Magic without mana

[darkw00t]

for a stronger wave of energy to fire at someone you would need a bit of mana but also you need to concentrate and stuff, but yeh mana still needs to be in the game

[Ethan]

About the \"need\", as Draklar said spell works using mana. So it is needed. But when we see it as an outer force, the cost is not mana it-self but \"something\" that allow the Mage to use an amount of mana.
\"something\" is what I said : ceremonie, inner energy, feelings and devotion to the good, and concentration.  

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.)

[Rage McCloud]

Well i like the idea of a concentration bar... like if you chat then it takes it down a little and stays around 75% then slowly goes back up... and you could train your concentration... if it wasnt high enough then maybe you could get distracted by someone talking directly to you... or if someone made a loud noise... but on the other hand if it was trained extremely well... you would still loose it if you talked but thats like the only way and if your concentration wasnt high enough and you summoned something, it would summon something of lower \"greatness\" or somehow the system would purposely \"glitch\" it and it would come out deformed...

[darkw00t]

that would be seriously funny if a mage was doing a spell and someone whistles and puts him off

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by darkw00t
that would be seriously funny if a mage was doing a spell and someone whistles and puts him off

Seriously XD I\'d die laughing.

If I may chuck my own two tria into the discussion:

In a world where \"mana\" permeates the air and the very sense of things, I still believe that there are (should be?) individuals who have a more or less \"natural talent\" to be greater than others. It\'s an art. And like art, there are those who can draw or paint without any training at all, those who become masters only after serious work, and those who put in serious work but still can only make stick figures. Granted, this should be left up to the player behind the character (and mine is the very last of the three choices), but creating a system were magic is as easily acceptable as another form of actual physical manipulation, in my mind would only create a greater number of I-can-do-anything\'s and My-power-knows-no-bound\'s. I don\'t know. Somehow, from somewhere in this thread I got the feeling that this would be a side-effect.

Unless! Ceremonies :D Ceremonies are good! Needing certain items to work with magic, perhaps items that have a concentrated amount of (specialized?) mana, and bringing them together in some way... Magical smelting of objects :D Woooo.

PlaneShift already has a mental stamina bar, doesn\'t it? It\'s that blue bar below the yellow-orange regular stamina. I\'m not sure, I\'ve never touched magic ;) So some system of mental stamina is either already in-place in a rudimentary way, or going to be put in. I don\'t quite like Rage\'s idea about a concentration bar that affects anything besides magic [ like chat - I mean come on, have you noticed how often are people talking without actually thinking about it? ;) ] - I think a mental stamina relating to magic just as physical stamina relates to fighting/mining/crafting would be just fine. At least, I cannot think of a way to implement anything else.

Originally posted by Ethan
But when we see it as an outer force, the cost is not mana it-self but \"something\" that allow the Mage to use an amount of mana.

Precisely. What about calling it simply the capacity a caster has for manipulating/moving mana through his or her body for specific ends? You train your mind and body to conduct greater and greater amounts of mana... but this is still another form of mana points, in the end.

And now I lost track of what I was writing, as I\'m late for class :) Gotta love spontaneous posting.

[Rage McCloud]

Yes, i figured that that blue bar was for magical things... anyways yes objects would be cool... and once characters are fully customizable maybe there could even be VOODOO DOLLS! hah! but for real... Yes mana could be taken out... but there would have to be something in place of it... Concentration is a great one to put in...

[darkw00t]

Concentration should be a new skill stat altogether

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by darkw00t
Concentration should be a new skill stat altogether

The question is what would it affect, and how would it affect that?

[darkw00t]

Your mind abilities really also it could affects choices you make (??)

[Karyuu]

Mind abilities..? Isn\'t that what mental stamina is for, a little? Also, when making a suggestion, try to expand on it as much as you can. \"Choices you make\" is really too vague...

[darkw00t]

i mean it shouldn\'t just be for magic abilities other suggestions to what else it could be are welcome

[derwoodly]

I like the idea of reducing casting time for higher skills or level of spell.   Really powerful mages should have some near instantanious spells.

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?

[Karyuu]

No, mana isn\'t an object any more than air is. It\'s just energy flowing through the world that can be manipulated as much as air currents. It\'s nearly limitless.

[Ethan]

Originally posted by derwoodly
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?

I could be a way but arrounding mana\'s resources are huge, so it doesn\'t really matter but the map may be able to store a mana level.
And casting doesn\'t change that level or so few that you don\'t need to bother about.
Changing the mana resource are done with map-sized spell, and this kind of huge, enormous spell should not been given to players.

Ps : Why there is always people posting at the same time... grrrr... lol

About the concentration being disturbed by chatting, I like this idea. But let\'s go more generic. Concentration is needed for all actions (figthing is not an exception) and any actions not related to the main one will disturb. So in order to have a good implementation, devs have to considers all user\'s inpout. (Chat cannot be more disturbing than looting a corpse and devs should set what action you can do in parallele and what is the malus related to this one.)

There is some positiv points to loo at :
- it is more realistic and so the rpg will be more \"subtle\"
- this give a meaning to futur \"telepathy\" spell (If we say that using telepathy communication need less concentration that real one), so this kind of spell could be used for group/guild chat.

and negative points :
- players can use extern chat in order to avoid malus...
- this is hard to implement so it won\'t be the first thing to be implemented

***************

About the stamina limit for all actions, there is a way to resolve it. But it also give a lot of works (join the community !!!). Stamina could have no real minimum-limit ; above 0 it is like now. But under it give you malus in all actions, you will (or something else) is used to know how far the stamina can lower. If you fail a will test/ or if you break the limit, you fall unconscious.
This idea is also generic : magic, figthing and all the others...

forum-related comment : This idea must allready have been posted and this is not really the subject of this thread.

and this one too:

Skill(s) (not exclusively magical) should reflect, your ability to
- use one type of glyph
- purify them
- create spell by combining glyph
- cast each specific spell$
- extract/manipulate mana
- know spell : if you see one to be able to identify it and
describe its action
- know/use ceremony
- concentrate

[Neryam]

Well about concentration, I say the way should be rotated. Intellegence should be a global mental stat, so if you get higher int all the spells would improve, that would make more sense. And then concentration shoud be red way! Or red way can be switched with blue cause telepathathy would be blue right?

On topic, the word \"mana\" is SO overused. Its like.. every single game with magic calls that bar \"mana\" and it\'s ALWAYS blue X(
What does it mean anyway? Its not the bread stuff that rained from heaven, that\'s manna soo..

I posted this in another post, there should be long-term stamina and short-term stamina, (Short term runs out quick, recharges quick, long-term runs out very slow, doesn\'t recharge unless you like sit down or drink potions or something. That is more life-like, you can only run for some time but you can recover and run some more, but you won\'t be able to walk/run from mississippi to new york without sleeping) and magic will use long-term along with every thing else. Fighting too. Pretty much anything. In real life you can\'t fight for 5 hours non-stop either. :rolleyes:
So everything should use the long-term stamina, mining, fighting, casting, reading, whatever, except sitting and sleeping etc

Anybody read the Wheel of Time books? I like that idea..  Mages are only like water wheels in the endless river of current that is the True Source, the Source never \"runs out\" but intense use leaves the caster fatigued. Based on experience, casters can handle variable amounts of the Source at once, if they draw on it too much at once they either die with a catalysmic explosion or they get burnt out and can\'t use the Source any more. To use more of it at once they need special items (angreal), and some are more powerful than others.

So basically you can handle bigger spells with more experince, but with special items your level acts as if it were n levels higher. Continuous use sucks up long-term stamina, bigger spells use it faster.