Hybrid-Magic System

A couple threads I saw recently have got me thinking. How would I do this?

First.. why. Spells treated as skill is, let's be honest.. not very interesting and I do not believe the current system is worthy of being a spiritual successor to Ultima magic. The current system works sure.. but it could be so much more.

Now for this I am falling back on familiarity with Ultima magic systems with the goal of producing something similar. The way I see it there are 2 major challenges. The skill tree structure is one of them. The other is UI and actual combat.

First, the skill trees only have so many tiers.. where as Ultima has 8 or even 9 circles of magic. So the first thing I would do, is remove ALL spells from the skill trees and replace the first tier skill with a spell casting skill or spell school theory. The higher this skill the higher circle of spell you can cast.

Herein lies a new problem.. we now have a bunch of empty skill trees. We need new skills to fill in the space. To this I would add skills that improve your mastery of each specific school.. these skills might improve speed, power, reagent use, spell weaving, attunement, item use etc. Alternatively, part of the skill tree might unlock higher spell circles for that school.

This would allow any number of spells to be added in the future without needing to change the skill trees. Nor would spells

Spell Books
For me at least, much of the fun of Ultima magic was building the spell book. Find or buy schools, add them to your book. If you have the skill, the focus and the reagents you can cast any spell in the book.

Note: This would still require the appropriate skill in each individual school. Being a master of Air doesn't mean you can cast an 8th circle Earth spell.

In remaining true to the Ultima style.. learning a new spell should only require the scroll be placed in the spell book. You will still need to train you skill normally in order to cast it.

Now we come to important issue. How does spell casting work in practice? Same as it does currently.. only instead of building your deck from your skill tree.. you build it from the spells in your spell book.

Now we have a couple technical issues here. Your spell book would have to be a permanents item in your inventory. Much like your journal. OR.. another solution would be to tie your deck to your spell book. So you leave your spell book somewhere the deck goes with it. Which I actually like better than the first idea though it's more work.

Spell books should not be lootable.

Spell scrolls would count as consumable items and used in the same way as potions. Crafting scrolls would require the appropriate reagents and possibly both the magical skill and alchemical skill.

That's just my thinking off the top of my head. I do not feel it's a huge departure from the current system but would allow you to have spell books and collect spells much like Ultima while retaining deck building. It also allows flexibility for new spells to be added later and does away with spells requiring proficiency in other spells to cast which seems a little strange to me in some cases.

I'm sure there's a few more things but the mind isn't holding on to them right now. I think that covers the core of what I'm thinking at least.

 

This could work. Essentially, each Magic school would be like a Craft school, with mostly identical skills within it, and each would affect spells assigned to that school equally. This would allow a wider variety of spells, without having each be essentially cut and paste with a minor variation to effect.

My suggestion involved a more detailed change to the Magic schools, because I attempted to take into account Words of Power and make them more than background dressing. It had the same effect on spells, however, which is the real desired goal.

 

I like it.

 

I don't really see this as much of an improvement. If the spellbook is permanently in your inventory and filled with spells that are placed on your hotbar like skills and only work if you have appropriate training in the associated magic school then from a practical standpoint all that really changes is where the spells are kept.

I mean, collecting the scrolls for your first spellbook in UO may have been a bit of an endeavor, but it's hardly a really game defining experience. It was sort of a do once and done kind of thing, at least until they added that awful slayer system to artificially create a need for a dozen different weapons for every character.

I don't like the idea of consumable magic at all, because any system that grants significant power in exchange for consumable items basically just creates massive unbalance in favor of people who grind a lot.

 

The only reason to make it permanent is to simply deck building. If they want to go so far as to tie decks to a specific spell book that could work too, but it's more work for the devs. The point is the idea is meant to deal with a very real technical issue.. but it's not the only way. If you have another idea feel free to share.

Can say the same thing about having more time to play than someone else. Time is always a potential advantage for those who have more of it.

 

I like the idea of scrolls , it's a pain in the neck to keep track of all those ingredients & regeants. You also tend to run out of them at the worst possible time

 

There have been a few ideas from Redfish and myself regarding reagents that I'm rather partial too. I do think reagents should be necessary but that's an ongoing debate I don't think we need to revisit here. Scrolls are a nice single-fire solution and big part of Ultima's magic system in the past. So it would be nice to have them back. The bigger issue with them is in their creation. Making sure high-level scrolls are hard enough and/or expensive enough to produce that not everyone is running around summoning elementals.

 

I agree , why not also make the more powerful scrolls require a specific time or moon phase for their creation ? That should add to the immersion factor and slow down production of powerful scrolls at the same time.

 

I never was in love with spell books. IMO the fun idea of magic in the Ultimas prior to U7 was the idea that there were unknown spells that you could figure out just by messing around with reagents and words of power. They didn't exploit this too much, but there were a couple of spells like Create Food and Change Wind that you could have theoretically cast anytime, if you knew the reagents and words of power.

In fact, the addition of spell books made the game less interesting to me, because you no longer had to use words of power. Spell combos, which I think will be a big part of SotA brings that back for me. I think there are only a certain number of base spells you need, and I like the tree concept, because its really about mastery, rather than some abstract idea of level. The trees are very logical. In order to cast a fireball, you need to know how to throw a fire arrow first, and in order to ignite your sword, you need to know how to immolate yourself first. Before any of those, you need to know the basics of creating a flame fist. Once you can both create a fireball and ignite your sword, you have the mastery required to create a ring of fire around you. Its very, very logical. Most of the spells will come from combos within schools and between schools.

The problem of adding spells in later on that were overlooked is interesting. So for example, I suggested Featherfall, which would require an addition to the Air school tree. But then, even the Combat and Strategy skill schools might need to change or expand, and the crafting skill schools might also need to change or expand. Its not a problem limited to magic. Would you have like spell books, skill books for those things too? Or maybe, instead, blind skill trees, which leaves open the possibility of branches you have yet to discover?

 

Good ideas above. I am wondering how complicated the implementation really is. What happens if the current trees are given a title at the top that says "spell book" and some background graphics that make it look like a book. And then the spells can unlocked not when they are bought directly on that interface, but when a scroll is found or bought and activated to unlock them. Sounds very similar to what we have now in some ways, just with improved interface that makes it more immersive in the way described. I'm not sure how the circles of magic would work though.

 

Physical spell books arrived with U6 actually. It was only 4 and/or 5 where we could potentially discover or tweak spells but I do recall spells being listed in a spell book then as well.. But consider this.. under the current system the spells you know are static. You would never have any hope of a more dynamic system. By moving spells off the tree you create at least the option of flexibility.

This idea leaves spell weaving entirely intact.

 

Oh yea you're right it started with U6.

What are your thoughts on non-magic skills, though -- do they stay in trees? I just see it as the same issue, that's all. And I doubt we'll have more than a handful new base spells, unless they add whole new schools.

 

Magic circles from a mechanical standpoint are very similar to skill tiers. The problem is there isn't a direct translation as the skill tries are also lateral. Each school has it seems about 8 or 9 actual spells but only about 5 tiers with branches. In theory you could consider them within a 'circle' based on their relative power and what tier they're in.

 

I probably wouldn't have designed skills the way they did but I don't see any great need to change them. With magic though spell books are both an iconic part of player a spell user.. and also in keeping with Ultima tradition. Technically we could argue that spell books have been in Ultima since IV with how known spells were listed.. it's just they had no physical representation until VI. To not have them now just feels off.

Now personally I would love to be able to also explore spell creation and discovery with words of power and all that as well. It's only of my favorite early concepts. If the magic system included more of a feeling of scholarly research and discovery I would be very interested.. but I fear that would be overly complicating things for most.. on the other hand most players can simply learn from others and that works too. But all of that is beyond the scope of EP1. I see no reason though why spell books should negate that idea of discovery like the skill trees do.

What I probably would have done with skills.. if it were up to me.. wow that's a tougher question than I thought. heh.. I just don't think I would've gone with a deck system. I'm too much a fan of single player combat I guess. For SotA I think they're fine the way they are but I would have liked something that felt more natural. Decks and hotkeys just don't do that for me.

 

Personally, I have great difficulty with the ability to do magic without reagents.

 

I think starting the game with a bag of reagents is silly and overwhelming. We're from earth! we shouldn't have any idea how to do magic first joining the game. Let it be something that we can discover later, and keep our choices at the beginning to: a small dagger and a bow, or a pole arm, or a sword and shield.

I'd like to see a mysterious magic user and/or rogue help us during the initial battle, to get us intrigued in the idea of using it, and wondering, 'hey, how can I do that?'

Then one of the refugees might be an apprentice, or apothecary, (or thief), who has to deliver a message to their master, and we could help (or stop them), and start learning about magic/subterfuge after we've completed the basic quests in Soltown first.

Magic needs to be tested in Pre-Alpha yes, but it shouldn't be something we can just do. It needs to be, and feel, different from standard combat. I think both, subterfuge and magic, should branch off in an intermediate phase as standard combat begins to specialize.

Sorry, I guess this was a bit off topic. I like your ideas. Stressing that magic should feel different from other combat skills is what got me off on that tangent! ;-D

 

I like it.

 

There is a huge difference between someone who has a lot of time to grind being able to buy a nicer house and someone who has more time to grind being able to just roll over everyone else in a fight because they can blitz through so many scrolls and potions without even thinking about it.

Extraordinary time investment works the same way as micro-transactions. There are lots and lots of things that they can be used for that are very much desirable that nobody takes offense with, like cool items to show off with or having some convenience here or there, but there are also things that they shouldn't be used for because it just creates a lot of ill will in the community. The whole idea of a game not being "Pay to win" is that you can't spend real life money on anything that gives you the edge in direct competition with another player, be it competition for group spots in PvE or competition to win a fight in PvP. Since available time is just as much a real life factor as available money it should be treated the same way.

 

Great thought provoking thread.

I always thought that there were at least 3 types of magic users. Healers of course, who draw strength from Life & their polar opposites the necromancers. Life and Death are the most primal of forces and for these most ancient of spellcasters - oral traditions or words of power would be the way to go.

Mages and sorcerers would be (relatively) newer professions. Their lore would be in books and books imply cities, libraries and a higher level of technology where the written word would be the preferred vehicle for knowledge.

Chaos magic would represent otherworldly or other dimensional stuff - whatever that means in Ultima lore. Demons, for example are definitely not of this world and strangely enough so are avatars.

Maybe some trees or branches of trees can be marked off as requiring words or spellbooks. And maybe instead of paying 100g and getting any spell you want, the completion of a quest would be necessary to unlock certain magical paths.

 

Taking your ideas under consideration, perhaps a new adventurer who has shown 'natural magic ability', would/should start with the basic life/death spells to choose between, (since these are primal magics that maybe could be used naturally without study or prior teaching?) But I really think all new players should be introduced to magic equally, no matter their truth/courage/love tally. I think there's magic to supplement any combat skill variant, and the ethics behind different magics differ as widely as the virtues themselves.

I don't see how someone who's interested in death magic and subterfuge (lunar) and chaos, should be more successful in their magical ability by being truthful people..

And what about those who refuse to embrace magic, for the sake of science? Maybe SotA could use that common divide as an ethical dilemma in this story.. in the end, showing that magic.. is.. science? bum, bum, bum..