Magic without mana

[darkw00t]

The backfire thing works well with concentration, if you\'ve been put off (eg. lightning flash) you might backfire cast or you could lower the spells effectiveness

[derwoodly]

I hope I do not add Draklars pain on this.

I think the point was that...  All the other games use mana as a way of controling the amount of damage that a mage/caster class can do.

What is proposed here is to do away with the idea that a mage/caster would ever be caught powerless.  Yes this is like McCloud\'s Full Metal Alchemist.   The damage per second is controled by spell damage and casting time.  

In McClouds example of the warrior and the wizzard battle where the warrior has 1000 points of damage and the wizzard has 10 but kills the warrior by cast, run away, cast, run away technique, balancing could be done by giving warriors speed bonuses, or magic resistance, or stunning abilities.

Personally, I don\'t care if the wizzard can beat the warrior as long as the warrior has some sort of role in the game I would be happy.  If the mages can tank, and damage, then some balancing would be needed.  

BTW I realize PS does not have classes, and it is possible to make a sword wielding mage. Therefore balancing all the skills so there is a reason to train them is a seperate from the mana issue.  Actually it helps the wizzard warrior battle.  If the warrior with 1000 hps learns a skill level 1 spell that does 10 points of damage along with his sword skill of 200.  Then the battle is his.

[darkw00t]

there should be a huge limit to a skill, say 500 so that if that person non stop trains that skill he will get better, so it will take years for a person to train 2 skills to lvl 500, it could be less but what i mean is that it will be really hard to get a good warrior/mage or a tanked up mage

[derwoodly]

Dark,

I am a bit confused by what kind of mana system you are invisioning.  You have mentioned that some spells would use mana some would not.

If I understand correctly, then the Mana bar would stay and some spells would still drain the bar and others would not.  For example a \"rock skin\" spell would not use mana, as it would draw all its power from the users mind.  But the summoning spell would lower the mana bar.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Rage McCloud
well the reason i put that someone didnt read my post was because i had already explained why and didnt see any reason to explain again...

And all your points could be countered with my first post in this thread... Thus none of them were in any way valid when it came to this discussion. I was asking for something that could bring the discussion forward, not put it into some loop.
You still didn\'t explain why it has to be (implicating that it indeed is a must; That the system cannot work without it) replaced. Merely pointed out why you think it would be better.

[darkw00t]

rock skin will require mana, most spells will though some spells will be benifeted from concentration eg. healing, both ways will drain a bit of stamina/fatigue, wind spell for example may be used with concentration on a windy day though if it is isn\'t a windy day you will need to use mana to summon the up the wind. What i am saying is most spells will need mana though there should be some times where you don\'t have to use mana, alot of games have a fast lunge and big slash or something that uses mana, that is not what i want as they should just be using stamina, if you fire 3 arrows at once, it should only use the same amount of stamina as it would with a normal fire you just lose 2 more arrows, if you a lighter for eg. and you light an arrow on fire it still uses the same amount of stamina as a normal arrow though if you don\'t have a lighter etc. you would need to summon a fire bolt or whatever, this would require mana force. You should be getting what i mean now, but say if you concentrate for a wind spell and there is no wind then it\'ll just say \"not enough wind\" or \"you cannot do that\"

[derwoodly]

How can I say this without sounding mean... Maybe a few smilies will help  )  

What MMORPGS have you played before?  I have never played a game with a spell system like you describe.

[Edit: your post would easier to read with a few gaps between paragraphs.  like the ones I have above]

[darkw00t]

So your saying every MMORPG needs to copy each other.

I have played NWN, Diablo 2, Dungeon Seige 2 and the list goes on, I have just quit playing MU (i got bored really quickly) and realised that high lvls had all the fun in that game and you had to be high lvl to use certain characters. The game should be really fun when you start as well, for example- special game events or guild games where you don\'t have to be lvl 100 in something to play it. Also  the character thing in MU was not a bad idea but i would not want to watch numbers come up on a screen killing and killing the same monster for like a year until i reach lvl 220! just to do that process over again.

(back on topic)In MU there was a high lvl skill which was a twirling slash for a warrior which required a lot of mana, now really if you did a twirl with a pole you wouldn\'t need to be magic to do it though (remember these weapons are quite heavy) it would be tiring, i mean you could become stronger so the weapon feels lighter though it will still make you lose stamina, which comes to my point that not all skills (MOST MAGIC SKILLS WILL STILL NEED MANA) will require mana which leads to my above posts with the weather and so on (alot of my non-requiring mana skills are for warriors and rangers)

I hope you can understand about my point now.

[Neryam]

Well the entire reason I say this is good is because it would be GOOD, FUN, and REALISTIC. Unique is good, this game should be set apart.

I still say mana should come from an outside source, we should just slice the entire variable \"mana\" and have everything use stamina. Would require more strategy and care.

What exactly is \"Mana\"? Is it from diablo or something cause like every single fantasy game uses it X( I mean it doesn\'t make any sense is it inner strength or something?
It should make you tired anyway. Sword fighting, mining, all everything else should make you tired. Magic should make you tired too. It just makes sense to use the long-term mana.

[Ethan]

Originally posted by Neryam
I still say mana should come from an outside source, we should just slice the entire variable \"mana\" and have everything use stamina. Would require more strategy and care.

I am totally agree.  *  And for the cost it would be like all skills, using stamina. Of course this rule of \"stamina use\" could be also been enhanced in order to diffenrentiate \"mental skill use\" from \"body skill use\" and \"short-stamina\" from \"long-stamina\".

But there is laso a point to look at : player don\'t have to follow a \"real sleep cycle\" but it could been something near... Maybe, by using drogs (like coffe) and spells, characters should be able to stay awaken more than in our world, the real one. Some draw back could be added to such methods.


darkw00t : Well, spell (that is to say, magic) use mana, it is the definition... But maybe I understoond what your are saying. I will try :

#What you call magic with mana is magic.
( yes, lol)

#What you call magic without mana is mindcrafting or psionics kills. (Kind of abnormal physic skills using mind, is is quite a modern point of view, will be hard to put that in a medieval-fantasy rpg...)
Or is the consequence of high experience in a skill.

#What you call no-magic but using mana is in fact magic related to the skill. ( Like a fighter\'s fire-sword. )

So your point is character should use mindcrafting-psionic if this can perform the action they want to and if not they should use magic...
Magic and mindcrafting-psionic don\'t use the same explanation-background-awarness_of_the_process , it is quite strange to mix them. Personnaly, I don\'t like it.

Ps : I don\'t understand what you called \"long  term mana\", Neryam.

* Even if I am more to move the mana-variable to the area in order to simulate a global mana level ; see pots above about the environnemnt. I am fully aware that such a thing is a detail, and that the first thing to do is remove mana variable from the character.

[darkw00t]

I am not saying to use mind control in the game though, i am saying to use concentration at a certain level within the game, i\'d agree with what Neryam said about the stamina and so on.

[hereticalfaction]

OK, lets all hold hands and acknowlege something that we have all known for years: D&D STYLE MAGIC IS GAY!!!!!

Spellbooks with disappearing ink is dumb... not \"remembering\" a certain spell once it is cast is dumb..

The whole point of MAGIC in any mythology is that it is a force which turns the commonplace necessities of resource management and causality on their heads.

There should be no MANA further, There should be no limit to casting..

What there should be is a price to be paid for weilding magic... Some long term toll it takes on the caster, aspecially when done in a way which compromises his guiding philosophy.

Heres how it works: Lets say Magic skills run 0-300 and spells (a combination of spell difficulty * intensity) run 1-250. The rule is : You can cast any spell at a value
A good wizard might be a guy who never seems to do much but conjure neat looking but useless effects to amust children or sit beggin for change in the town square while spectral violin music plays from no visible agency

A neutral Wizard might spend weeks at a time silently poring over ancient texts, not a metphysical flicker to be seen...

An evil Wizard might be a guy who always gets his way... Not by roasting you with a giant fireball, but by crooking his eyebrow at you in just such a way as to say \"I could quite easily roast you with a fireball, or any of a thousand worse things if you weren\'t nearly beneath my notice, now do as I say, worm!\"

Fighters are a dime a dozen, and should be, they are flexible, robust, they can afford to screw up badly, dust themselves off and try again, people like, respect, or fear them based on what they DO... But wizards are all about what they ARE... the abillity to summon enough occult force to light a friggin candle should make whole villages weak in the knees at the sight of it...

Having a wizard go adventuring with you should be oddly frustrating.. You know that he could easily teleport you right to your destination, level the enemy, and have you back by lunch, but instead, he spends most of his time reading or sitting by the campfire brewing tea while you do all the work... you call for his aid and he smiles knowingly, you ask his advice and he sighs distantly... But then, out of the blue, he applies just the right ammount of meaphysical influence at just the right place at just the right time, and rearranges all the courses of fate around him, making the impossible possible. Then he quietly goes back to the fire and starts water for tea....

[Rage McCloud]

Well Draklar... lets not get into a fight... but loop?

HAHAHAHAH please count how many posts dont say anything of an idea that was stated before... i mean ones that they repeared or knowingly repeated from someone else just to further the conversation and get their point across...

now count the posts that do...

and yes i like the idea that was stated in the post above this one... and the same idea taht was stated many times before... but this one explains it more... i DONT think it should be an ungodly terribly wickedly evil punishment though... because then we wouldnt have as many mages... WAIT something just clicked... thats EXACTLY what we want... MAGES ARE RARE IN THE OLDEN DAYS OF RPG\'S TIMES!!! So they should be rare... thus making them seem a lot more powerful...

[darkw00t]

Sorry if this is off-topic but a person could easily make a warrior-mage so they wear the best armour and not get hurt while they cast spells at a distance sooo.. having armour when casting (plated armour not robes) should highly decrease the spell\'s damage making it more fair, this should go a lot of ways eg. mage wears robes, rangers wear leather or light plate or they can\'t run and shoot, assassins wears there assassin clothes etc.

Rage McCloud is kinda right in the fact that mages were not much back in the medieval days and in real life a mage would be really bad at first though become very powerful once experienced, a person would stick to 1 or 2 classes as there main classes eg. i\'d be mainly a archer though i would also be a warrior if you came to close combat or if i lost the items and whatever, though a mage to be good would have to practise a lot reading books (there should be a bookreading skill) and so on.

I think using mana only when the time is right is the way to go. Also every skill should have a stamina system and the magic should have a concentration skill as well

[hereticalfaction]

I think that getting magic should be really difficult to start off with... You shouldn\'t get any magic skill from chargen (at least in final version, we need lots of casters for debugging).

The things which now give you Mlvls in chargen should instead give you no skill, but higher magic-oriented stats.

You should have to start your magic training young, so be sure to start a magic-seeking path before you get 100pp (If pp are still in use). First, you should have to find a master of one of the magic orders every npc should have a clue to find at least one master, so you ask around... Every clue that you collect may be counted as a mini-quest, and the first time you talk to the master you should get small rewards for having gathered them (to discourage outright ooc influence where you walk right to the secret master of all darkway and say \"please train\"))

Lets say you find the master (if the master is evil, maybe he will only reveal himself to you when you show that you have evidence who he is. If he is good, perhapse he will not entrust the power of his knowlege on one who hasn\'t proven themselves by doing favors for his friends.) Now the master should have a few quests before he will innitiate you: herbs to gather for the innitiation rite, five books in libraries, taverns, and temples throughout the realm you must study, etc.

Finally, you are innitiated and earn your first lvl in that school. Then, there should be three (or five or twelve, or pick-your-occultly-powerful-number) other trainers who you will be sent to seek out for knowlege of the 3, 5, 7, 12, etc cardinal teachings of the school, each of whom bestows 1 or two Mlvls.

Only when you have finnished these \"accolyte\" levels will you be able train that way like any other skill. A person who has innitiated in one way can follow this process at any time to gain other ways, regardless of how far he has advanced. Other ways can never be more than 70% (rounded up) of the level of your \"home\" school, and you can never be innitiated in your home school\'s opposition school.

So, all that is required is that if you want to learn magic, you do so first. then you are free to be a plate-mailed axe weilding warrior on top of that with little penalty. Some people will do it, and the game will be richer for their presence. But most people who choose to do magic will spend several rl weeks running around to get a moderate Mlvl in one way and innitiate level in one or two others, and will be used to roleplaying a magic guy enough to not go the road of the Fighter/Wizard/Miner/Thief....