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Yes. It should be easily accesed and everyday stuff, like in nethack or A.D.O.M.

21 (9.6%)

Yes. It should be hard to access and not typical say the magic word and you shoot lightning magic.

137 (62.6%)

I don't really care.

13 (5.9%)

Only in the form of reactions.

24 (11%)

No.

24 (11%)

Total Members Voted: 219

[Greiger]

Take 1 bunny rabbit.  Teleport bunny rabbit's foot half an inch to the left.  Transmute blood of bunny rabbit to molten iron.  Change temperature of bunny rabbit's right eye to 2 kelvin below absolute 0.

That's the kinda stuff I see magic doing in the future.  After all, that's more or less how it worked in Armok 1. (well the teleport foot one...the other 2 didn't exist but were kinda along the theme of the other spells.)

[Eric Blank]

I want magic, but I want it to be subtle, and difficult to perform anything real powerful like causing real injury to an opponent. And I think it would be interesting if the magic used energy directly from your body, in the same way melee combat drains you, rather than be a separate and divine energy form as it is in most games. Maybe simpler forms of magic ought to be just tricks that increase your combat prowess, like dumping energy into your legs and nervous system to make you more agile and escape a fight or dodge better during it, or forcing wounds to heal, and things that occur solely within your own body or through direct contact of skin.
Essentially you're learning how to consciously control matter and energy within your body, without your body but contacting it, and then finally projecting energy and matter across open air/other mediums. Not a simple everyday thing, and difficult to learn, but still worth training it for when you're in a fix, or your friend is, all without it becoming a necessity or something you can live off of on it's own.

I would expect that allowing you to use racial abilities like fire-breath and spraying extracts, etc.. that your species has naturally as defined in the raws will come before magic.

[Angel Of Death]

Take 1 bunny rabbit.  Teleport bunny rabbit's foot half an inch to the left.  Transmute blood of bunny rabbit to molten iron.  Change temperature of bunny rabbit's right eye to 2 kelvin below absolute 0.

That's the kinda stuff I see magic doing in the future.  After all, that's more or less how it worked in Armok 1. (well the teleport foot one...the other 2 didn't exist but were kinda along the theme of the other spells.)

I think it should be like this. I also think that you should have to inflict some form of harm on yourself as well with greater magic.

[Nivim]

 It's yet another one of these threads licking the tip of the iceberg that is the magic discussions. Why don't you guys just use the search function (which is specific to the forum or thread you're in) to find the advanced ideas to improve and refine? Perhaps visiting Kohaku's threads on the matter as a starting point?
 It just feels like a waste to watch people posting near-verbatim of old posts and sentiments, except with less detail and less awareness.

Edit: I guess I should probably offer up some links. Here's the latest large magic thread, where NW_Kohaku focusing largely on basic life systems (flora and farming). Then there's two old threads I recall; an 11 page "'Magic versus Tech' Is Dumb" thread and an 8 page Metamagic thread, both of which start out rather wrong but get better.

[Rakonas]

I do not care about whether or not magic exists, so long as Toady has a few simple things visible in the raws.
Namely, there needs to be a magic affinity tag, preferably with more of a scale than just some having no magic and others the same level of magic. So long as I can make it so that dwarves have no magic, it's alright with me.

[Supercharazad]

I'd love magic. On one condition.

We can turn people to bismuth and rip out their aortas at the click of a finger.

[Tsukana]

Randomly.

Generated.

Magic.

Systems.

That is all.

[Lovechild]

Spell name: The Smooth Conjuration of Flukes

Reagents needed: 2 kapok logs, 1 plump helmet, 1 green glass block

Range: 15 tiles

Effect: The target suffers a blunt attack to the upper body with a velocity of 1000 and a force of 40000, gets blisters on each foot for 5 days, and becomes pregnant with a horse foal.

[Necalli]

Randomly.

Generated.

Magic.

Systems.

That is all.

Yay for turning your opponents into half-elf-half-pigs and then raining down bolts of troll vomit upon them!

[Greiger]

Effect: The target suffers a blunt attack to the upper body with a velocity of 1000 and a force of 40000, gets blisters on each foot for 5 days, and becomes pregnant with a horse foal.

That last part would be a far more horrible thing to do to a bunny rabbit than I ever did to them in armok 1.

[Jacos]

I think that magic spells should first be randomly generated, and to "unlock" them, you would have to study items imbued with magic, wether it be ancient, by modern wizards, aliens, or whatever. Perhaps civs would already have these, and the spells written down on scrolls in libraries.

[Duntada Man]

Use of magic is for those with spindly little elf limbs that can't heft a good axe on their own.

Though I do kind of like the idea of them being done as reactions. Combine certain objects and commit a ritual to get the effect, that's fairly interesting actually.

[Jacos]

Use of magic is for those with spindly little elf limbs that can't heft a good axe on their own.

Though I do kind of like the idea of them being done as reactions. Combine certain objects and commit a ritual to get the effect, that's fairly interesting actually.

"Urist McMagician, cast a spell to kill that dreaded dragon before it eats us all!"
"Okay, hold on, does anybody have a spare kitten heart?"

[UristMcDwarf]

Spell name: The Smooth Conjuration of Flukes

Reagents needed: 2 kapok logs, 1 plump helmet, 1 green glass block

Range: 15 tiles

Effect: The target suffers a blunt attack to the upper body with a velocity of 1000 and a force of 40000, gets blisters on each foot for 5 days, and becomes pregnant with a horse foal.

YES.

[freeformschooler]

Spell name: The Smooth Conjuration of Flukes

Reagents needed: 2 kapok logs, 1 plump helmet, 1 green glass block

Range: 15 tiles

Effect: The target suffers a blunt attack to the upper body with a velocity of 1000 and a force of 40000, gets blisters on each foot for 5 days, and becomes pregnant with a horse foal.

YES.

I would not be adverse to this.

Anyway, aside from how I want magic to be done, given DF's track record and interviews with Toady it looks pretty likely that we'll have procedural, possibly subtle magic systems, decided on at worldgen. I think it would add a special flair to each world.