus your biomes, plus random chance.  These could range from a host of pixies who will stay for a month, clean your fortress for you, and give good thoughts to dwarves who run into them, to drawing the attention of a roaming Forgotten Beast.)

In all of these, even a Legendary Practitioner should have a chance of nothing happening -- though making Artifacts out of Prepared Reagents should be awesome, regardless.  The best you should be able to do in any case is stack the odds in your favor that using magic will come out with you ahead.  The more powerful magic should really teach the lesson of MacBeth:  Unnatural means beget unnatural ends.  It will also lend well to some extra interaction with your dwarfs.  (I'm hoping for some love potions to sell as trade items to the Humans, so let me shop around for the drawfs with the best set of personality traits to get that to happen. -- No!  My Expert Fishcleaner died!  He was the only worshipper of the deity of food and the seas!  How can I find out which of my food stocks have been poisoned by that last gobbo assassin now without testing them each?)

There should be some additional cost to doing magic.  It could be that it makes your dwarves hungry and thirsty very quickly, or has a chance of making them sick.  This could be random based on the World Gen, or on the dwarves in question, or both.

The overall idea is to give players the illusion of control, reward planning, and punish rushing headlong into it.  Just like with HFS.  If you dig straight down, unprepared, to get at the goods you know lie beneath, you'll could have an empty fortress in a few minutes.  ...Or you could get lucky.

(p.s.:  Plx with the assassins trying to poison foodpiles.  kthxbai)

[Dr. Melon]

I like Terry Pratchett's magic system. In his words...

"Magic's a little bit tricky, a little bit alive. Just when you think you've got it by the throat it bites you in the arse."

In the Discworld, magic is highly dangerous and unpredictable if not managed correctly - randomised events occur in places with high magic concentration (like tossed coins turning into caterpillars or flying into space, or perhaps spinning on the spot really fast then exploding) and actual magic usage itself being highly dangerous and specialised (a wizard trying to move a giant rock must be very careful to make sure he balances the forces correctly, or risk blowing his brains out of his ears - conservation of momentum suggests he should make a rock fall from one place and channel the momentum to lift another object up. Failure to do so properly will quite probably tear his head off.)

[jei]

How about resurrecting the dead?

You could maybe resurrect dead dwarves as one spell.

[Virex]

[...]

  Aha! Magic dynamics!

  6. The switch of change in magic. "[:] is the existence and form of magic static or dynamic?" {0 or 1}
    6a. The scale of how much it changes in general. {x} (-100 to 100, here and below.)
      6α. [Should be a list of all previous variables to tweak whether they increase, decrease, or swap around. 6a sets all these variables at once, or it acts as a modifier to them, whichever is more useful. Most notably 1 and 3.]
    6b. The reason(s) why it changes. (-100 to 100 for below, positive means it causes the change, negative means it undoes the change, while zero of course means no effect.)
      6α. Use of magic. (Possibly divided into kinds of magic used, be then schools or nationalities or spheres.) {x}
      6ί. Faith in magic. (The belief system will probably be more robust by the magic arc.) {x}
      6γ. Sacrifice to magic. {x}
      6δ. Things living on the world. (The more life living around, the more magic is available.) {x}
       (I guess this list is actually a ridiculously long one. Blood, gore, death, fantastic beasts, gods, god fights, demons, demon fights, fights with gods and demons, certain shapes on engravings, time passing, dwarves vomiting from cave adaption... Probably limited to things recorded in legends though.)

You forgot "changes completely at random, including during the casting of a spell (because that would be hilarious.)"

[Auto Slaughter]

I dunno if this has been mentioned... there alot to read in this thread... but how about a "ley lines" type thing?  World gen could lay down a magic mesh along with all of the other meshes and that could control the intensity or reliability or other aspects of magic in an area.  Perhaps in a strong nexus you could get Ultima-type moon gates or some other terrain effect appearing.

I also like Levi's suggestion to randomize the rules of magic in each world.

[Nivim]

I also like Levi's suggestion to randomize the rules of magic in each world.

You mean Toady's suggestion for his own game? He knows at least that much about what he's going to do with it; magic will be generated during world generation, and be just as random. It will have world generation settings (which I've been trying to make a kind of list for), and RAW tags like the other elements of the game.
 Ley lines have not been mentioned, other than as "magic of the land".

I object to "very rarely" going wrong. It should somehow go wrong at least half the time.

  People also object to female dwarves without beards, or female dwarves with beards. So there's a RAW option to change it. People have different tastes for the world they want, so there's world generation options to outline the worlds.

You forgot "changes completely at random, including during the casting of a spell (because that would be hilarious.)"

  Ah yes, we should delete number 2 because it's too vague and instead expand the system of change. Then add a setting specifically for how much information you'll get for your magic. So...↓ (As to specifically what you said, I figure that kind of thing will be an init option to make it easier.)

Work-in-Progress; The Magic System Generation Settings:
  1. The general level of magic in a world. 1 wizard in a million or 1 in 5? {x/y}
  2. The proportions of who has the magic. Do mortals make it? Is it part of the land? Does it only come from powerful spirits?
    3a. Elemental, ~inanimate.
      3α. Leys lines and magical currents in the land. (Does magic collect into them often, or rarely? How large do the get proportional to magic available?)
      3ί. How closely linked are the spheres to the land? Is magic uneffected, or is it completely determined by, the spheres?
    3b. Civilization, mortal.
    3c. Immortal, ~imaginary.
  3. The scale of how strongly magic is tied to objects. Does it vanish outside of special containers (crystals)? Is it impossible to bottle? {x}
  4. The scale of how physical magic is. Is magic mined like a gem, or drunk like ale? Is it never seen, heard, or felt tactily?
  5. How much information will be displayed about magic. (specific numbers and equations [this is unlikely to be very inclusive, keeping with the style of the game], or "the spirits mock your efforts". This will be a determining factor in how vancian(DnD) the magic is.) {x} (0-100)
  6. The scale of otherworldly interaction. How easy is summoning? Are the boundaries between earth, heaven, and hell well defined and strong or vague and weak? {x} (1-100)
  7. The switch of change in magic. "[:] is the existence and form of magic static or dynamic?" {0 or 1}
    7a. The scale of how much it changes in general. {x} (-100 to 100, here and below.)
      7α. [Should be a list of all previous variables to tweak whether they increase, decrease, or swap around. 6a sets all these variables at once, or it acts as a modifier to them, whichever is more useful. Most notably 1 and 3.]
    7b. The reason(s) why it changes. (-100 to 100 for below, positive means it causes the change, negative means it undoes the change, while zero of course means no effect.)
      7α. Use of magic. (Possibly divided into kinds of magic used, be then schools or nationalities or spheres.) {x}
      7ί. Faith in magic. (The belief system will probably be more robust by the magic arc.) {x}
      7γ. Sacrifice to magic. {x}
      7δ. Things living on the world. (The more life living around, the more magic is available.) {x}
      7ε. The passage of time. {x}
      7ζ... (This list is actually a ridiculously long one. Blood, gore, death, fantastic beasts, gods, god fights, demons, demon fights, fights with gods and demons, certain shapes on engravings, time passing, dwarves vomiting from cave adaption. Probably limited to things recorded in legends or populations.)

Possible d_init Options:
 [MAGIC:YES]

 You can set this to NONE, PARTIAL, and COMPLETE. NONE uses the magic settings determined in world gen, PARTIAL changes settings randomly as time goes on, COMPLETE ignores the settings and makes magic completely random.
 [MAGIC_NOISE:NONE]

In the Discworld, magic is highly dangerous and unpredictable if not managed correctly - randomised events occur in places with high magic concentration (like tossed coins turning into caterpillars or flying into space, or perhaps spinning on the spot really fast then exploding) and actual magic usage itself being highly dangerous and specialised (a wizard trying to move a giant rock must be very careful to make sure he balances the forces correctly, or risk blowing his brains out of his ears - conservation of momentum suggests he should make a rock fall from one place and channel the momentum to lift another object up. Failure to do so properly will quite probably tear his head off.)

  A specific magical backlash setting?
 Does anyone have any ideas about how that might be connected to the cost and dangers when working with numbers? They can't just be divided by the words we are using.

[...]

[...]

  How do you know that workshops will even be similar to how they work now by the time the magic arc rolls around? We can't know those details! So any arguments focusing so completely on them will become outdated and useless. Focus your energy on something that Toady might find useful; that might last.
 Toady has posted a gargantuan amount of text on his plans, and people are always after more detail about those vague plans, but exact and detailed plans fall apart under changing circumstances; and change they will! Ideas for the future must be flexible and dexterous; able to adapt to any situation, and take advantage of any opportunity, that might arise.
 Of course, this isn't possible to do perfect, but we can get pretty darn close!

How about resurrecting the dead?

You could maybe resurrect dead dwarves as one spell.

  I wish to point out the incredible inanity of this post. How many thousands of fantasy books and games have some kind or resurrection? How do you think the idea could possibly be overlooked? Why do think dwarves will even use spells? Or that such well defined spells will be in every one of the millions of worlds generated.


 On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did I rant?

[Dakk]

On the subject of availiability, me thinks it should be variable from worldgen to worldgen, but I'm much more attracted by magic as a very powerful and quick way to achieve your goals, but also a very dangerous one. My idea of magic users is of wizards that have carefuly studied their craft from a very long time, and have attained considerable powers due to it. Elder wizards would be night omnipotent beings, their age now nothing but faint memory as said wizard probably already achieved a form of immortality (not nescessarily lichdom, many ways to achieve immortality should be availiable), able to bend the elements and the very fabric of existence to their will, but still being outmatched by powerful gods and deities. However, magic should be a very hard craft to master, requiring not only dedication but certain situations, locations, objects, people and other things depending on what kind of magic you're trying to master.

 Pherhaps in order to become a better demonologist you'd have to find more beautiful virgins to sacrifice at more sacrilegious places, a diviner could spend a lonely existence on the top of a certain mountain sitting in a leyline of powerful magical flows, studying its effects for decades and aquiring immense powers and knowlegde, a transmuter could aquire several different animals and try to merge them with people or himself in various ways in order to hone their craft or gain some sort of biological advantage and try to turn lead into gold, etc.

Since magic would be so dangerous, wizards should also be quite rare. Think of a wizards as a world entity by himself, referred in legends to as X the great conjurer or Y the demonspawn and such, hiding in their secret lairs and laboratories, researching the forbidden truths behind magic. An ambitious or crazed wizard should be able to threaten the whole world, either by creating a huge army of a race of superior creatures said wizard created, opening portals to another worlds, raising the dead everywhere, spreading terrible plagues, brainwashing entire populations, possessing a civ leader, etc.

[NinjaE8825]

I'm thinking Power Goals, here.

A dragon is terrifying a village. A young lad braves the Swamp of Death to carve an arrow from the branches of the tree that grows there. He shoots the dragon with it, and everyone almost feels sorry for what's left of it.

A wizard draws a magical circle of binding, and summons forth the demon Aleheart the Tree-River of Politics, so it can tell him the secret of eternal life. Except he's messed up the circle, and it titters maniacally as it spirits him away to serve as its slave - he shall have his eternal life!

The goblin horde approaches! The dwarves bring offerings before the shrine of the guardian spirit at the entrance - the great obsidian statue shimmers, and out steps Castlebreaker the sand-tiger, protector of all dwarves! His claws are steel, his breath the very rot of ages!

A mighty wizard wants the local king to agree to his demands. First, he turns the river into blood, killing all life, making it unfit for drinking, and attracting the spirits of the hungry dead. Then, he calls rivers of vermin - locusts, toads, gnats, and worse, to trouble the citizenry and devour the crops. He calls for the spirits of plauge and pestilence, and brings them upon man and beast alike! Still, the king sits silent. Fed up with this, the wizard brings out the big guns, and tears the very stars out of the sky and down upon the kingdom - the ash and dust blots out the sun, but the king still refuses. Finally, the wizard says "To hell with this!" and summons a great demon to slay every man, woman and child in the capital, except for the king.

[Kurouma]

To have powerful wizards as rare beings in worldgen would be very cool.
We could have non-entity affiliated wizards wander off into the wilderness, build towers, and fill them with minions as they go about their daily business (maybe they're obsessed with attaining eternal life, or just in becoming more and more powerful). Even after they die, their towers would still be loci for 'magical energies', whatever form they be. Great fun for treasure hunting in adv. mode. There would be libraries full of arcane tomes, and there would probably many an enchanted item to pilfer.

For mortal races I feel it should be between [MAGIC:CAN_LEARN] and [MAGIC:NONE], whereas FBs and the like should have [MAGIC:INNATE]. Reminds me of this: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=68238.0

[Knigel]

^He does bring up a point of another thing, availability of magic by race, to be added to section 2.

[ScriptWolf]

hmmm reading through this i just want to add my own little bit. i agree that magic should make your character tired and other effects but also what about having to use blood or sacrifices to perform spells? so like if you got tired of a adventure you could perform a spell which would drastically change your generated world (as well as killing yourself having a lot of elf blood could help ) so kind of like having self sacrificing spells to make game more interesting and changing your generated world. and i also think that dwarfs should mostly focus on having magic artefacts and the other races having other magical properties.

also to stop everything being over powered with magic not everyone in the game could have magic and that some of the people generated are born with magical powers which are 1000000x more powerful as a person who is born without magical powers but has learned them, but a mage can also have a lot more problems with his spells, being more powerful more things could go wrong (also as a side note i would like to be able to teleport peoples organs and eyes out of their body like on Armok 1 ). But should be two classes of people, people who are born with magical powers and people who learn them. also your adventure has a certain % of being a mage when you spawn him.

also i would like to see a lot of spells some which you have to find, or some which you could be taught by doing jobs for mages?. i would like to be able to become such a powerfull magic user kinda like sauron or morgoth, but with that kidna power have more go wrong while still have some degree over how your magic is going to work

[Wnderer]

I don't know how this fits in with all the rules about magic but I want a magic magma pump, that pumps magma when there is none around.

[Zrk2]

I definetly think magic should be rather esoteric so a player does not simply have a mage tap into his Fire Warren (Ive been reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen) or whatever and burn everyone the player dislikes to cinders and goblinite. Although that would be so much fun.

[voodooattack]

I know this topic has been abandoned for a while now, but I know it would resurface again eventually, so why wait.

Not sure if this was suggested before but what about the magical model of Dungeon Crawl?

If you don't know how that works: Magic is like opening a can of worms, and you can't be too careful. To train magical skills, you have to go *very* slowly, if you take the risk of casting a high-power spell at a low experience level in with that spell's school(s), it *will* backfire and punish you somehow. Punishments can range from random loss of attributes to spatial distortions, random teleportation, and eventually horrible mutations.

Spell miscasts, prolonged use of magical effects, and wielding radiant artefacts can also give you a magical contamination level (glow), which is analogous to radiation in real-life (with respect to the different results of course), it generally accumulates slowly, but the higher your glow level is, the easier you are to see and hit, and the higher the chance that random magical eruptions occur in your vicinity, those manifest in different ways and can damage or randomly mutate you. (or blast you and everything around you, depending on how bad it gets)

Mutations are generally bad, but some may even be useful/beneficial.

Magic is divided into schools: Elemental schools (Fire,Ice,Air,Earth) along with various function-oriented schools (Necromancy, Poison, Translocation, Transmutation, Conjuration, Enchantment, and Summoning).

But spells often span several schools, for example: Bolt of Magma is classified under Conjuration, Fire, and Earth. Depending on the spell, it may only be cast in a certain way or in certain situations. Some spells brand the caster's weapon with elemental powers/effects and can't function without a weapon wielded, some spells transform the caster (or parts of the caster, i.e claws) into a different form entirely (shape-shifting) and may have the power to meld them with their equipment. Some require specific objects to be wielded by the caster to work efficiently. To cast Sandblast(Transmutation/Earth) at full power you must wield a stone, for instance. Most necromancy spells require corpses/flesh/skeletons in the vicinity or in the caster's hands. Evaporate (Fire/Transmutation) requires a bottled liquid to function and can be used to indirectly create a cloud of venomous fumes, etc.

Spells can be acquired by reading spell books and memorising them, though any initial affinity with magic must be developed through the repeated use of magical scrolls/special artefacts.. so, I'm not sure here.. I know that I read somewhere that books are going to be added, I hope this can be integrated when that happens.

Casting spells costs MP and hunger, and since we're not in a world of numerical abstractions in DF, It should just consume stamina. Decreasing the stamina used per casting according the caster's skill. Hunger simply fits in.

What's great about this system and what I think would make it fit in DF is the schools, mixing function and elements (semi-)randomly can be used to generate new spells at worldgen (with dwarvenly cool names of course), in addition to predefined ones from the raws; casting methods (projectile, cloud, halo, weapon effect) must be predefined I guess, but can be mixed in to vary the results even further.

What do you guys think?

[JohnieRWilkins]

Well the problem with the Dungeon Crawl system you've outlined is that there's really nothing that causes magic to be rare, or magical. That's in direct violation of Toady's wishes for the system. Just because there's a chance of the magic backfiring, doesn't mean that it'll be rare. It'll either be worth doing all the time, or worth doing by only the suicidal, depending on the severity of the punishments. If it's worth doing by only the suicidal, that isn't a very fun system for a slightly less-suicidal player who still wants a piece of the magic.

In df terms:
Why can't the farmer have his sons draw strings to cast the Magic Pitchfork spell for the good of the family? Before long, there will be no economy and every human orphan will have flying thrones made out of solid HFS with the ability to shoot other, much cooler HFS at their enemies.