When a Spell goes bad...

[Levski]

Originally posted by Syzerian
spells should only backfire if its a spell that you have learnt not spells that you cast off scrolls and such, but yeah this kind of system would make me more paranoid with mage friends

Well, all the spells will be cast using glyphs, so maybe if you arrange them in a wrong order or something the spell could backfire.  Also, if you take too long to use the next glyph, maybe then the spell could backfire, or just die out.

But on the other hand, it would be a nice RPing effect that non-mages are wary of mages and their supernatural powers.

Originally posted by Seytra:
If your skill is below a certain level in comparison to the spell complexity, you have a greatly increased chance of failures, also the effects could be more uncontrolled than if your skill is adequate. In this case, it\'s going to work almost always, and even if not, simply fail or at least not do much harm.

Well, here is where we bring in numbers again.  And we all (well most of us) agree that too many numbers aren\'t good in an RPG.  So let\'s base this on skill, and not numbers and percentages.  Maybe if your skill is not as high as the spell would usually require, maybe you have to add an extra glyph, or read the glyphs in sequence faster, or change the sequence around even.  But a success/failure rate shouldn\'t be fixed for every single player, they should have the chance to prove themselves.

[Sifright]

Ahem I think i have a fair bit of idea as to how magic works in ps.. >: D ^^

Right then if you mess up the glyph combination its simply not the same spell The glyphs are what makes the spell Come on surly some of you have played Dungeon master... any way i digress The point is that spells wont have a Completly set difficulty The more power you channel into it the harder it becomes and less means easier spells will be made by combinations of runes/glyphs i will give you a SS off Dungeon master the glphys will look more flashy in ps but the idea is pretty much the same

The first symbol is power of spell that is the spell at its weakest then comes elemental power and then delivery
I know the system wont be quite the same in ps but it will be fairly simular

[Seytra]

I also believe to know some stuff about the PS rune system by now. The explanation I gave was greatly simplified because the links provide it in greater detail anyway.

I don\'t know about the combinations of glyphs, but I\'d rather gor for a \"charge intensity\" for each glyph or glyph combo that you can freely select. The combination of glyphs will define the spell, no single glyph will IMO represent \"the spell as such\", unless it\'s a one-glyph spell. Even if it is, the same glyph can appear in other spells at different locations as well.
Glyphs _might_ represent spell properties, like fire / water / whatever but I doubt it. There might be blocks of glyphs representing spell attibutes. These blocks could be charged to any extent by your wish. The overall power might also be a combo. This way, you could, by simply varying the attributes, change the fireball spell into a ice explosion spell. If you know how to handle these elements, that is.

The charge level could also be set to more zhan 100%, overcharging the spell. Doing this for the overall power will of course be the most risky thing, but overcharging the individual attributes will make them unstable as well. If you overcharge fire and earth, you might end up having a powerful volcano spell, but also fire could break down and you\'re left with a heap of dirt, or whatever.

Undercharging will make the whole thing easier to control, but still your skill is important. Undercharged spells will, natrally, drain less mana and be less powerful.

The end result has been called \"k-factor\", which is very much like (no, even more natural) the P&P system\'s rules, isn\'t it? THAC0, for example.

Also, as for the \"number v.s. skill\": \"skill\" _is_ a number. Whether it is actually being displayed or not is entirely irrelevant. For the devs it\'s going to be a number, for the player it\'s a skill, because it\'s what\'s they deal with from their particular environment\'s point of view.

Perhaps we could base the internal rule representation on fuzzy logic. This would yield greater flexibility and closer resemble real-world rules. It hasn\'t been tried for RPGs, but it might be good, albeit much work.

[PlaneWalker]

I like Seytra\'s idea.  Another further idea is that when the caster is attacked, every attack will trigger a check to see whether the spell will fail or not.  The higher the caster\'s level is relative to the spell they\'re casting, the less the chance of spell failure.