Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Ideal spellcasting system ( system also applies to abilities)
Rungar
Member RarePosts: 1,132
Casting/using abilities
Spells and abilities can be cast/used three ways. They can be spoken ( and can thus muted) they can be hand gestures ( thus require a free hand) or they require a conduit ( a weapon). Some spells also require a combination of these parameters. In my high fantasy setting everyone can use some magic.
so if your muted you cant cast spoken spells, bound you cant use your free hand and disarmed you cant use your conduit.
They can be improved in four ways.
1)Lair based power: Some spells and abilities can be augmented by creating and deploying specific devices in your lair/home. These include things like grimoire stands, magic pools, magic gates, magic circles and other arcane style devices. Some of these devices can also be added to and improved a few times. Some of these devices will augment whole schools and others individual spells.
For example if you find the Arcane Gate spell you would need to set up an Arcane Gate at your home to get the most out of it in terms of range, cost, how many could walk through it, where it can bring you etc. Of course to do this you would need to find a blueprint for an arcane gate and materials to build it and any upgrades. Once you have it built its a permanent effect until the device is destroyed/disassembled.
2)Consumables: You can improve spells and abilities through the use of consumable reagents (which include poisons). Using reagents would bolster your spells effects 10-25% depending on the spell or activate a built in secondary effect. To access this you need to learn how to create the reagents which might require a device at your lair. In my system using reagents costs something else either an extra skill or potion as you only get so many slots. You can slot two reagents at the cost of other things.
3) Casting Type: Depending on the spell or ability you can choose how you cast it. For instance some can be spoken or hand gesture or you can choose both. The downside being your more susceptible to controlling effects such as mute and also each type of casting has its own cooldown so if you speak a spell you cant speak another one for a certain time. If you choose to augment the spell with two casting types both types go on cooldown. Depending on the spell you can use spoken and or hand gesture but conduit is always reserved for weapon skills. Weapon skill related spells can use all three, but non weapon spells cannot use conduit.
4) Conduit, Archetype & Weapon Skills: All weapon specific skills are a conduit to specific archetype abilities through the specific weapon. This mean that a weapon skill in a fighters hands will behave differently than the same weapon skill in a mages hands. The base skill is the same but becomes empowered when used by a specific archetype. For instance for mages a weapon skill will add various runes and magical effects to a base skill where a fighter would add specific moves to a skill. Each archetype modifies the base skills in its own way according to the archetype. This means that any archetype can use their favored weapon effectively regardless of what the weapon is. It will behave differently though based on archetype modifications available.
How you set up your archetype in conjunction with the weapons you use and the weapon skills you employ defines how your weapon skills work ( see my post on hotbar/ui layout). The base weapon abilities do not "belong" to any archetype but are greatly enhanced through archetype choices. You go find the weapon, then collect the skills then modify that skill according to choices you make with your archetype.
Non weapon skills
These skills are a mix of archetype specific and non specific spells and abilities you can collect. They don't use the weapon system at all and thus don't use the conduit but instead use only free hand and spoken casting types which have their own cooldowns.
Cooldowns
This is a three cooldown possible system. Your conduit has a cooldown, spoken has a cooldown and hand gesture has a cooldown. You can combine spells and abilities casting type for more power but it also activates the cooldown for each one so you have to pay a price for doing that. Weapon abilities tend to have much shorter cooldowns (1.5 sec min) and non weapon abilities longer cooldowns (2.0 sec min) though any skill could be more than that based on weapon size and other factors. If you use a 2 handed weapon you cannot use the hand gesture cooldown at all.
Healing
There are no "direct healing" spells in my system but there are a few regeneration bolstering spells. This is limited to improve the overall gameplay relying on archetype mitigation, evasion and crowd control instead of healing.
Crowd control
Since there is no healing there will be a lot of crowd control. The difference in this system is there is no hard shutdowns. You have to combine multiple crowd control/effects to achieve a hard shutdown.
so if your muted you simply cant cast spoken spells or abilities. If your bound you cant use your free hand and if your disarmed you cant use your weapon. There would also be roots, snares, double vision, darkness, fear and other partial forms of control but not a single spell to stun or mesmerize. These hard effects can only be achieved through synergy with another player or skillful combo play to a lesser extent.
thats all i have so far.
Spells and abilities can be cast/used three ways. They can be spoken ( and can thus muted) they can be hand gestures ( thus require a free hand) or they require a conduit ( a weapon). Some spells also require a combination of these parameters. In my high fantasy setting everyone can use some magic.
so if your muted you cant cast spoken spells, bound you cant use your free hand and disarmed you cant use your conduit.
They can be improved in four ways.
1)Lair based power: Some spells and abilities can be augmented by creating and deploying specific devices in your lair/home. These include things like grimoire stands, magic pools, magic gates, magic circles and other arcane style devices. Some of these devices can also be added to and improved a few times. Some of these devices will augment whole schools and others individual spells.
For example if you find the Arcane Gate spell you would need to set up an Arcane Gate at your home to get the most out of it in terms of range, cost, how many could walk through it, where it can bring you etc. Of course to do this you would need to find a blueprint for an arcane gate and materials to build it and any upgrades. Once you have it built its a permanent effect until the device is destroyed/disassembled.
2)Consumables: You can improve spells and abilities through the use of consumable reagents (which include poisons). Using reagents would bolster your spells effects 10-25% depending on the spell or activate a built in secondary effect. To access this you need to learn how to create the reagents which might require a device at your lair. In my system using reagents costs something else either an extra skill or potion as you only get so many slots. You can slot two reagents at the cost of other things.
3) Casting Type: Depending on the spell or ability you can choose how you cast it. For instance some can be spoken or hand gesture or you can choose both. The downside being your more susceptible to controlling effects such as mute and also each type of casting has its own cooldown so if you speak a spell you cant speak another one for a certain time. If you choose to augment the spell with two casting types both types go on cooldown. Depending on the spell you can use spoken and or hand gesture but conduit is always reserved for weapon skills. Weapon skill related spells can use all three, but non weapon spells cannot use conduit.
4) Conduit, Archetype & Weapon Skills: All weapon specific skills are a conduit to specific archetype abilities through the specific weapon. This mean that a weapon skill in a fighters hands will behave differently than the same weapon skill in a mages hands. The base skill is the same but becomes empowered when used by a specific archetype. For instance for mages a weapon skill will add various runes and magical effects to a base skill where a fighter would add specific moves to a skill. Each archetype modifies the base skills in its own way according to the archetype. This means that any archetype can use their favored weapon effectively regardless of what the weapon is. It will behave differently though based on archetype modifications available.
How you set up your archetype in conjunction with the weapons you use and the weapon skills you employ defines how your weapon skills work ( see my post on hotbar/ui layout). The base weapon abilities do not "belong" to any archetype but are greatly enhanced through archetype choices. You go find the weapon, then collect the skills then modify that skill according to choices you make with your archetype.
Non weapon skills
These skills are a mix of archetype specific and non specific spells and abilities you can collect. They don't use the weapon system at all and thus don't use the conduit but instead use only free hand and spoken casting types which have their own cooldowns.
Cooldowns
This is a three cooldown possible system. Your conduit has a cooldown, spoken has a cooldown and hand gesture has a cooldown. You can combine spells and abilities casting type for more power but it also activates the cooldown for each one so you have to pay a price for doing that. Weapon abilities tend to have much shorter cooldowns (1.5 sec min) and non weapon abilities longer cooldowns (2.0 sec min) though any skill could be more than that based on weapon size and other factors. If you use a 2 handed weapon you cannot use the hand gesture cooldown at all.
Healing
There are no "direct healing" spells in my system but there are a few regeneration bolstering spells. This is limited to improve the overall gameplay relying on archetype mitigation, evasion and crowd control instead of healing.
Crowd control
Since there is no healing there will be a lot of crowd control. The difference in this system is there is no hard shutdowns. You have to combine multiple crowd control/effects to achieve a hard shutdown.
so if your muted you simply cant cast spoken spells or abilities. If your bound you cant use your free hand and if your disarmed you cant use your weapon. There would also be roots, snares, double vision, darkness, fear and other partial forms of control but not a single spell to stun or mesmerize. These hard effects can only be achieved through synergy with another player or skillful combo play to a lesser extent.
thats all i have so far.
.05 of a second to midnight
Comments
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
the idea was to build a wizards tower (or fighters hold etc) of sorts filled with things that actually helped your character. Getting the skill is the beginning not the end since there are so many more things to do before it reaches full power.
in my model i use a situational mitigation theme which is like mages can defend best (tank) against magic, fighters can defend best against physical attacks which replaces the old trinity and is best suited for action combat games. This model doesn't require healing because each archetype (fighter/mage/rogue) has a specialized way of defending themselves depending on the enemy and all players can fight, evade and use crowd control. Healing isn't constructive in this model. A new kind of gameplay.
what i was really going for was a strategic deployment of skill buttons on the hotbar similar to how eso does it. So if you had a sword and shield you could channel weapon abilities and only speak spells, which is reasonable, but you could keep one hand free to get an extra cooldown but of course you lose your sheild or the extra damage from a 2 hander etc. How you want to bring it altogether is up to the player.
Which makes your spellcasting system unsuitable for all currently popular gaming hardware.
Think of a battle where opposing lines of melee characters on both lines focus on running past each other to avoid the melee vs. melee.
EDIT: Also, in that kind of system the ideal team would be either all magic or all fighters.
For example let's say all mages team against a team with 50% mages and 50% fighters. At the beginning of the battle the all mages team could do full damage on those fighters until there are none left, whereas the 50% 50% team would have half of its members doing reduced damage.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/496800/my-ideal-skills-weapons-ui-hotbar-layout
1) lets every one solo you just have to pick your battles.
2) lets everyone tank but again you have to pick your battles.
3) everyone can dps and crowd control but you have to pick your battles.
the ideal group is fighter, mage, rogue because all components are represented. No matter what you fight, you'll have the right guy. If your fighter guy cant tank the evil mage then they can still either kill them or act as crowd controller or both.
This lets people play dynamically as they choose an archetype or flavor now and role presents itself through the enemy you face which is constantly changing. You have to know a little bit about your enemy which you would learn by experience.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
But I love the idea of "Lair Based Power."
An idea that I always liked was for a Mage to be able to sit in his Tower, using a crystal ball as a connection, and take over his Familiar to go out into the game world and explore. Or even communicate with other Players. And using skills that belong to that Familiar.
That, and/or simply "Scrying" as an invisible Eye.
I also wouldn't mind seeing some of it for other Skills or Classes.
Alchemists would be a good fit, as they build their lab.
It would also work for Smiths well. Non-magical stuff, but special equipment for special products.
And Druid Coves, Witch Covens, and the like.
Once upon a time....
what it really does is shift focus away from levelling and skilling up toward resource collection. When you find the resources and recipes and do the upgrades that is the replacement for the time you would of otherwise been grinding up those skills. Just a different perspective.
It allows you to have a skill capture system without the need for skill use grinding. We've just moved that grinding component over to the resource acquisition department.
It gives your lair some real purpose over and above decorating and makes the alt process, combined with my skill library idea very user friendly.
its really not a complex system. It basically gives you two or three cooldowns to manage on your hotbar depending on how you set up your character. You have to make some simple choices as i'm all about "builds" so there are a number of ways you can set up a character with pros and cons to each setup.
But I'll reserve any final decisions for now.
Once upon a time....
Powerful spells should be costly and strategic.
I liked Funcom's idea with Conan when a spell could backfire and damage you. But I can see problems with the playerbase having spells blow up in their face.
My #1 thought when it comes to any kind of combat is:
Is it fun?
is it entertaining?
People want/need variety, they get bored. To me it seems that developers are forced to put way too many different combat abilities into a game or people will believe its too simple.
Imho it's the scripts that have become boring. Instead of trying to come up with more ways of attacking mobs, come up with more ways mobs can attack, make them feel more menacing.
Combat needs to feel challenging.
Combat needs to feel rewarding.
What are the goals?
A commercial blockbuster or a niche game. A numbers game or an immersion game?
I don't know, I think we've seen so many different combat abilities and things of that nature, but the mob side of the equation always seems to stay the same.
Dumbass, boring mobs. The only thing that changes is the pretty pictures.
Imho it doesn't matter what one comes up with on the offensive side of things, if the mobs you fighting are stupid and boring.
My combat system would be built off of that foundation.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
as for spells backfiring i remember eq had a system where a spell could fizzle. This happened most often when you had low skill but it was an interesting idea especially when a spell fizzles at the wrong time.
It definitely is appealing, but how to do it well?
UO spells would fizzle all the time. The better your skill, the less chance to fizzle. Shittiest thing was wasting the regents.
edit: I liked the idea, like in UO where a powerful spell had a cost associated with it.
In UO the cost was monetary and spells had a chance to fizzle if you cast them before the appropriate skill level.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
so its not just a question of having a trillion reagents on you instead its a choice between the reagent use and slotting another skill, potion or passive.
so depending on how you play it can be worth it or not worth it. Same thing for the free hand. It gives out extra cooldown to play with but costs you a shield or 2 hander etc.
so it a choice to have something at the cost of something else. In horizontal based games you need to offer sufficient build choices, not just in archetype(class), equipment and skills but even in how your hotbar functions.
The fizzles stopped pretty quickly because skilling up went pretty fast at the low levels (and stopped faster at the higher levels).
Also, spell casting could be disrupted if you took damage while casting (which only took a second or 3). You could spam the casting and make it work out, almost always. Or you could step away and get the extra time it took the opponent to catch up to you to get your casting done.
I also like "precasting." You cast the spell, but then you had to "send" it by targeting something. So you could hold the spell until the right time to "throw" it. For up to 12 seconds, I think it was.
The words of power appeared over your head automatically, and anyone who knew them would know what spell you were casting. This made Mage battles pretty fun, as you played out some tactics when you saw what the other guy was casting.
There was some stacking of spell casting, based on timers on a very few spells, but also the means to counteract the strategies used with stacking.
Example:
1. Paralyze (froze for some seconds or until taking damage)
2. Explosion (with a timer for a few seconds before it explodes like a grenade)
(Target is still paralyzed until the explosion happens)
3. Major damage spell
(Combination might be enough to kill target, or at least put them behind on healing themselves.)
Then there was the Curse Spell, which reduced all of the targets Stats. In a lower Power Gap game like UO, this had some effect, but the target often didn't know they had been cursed because they didn't see any effects, so watching their Health Bar was off. And the Target had fewer HPs left than they thought.
And Poison Spell, Target can't Heal until the Poison is removed by a Cure Spell or Potion.
It was just a fun system.
Once upon a time....
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
UO had a strange thing they introduced.
Concerning Blackrock and almost certainly connected to my post about the "Greatest Quest Artifact."
It was discovered (probably leaked by GMs) that a Player could say a certain set of Words Of Power while near or holding a piece of Blackrock.
No one knew what it meant, but the piece of Blackrock would explode and the Character would from that point on "infect" creatures with some form of plague that caused them to go insanely aggressive. They could also infect other critters.
But Player Characters could not infect other Players' Characters.
I found the story on this at the UO Wiki. Evidently, after all these years, that's still the case.
That sounds like some deep mystery. But maybe it's nothing more than what is seen.
If it is a mystery that actually has an answer, that would be really cool.
I'd love to see Magic systems in games that had experimentation, hints in Ancient Tomes, discoveries in the game world that give hints, etc. A system that's deep and mysterious, but actually makes some sense so that Players are able to use their heads to figure out some of it.
Once upon a time....