PlaneShift

Setting new for now, since this is a feature request.
Although you point out the problem very well, with nice examples (and I fully agree), please know that this is long known. If I had time, I would find you a bug that this is probably a duplicate of :)

Before I published this, I actually did search the old bugtracker for all unresolved bugs with the word "magic" (19), and I looked in this bugracker for all entries categorized under "Magic System" (14), and did not find this issue addressed. I also searched this bugtracker for "magic" in Combat and Training & Skills with no results. Not saying it's not in there someplace, but I couldn't find it.

I wish I had the coding skills to help develop the magic system, but alas I get lost in all the curly braces and semicolons.

MrG

I completely agree that growth for a magic only character is too painfully slow to be playable. afaik the law states that every citizen is supposed to have some skill with the sword, so there has never been the intent to provide for magic only characters.

part of the suggestions consider magic as something that is easily done - but considering the existing learning curve it is obviously not. casting while running is as much nonsense as sword fighting while running - you need to focus for both activities, the involved movements (gestures, incantations, stances, feints…) are (or should be) already taken care of by the combat system.
a mining spell is ridiculous, as it would have to be about 5th realm to force the earth with your mind instead of using a rock pick - and you still have to be able to carry the ore. besides, last time I checked mining still involves mental stamina, so you even your warrior type can get fatigued with low mental stats pretty quickly.
as for the easy way of crafting that warrior type characters are supposed to possess: crafting is not as expensive but much more time consuming than magic, and the outcome of your items does depend on your mental stats. hence crafting is actually a lifestyle of its own, like fighting or specializing in 2-3 magic ways.
NPCs do not have to consider the skills/stats of a player as in many cases you don't have to fulfill the quest on your own. as a resourceful wizard you should be able to find ways to get others to help you. as long as you can talk to NPCs while you are overloaded even items that are too heavy for you to carry around can be passed on to the NPC to fulfill the quest.

I started out with a magic only character (strength 23) and had a lot of trouble in the start. however, it is a tough world we are living in, not even ground transport aside from your own two feet, so realistically you should not create such an extreme character without being willing to pay the price.
what I would wish for as a magic user are
a) casting times of low level spells shortening with increasing skill, at least for combat spells
b) more powerful spells at higher levels as the powering of spells works only in a rather limited fashion
c) a larger variety of spells (at least one per way and realm)
d) more medium distance spells instead of touch spells as it is really hard to concentrate while you are being bashed over your head
and of course the bug fixes for the existing spells I assume that all of these (maybe with the exception of a) are already in process.

a wider range of magic items and the introduction of enchanting skills would be a nice addition but not a must have for balancing magic against other lifestyles.

Although I would not mind Kayden having a look now that he is looking at some magic scripts, please understand that what is asked here is much more complex than just changing a few scripts. Before you know it, there will be similar posts asking why anyone choosing a magically inclined path in character creation can kill everyone within a mile by blinking their eyes :).

Balancing magic with other offensive and defensive skills requires someone to spend quite some time looking at all the aspects (expense, invested time, defensive and offensive effect, how quickly you can earn money and items, which depends on availability of 'prey', crafts, quests, etc).

For now, lets first get magic working :). If while doing so, Kayden can tweak a few scripts (for example, have freeze actually do some damage), that would be nice. If not, hopefully someone will have the time to look at general balance soon ™.

I'm making the engine work. I've also looked at various spells and improved their scripts a bit, but I haven't been rewriting or rebalancing the rules. I would love to see a rules team work on that, add new, fancier spells, and possibly remove some existing ones. Most of ours are pretty boring…"You blind the player's vision…it lowers their attack by 2%." "You do something else really impressive! It…lowers their attack by 2%." We can do better, I'm sure.

Another idea is, rather than changing the spell damage amounts, we may just need to raise the PCaps on lower level spells.

Removing Kayden as assignee, hoping there will be a rules department to look at balance soon :)

Also changed category.

Assigning to bovek to have a look. Maybe he can get some ideas from this and then close it :)

Just to tell: there should be some sort of "wait" (for completion) in the shortcuts becuse, as already stated, two spells can't be casted in sequence (not in parallel: just in sequence) because of the casting of the first ruins (blocks) the second one. The "wait for completion" should not work for casts only, but I found it's need just in casting now.
e.g.
/target Elwee
/cast <name of defensive spell>
/target clear ←- this ruins the previous cast completion

Obviously maybe I'm to new at PS to know some kind of (existent) "wait"… or some trick to do it (but in this case I think is preferrable to have an explicit way to "wait" instead of a trick).

Even if I completely agree with MrG on the need that the magic way of life should be at least the same (in power) as the weapon's one, I really hate any kind of "auto-magic" like "loop untill the monster is dead" as it's up to the mage to try 'till he is satisfied by his work.

Instead of "automatically fire defensive spells" I suggest the mage can cast some kind of "all day" protecting shield which lasts for "24 hours" from the cast (and can be saved from logout/login/crashes), it can be ruined by other's attacks and can be renewed if faded away.
Low level mages can have it with less (magical) hit points while high level mages can trust it much more (like an armor, but not lasting like it: e.g. low level = 10 hits, high = 30).
It should be "generic", protecting the PG from any thing which try to hit him.
Any other kind of protection will add to it but have shorter protection times and the ability to protect from some kind of particular damage (physical, energy, fire, dark and so on).

Last but not least, I think that the only cast which can be used while running should be a position related one (walk/run): e.g. there can be a "teleport" spell which can move the PG to a (nearest: in view) location: this can be casted while moving without ruining the mage's cast concentration, while the other spells won't be (as well explained by felanha).

*EDIT*
To avoid creating such a kind of "tankmages" I suggest to differentiate "war" PCs from "mage" PCs in the way the first will just have access to some low-level cure, but the second will access all the magical ways: the key is in the Stats.
Stats should be "capped" in a way a PC can have only an (auto)balancing amount. Three Physical Stats and Three Mental ones, so the Cap can be 300% (or 350%).
(I don't know the numeric stat "limits" so I assume "100%" the "full Stat")

e.g.
STR/END/AGR at 100% should lead to
INT/WIL/CHA at 0% (or the sum will reach max 50% if the cap is 350%)
(a "pure war")

and (obviously)
INT/WIL/CHA at 100% should lead to
STR/END/AGR at 0% (or the sum will reach max 50% if the cap is 350%)
(a "pure mage")

As no one will tavel the world with 0% STR (not enough STRength to lift anything) and no war just do "brute force" only, there will be a sort of "balancing" from Physical to Mental Stats: wars will decide to lift Mental Stats a little (to better use some part of equip (e.g. magical weapons), potions, low level healing spells) and mages will lift Physical Stats just to walk and run without being stuck lifting their bag of Glyphs. ;)
Lifting up Physical automatically forces Mental to decrease (and vice versa) so will be impossible to have a PC with 100% Physical and 100% Mental: one should choose his way, the metal or the spells.
A technical hint: implementing the "cap" requires the presence of some kind of "lock" mechanism to avoid the unwanted decreasing/increasing of some Stats: e.g. I lift 1% of STR and one of my Mental Stats will decrease by 1% (if I reached the Cap): locking INT the auto-decrease will choose from WIL and CHA only (if I lock the three Mental I'll have no gain in Physical as no (auto)decrease is possible in Mental Stats: no auto-balance = no increase).

note: this mechanism has proven to be good in Ultima Online's Stats and Skills, leading to very differentiated PCs but all with a "preferred way" (mages, rangers, wars, rogues, etc.) all really "balanced" in skills and stats thus the ability of the player counts much more the "level" of the PC.

Cheers, Elwee (a wanna to be mage) ;)

The problem that beginning mages face is threefold (I'm limiting this discussion to newbies as the strength of high level magic is a whole another can of worms):

1. Magic training is hideously expensive; especially as their capacity to finance it is severely limited without taking up a profession (such as smelting, smithing, or cooking) as well. The recent changes to increase PP yield from crafting probably helped this; however, smelting and smithing are difficult to do with low weight capacity, and to be truly effective at crafting requires a fair bit of leveling anyway, which means that less PP is available for magic training.
2. The spells you learn at low levels are relatively weak at that point. More on this later.
3. The six or so "base" glyphs (those sold by Levrus) are trivial to get. A few select ones can be obtained easily by questing; however, most glyph rewards (even low-level ones) are yielded through quests that either require going out to forlorn corners of the world or are extremely difficult to impossible for a beginning mage to run. Perhaps making it so that a novice mage can get at least 2-3 glyphs spread across functional areas (healing, buffing, attack) in his or her chosen Way without having to slave away at a mine for hours would be a good idea.

Now, to expound on the second point. Most attack spells are quite weak at low magic skill levels; this means that a novice is practically limited to a select few monsters (One-Eyed and some Diseased Rats, perhaps other mobs in a similar strength class such as some Tloke Drones) by going toe to toe, spell against claw. It is possible to take on stronger monsters by using the world as a defensive weapon to prevent the monster from hitting you (basically, taking advantage of the current state of the AI); however, mana becomes a severe limitation in that case, even with the use of Relaxing Sleep to increase your character's passive mana regeneration temporarily. The only way around this is large quantities of mana potions; these add up rather quickly though, and take up inventory space that is quite precious to a novice mage (who will most likely have very poor physical stats). This is further compounded by the fact that some Ways don't provide any attack facilities to novices (see the breakdown below).

• Crystal Way: attack and healing are available at realm 1, making this attractive to novices. However, the quest for the Energy glyph is somewhat time consuming, which can put a bit of a damper on healing ability. Once you reach realm 2, things get a little better: there's a max-HP buff, a weak debuff, and a stronger attack spell; however, Crystal lacks any true defensive spells, which is problematic.
• Azure Way: this is the single hardest way for a new mage to learn. Relaxing Sleep is a very useful spell for the mana regeneration it can provide (it also serves as a weak, short-duration HoT and provides stamina regeneration); Defensive Wind (like all the defensive buffs in the game) should be strengthened though; this would make melee combat far more tolerable for novice and intermediate mages, due to the fact that they are squishy (limited HP). An aggravating factor is that the first offensive spell available in this Way is a realm 3 spell, meaning that a mage has to study for quite a while before he or she can actually kill things with Azure magic.
• Blue Way: you do get a first realm attack spell (a DoT), which helps. However, very few other useful spells are available in this Way (no buffs that I know of, and no healing/DoT removal either, perhaps a HoT would be appropriate for Blue to contrast with the straight healing provided by Crystal Way?).
• Red Way: other than the lack of a heal, this is one of the best ways for a novice to take up. A useful strength buff, two attack buffs, a defensive-offensive (damage reflective) spell, and a pseudo-AoE attack spell are all available from the beginning, provided you can obtain the necessary glyphs. However, the main power of Red Way lies in buffing fighting, not in direct attack (this is due to the lack of true AoE behavior in the engine; perhaps Flame Burst should be made into a straight attack spell and AoE casting reserved for more skilled casters?).
• Brown Way: there are buffs and defensive spells available early; however, again, we have the issues of difficult to obtain glyphs and weak defensive spells though. Flying Stones is unavailable until realm 2; however, it is a good attack spell even at such low skill levels, which makes BrW surprisingly useful for intermediate mages.
• Dark Way: you get a debuff, a straight attack spell, and a DoT/weak self-heal, all at realm 1. However, (this is a problem Weakness shares with Freeze), keeping a target DoTed consumes an inordinate amount of mana due to the short time frame of DoTs in PS. Perhaps making the DoTs longer and slightly weaker would help?

Brief magic glossary:

• AoE – Area of Effect. Refers to spells that affect whatever is in a given chunk of space, rather than individual targets
• AW or AzW – Azure Way
• BlW – Blue Way
• BrW – Brown Way
• chain targeting – Spells that are targeted at a given character, but whose effect also "spills over" to one or more nearby characters.
• CW or CrW – Crystal Way
• Direct (straight) attack – Spells that attack a given target (analogously for heals)
• DoT – Damage over Time. Refers to spells that inflict damage on a foe over a set period of time as opposed to all at once.
• DW or DkW – Dark Way
• HoT – Heal over Time. The inverse of a DoT, this type of spell slowly heals the target over a period of time.
• pseudo-AoE – A class of spells that uses chain targeting behavior to emulate an AoE effect.
• RW or RdW – Red Way
• Squishy – vernacular for a character with severely limited HP/armor

This task should be slightly more complete now, as the difficulty is no longer as bad as the original poster made it sound. The difficulty curve with mages is commonly a very hard beginning, but an exponential increase in power. The sorcerer's apprentice is usually handed the manual labor the sorcerer does not wish to do; "character building" and "lessons". Is magic not meant to follow these tropes?

BUg tracker is not really a good place for discussions. Things not being balanced is known, and being worked on. Magic should already be much better after Jorrit made improvements. I will assign to him so he can check this report to see if there are any good ideas worth keeping somewhere else, and I suggest he closes this request after that.