Magical Experiment
– Ahh, the child of Bhaal has awoken, it is time for more… experiments.
– The pain should only be passing you should survive the process.
– Interesting, you have much untapped power.
– Do you even realize your potential? Irenicus, Baldur’s Gate II – Shadows of Amn
Well, I’m trying to improve magicians so I’ll be experimenting with them from here on. I indulge everyone to try to be a mage, with or without class alignment. This way I can try to experiment with the two aspects of magic, the class perspective as well as the regular perspective.
If you have any thoughts about the magic system, please post them here. I’ll need them to improve the system. Now I’ll be explaining the things I’ve thought about and want to improve.
I think that magic shall be the most powerful force in Nianze, except for the Divine powers and such. I also want it to be flexible and useful in most areas.
I’ve divided magic into three schools, from Dragons and Demons 1991, but customized it a little to my will.
Animism
This school shall have three available aspects, Nature, Weather and Creature. I’ve meant for this school to be fast, but with a large magic cost. I want it to be a support and enhancing magic school that aren’t much for direct battle.
I’ve also thought of this magic to alter the strings of life, which is the binding magical flow of the three planes of existence in Nianze. The aspect of this school uses the environment rather than creating stuff. By suggesting, or forcing the nature to do as they want it. When the summon creatures they actually draws them from the plane of existence, as a weaker image than the actual thing, so a summoning actually is just an imaginary picture from the Multiverse that resembles the real thing.
Elementarism
This school shall have five aspects from now on; Common, First Elemental, Two elemental, Three elemental and Four elemental. I’ve meant for this school to be cheap in magical costs, and semi-fast. The catch should be that it needs more than just magical proficiency; it needs reaction, precision and sense as well as some other skills too. I’ve also thought of this magic to alter the elemental particles of the world. The world’s building stones. The Common aspect should just alter all particles without changing their alignment making the weakest as well as the strongest spells available for this school. The other aspects mix different particles to make powerful spells that often are offensive OR defensive. So these magicians are meant to be battle mages that use fast magic on the field.
Mentalism
This school is meant to be the absolutely most powerful and dangerous school there is (at least available to players). Its aspects are; Senses, Body and Mind. This school is meant to be expensive and slow, but very efficient. This school also has most available spells. Mentalism alters the waves of the psychic plane of thought and uses it in the material world. It’s very powerful and can alter reality itself just by the thought. The great catch of this school is that it strains on the mind of the magician too. So if not used carefully it may destroy him or her.
This is what I want it to be. People haven’t used magic too much, so I don’t really know how you look at it. But I know people almost always just complain about them…
However, the system…
Right now magicians have three special skills;
Favored School – This just helps them become better in one school as well as improve their magical capacity.
Magical Channeling – Reduces the time to channel to Multiverse.
Memorize – Makes it possible for the mage to “store” spells in a magical memory instead of needing to rely on an artifact.
So magic works about this;
First you spend some action channeling to the Multiverse and the time it takes depends on your skill.
After you have channeled, you prepare a spell, here you can choose auto-success or roll for success, and this isn’t possible on all spells when a diff is needed. This often takes more actions.
Then, if you succeed your spell is cast and the effects begin to affect the targets.
This is what many think is vague and sometimes it seems like some schools don’t even need a FV on their spells. Well, this shouldn’t be true. So if it is right now I need to change it, thou I don’t really know if it is, but I will try to look over it.
About what I want to improve about the magicians
First of all, I want to change the channeling thing. I haven’t really come up with any great ideas yet. But I have some few that I need to think through that I will tell you about now.
Channeling takes way to much time, and the concept feels too similar to other magical concepts. But if I shall change it I don’t want it to be too advanced, the whole Nianze-system is already too advanced as it is.
I have these ideas; Ability Channeling, Level Channeling and Speed Channeling.
Ability Channeling
Many classes have many abilities, Hireswords, Magicians and Warriors are the only ones without abilities from their special skills. This idea is to give them three special abilities tied to the channeling skill. How, or which skills to have here, I haven’t really thought about, but if I change it to something like this it would probably be almost as before with actions to channel, but with some abilities to use too.
Level Channeling
This idea is that you don’t need to channel like before at all. Your skill in channeling determines how powerful your spells is. It’s like every spell has three to four spell-levels and channeling increases automatically the level of the spells, making them more powerful. This will give channeling a new perspective, when the spell-level is determined by both FV and channeling. Thou I don’t really know if this is to complex or not and if it’s even possible to change the system to this without to many glitches.
Speed Channeling
Every spell takes time to cast, but if I change the channeling skill so it reduces the action it takes to cast and charge a spell channeling would also become much more efficient to have. And then magicians suddenly can throw a lot more spells making them even more powerful. The catch with this is that I don’t really know if this is to powerful due to the fact that the new battle system will become to slow if everyone has actions left all the time. But then again, this may be good too, making effects more lasting, for all classes.
These three changes is what I have thought of when it comes to channeling and the reason I just focus on channeling is that I think that this is what makes it most complicated to be a mage right now.
One other thing I know complicates the magicians is the fact that FV don’t seem to be needed all the time, and for some it seems like you can’t use your spell until they’ve gotten over FV 10.
I don’t really know how it works on everything but I’ll try to make three kinds of spells.
The three types I’ve thought of are power, degree and success.
A power-spell is a spell where the FV determines how powerful it is. Like the damage it does or how much bonus it gives, this type of spells is meant to need a diff and therefore must be rolled.
A degree-spell is a spell where the FV determines how much it will do. This can not be altered or improved unless you raise your FV. So this type of spells aren’t needed to be rolled, but can be rolled to gain FP.
Success-spells are spells that have a predetermined effect but needs to succeed with. So you need to roll for this. FV on this skill is bound by the properties like PCN or SIN. This type of spells isn’t meant to be for animists.
Well, I don’t have much to say right now, but with your opinions I may be able to answer questions as well to choose if I shall change anything or not. Otherwise I will just have to test and see for myself.
Best regards,
Herid Fel
Well well.. ive read it through(as some thought I wouldnt) and all I can say at the moment is that some of the ideas mentioned sounded atleast interesting that could make the magician more versatile and the use of spells interesting aswell.
ill only mention a few things now.. and the rest you can hear later.
Elementarism – As the system is right now I think its the hardest system to use and cast spells with.. as it seems you need both high FV(13-Upwards) on the exact spell you use else you will most of the times fail.. and on some spells you also have to aim at the target which requires high SIN or PCN against their SMI or a magical shield perhaps. So you need to roll successfully on 2 rolls..and most of the time in cases like these. probability will bite you in the ass.
But I would be happy to discuss these things in person rather than on this blogg, cause it takes so long time on the blogg and its easier to brainstorm ideas in person.
Over and out.. lol.. back to work
As an reply to what you said. First of all, I didn’t think you would comment, read it I was certain that you would do.
And about elementarism, I quote myself;
Success-spells are spells that have a predetermined effect but needs to succeed with. So you need to roll for this. FV on this skill is bound by the properties like PCN or SIN. This type of spells isn’t meant to be for animists.
This means that if an FV is bound to PCN or SIN it means that you don’t need to roll this property to succeed. Elementarist will have both SS((Success-spells)) as well as DS ((Degree-spells)). The DS are meant to be used without a roll with just a roll on PCN and SIN. An example of this is Firebeam, where the FV determines the damage and range, while PCN and REA is the properties that are used to hit the target.
So you don’t need two rolls to success, just one, but you can choose to make it two.
Well, for you it’s good enough that you commented first. So maybe we’ll talk about this later, but I want most of the thoughts of this visible for everyone so I don’t need to have the same discussion with everyone over and over again…
Well I was commenting how the system works now… since those ideas havent been implemented yet(?), as far as I know atleast.
Anyway… I think making channeling more part of the spell casting and such is a nice idea and hopefully it will change too some degree. anyways.. customers to serve…….
As it is now it is rarely effective to be a caster unless you are a mage, but with the new changes (ds) and (ss) it could actually be worth taking a magic school even if you aren’t a mage.
A mage should be able to cast more spells as it is now because of the extra mp but 5 turns chanelling is to long for a none caster.
If you would make chanelling a part of every spell you cast you could even as a ie hiresword be able to use magic.
Another positive aspect is as it is now a chanelled mage most of the time end up with a dissaster when they roll 20 or a catastrophe roll.
With channeleing for every spell you gets more bad rolls because you roll more but you could add a strength of effect value for every spell so that a catastrophe roll on a low level spell like fireball will be easier to handle for the mage and not cause as much destruction as ie meteor shower (dunno if this spell exists but it sounds strong to me ^^)
if a mage is channeled and something happens now, ie magical vortex, chaos magic and traps they will end up in more trouble than they can handle. With a new channel system they will ofc end up in same situations as before but since they are not channeled all the time and only when they cast spells the mage doesnt have to end up losing to badly from a spell cast in the wrong time but can use spells if they really are in trouble.
I don’t really thing you understood it. But almost.
As it is now it’s obvious nobody can be a spellcaster without being a mage. But the new channeling system will be avaiable as soon as I’ve made up my mind on either channeling methods.
As it is now, speed channeling is the most probable channeling method for the future. Which reduces actions from the spellcasting process.
I have just been reviding the spell-list for Elementarists and they will have 30 spells, Animists have 45 and Mentalists will have 50-60 (right now they have 60, but I’m thinking of taking some away).
As for the channeling once again, you won’t roll a channeling roll, the KN or FV will just determine how much effect it will have.
But well, I’m spawning right now, nothing is yet setteld, but it will be soon, so if you have any ideas, tell me and I’ll se if I can implement them into a better system.
Well, RPG soon, so I shall get some sleep. And PB needs it as well.