Magic in JADE

[Sradac]

One thing in all RPG's that i love using is magic. I tend to roll casters a good 80% of the time and quick agile melee the other rest. While ADOM's magic system was quite versatile with all the types of spells, pretty in depth and pretty satisfying i always felt it was lacking in certain aspects and that was the number of spells. Yeah ADOM has a decent variety of spells but i always felt it was a bit lacking and maybe JADE could improve upon that, really all there was in ADOM were damage spells such as fire ball, magic missle, and death ray. Healing spells that healed wounds disease and poison. And Utility spells ranging from knock and invisibilty to strength of atlas and wish. I'd like to see not only more types of spells but also more spells in those existing groups. Possibly some tap spells, spells that leech enemies life and maybe even lower enemy stats while temporarily increasing yours. PP taps. A temporary enchantment to a weapon such as adding +1d6 fire damage to it, or even a stun ray type effect buff for a weapon.

And the available spells were kinda slim pickings, its kinda dissapointing knowing there is only ONE ranged cold spell and it can only be cast in the cardinal directions. Maybe add a spell that does higher damage than the basic frost bolt but will only one enemy the one it strikes first, kind of like improved fireball except with no area damage. A targetable damage spell that you cast at a specific location regardless of whats in your way. I could totally see an orc sorcerer conjuring up flames from the ground underneath an unsuspecting victim, quite surprised to see flames erupt around them.

Maybe a fire spell that ignites enemies dealing damage over time. And even things as simple as casting your basic bolt spells but NOT in the cardinal directions they can follow a path just like missile weapons. Maybe a stronger version of magic missile that dosent bounce of walls. A "shock" spell that deals less damage than lightning bolt but has a chance to stun an enemy. A firebolt spell that costs less PP than firebolt but also deals less damage. And even more damage types maybe, a poison bolt that poisons whatever enemy it hits, a spell that conjures up a huge waves and crushes the enemy with both water and physical damage. A Pure light spell that while not doing a heck of a lot of damage has a high chance of blinding whomever is hit by it. A physical damage spell that calls up spikes of earth from the ground, or causes stalagtites to fall from the ceiling. A spell of pure force that can knock enemies back while damaging them. A blizzard spell, same targeting as improved fireball deals less damage and has a 50% chance to slow enemies caught within the frigid winds. Not sure how much this could be implemented I dont know how The Creator scripts his spells but I know things similar to this exist in other Roguelikes namely ToME. And maybe finally REAL pet spells that summon a friendly monster instead of hostile ones like summon monster does, whats the point of that spell lol. Conjuring up a temporary weapon or piece of armor. Summoning food when you run low. The possibilities are really endless. Even a spell that when used in the wilderness will temporarily animate a tree and have it fight for you for a certain time!

Just some suggestions, again I liked ADOM's magic there's just so much more than can be done with it than your basic, cause damage, heal damage, teleport spells.

[Dougy]

Some good ideas here, but of course one should be careful not to make spells overly powerful. Another catch is that if the score is turn based, you certainly don't want almost all of the spellbooks you find to be virtually useless.

Will there be a library in JADE? I wonder how that would work with extra spells/spellbooks available.

My thoughts: spell of 'visibility,' spell of 'ageing' and that spell that ogre magi have! (perhaps from eating a corpse)

[Grey]

Gaining monsters' spells from eating their corpses would be very nice :)

There's some nice ideas you've got there, Sradac, but as Dougy said they do need to be balanced in the game. In ADOM wizards can get a bit too powerful, with offensive magic and utility spells riding them through the end game. Would be nice if there were areas of the game where you couldn't use magic, or where it has very negative repurcussions - I'm thinking like how the Mana Temple makes things difficult, but something more extreme.

[Dorten]

Think, the balancing could be done as follows: some testers play the game, enjoy it, and then share their opinions.
"Wow!" - says one - "Acid ball spell rocks!"
"Indeed" - says another - "It's so cool!"
"In next release it'll be much weaker, Bwahahahaha!!!" - laughs The Creator.

Of cource this process can take a long time...

[electric_wizard]

I really like the idea of adding enchantments. Could make magic more applicable to fighters and such.

[Nezur]

I agree that there should be more damage-over-time spells and nifty cantrips in JADE than ADOM. I also like the enchantment idea. What about melee-specialized characters having melee combat specific special abilities in order to alleviate the imbalance?

[chalup]

I'd like to see some major changes in magic system in ADOM. First, I don't like the fact, that when you play wizard/priest in ADOM you can relatively easily (library) learn every spell in game except the Wish. IMHO player should face some game defining choices when playing, for example some spells should be mutually exclusive (if you learn some high level frost spells, you can't cast anything more than burning hands from fire spells repertoire), some spells should need prerequisites (for example to learn enchanced fireball spell you'd need at least lvl 10 in fireball spell).

I know that this sound more like tree skill system from Diablo II than magic system from ADOM. I have to admit that the skill system was one of few things I liked in Diablo II, because effectively every class had at least few subclasses depending on the chosen skills, and I'd love to see something like that in JADE.

[Stephen2]

I know that this sound more like tree skill system from Diablo II than magic system from ADOM. I have to admit that the skill system was one of few things I liked in Diablo II, because effectively every class had at least few subclasses depending on the chosen skills, and I'd love to see something like that in JADE.
Couldn't agree more, you've had 2 posts so far in this forum Chalup, for 2 AWESOME ideas. I hope The Creator and community enjoys your ideas as much as I do.

[Tannis]

I also think mages should not have free equipment reign. In most RPGs fighters suck at magic, but the trade off is they walk around in huge plate mail. In ADOM, a mage can enjoy that plate mail and still blast enemies with magic. Wearing heavy armor should severely impede magic casting, such as increasing the failure rate or something. Exceptions could be items like mage plate, or items of elven craft.

[Tian]

Maybe a fire spell that ignites enemies dealing damage over time.

GREAT idea! could be an improved Burning Hands spell, or an "Ignition Bolt"... the ignited monster could change his color to a light or dark red, changing every turn, and run to random directions... I almost can see that red-coloured ogre magus running desperately... Burn, baby, burn! jajaja



PLEASE Thomas, you MUST include a spell like this one in JADE

[myrddin]

The Wizardry series is similiar in this way - for example if you are a mage (magic user that specializes in fire and water spells) here are a list of the various fire damaging spells and what they do:

Energy Blast - directed at 1 enemy causing some damage

Fire Ball - directed at a location -causes damage to anything it hits within a certain radius

Fire Storm - directed at a location - causes lasting fire damage to anything it hits within a certain radius - amount of damage goes down each round and lasts from a few to several rounds depending on spell level

Theres also a priest fire spell -

Ring of Fire - creates a ring of fire around the caster which lasts from a few to several rounds depending on spell level - anything next to you during that round is hit with some fire damage - the amount of damage decreases over time (ring moves w/ the caster).

And theres a special Psionic (think telekeneticist) spell:

Psionic Fire - shoots fire from the psionicist in a V like shape outward from the caster causing fire damage to anything it hits in its path

(theres more fire damaging spells in Wizardry but they are similiar to what's already here - like alchemists get "fire bomb" - but it's really just a different name for "fire ball")

Taking a cue from Wizardry you could easily implement the energy blast, keep fire bolt, fire ball, and improved fireball but also add firestorm, psionic fire, and ring of fire.

[chalup]

I also think mages should not have free equipment reign. In most RPGs fighters suck at magic, but the trade off is they walk around in huge plate mail. In ADOM, a mage can enjoy that plate mail and still blast enemies with magic. Wearing heavy armor should severely impede magic casting, such as increasing the failure rate or something. Exceptions could be items like mage plate, or items of elven craft.
I've never liked that solution (i remember it from Moria - the very first RL i played) and I also don't like restricting certain items only to physical classes (for example twohanded swords that can be used only by fighters). I'd rather like to see some kind of "armor using" skill and increase the number of skill checks needed to raise that skill level for wizards, so they would get big negative modifier to DV and speed and using heavy armors would require loooong and hard training. The effect will be almost the same but there will be no hard restrictions - if the player chooses to create some kind of "battlemage" capable of using plate mail, morgenstern and tower shield, he can do it (although it will be major PITA because of the negative modifiers).

I have another idea for nerfing wizards (especially high level ones): spells should have different casting time, during that time the wizard have to stay focused and every distraction (for example horde of charging monsters) will increase that time (effect that should depend on Willpower, Concentration, Courage and so on). If the wizard is hit or nearly hit by the monster when casting the spell several things may happen: the casting time is slightly increased, the spell backfires at the wizard (if it was near completion), the spell is "released" prematurely and works only with half power (maybe add some nice random effects for high level spells), etc. This way the wizard can still use some basic spells in direct combat, but can't just teleport straight into the room full of monsters and nuke them with acid ball.

[Grey]

I have to agree with both of your suggestions, chalup - they would help make wizards much more balanced (which would then allow for more powerful spells to be added in!)

[Epythic]

More spells are good.

Restricting things to classes is not good. Why should a fighter not be able to learn how to do magic? It should take time, but it should be possible.

What Chalup suggested sounds reasonable.

[Nezur]

-- player should face some game defining choices when playing, for example some spells should be mutually exclusive (if you learn some high level frost spells, you can't cast anything more than burning hands from fire spells repertoire.) --

There shouldn't be hard limitations in the game. I agree on that. Otherwise I'm not sure. I tend to emphasize "realism". How could the powerful frost spells stop the player from learning fire spells?

Some thoughts:

IMHO casting spells from a given school should increase the power of all spells in that school as well as training the one casted. The same for weapon training. Of course the schoolwide effect is lesser. Maybe the effectiveness of unused spells could degrade over time to the base values. I also second a Mana recommendation for spells and a Strength recommendation for heavy armour and weapons. If a stat is below the recommended value severe penalties will be applied for the action (spells become weaker, spells cost a lot of mana, casting a spell may not produce the desired effect or will trigger nasty side effects and wearing too heavy an armour will severely hinder movement). In theory heavy cumbersome armour should always reduce DV and speed to some extent, regardless of class (or guild membership). An extremely high Strength could help though.

[Grey]

I think spells should become more difficult to be more proficient in the more you increase them, much like they are in ADOM. Thus to truly master an area of magic you would have to neglect many others.

[Sradac]

[QUOTE=myrddin;741]The Wizardry series is similiar in this way QUOTE]


Wizardry rocks =)


Yeah all you guys got good points, i wasnt trying to get a make wizards uber thread going, this was just one thing that i thought was lacking. Special abilities for melee is also needed instead of semi basic thing adom has going for them. Maybe get melee better bonuses for getting better with certain weapons. Right now advancing in say pole arms only got you + to hit, + to dmg, and + to DV. Maybe once you become"skilled" with polearms you can perform a sweeping attack with your polearm knocking an enemy prone for a turn or two, and maybe when you become even more skilled ou have a chance to pierce an enemy and damage the next enemy behind them. After all pole arms are kind of long. Maybe if you get better with daggers you have a chance to by-pass PV just like a phase dagger, since you're very skilled with such a small blade you know how to get into enemy weak points like under the arms or the neck. Make daggers usefull again! Getting good with staves you can go into a defensive flurry with it deflecting many incomming blows while spinning your staff rapidly. Getting good with axes you could swing your axe around you in rapid succesion damage all enemies around you similar to a circle kick. With bows? Get them sniping skills going using some kind of eagle eye (Yeah its a talent this is just an example name) you can extend your vision in a certain direction for one round and increase damage x2 to get that all important first shot off even sooner. Of course ALL these actions would cost more power to perform and have maybe certain other negatives. Possibilities are endless in roguelikes like i always said. The Creator better be reading this forum we got good ideas going here!

[ZeroTheBird]

Custom spells for race/class combinations.

[Epythic]

Custom spells for race/class combinations.

Please not! Why should character creation be what determines your later style of games, without any possibility to rethink your decision?

For choosing the race, ok. But then, there may be a !PP (Potion of Permanent Polymorph, permanently changes your race)... artifact, of course.

But class? Why?

[Nezur]

I think it's a bit weird in ADOM that the knowledge of a spell actually decreases when you use one. Also why do spell books have to disappear after reading them? If you have read the book completely the game could just tell that the character can't learn anything new from the book. Perhaps reading another book of the same kind could increase the spell's effectivity somewhat.

I also don't like the fact that you can't cast bolt spells in any direction in the same way as throwing things.

[Pustka]

balancing the classes is imho a bad idea from the start. in ADOM they are not just "unbalanced" by chance. they are supposed to be that way. (*cough* acid ball *cough*)

the idea about mutually exclusive spell is to simple and have no reasoning behind it. i could see it as some sort of specialization in various schools but this idea needs lots of thinking - just throwing it "as it is" is not enough :P

the skill system in diablo II was not so good imho :cool: lvl prerequisites for spells are just unnatural.
maybe ... hmmm... skills for various schools of magic could serve for stating prerequisites. thats more natural when using some spells makes u increase ur skills with habdling them and thanks to that u can master more complex spells :) im to lazy to dig through the news and website to search if creator already did something with magic ;>

[Nezur]

balancing the classes is imho a bad idea from the start. in ADOM they are not just "unbalanced" by chance. they are supposed to be that way. (*cough* acid ball *cough*)

The classes in ADoM are not very balanced but this could be intentional. Experienced players might want to play as mere farmers for a challenge. However I do think the traditional or "serious" RPG classes could be more balanced.

On the other hand I don't really like classes.


the skill system in diablo II was not so good imho :cool: lvl prerequisites for spells are just unnatural.

Levels themselves are unnatural. :) You don't become more durable by killing one thousand giant frogs.

The opportunity to increase your skills every level is even more unrealistic. You don't become any better at maths by killing one thousand giant bats. Your accuracy of aim might increase however.


maybe ... hmmm... skills for various schools of magic could serve for stating prerequisites. thats more natural when using some spells makes u increase ur skills with habdling them and thanks to that u can master more complex spells :) im to lazy to dig through the news and website to search if creator already did something with magic ;>

Hmmm... Yeah, when you think about the idea it sounds pretty good. However I think the "skill" requirement should be just a "recommended value" instead of an all-or-nothing type thing so that you could still learn the spell but be able to use it poorly.

If you manage to learn a spell you'd still have to gain experience in that particular spell in order to first be able to cast it properly and then able to increase its power and/or be able to call forth minor additional effects along with the spell. Maybe Le could be the major factor when you try learn the spell and Ma when you are learning to use it by casting it. Characters with high mana are better in touch/in tune with the Mana Plane and thus able to attune themselves to the energies of a given spell faster.

Additionally I'd like to suggest some spells:

Animate plant - animates a plant and forces it to act as your protector
Animate armour - animates a pile of equipment and creates an animated armour that is able to act on its own
Animate weapon - animates a melee weapon which will then fight for you
Construct unlife - constructs a golem from iron, clay, steel etc. which will act as your protector

[Narvius]

I'm a friend of classless games. Why not change "class" into "talents" which have less impact on the game? If you want to play a mage take "Arcane Talent", which increases your magic skills, or "Fencing Talent", which... well, I guess you've got it already.
Except that - it's natural that this kind of adventures force one to be universal to some grade. A pure warrior will never be able to defeat all evils - as well as a pure mage won't (of course I'm ignoring the fact that a single mortal has no chance to kill *any* big evil at all).

[ivoryknight]

I agree that getting rid of classes would be nice. Maybe it could be replaced with guilds that could be joined/left at any time in the game, so that you would still get the benefits that classes give you.

About magic, I hope JADE gets rid of the silly idea that you're knowledge of a spell decreases as you use. I understand this is probably used to balance the game, but using a spell often should actually increase your knowledge of it, like using skills. An unused spell should be one that decreases and eventually is lost. I also think it would be nice if you could learn/train spells with NPC's.

[Zephyr]

Construct unlife - constructs a golem from iron, clay, steel etc. which will act as your protector


Maybe this could be a weaponsmith power. You'd have to limit the construction of eternium golems, though...

I think a ball spell that has a lasting effect. Like, improved fireball that turns the effected area into the equivalent of the bottom level of the ToEF. For a few turns or something. It'd be useful against tension rooms, etc...

[Sradac]

lingering cloud spells would be cool, they're in ToME with lua scripting so im sure java could do it and do it better.

[Evil Knievel]

Phase shift - renders you almost invisible, gives DV+ something and minus on damage, and you are able to pass solid objects - just don't materialize. And don't use teleport without TP control when out of phase. Ghosts however can hit you even harder since you get in phase with them - and you also hurt them even more...

Reinforce gravity - In a radius around you, all flying things crash to the floor and become immobile. Your backpack gets double weight.

Time travel - only works to go to the past. you can place some sort of magic rune (to make the game start protocolling) and when you cast time travel, you go back to that point of time and space (or around, maybe you need practice to control it) and spend some time in the past, while your past alter ego is just doing his thing - don't interfere with him in the wrong way, you could impose random changes in the story/your equipment/your life/alignment/attributes/anything in the future.
Why one would do that? I don't know of many uses now, but maybe go down to the puppy, but you have to retreat, then just leave a rune, later come back at higher level when puppy already would have died, pick it up in the past, lead it some levels upwards, and save it in the future.
Or just before a big fight, you almost die, have real problems, then go back to the rune you set up, and help yourself, use wand of digging create a way out for you alter ego, beam or just hit the danger from another side, and when you get back, you see realitiy is altered, bad guys are corpses now...
Clearly it's difficult, and it can be set up in various ways - technically, and also how you want to understand the timelines - star trek like? or like terminatorr? you understand me, I hope. Or you go back and stay back in time. See yourself doing the time warp, and just living with your jumped self, able to double your presence in some situations. Also dice rolls from first living of timelines could be saved, and so things, even if action is slightly altered, e.g. hits, or effect of potions, or whatever, will happen the same way... so if you score a critical, that almost kills the ACW, travel back, put some more damage on him, you might be able to see the critical killing the ACW this time, right before everything would have gotten dangerous. Seriously manageable only with very small time windows, I think...

[Grey]

Rather physicsy theme to those - don't think it suits the theme of ADOM/JADE very well. Of course it's easy to simply rename them to make them fit in better - Astral Walk instead of Phase Shift for instance.

The time travel thing is far too much like saving - goes against the roguelike ethos in my opinion.

[Evil Knievel]

Yeah yeah, thats all right, but I don't have a good English language outside of physics... that can be your part

To time warp: depends on how it is implemented. when thinking deep about it I come to no good solutions, but I think the idea has potential.

I tried thinking about ideas, that make a magican feel very magicianlike... (like the absolutely meaningless earthquake spell does)

But there aren't that many ideas in my head right now...

I promise to only post an idea, if it is really worth it next time

[bjarketp]

Contingency. Once condition x is met, spell y is cast automatically without using a turn.

You would cast contingency and then get a choice of conditions. They can be, (specific) monster sighted, HP drops under x, PP drops under x, taking a melee hit, being submerged in water, being struck by a (specific) spell, being blinded, being stunned, spell wears off, setting off a trap, basically anything.

After you set condition, you well be asked to cast another spell at normel PP. The spell won't be cast immediately, but will be saved until the condition(s) are met. So a contingency takes 2 turns to fully set up, and the contingency spell itself should have a rather high PP cost.

Uses would be emergency teleports, fastcast Fireballs, healing, curing status effects, recasting buffs, whatever.

It may be too powerful, it may be hard to code, but I think it would be fun.

[Sradac]

meh contingencies are a bit too D&D like for me. I just want spell customization, being able to create your own spells or fine tuning your own spells for a certain situation, do you throw out several weak low powered fire bolts or put all your PP into one huge firebolt more along the lines of a magma blast or a solar flare. Some other roguelikes have that in them and I always enjoyed being able to fine tune my spells for a specific situation. Why should I be restriced to casting a magic missile EXACTLY the way the spell book taught it, as I get better at casting it I should become more familiar with it not just making it more powerful but giving me more control over it.

This goes back to what I mentioned before of having spells that are single hit like a missile only hitting one target and not a beam hitting everything in its path, I should be able to do that with my frostbolt if im familiar enough with the basic fundamentals behind conjuring elementals enough.

And i know it wont be in, but in my eyes the perfect magic system in any game is the ability to combine your magics the way you want. Using your knowledge of the elements of wind and water you can combine them and conjure water, then use your powers over the wind to chill the water to a freezing point to create an icy blast. focus more wind into it to propel the icy shard faster for a higher crit chance, or focus more water into it to create a larger ice chunk causing more base dmg.

the possibilities would be endless for that, air and earth to hurl boulders, fire and air to conjure up a storm of burning winds. it'd be really complex im sure, but it would be so damn cool.

[Krough Firender]

I actually created my own (D&Dish) RPG and Custom made the spell system (kind of)
I used slow Magic, having magic take a set amount of turns to cast, depending on level. This of course was just because I thought unlimited Spell casting would be cool and that It would be too hard to keep track of PP on a paper and pencil game. but the main differences I used were these
1) You get the spell craft skill. This needs to be increased during level making, but progress should be relatively slow. Or maybe it should only increase with spell casting experience? This skill allows you to cast more powerful spells. ex. Gust of Wind: Spellcraft requirement: lv. 4. 1d6 (+1 per lv) dam. + enemy flies in opposite direction of the caster for x amount.
2) spells gain special abilities after som amount of xp. ex (with the Gust of Wind spell)
At level 6 with Gust of wind and level 7 of Spellcraft, Gust of wind can cause opponent to be disarmed, the weapon flying out of his/her hands.
3).... Actually, thats about it. For the different classes in my game (theoretically) they used different casting styles. My divine classes (Preist, Cleric and Paladin) used daily magic. My Arcane (Sorcerers and Wizards) used the power point system. and the "other" category (Scribes, Bards, Druids) used slow magic, with unlimited spells. I don't know if its possible or probable to experiment with different Magic styles, but maybe it could work.

The Spell craft skill would allow for the fighter classes to have basic knowledge, and cast certain level spells, with the Spell casters just owning and depending on the increased spell craft skill to unlock new spell abilities. MY literacy skill was also important. the skill level allowed you to read a certain difficulty for scrolls and spellbooks, making really powerful scrolls only accessible to be read, or written by high level "readers"

I was just spewing Ideas, if any of them seem good, let me know =)

I also think that ther should be enchanting spells. Maybe in the form of scrolls.
"You identify the scroll to be a scroll of flaming weapon"
causes the prefix of flaming to be added. +1d4 fire dam. or something.
It should work for arrows and armor to.
As a spell you can cast, it should last a certain number of turns... about the duration of Strength of Atlas I thihnk... maybe a bit shorter, or dependent on mana. It could even be a new skill or class.

[Sradac]

well the weapon enchantment has been thrown around in this thread a couple times, I know i mentioned it once or twice on the first and 2nd pages as well did a few other people. I dont see why it would be difficult to do, just have the item get the -foo- tag on it for x turns. i know TBs system can do this, lets just see if he does.