What about Rituals?

[Leodinus]

I have an idea...how about rituals for spawning...you know make a sacrifice to the gods for more deer or whatever...it\'ll increase the amount of spawning in an area .

[MagiBountyHunter]

BAHAAHAHHHA just had to laugh.





OutKast Tha Profet

[TheGeneral]

Originally posted by Leodinus
What I mean is for duals between guilds.  Not between players, but between summoned creatures .  Lets say guild A and guild B want to have fun or just want to settle an issue.  They get their wizards together to summon monsters (various monsters per spell, level of the wizards, etc.).

The monsters then fight.  Maybe have it that one of the wizards can take over controls.  You know have it so that it can only happen in arenas and only attack other summoned creatures (so it isn\'t unbalanced).  Maybe have a limit to the number of wizards who can be in the ritual so big guilds don\'t have too big an advantage .  Just throwin\' it out there as somethin\' fun to do.

From I know of MMORPGs, and i played tons, that is the coolest idea yet. I can only think of one game that gives you that option, and it makes i think around 15 million a year (correct me if i am wrong) Lineage. Not only will that option allow you to increase the number of ppl in a guild war, but also add variety to the battle.  It would ROCK if that would be implememnted, but than again, that is only my opinion. :]

[David_HD]

Are the guilds going to be trades guilds, or are they going to just be factions? I mean, will there be a mages guild and a fighters guild and a thieves guild, etc? I know it\'s not a class based game, but I mean with people usually joining the guild closest to how they specialized their character. If so, then a fighter\'s guild might be significantly disadvantaged by this, as they won\'t really have any mages to cast these ritual spells, or if they do, they won\'t be as effective, due to their focus on fighting. One option would be to allow any guild to cast these ritual spells, not just those with mages. Use the overall power of the characters involved to compute the power of the spell, not just the magic related stuff. The effects should then be distributed over the whole guild, so if a spell would absorb 60% of the damage to each of 20 guild members, it absorbs 30% of the damage to each of 40. That will balance the size issue.

[Tearlach t'an Ailech fin Leros]

Rituals would be used (in my opinion) for summonings, raising of the dead, enchanting things, setting up defensive \"spheres\" (as long as the mages concentrates) against magic or physical harm, LARGE area effect (or overkill) offensive magicks, and so on.

This would make guild wars really interesting, as the mages are locked on defending/attacking each other.
(now everybody joins hands here and we will have toast to our evening tea).

When thinking of rituals where more than one person is involved (which my whole post is about) no single \"chain\" can be better than the weakest (in magic) link, therefore a chain of twenty magicians with a lowest magic score of say 2, would be as good as a chain with magicians whose magic value is no less than 4.
The more magicians, the higher chance that one is weak, furtermore, if one mage would fail to channel his power in the chain his link would be broken and all the ackumulated magic would burst out there, creating a random effect...

[David_HD]

I agree it should only be used for large scale spells. We\'ll still have individual magic for the small stuff. Doing a \"only as strong as the weakest\" wouldn\'t give any reason to use more people. Unless maybe certain spells just require more people than others, but I think that would hurt small guilds too much, as their guild-level spellcasting would be highly dependant on the number of mages they have, and only as powerful as the weakest. Also, while minimum numbers of people for certain rituals makes sense, the chain thing doesn\'t, really. I mean, it kinda seems everyone can contribute, and the more energy it has, the more powerful it\'ll be... I\'m still not sure if it should even use your magic stat. Perhaps a new skill? Or just raw character level...

[Tearlach t'an Ailech fin Leros]

it kinda seems everyone can contribute, and the more energy it has, the more powerful it\'ll be...

Yes, and the more powerful it is, the more powerful you need to be to contain it, magic isn\'t a toy.

but I think that would hurt small guilds too much, as their guild-level spellcasting would be highly dependant on the number of mages they have, and only as powerful as the weakest.

But small guild would probably only go to war with other small guilds, and larger guilds could crush them with superior numbers, besides there will probably be more magicians of low level in a large guild, therefore limiting how strong spells they could cast. (note: it would only limit how much energy they could throw in the spell, not the spell level. So two mages with azure way 8 for an example could either team up and use all of their magic points together or surround themself with weaker magicians and throw one level 8 spell each, the power they lay in it would be equal to the lowest  magic point multiplied with the number of participants.)

I am also agreeing with your idea of minimum number of participants in a ritual, it would force guilds to let lower level characters to join in a ritual.

And one note more, I think that it would require at least half an hour (ingame) to ready all things needed for an ritual (pentagrams for defensive spells and maybe animal sacrifices for offensive and so on.)

[dying_inside]

Sorry for necroing a thread but:

Rituals are a good idea.
Usually rituals are performed through several acts such as sacrifice, drinking of somthing and then a chant;  just as an example.
Usually to cast a magic on a certain group of people or person which effects them extremely powerfully and for longer period of time. 
They can also be used in raising or sommuning a creature such a deamons and the dead.

Single person rituals are usually linked to vengance or to get back at a single person, and require a slightly simpler  procedure to complete: light a few candles in a pattern, chant away, pour blood onto an object of power. This can cast a disease or somthing of the sort on a person, or even strike them down. They can appear strange to other people and be hated by everyone because of this ritual performed on them.

Other rituals such as cult extremeism are just used to please a chosen deity, usually involving sex acts of some kind and  alot of times abuse of a person or being.

If a ritual is based on one person, I think it usually involves having somthing of theirs, such as a hair or item etc.
 
Ii;m not entirly sure  how this would fit into game worlds, but maybe you could choose the type of ritual you wished to perform from a list or somthing and the person with the best skill involving that type of ritual would lead the  ceramony. List could be like "cult worship", "powerful magic", "singlular rituals", "summonging" etc.

The more experianced you are in your chosen ritual field the mrore rituals you can do without  dire consequences.  If you are not skilled enough in channeling  the power you are trying to summon, the magic could backfire and cause horrible side effects. You would also have to search around  to find new rituals, it would not just be handed out when you train, you might find it written down on a piece of parchement  dropped by a dead fanatic, or a rogue who stole it from another person etc.  Large books in the library could hold a few passages and instructions on how to perform a ritual or two.

Maybe you would have to keep the parchment in your mind slot, to remember it, as rituals take time and effort, and step involved etc. its not easy to remember all of those steps when you havnt performed it in a while or you havnt reviewed it.  best to be sure and have the spells fresh in your mind, else the consiquences could be horrific if somthing is done wrong.

[Homik]

Sorry, but i just have to.

VOODOO!!!!

[Cynnnah]

Another idea for ritual magic:  Add to the play based economy.  For example, if I want to buy several healing potions, then I have to find a mage who has learned the ritual magic to create said potion, and pay him for that potion.  Add to that the idea the only ritual magic can create magic items, including wands/books etc.  So a magic user would have to buy his magic from the ritual user in the same way a fighter needs to purchase weapons and repair them.  This could be a very effective means to improve cash flow.  Once the system is correctly implemented, then items such as healing potions can be reduced, or even eliminated, from the loot drops and improve the entire player based economy.

Of course, this is just spewing out as the ideas occur, and aside from the creating stuff with ritual magic, has no business whatsoever in this thread

[Polar]

This could be infinitely useful, and quite entertaining. I don't think it should be restricted to large groups though, there aught to be ways for a single character to perform a ritual, with a few involved stages. (IE: The drawing of a pentagram, the lighting of candles, the preparation of ingredients into a potion, that sort of thing.) The character places the heart of an ox into a small wooden bowl covered in arcane symbols, sprinkles some prepared powders on it and chants invocations to a pagan god of one sort or another, while bowing deeply over the sacrifice. Sounds interesting, no?

And there could be advantages for banding together and doing it in larger groups. They could create more spectacular effects by doing more complex rituals, like a ten character ritual with the ability to change the weather effect present in a certain area for a certain amount of time. (You might know this as a 'rain dance'.) They could also do things like summon greater beings from other planes of existance, erect structures by sheer force of arcane strength or prayer, (if you've played G1 or G2, think Xardas' tower) or, for the entertainer classes, there could even be entertainment rituals.

A group of bardic characters could come together and play their insturments in harmony, or a pair of wizards could unite to create spectacular visual effects with their magic. In theory, this could apply to any class. A group of warriors could congregate before battle and perform a dancing or chanting ritual to increase their stamina, strength, and health for a short time (as to represent the boost in morale caused by the ritual.) Or a single hunter could perform a short ritual before going off on a hunt. Even a miner could offer a short prayer for a better chance at locating minerals.

All interesting things to think about, food for thought on the road ahead.

--Polar

[witchking]

I like the idea of rituals or ritualistic magic. I wanted to post something about it but wasn't sure whether to risk making a new topic or necro an old thread. This certainly made my decision easier.

I definitely want ritualistic magic in one form or another. However, after watching a certain video coverage on an MMORPG called "Vanguard: Saga of Heroes", I really like their approach to it. They talk about ritualistic magic in the second part of the video, so feel free to move the slider about 50% through to get to it faster. Here is the video itself (click on "Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Developer Interview 2"):

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vanguard/media.html

"We're adding sympathetic or ritualistic magic and different types of abilities such that one magic user may start a spell and you may be able to react to that spell by starting a spell that combines into a more powerful spell or complete the spell like trying to complete a ritual. But it's going to be timing based, so if you're not paying attention to what your ally is doing or your friend is doing, you might miss the opportunity. But if you pull it off right, if it's a very complex line, involving your entire group, the results could be spectacular - you could deal an incredible amount of damage, let's say, to a boss mob at the end of a dungeon..."

[arcain92]

maby you would have to actually say the  words to the chant.like /ritual bladyblady doh ..and so forth.

[Kerol]

I like this thread and the idea of rituals of different kinds, also guild-specific ones

* Kerol runs off to get stuff like that implemented 

[dying_inside]

Uuuh. Seeing as fanatics could be considered a cult, will this mean that they will be implememnting ritual sex acts in game? 
Just because i swear in every cult there is ritual sex... I wont go into further detail though. Save