Magic in JADE

[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 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 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.