Mechanics (Magic System)

[Yaw]

Don't we have "magic theory" already? I know it was in the defunct Amstaad, and I remember a post with an updated version when this started up again. If that was lost in the crash, can it be recreated? Would at least give a starting point here.

[Yaw]

There we go.

The way this used to work, the different styles of magic worked completely differently. So if you do conjuration, your mind and actions would know how to do conjuration, and it'd be hard to transfer the skill to alchemy. Of course, someone could do both, but they'd have to have skills or aspects in both (however we choose to do this). The advantage was that everyone would know exactly how magic works, and rules could be built to support that (also, mods and players would have flavour to refer to in-game, and a reasonable background to decide if and how things happened).

Of what we had, I think sorcery (what is now fire/water/air/earth) needed the most work. The basic idea there was that the sorcerer would gather up materials through some means, and combine the elements to produce some effect. Effects would then be limited by how much of each element the sorcerer could get, with the side effect that the elements would be lacking elsewhere. For example, gathering fire could make the surrounding area colder. While this is nice to think of (with a lot of parallels to conservation of mass and energy), there are problems. One is that the sorcerer can suddenly do two things at once -- both making a fireball and freezing someone at the same time! The other issue is that sorcery is so free-form that players can come up with ways to kill anything just by being creative (nothing's really going to stand up to having their kidneys on fire). I don't believe the "magical code of ethics" proposal from before is sufficient to stop this kind of nonsense, so something needs to be tweaked pretty severely here.

The other three (nature didn't exist before) were fairly well mapped out. Alchemy can be based off actual alchemy pretty easily, with a bit of elaboration for fantasy (so alchemists mixing up various substances with the intention of achieving some kind of enlightenment). There were different divination methods for each race, from crystal balls to throwing bones. The only thing here is to try to go more on the cryptic end of things, the point is not to tell players the future. Conjuration was the interesting one. The original idea was to be able to just create stuff. Amended, the conjurer takes a mental journey to the astral realm, chooses something there to bring to the real world, and it will manifest. Except it's a deferred payment plan -- the longer that item is around, the more tired the conjurer gets, until they finally give it back (or go unconscious). The nice part here is that all the mod has to do for conjuring is figure out how long the item can stay. Something small might stay for until the conjurer sleeps. Try to bring a demon into the world, it might last a millisecond before the conjurer blacks out.

The big thing here is figuring out the aspects/skills for magic, and figuring out a balanced way to make Fire/Water/Air/Earth/Nature work. I personally prefer not having lists of spells, but instead a solid framework of how they work that mods can refer to, and a good understanding of the power level involved in sample effects.

[Yaw]

This doesn't need to correspond with some "accepted" idea of rpg magic. We're making it, it can have our own flavour. There's no requirement for white or black magic, or anything else.

Divination, I love the flavour, we should definitely try to get this working. My suggestion: You can look for something specific (the more absolute/detailed the harder it is) you either pass or fail, or you can look in general and you see something depending on your MoS, different methods/races are better for finding different types of things. Yeah you can look up the exact wwwwwh of a PCs death but it's going to be Legendary+++ difficulty.

Just thinking through the modding, I'd be a bit more careful with the implementation. Vague is usually better here. As soon as you start getting into specific predictions, you either give the prophecy the chance to go wrong, or force the mod into railroading the player into a specific outcome.

Conjuration, meh, too much trouble and how does it even work, most other types of magic you can just say use mana get effect, for conjuration you are drawing out an item from an astral realm (what is it? does everything exist there?), if I can summon a small pellet, can I also summon a small pellet filled with the most deadly poison known to man?

Well, the conjurer would have to go into a trance, so would either need a bodyguard or would have to do it pre-combat. That said, yes, everything does exist there. The player could summon a demon, if he/she really wanted. But the time allowed for the item to manifest is directly proportional to how big it is, and how dangerous it is. So the pellet alone would last longer than the poisoned pellet. Just give mods discretion with a few guidelines, and let players go wild. It's perfectly balanced, because anything too unbalancing won't stay long enough for the player to use it, while also knocking the player out for a while.

Alchemy, possibly combine this with enchanting, anything that (semi-)permanently alters the properties of an object.

Yes, this originally included both enchanting and potions. Sort of like magical chemistry.

I like the nature idea, but we'd need an idea of how it works. (I like the flavour of druids, but I hate the DnD shapeshifting. I think this gets into the larger question that should be determined first -- how big an influence is magic? How powerful and accessible is it?)