Goblin Squad Member
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Don't forget an hour-long "study your spellbook!" minigame.make it real time
spell per day means SPELLS PER DAY. 8 hours rest means 8 HOURS REST
SAME GOES FOR REMOVING FATIGUE AND SUCH
The original Everquest started with exactly that. Recharging mana at a reasonable rate meant sitting down and opening your spellbook. Keep in mind that at this early stage in MMO development, your view of the world was only a window in the middle of the screen, not the whole screen. Your spellbook took up that entire window.
Need to regenerate mana in a hostile zone? Find the quietest corner you can, sit down and essentially blind yourself, and hope nothing wanders by to kill you while you can't see it coming.
There was a good reason they changed this mechanic. It worked okay if you had a very patient party, willing to stand around and guard the wizard for a while. Solo, or with a pick-up group, it was a recipe for death.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thematically, Words of Magic is a functional magic system for Pathfinder that simulates the magic system from LaGuin’s “Earthsea” novels. The power of the universe is hidden within magic and mages are able to speak the "true words" which control the universe.In table top, Words of Magic has a word for each spell effect - spell duration, damage type, summoning, healing, area effect vs. single targets, whatever. Not all of these can be combined (a summon spell that deals damage directly makes no sense). As in UM, the skill rating of the player would limit the power of the combined effects of the spell. So, basically, a more skilled mage can cast a more powerful fireball that effects more targets. It is actually quite complex. Now this is an insane amount of bookkeeping in table-top, but, in an MMO, this problem would hopefully be a non-issue.
What I was thinking is that...
This is very doable in an MMO--Vanguard's system of song creation for Bard's is very similar:
- Bards compose a song from various components: Melody, Embellishment, Lyric, Chorus, Verse, Bridge & Coda
- As the bard becomes more powerful, they can compose more complicated songs and learn new components
It would be easy to adapt this to a magic system:
- Magic Users research spells from various components: School (Necromancy, Conjuration, etc.), Type (Light, Dark, Evil, Good, Fire, etc.), Range, Duration, Casting Time (adding to this would lower a default spell cast time), Area of Effect, Effect, and Quantifier (number of dice).
- A grammar for spells so that you don't get unworkable combinations, i.e. placing Evocation in the first component slot would then open up Type, Range, Casting Time, Area of Effect, Effect and Quantifier.
So maybe I research a spell: Necromancy, Death, Touch, .5 sec, Single Target, Direct Damage, and 3d6+(No. corresponding to level), and I very creatively name it "Death Touch," and viola, I have my spell.
But if in the effect I put in Damage over Time, that opens a contingent slot for Duration, and that spell has a lower Quantifier, but goes on for 10 seconds, and I call that one "Soul Eater."
And then the limit is how costly my spell components are--I have a set amount per spell based on my current skill, and so I have to artfully trade off parts of the spell, or I become exhausted, and I'm out of the fight for a while.
Vanguard is the only game I've played a bard in, and I did it so I could design my own spells. My first battle buff was "War Pigs," and man did I love that :)
Don't forget an hour-long "study your spellbook!" minigame.make it real time
spell per day means SPELLS PER DAY. 8 hours rest means 8 HOURS REST
SAME GOES FOR REMOVING FATIGUE AND SUCH
The original Everquest started with exactly that. Recharging mana at a reasonable rate meant sitting down and opening your spellbook. Keep in mind that at this early stage in MMO development, your view of the world was only a window in the middle of the screen, not the whole screen. Your spellbook took up that entire window.
Need to regenerate mana in a hostile zone? Find the quietest corner you can, sit down and essentially blind yourself, and hope nothing wanders by to kill you while you can't see it coming.
There was a good reason they changed this mechanic. It worked okay if you had a very patient party, willing to stand around and guard the wizard for a while. Solo, or with a pick-up group, it was a recipe for death.
Yeah the vancian system we have come to associate with DnD works well for tabletop games that focus on 1-4 encounters in a night. In an MMO where combats last but a few seconds, and you could be playing for 6 hours or more at a time, that vancian casting breaks down immediately.
MMOs tend to use cooldown timers to set the refresh rate various powers. You might see wizards and sorcerers having different cooldowns on there spells. Perhaps your highest level spells have longer cooldowns than lower level spells, allowing you "more castings" of the lower level spells "per day". That's of course if they want to emulate the feel of having limited castings.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In an MMO... that vancian casting breaks down immediately.
I actually think there's a pretty simple tweak to the Vancian system that would make it appropriate for MMOs:
1. Change "number of spells that can be cast per day" to "number of spells that can be cast before having to study them again", and add a bit of randomness so that if you can cast "3 spells", there's a pretty small chance you might actually fizzle the 3rd, and an even smaller chance that you could cast 4 or 5.
2. Get rid of the "8 hours of rest before you can relearn your spells" entirely, and allow them to be relearned simply by sitting down and studying them.
3. Add a slight decay over time for spell memorization, so that if you go to use a spell you memorized earlier and then haven't studied in quite some time there's a decent chance it will fizzle.
Wizards would be constantly opening up their spellbooks when they're out of combat, studying up on their spells.
(( I don't know how it would work for Sorcerers... Maybe someone who really loves Sorcerers could propose something similar. ))
neverwinter nights did something similar (at least for 1 and 2). And it worked well enough to get the feel across, but I got fairly tired of it early on. But there is a different scale and pacing to MMOs than even that of other computer games. Downtime while adventuring becomes a drag on the game. Sometimes its necessary, but if its overly done for sake of simulation it hurts the experience. An MMO is about keep butts in the seats, keeping people coming back for more.
Should there be spellbook time where someone sits and flips through their book? Sure. But it might be for when they change their spell selection, rather than running out of spell slots.
Translating Pathfinder to MMO play is going to mean revisiting a lot of sacred cows being somewhat merciless about how to model them. It will be less 3.5 and more its own animal, inspired by 3.5.
In one of NWN server, it used a system with a different way of determining the required time to rest. (there are no limits of resting in vanilla) There is a "fatigue" and a character has to be tired enough to rest, which usually takes about 20~30 minutes of adventuring. There are other ways of speeding up the required time to rest such as drinking alcohol, but the character might die due to dehydration if too much alcohol was consumed.
I used to have a character that lurked in the sewers and drank free ale that were stored there, and eventually fell unconscious then died due to alcoholism. lol
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Goblin Squad Member
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Time in MMOs is always compressed in the interest of keeping the game moving. Even pen and paper sessions compress time this way. When a party in a tabletop game camps for the night, the GM doesn't make the party roleplay their interactions in camp for the next 8 real-time hours.
"My bard turns the spit so the meat cooks evenly." "My fighter stretches and scratches himself." "My mage stares at page 13 of his spellbook."
4 hours later...
"My bard is asleep, dreaming of treasure." "My mage is staring at page 18 of his spellbook." "What about the fighter?" "Oh, Jim's snoring. I guess his fighter is, too."
If players had to wait 8 real-time hours for their next set of spells, then the game would be better off not even offering casting classes.
If players had to wait 8 real-time hours for their fighters and rogues to flush the fatigue toxins out of their systems, those classes would be out, too, leaving...
No game at all.
I have to agree that sitting around for 8 hours is a quick recipe for death, or a mage who suddenly finds that he has no friends.
That being said, I would despise a game that does what DDO did. Sure, a wizard has to be able to hold his own in combat, if he only has two spells with a ridiculous recharge, he's useless in a fight. But when it comes down to it, a magic missile should not be the exact same as an arrow with a different animation. And fireball is the same, but has slightly higher damage. And Poison is the exact same as that, except it is purple, and deals 3 damage over 30 seconds.
Additionally, spells that deal "3 damage over 30 seconds" are kind of pointless. So? In 30 seconds, the goblin is dead anyways, or the dragon just doesn't care.
Basically, if you're going to do magic, do some MAGIC. Otherwise, you might as well be a ranger, and get a favored enemy to boot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It will likely be fairly similar to other magic systems in MMO or single-player RPG video games. It could be anything from the Diablo III style to SW:TOR to Skyrim. We don't know until they announce it and they will likely announce something that aligns with their overall concept of how their combat system will work in the game. Until they figure out their combat system, they can't really figure out their magic system and for the most part, vice-versa.
Until then, I'm predicting that it will be a system based on cards and you have to 'tap' certain cards in order to play others. These eldrich spells will be aligned with certain colors and you'll want to build decks of them in order to be a powerful magic user.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm predicting that it will be a system based on cards and you have to 'tap' certain cards in order to play others. These eldrich spells will be aligned with certain colors and you'll want to build decks of them in order to be a powerful magic user.
Is that your prediction for PFO? If so, is it just on a lark, or do you have a reason for believing this is what they'll actually do?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm predicting that it will be a system based on cards and you have to 'tap' certain cards in order to play others. These eldrich spells will be aligned with certain colors and you'll want to build decks of them in order to be a powerful magic user.Is that your prediction for PFO? If so, is it just on a lark, or do you have a reason for believing this is what they'll actually do?
It's a lark playing on Magic the Gathering.
However, I think they'll end up with a system that is very similar to other systems currently used in video games, but with a more Pathfinder spin on it. Also, while I think it will be influenced by the vancian system, it won't necessarily hold directly to it in a lot of cases and may diverge completely from it.
For example, how do you show the difference in a Sorcerer and a Wizard in an online video game? They have the same spells after all. I think it comes down to resource systems and adaptability.
Sorcerers would have a finite spell list available to them that could be changed under very special circumstances, but within that finite spell list, they'd have a distinct amount of power. They'll likely have a casting resource of some sort (think mana as a reference) and higher level spells consume larger portions of that resource and lower level spells consume less of that resource. But, the resource would regenerate slowly over time in combat and possibly faster out of combat (or at least have some way of being made to do so).
Wizards, on the other hand, have a seemingly infinite amount of ways that they can prepare spells based on the spells available in their spell book, but once they are chosen, that list is fairly fixed until they re-prep their spells. So, we'll say that our Wizard prepared fireball 3 times today and as such can easily cast the spell 3 times in succession. The problem is that he must then wait for that spell slot to recharge (any amount of time based on gameplay and balance) before it can be used again. This would allow for the customizations and feeling of a prepared caster without being limited to _ONLY_ having that spell 3 times for a 6 hour period (remember, they've sped up time 4x in PFO so that you get 4 'days' per 24 hour period). There will be some mechanism to add spells to your spell book either by merit badges or by just purchasing scrolls and scribing them in (with a chance to botch it).
Other than the customization of spells available, we're talking about resource systems which are fairly standard across the video game markets and each have their own issues balancing. You can have more in depth resource systems or simple ones such as the ones I described. There is something to be said about a more complex resource system to manage in that it forces players to use more skill to play. A lot of games have started using hybrid resource systems involving multiple types of resources that you must manage in order to use your abilities.
It still comes down to how Goblinworks wants to do their combat system. If they really wanted to, it could be turn-based and have an interface like old school Final Fantasy games. Until they figure out their combat model, any guesses at the magic system are rather moot, because they won't have a proper context in which to be framed.
All in all, I'll still bet it's going to be similar to most modern video game magic systems in some fashion with a little flare thrown on to make it their own.
TLDR: No idea and neither do you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's a lark...
I hoped so :)
So, we'll say that our Wizard prepared fireball 3 times today and as such can easily cast the spell 3 times in succession. The problem is that he must then wait for that spell slot to recharge (any amount of time based on gameplay and balance) before it can be used again.
That seems like a very good way of capturing the feel and the spirit of PFRPG in PFO. I like it!
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Goblin Squad Member
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To contribute a bit to this thread I would like some "ground breaking" spells that would require a ritual, require a group of spell casters (arcane for arcane and divine for divine) for example if you are attacking a fort/castle in a fantasy setting, you ofcourse have siege ramps, catapults and what not of siege weaponry but with every siege weapon, you require loads of person to handle it, why not have something simmilar for the spell system, ofcourse they would be in a safe disstand so some long casting time would be fair.
I found this by reading Undeath/Unholy/Unclean series from forgotten realms and I've liked that and been wanting to see it in some mmo.
Having rituals for certain spells to be cast isn't "ground breaking" in MMOs, they've actually been done before. Warlocks in World of Warcraft used to need to do a very long quest chain in order to gain the ritual to summon a certain powerful demon as a slave.
When they did this ritual, everyone in their party had to help summon the demon and it would randomly sacrifice one of the party members upon summoning at which point the Warlock could enslave the demon. The problem with this is that there was a 20% chance that the Warlock would be the person sacrificed and then you'd have an unrestrained demon running around killing your party.
This wasn't a one time thing. This was the ritual that happened any time you wanted to summon this demon to fight for you (and he was pretty powerful, so you really did want him).
Now, would it be cool to have some "teamwork feats" for casting show up in the game? Sure. Probably something similar to the group tactics talked about in today's blog, but altered to match casting instead of soldiering.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some intriguing ideas for the magic system. I've always thought of magic as being the skill that has the requisite "high intelligence" characteristic to be able to be good at in rpg?
So, I wonder if as mentioned above some more emphasis on preparation and combining (spell decks?) and working out the riskiness of (again above) summoning a demon that might backfire, as well as spells that need ingredients and other spells that take a while to initiate and so on. So these wizards play different and are not so actiony hack'n'slash as a barbarian or ranger might be? Using their brains more than their brawn.
Until they figure out their combat model, any guesses at the magic system are rather moot, because they won't have a proper context in which to be framed.
We have a little bit of context. We know that barring stats, every character is going to be exactly the same for its first ~15 minutes of virtual life. My guess is this means one of two things: either the skill system is going to have the means to grant a variety of resource systems, or there will be a universal resource system that will fuel any ability or spell.
Honestly, I thought Ragnarok Online handled magic beautifully.
There was a huge plethora of magic, also divided up amongst a lot of divergent skill trees. So you could be really talented but only know a few spells, or be not-quite-so-great at any one spell but have a large number at your disposal.
You could also modify the build of your character on if you wanted your spells to hit hard but take a while to throw out, or if you wanted them to be less damaging but lightning-quick to release, or a hybrid of the two play styles.
The result was an interesting, complex magic system that could be effectively played in any number of different ways due to all the variety of choices given to the players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Honestly, I thought Ragnarok Online handled magic beautifully.
There was a huge plethora of magic, also divided up amongst a lot of divergent skill trees. So you could be really talented but only know a few spells, or be not-quite-so-great at any one spell but have a large number at your disposal.
I have to largely disagree with RO and magic, it went way out of balance once maxed in the right stats etc... and there were pretty clearly useful choices. Ever seen an RO wizard without stormgust?
Generally RO wizards had storm gust, Jupital thunder, everything else was novelty spells to use on one or 2 obscure enemies or bosses. That and just the raw concept of AOEs more or less dealing more damage than single target anyway, cast time being boostable to the point of near instantanous levels etc... Heck to top it off with storm gust, was the detail that counters for it had drawbacks. IE either you are frozen get hit once, and held out to take double damage from the follow up JT, or you can wear protection against it, which makes you take 5ish hits from the actual storm gust instead of freezing. Whether the target is prepared or not, the same spell is best. Myself I prefer a system where if the target has prepared to counter your spell using a different one is better.
I liked the variety of elements in the game, the issue in almost all of RO, was that there were a good amount of situationally good spells, but most of them were only marginally better than the ultimate jack of all trades spells. RO had lots of options and specializations available, you generally only saw them in the weaker proof of concept builds people make for fun when trying to make a weird build that can do 80% of the damage of a generic obvious build everyone else follows.
Give me options! Give me a long list of available spells. And don't make them all available just by going to a trainer. Make me work/adventure/explore/fight/survive to acquire most of them. In fact, outside of some core spells at each spell level, I should have to go out in search of the rest.
Also, don't worry so much about balancing offensive power between various schools of magic. If I choose to specialize in Divination, so be it. As long as I am made aware of the drawbacks/benefits before doing so, let me choose to play that way without feeling like you have to add some crazy divination mind-bolts just in case some poor schlub was too dumb to plan ahead, decided to specialize in Divination and now complains about a lack of firepower.
Instead of "Spells per Day", think of this as more of "Spells per Fight" or, to use more MMO nomenclature, "Spells per Pull."
However, while everyone else is gobbling food or drinking liquids to regain lost hit points, I can also hit a nifty "study" button on my interface. My character whips out his spellbook and begins studying. Perhaps it takes twenty seconds to re-memorize all of my spells. Or, perhaps it's based on the number and level of spells that I am memorizing. Regardless, it's a mechanic that mimics the eating/drinking mechanic found in most MMOs.
If the party is getting tired of waiting on me. Well, that's either the cost of having a fireball-slinging super wizard in your group, OR I have to start rationing my spells a bit.
Either way, this would keep the spell management aspect of the core rules in the game, while not unduly inconveniencing the other players.
+1
Spell variety and thus spell management is a hugely critical part of making spell-casting classes fun, dynamic, and interesting, imo.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that if Wizards are able to change the spells they are able to cast situationally then it breaks the differentiation between Wizards and Sorcerers (it makes Sorcerers a less meaningful choice and therefore a choice that isn't a choice).
To keep to the spirit of the rules there has to be some meaningful limitation on the flexibility of the spells a wizard can cast, and a fairly meaningful process that must be undertaken before those spells can be adjusted.
Changing them between "fights" means the only meaningful spells your wizard will cast are non-combat spells. For combat they'll usually be able to make choices that are not meaningful (in other words they'll usually make the optimal choice possible and only player error will cause a mis-match between spells and opponents).
Yeah, I hear that. So there certainly does need to be a distinction and some degree of limits put in place
That said, I do think making spell management a core component of how both sorcerers and wizards are played and giving a wide enough variety of spells so that management is actually a meaningful activity that requires choice and thought and a variety of "correct" answers is important, too!
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Make learning spells skill based? At spell knowledge 1, you have up to x spells in your spellbook, and to learn more you need to gain the skill spell knowledge 2? Or perhaps have limited-capacity spellbooks, and only one spellbook may be equipped at a time, allowing flexibility at the cost of downside risk (provided that full spellbooks are expensive).
If the skill limited route is taken, I think that some protection against stupidity or bad choices is warranted- but at some cost. If it takes 24 real-time hours and a consumed item to learn a spell, then the ability to forget a spell and learn a new one isn't of tactical or even strategic significance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the skill limited route is taken, I think that some protection against stupidity or bad choices is warranted- but at some cost. If it takes 24 real-time hours and a consumed item to learn a spell, then the ability to forget a spell and learn a new one isn't of tactical or even strategic significance.
I would say 24 hours is significant for learning a spell, if you are talking sorcs, IMO leveling up should be significant timing for changing out a sorcs known spells. In general when large scale wars are in concept etc... people certainly have a days notice of what they are going to do, when their side is leading an attack etc... as well as planning for PVP ambushing etc... also fairly easy to plan ahead for and know in advance. IMO a sorcerer should base their knowledge on when they level up, not just for the line up with core, but it is simply practical, it gets less often the more powerful the sorcerer is, at the same time is more frequent when they are a newbie figuring things out.
Now wizards, I could see that as daily or even more frequently, even daily game time (IE at 4x time, so every 4 hours or so). Still infrequent enough that a wizard isn't going to be changing his spells between the trip too the dungeon, again in the dungeon, and then again for PVP when hauling loot back from the dungeon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To keep to the spirit of the rules there has to be some meaningful limitation on the flexibility of the spells a wizard can cast, and a fairly meaningful process that must be undertaken before those spells can be adjusted.
Very pleased to hear you say that.
It seems to me like that's totally consistent with Gregg Reece's suggestion of how to capture the spirit of the rules with respect to number of spells per day as well.
Of course, making all the spells skill-based, and having your skill level largely determine how often you can cast the spell makes a lot of sense too.
My fear is that trying to cleave to the "spirit" of wizards will result in a non-functional class. Sorry guys, I just accidentally prepped the wrong spell, you'll have to take someone else to the raid. Or worse, What do you mean you don't have X prepared? Please leave.
The only way I can see around that is to have an expensive reagent for swapping out a different spell, but that would eventually be a non-issue, leaving wizards just a more expensive spontaneous caster.
Similarly, it would be pretty easy to "break" a sorcerer (temporarily) by making poor spell choices.
I'm just not convinced that the casting methods need to be differentiated. In my opinion, that's not a very compelling choice to make, unless the margin is very wide between the number of spells known. It seems like sorcerers would be wizards with training wheels, and wizards would be expensive sorcerers. I would rather see a focus on bloodlines and schools than casting methods.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only way I can see around that is to have an expensive reagent for swapping out a different spell...
It's a fairly common practice to have a long cooldown (20 mins?) ability that lets you break the normal rules somehow. I can easily see an ability like that to let you change a portion of your prepared spells. There's a lot of room to make it a much longer cooldown, or to tweak how many spells slots it will allow you to change.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My fear is that trying to cleave to the "spirit" of wizards will result in a non-functional class. Sorry guys, I just accidentally prepped the wrong spell, you'll have to take someone else to the raid. Or worse, What do you mean you don't have X prepared? Please leave.
The only way I can see around that is to have an expensive reagent for swapping out a different spell, but that would eventually be a non-issue, leaving wizards just a more expensive spontaneous caster.
Similarly, it would be pretty easy to "break" a sorcerer (temporarily) by making poor spell choices.
I'm just not convinced that the casting methods need to be differentiated. In my opinion, that's not a very compelling choice to make, unless the margin is very wide between the number of spells known. It seems like sorcerers would be wizards with training wheels, and wizards would be expensive sorcerers. I would rather see a focus on bloodlines and schools than casting methods.
IMO that idea more or less relies very heavily on, 1. encounters being very predictable, 2. several spells not being useful outside of certain situations. In the case of WoW's puzzle bosses, IE the bosses in which there is one way to beat them, deviation = guaranteed wipe etc... that is understandable. On the other hand, well in P&P how many times have you run into that situation? I've had a handful of times where a difficult battle could have been easy if we had the right spell prepared, but never a situation where a wizard was worthless. The only exception would be perhaps if a wizard was pure enchantment going into a den of undeads.
@Hudax, in the tabletop that's the niche that scrolls fill in. They let you have a theoretical unlimited capacity in terms of what you can cast and how many times per day you can cast.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that if Wizards are able to change the spells they are able to cast situationally then it breaks the differentiation between Wizards and Sorcerers (it makes Sorcerers a less meaningful choice and therefore a choice that isn't a choice).
To keep to the spirit of the rules there has to be some meaningful limitation on the flexibility of the spells a wizard can cast, and a fairly meaningful process that must be undertaken before those spells can be adjusted.
Even better.
Maybe the "spells per pull" concept stays, but in order for my wizard to change his spell selection, he has to spend A LOT of time in "resting/studying mode" - whatever that may be.
Or, as was already hinted at, perhaps I've got an "adjust spells" button that has a 30 or 60 minute cooldown (or more). This is how I change what spells I have "memorized."
Whatever happens, I like the differentiation a lot between:
1. Magic-User A: Has to prepare the spells of the day/du jour at the beginning of every in-game day.
2. Magic-User B: Has to concentrate to create spells at the required time.
So, one is planning ahead for the unknown and the other is more flexible but more vulnerable in a combat situation (gives the fast fighter who is near to hand the advantage).
This aids magic as something always limited control over and emphasis on variable and RP'able each game session (naturally game days cycle so a standard log-in time would be a moving in-game time each time over a full cycle).
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about having a resource bar that fills up slowly over real time? This bar would not be your casting pool, but rather a 'study pool' that governs how many tweaks to spell loadout you can make. Sorcerers have an extremely slow 'study pool', representing that they are normally locked into their spell loadout over the short term, but can still tweak it over time. Wizards build up 'study' faster, though opposition-school spells would burn up a larger chunk of it.
Then there's the 'mana pool', and in that, sorcerers have the advantage of a somewhat larger pool and a faster recharge (or your pools recharge at a set percentage rate, so a larger pool means that the per-minute units are larger).
A similar study pool could be used for 'retraining' feats and other features. A fighter who has Weapon Focus [Longsword] may not pay as much switching to a similar weapon like a greatsword as he would if trying to switch the feat to a composite longbow.
If 'study pool' built up even while a character was offline, this would act as a minor balancer for people who simply can't spend as much time in-game, and for those that regularly play for 8-12+ hours at a stretch would have the advantage of greater experience so they wouldn't need as many swap-outs anyway (not to mention that they likely have a horde of other characters to play while letting one rest).
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Goblin Squad Member
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There could be a sort of ratio per level of "use of spells" vs "charging up of spells" done over real-time (with a cap at each level)? So blitzing spells loads might require reverting to "charging" Said ratio could be flexed for different spells/specialities? Eg perhaps location could be one format for some spells - so some nature spells might be faster regarging while magic-user is outdoors in the woods for eg?
Just figuring out a way to make the system more about considering the 1. use of spells 2. spell creation process 3. maintaining spells created
And then looking at variables for the above magic system. Eg ratios per level and these affected by temporal, contextual or other factors eg player specialization/dedication. Not really sure what to go with for resource management eg mana, perhaps just a part of the creation process/capacity of the character?
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet (Haven't read the entire thread yet), but heres an idea that will keep roughly to the Pathfinder rules:
Since 'time' in this world is going to be 4x faster than real world, according to one of the blogs, we could use that. However, going directly by the Pathfinder rules in this case would amount to spellcasters only getting their spells every 6-real hours. Not quite good enough for gameplay purposes. So, instead, one would have a 'prepare your spells' ability that allows you to refresh all of your prepared spells for the day. This ability would have a long casting time, so as to not be able to use it mid-combat, but would also have a long cooldown - perhaps 1-2 hours. The same would work for Sorcerers and Bards, except that they wouldn't have to 'choose' what spells they'd have for that casting of the ability.
This isn't perfect, of course. Its somewhat akin to DDO - where you have to prepare your wizard or cleric spells before hand and then find a safe spot - but its more like the pen and paper version than DDO, with its Spell Points. Granted, in DDO, you do have a relatively limited number of spell points, so it could work as well. And you'd have to find a safe spot to 'rest', and would not be able to do it in combat or within a short period of resting.
Personally, I think the DDO way -would- work well enough for this game's purpose. Perhaps leave the cooldown period for resting to half an hour or an hour. This way, players would need to be either smart with their spells while out and about, or find a restful area right before they may encounter baddies. This latter issue, of course, will be difficult out in the wilderness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Crustypeanut: If there's an eg already in another mmorpg, that's useful, definitely.
I still think it's worth aiming for something along these lines at the very least. It's a choice between:
1. Player logged in wants to enjoy chosen gameplay: Use Spells while logged in (most mmorpgs seem to go for this for obvious reasons)
vs
2. Player chooses a path and appreciates the limitations imposed according to the game world and learns the choices available and the "knack" for getting the most out of the class and making good choices to customize to what their ulterior aim might be.
I just think MAGIC in particular needs to down route 2. to make it a different experience from sword/bow/armour etc type of arms combat. Maybe very potent spells but infrequent use; specific target use; exact timing use.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Crustypeanut: If there's an eg already in another mmorpg, that's useful, definitely.
I still think it's worth aiming for something along these lines at the very least. It's a choice between:
1. Player logged in wants to enjoy chosen gameplay: Use Spells while logged in (most mmorpgs seem to go for this for obvious reasons)
vs
2. Player chooses a path and appreciates the limitations imposed according to the game world and learns the choices available and the "knack" for getting the most out of the class and making good choices to customize to what their ulterior aim might be.I just think MAGIC in particular needs to down route 2. to make it a different experience from sword/bow/armour etc type of arms combat. Maybe very potent spells but infrequent use; specific target use; exact timing use.
the problem with #2 is the real-time requirement of gameplay. It just won't be fun to have to "save up" your spells for when you might "really need them". Any magic user is going to want to use their spells, all the time. That's how they do what they do. In the PnP world, you can just time-dilate to the next day with the simple phrase "Ok guys, can we rest, i need to recover spells. OK 8 hours pass." In the real-time (4x speed doesn't actually matter in this case) a Wizard should rarely if ever be forced into dropping crossbow bolts into combat, or ineffectually waving around a dull dagger, if they would instead be choosing to cast spells.
Now this isn't an argument for unlimited resources, as I believe there is some gameplay value in a limited resource, but the timeline of this resource should be acceptable to people who have never seen a Pathfinder Core book, as well as those of us who can still dig up a 2e character sheet with faded pencil scrawlings.
I think the big kicker is how to differentiate between the feel of a spontaneous caster, and a prepared caster. The key difference in the PnP world is based in a frequency vs flexibility tension. Spontaneous casters have high frequency, but very limited selection, and Prepared casters have much greater flexibility of spells chosen, at the cost of choosing ahead of time, and less over all frequency. If PFO spell casting manages to capture this dynamic while still staying within the expectations of real-time casters being able to maintain the same kind of activity level as martial characters, then I believe they'll have this problem solved, and solved well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the big kicker is how to differentiate between the feel of a spontaneous caster, and a prepared caster. The key difference in the PnP world is based in a frequency vs flexibility tension.
That sums it up. I guess you've got to keep the emphasis on players ability to be "actively useful in-game".
I'm guessing there will be different spell decks to choose from for the above with different emphasis eg "support, damage, locomotion" etc?
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Goblin Squad Member
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...how to differentiate between the feel of a spontaneous caster, and a prepared caster. The key difference in the PnP world is based in a frequency vs flexibility tension...
Refining my idea from earlier a bit: Have a casting pool (mana) and a study pool (training). Make spells cheaper to cast for sorcery but more expensive to swap out, and make spells cheaper to swap for wizardry, but more expensive to cast. Sorcerers would have more castings, but not be able to edit their loadout very much, while a wizard could edit his loadout more often, but not cast as many spells total. A sorcerer may have to brute-force more, while the wizard could swap in spells more efficiently-matched to a situation.
That training pool could also be used as a 'respec' resource for other skills/classes, but changing things like rogue talents or feats would be expensive enough that it might only support one such change every few days.|
Goblin Squad Member
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I wonder if concentration for casting, eg producing a pattern in the air or something symbolic of actually performing the actions of casting (using some materials at the right time) will make the actual EXPERIENCE of choosing a magic-user be different than just click on spell A, B as well as the above frequency/flexibility to clicking on A, B spells chosen?
Edit: Also, curious what proportion of spells will be non-combat oriented also: Magic -> increasing gameplay options/interactions as well as improving combat effectiveness. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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... eg producing a pattern in the air...
Wow! That's just brilliant. To actually see the lines of magic weaving together, and having the effectiveness of my spell based in part on how well I can manipulate those lines just seems awesome. I don't know if it's workable, but man, it sure is cool :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well I've seen actual symbol-shaping with a mouse in other games and Sorcery demo PS3 title? But I was thinking it does not have to be so dexterous, the aim is to make the player concentrate by observing PATTERNS so eg if you had letter runes with dots at junctions the player has to click the dots in the right order or something? And then any variations to that effect.
Of course different degree of patterns required for different paths eg sorcerer vs wizard? And the animation of the player chat let's other players know they are "concentrating" which can be broken by eg firing an arrow at them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... eg producing a pattern in the air...Wow! That's just brilliant. To actually see the lines of magic weaving together, and having the effectiveness of my spell based in part on how well I can manipulate those lines just seems awesome. I don't know if it's workable, but man, it sure is cool :)
Thats a great idea for a single player, offline game!
If we were to take the casting pool vs study Sorc/Wiz analogy to a direct mapping of the PnP game, a sorcerer would have a purely fixed number of spells, but somehow the frequency would be greater, and a wizard would have the capacity to swap out with some regularity. The part where this really breaks down is when we try to apply it to a "classless" skill training system as is proposed. Maybe one skill tree represents the undisciplined force of personality magic (charisma based) and another tree represents the study based, pure intellect magic (intelligence based).
Aside from base stat dependency, in what way can we promote the differentiation between "styles", and still accommodate the skill tree concept? I've had a few ideas that ultimately seem sort of cheesy (sorc: fast but weak attacks, wizzie: slow but hard hitting) and I'm not a big fan of. Leaving aside the Spell Selection/Deck/Swap Out issue for the moment, what sort of mechanics could be implemented to provide a meaningful difference between a Spontaneous and a Prepared caster? Particularly considering the overall spell selection lists are identical. Just at the moment, i'm kinda blank on that, but it seems to me to be the key problem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope magic goes the way of interesting and useful spells rather then, "This is the mage class, here are your DPS spells please spam away. Oh, don't forget your hour long buff." Even something like Everquest where you had skills in spell casting and got better, had a good amount of down time, having to actually memorize your spells, things like that. I know it is a lot easier to do I the other way, but I'd like to see magic be something similar to how the vancian system works. EQ did that reasonably well I believe. Not perfectly of course, but well enough.
Basically not like newer games. I want less cinematic play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Who says that the overall spell lists are identical? In PnP play, the biggest difference between wizards and sorcerers is in what spells they have available- the wizard has more variety, while the sorcerer has more endurance.
The spell list of Wizards and Sorcerers are the same. The actual spell selections (spells known, or spellbook library ) of an individual wizard and an individual sorcerer are different. Niether arcanist would be able to partake in the spell list of a cleric or a druid (barring minor exceptions/crossovers). This has been the common usage for the term "spell list" for a while in my experience.
And has been discussed at length, a classic vancian system simply can't be applied to a real-time mmo and still have any semblance of balance with any other class not assigned to that system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... eg producing a pattern in the air...Wow! That's just brilliant. To actually see the lines of magic weaving together, and having the effectiveness of my spell based in part on how well I can manipulate those lines just seems awesome. I don't know if it's workable, but man, it sure is cool :)Thats a great idea for a single player, offline game!
If we were to take the casting pool vs study Sorc/Wiz analogy to a direct mapping of the PnP game, a sorcerer would have a purely fixed number of spells, but somehow the frequency would be greater, and a wizard would have the capacity to swap out with some regularity. The part where this really breaks down is when we try to apply it to a "classless" skill training system as is proposed. Maybe one skill tree represents the undisciplined force of personality magic (charisma based) and another tree represents the study based, pure intellect magic (intelligence based).
Aside from base stat dependency, in what way can we promote the differentiation between "styles", and still accommodate the skill tree concept? I've had a few ideas that ultimately seem sort of cheesy (sorc: fast but weak attacks, wizzie: slow but hard hitting) and I'm not a big fan of. Leaving aside the Spell Selection/Deck/Swap Out issue for the moment, what sort of mechanics could be implemented to provide a meaningful difference between a Spontaneous and a Prepared caster? Particularly considering the overall spell selection lists are identical. Just at the moment, i'm kinda blank on that, but it seems to me to be the key problem.
Those are questions which go quite deep into building the total magic system, and then looking at the differences between "trees/paths/spell decks" etc. Need to think about that.
I was more considering the controller-input experience of the player however to differentiate the feeling of the experience (and possibly skill/preference). So not sure if Ryan Dancy's mention of Guitar Hero has been digesting in the back of my head while I've been chewing the cud on this problem, but for another example,
The Bard, if they have to perform some musical notes (as seen in Zelda: Ocarina Of Time) but on a bigger scale and possibly a more jazzy sense of adding notes together for any one "song", that would be an interesting way for the player to experience the Bard?
Similarly for Magic-Users, perhaps some runes are in the GUI when some spells are selected and these need to be recombined by clicking the right sequence or some such that requires the player to concentrate on the pattern/puzzle to perform the spell.
...Then it all comes to the question of mechanics of how powerful the spell is, and it's stats and feedback on resource use etc and comparison with other spell lines.
Obviously the effect of the control input has an influence on "time to intiate action" (& complexity of action required by the player) but that's more the way I see of making magic users experience a game style that fits with "INTELLIGENCE" / "WISDOM" than the usual sword/arrow class who is more spatial/DEXTERITY skill ie looking at things on screen and reacting quickly and so on.
It would be more a case of using a players memory, pattern recognition and combinations of the 2 to actually then use their class' skills of magical ability. Which fits with players learning their wizardly ways, I feel.