Magic without mana

[darkw00t]

But you would be put off if someone talked to you but things like people greeting you could put you off though everyone will just do it and you won\'t be able to do the spell or watever, but say if it is raining you might have a chance of getting put off or if there is a lightning flash or a sudden change of weather would put someone off, a higher lvl of concentration will help this from happening, there could be other forms of disturbing your concentration though chat should not be one due to facts that people will dilliberately put you off on purpose

[darkw00t]

I like the short term and long term idea, as most of your skills (esp. Mining, fighting and etc.) will use stamina up and you will get tired, this combines with coffee thread in a way that coffee will bring up your stamina in short bursts (though there are side effects) but mana should be used though using a big sword slash should take up no mana at all it should use up just your stamina and telekenetics should use concentration though summoning a big fireball will need a mixture of skills, but these could well be divided into 2 stamina groups that you talked of, so yeh so far this thread has been a good idea in my opinion

[Ethan]

About the Wheel of Time books, it is an exemple of :
- mana as an outsource (mana being called by another way.. )
- draw back (explosion, burnt, no use..)
- ceremony (angreal..)

Originally posted by darkw00t
chat should not be one due to facts that people will dilliberately put you off on purpose

In fact malus/bonus with chat should be given according with what the mage wrote. The mage will always hear but his concentration may help  him to not pay attention to it. But if he answer that would means the dialog get a part of concentration of him.

[Zan]

Personally I don\'t like the idea of concentration at all ... to me it is implied in ones skill level. One of the very first things a mage learns is to concentrate without being distracted and as their skill grows their concentration grows.
I mean really if you can cast a spell while a Tefusang charges at you and perhaps even takes swings at you or when you are standing in the middle of a battlefield ... then don\'t you think it would be ridiculous if you got distracted by chatting?

Allowing a caster to be distracted makes them utterly useless because I can\'t honestly think anything that could disrupt concentration as well as standing face to face with your own death. So basically this idea makes it so that only the people with enormous concentrating abilities can fight with magic.

As far as the externa mana goes, it seems like it would be hard to code. The server would have to keep tract of Mana as an object? Seems like it would be like having 10,000 invisible carrots on the map. It seems like it would mean the Mage would have to constantly keep moving around too. Did I miss something?

Actually it wouldn\'t be that hard, the way I see it mana would be represented with just another variable, basically like the gamma/lighting of an area. One area has a normal mana variable which means all spells take the normal ammount of time to be cast. Another area has a normal mana variable plus a 1.5x Crystal Way variable. This means in this area Crystal Way spells will be cast 1.5 times as fast, say for example because the area is saturated with pieces of crystal which have fallen off the Sun.
So you see mana wouldn\'t act as an item but as a variable depending on the area. You have a constant which means every spell acts normally and on top of that you can either have a positive or negative value for each or all magic ways. I don\'t think it would require that much programming, of course still a bit but it \'ll be worth it if you ask me.

[derwoodly]

Originally posted by Ethan
  Mana \"still need to be in the game\" but not necesserily in the character. With an outer force it will be \"in the map\".  (the background of the map, and its weather defines the environement descibed above.)

That is where I got the idea that mana was an object.  I was speaking in terms of programing not lore.

If you assume the area around the caster has an infinite amount of \"mana\" then you don\'t have to keep tract of it.  In real terms this will just mean your mage will be limited by the casting time on each spell.  If you add long cool down counters to spells then mages will not be able to chain cast indefinately.  

This is unless your of the camp that wants your mages to be gattling guns that never run out of ammo.

[edit: @ Zan good point,  I did not think of the gama codes already in the map.  However I don\'t know if they are dynamic.  I think they are client side.  Mana should be server side data. that is if it is going to change over time]

[Ethan]

Well about chat disturbing I would say, it is not totaly useless : you can not fear a charge of some kind of beast, but being bothered by your friends who ask you how to inverse a matrice... (Try to cast a spell and at the same time to inverse matrice) Of course the chat malus will not be to high.
And as It need a lot of programming for only a  small thing in the game, I gess it won\'t be. But it would be great... Maybe far later...

If you assume the area around the caster has an infinite amount of \"mana\" then you don\'t have to keep tract of it. In real terms this will just mean your mage will be limited by the casting time on each spell. If you add long cool down counters to spells then mages will not be able to chain cast indefinately.

Well, long cool down counters.... On of the point of this thread is to find a better way, the use of stamina (as all ingame actions) is a better one, I think.

[derwoodly]

Sounds like you just want to use the stamina bar instead of the mana bar.  That would mean a mage was out of stamina would be a useless lump, and be esily killed as they could not cast or run.  

I like the way that your idea fits into the lore.  Power is drwn from the crystal.  But, It comes down to how you would like to mages used.  Do you want to have them store up a big pile of mana then use it all at once for a quick kill, then have a long down time while they rest. Kinda like catapults.  Or should then be more like archers with out the whole problem of needing arrows.  

Buffs typically use less mana, but without a mana bar then buffs would be unlimited.  Having short spell effects would compinsate for this , but would mean mages would do a lot of clicking.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
Or should then be more like archers with out the whole problem of needing arrows.  

And with chance of getting youself hurt (spell casting is more dangerous than archery).

Also, casting buff spells of same time five times at once shouldn\'t be any different than casting it just once.

If you cast \"Giant\'s Strength\" then the spell should give you speciffic strength (like +40). Casting it again shouldn\'t change anything. The spell isn\'t supposed to give you numbers, but to morph your muscles to a form that would be present if you were somewhat bigger. It might at best prelong the spell duration.

[derwoodly]

What I was getting at with the buff issue was that without mana to regulate a mage\'s casting one could just chain cast and quickly buff large groups of people.  If the spells effects took 30 minutes to wear off then one mage could keep 100\'s of players buffed.  If the length the effect was reduced then the mage would have to rebuff players frequently and the number of total players that one mage could keep buffed would be lower.

However, with a mana bar, You can adjust the amount of mana the buff uses to effectivly limit the number players a mage will buff.

The same thing can be done with a recast timer, if the spell can not be recast for 10 minutes and it lasts 30 minutes then a mage can only buff 3 people.

I am sure there are other ways to limit mages as well.

[Neryam]

Note: most of this post is to derwooly.

Right, well if the magic came from the \"True Source\", you wouldn\'t need to keep track of it at all, just slice the variable mana off the table and be done with it

And yes, but the long-term stamina would run out MUCH slower and it would be used by everything else. And yes, if the mage runs out of the long-term stamina he/she would be a useless lump. That is better; that is how it would be in real life (as in fantasy world real life) , the idiot would use the magic until he/she collapses and is trampled by the ulbernaut
That would add another strategic element to the game also; it is dangerous to use up the last drop of your long-term stamina and whoever does deserves to die anyway. You should always conserve a bit. If the long-term stamina goes to zero I guess the character would just collapse and go to sleep until the stamina reaches 5% or so, then regains conciousness.

And yes, there would be no restrictions in time except the casting time. There is no time restriction in sword fighting or archery; why should there be for magic?? Using one universal power source would effectively balance out the fighting completely. To make close combat more fair though, since it can\'t be used at range,  I\'d say it drains just as much power as the basic-level spells and it\'s easy to train. It shouldn\'t really do much more damage; I don\'t thing a fireball would hurt less than a sword slice

Oh and about the casting time, yeah the higher your level the more of the True Source you can draw on and the faster you will get the power to throw a fireball. The power draw enhancing items would make this even faster. Higher level mages should be able to cast most common spells instaneously, but I guess there needs to be something to prevent someone from throwing 120 fireballs a minute.. Which contradicts my previous statement. I\'d say if you have used a certain number of l-t stamina points in 10 seconds you start taking damage (from drawing on too much power at once).

[derwoodly]

So I swing a sword and do 100 points of damage and it costs me 5 stamina points.

I cast a spell it does a 100 points of damage and costs me 5 stamina points.  

It looks like mages will be doing the same damage per second as fighters but at range.  They will also need the same stamina as a fighter if they hope to do the same damage over time as a warrior.

This sounds like a diferent system than I am used to, I am not saying it could not work just saying high stamina mages is not the norm.

[Edit: off topic-- I read some of the web site in your sig  this is funny and so true...
Alternately, you are a game master or game designer.  You have a fantastic idea for a game world.  The people of Shangrila have lived in peace for centuries.  The have known limitless prosperity and developed amazing new sciences.  All this was shattered when the evil Necromancer Urghblech unleashed his mighty army of hideous orcs upon these unsuspecting people.  Can anyone save them in time?  Great - now what do the players do?  You need a plot.  Wait.... you don\'t need a plot - you have an army of orcs for the players to kill!  When they get too tough for orcs the Necromancer will summon Ogres for the players to kill.  These will later be augemented by Ogre mages, Dragons, Red Dragons, Blue Dragons, Copper Dragons, Curium Dragons, Radioactive Polka dot Dragons, Elder Radioactive polkadot Dragons and ultimately by something called a K\'tl\'aa\'draclqw that looks like a multitentacled jello cube and fires thousand point damage area affect lightning bolts and is only affected by +329 or better cheese based weapons ]

[Draklar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
What I was getting at with the buff issue was that without mana to regulate a mage\'s casting one could just chain cast and quickly buff large groups of people.  If the spells effects took 30 minutes to wear off then one mage could keep 100\'s of players buffed.  If the length the effect was reduced then the mage would have to rebuff players frequently and the number of total players that one mage could keep buffed would be lower.

I\'m playing a tabletop where there is no mana points or anything like that... And it\'s not an issue. One that spells require time to cast (and spell wears off at about 5 times longer time than casting), so you can support at best 4-6 people in such way (which would be normal for a group); Two that there\'s always danger of spell backfiring...
Of course, no one would set 30 minutes as the time for spell to wear off... That\'s ridiculous... Just look at the spells that we actually already have in PS.

[derwoodly]

In the table top game, can you chain cast as well?

[Draklar]

Originally posted by derwoodly
In the table top game, can you chain cast as well?

What do you mean by \"chain cast\"? :|

[derwoodly]

I use chain casting to mean casting the same spell in rapid fire succesion.   Although I have heard it used to mean casting without pausing.  Usually done by mad clicking on the spells hot button or mad hotkey pressing.

I believe in NWN it was a spell that let Wizzards cast faster than normal.  Anyways, it means you would use up your mana bar fast if you had one.

I am making the assumption that spells will be more powerfull in the future.  If they remain weaker than swords there really is nothing wrong with letting Mages types cast as fast as they can press the hot key.  In my opinion, that does not make for a fun game.  But that is just me, and I dont have to play a mage, I am happy with warriors, untill it becomes all about the equipment and not about tactics.

Its night night time now, and I have a busy weekend comming up.  Enjoy!