PURE MAGE SKILLS

Since there are 9 schools of magic if we were to put skill points into each individual spell nobody could become an arch-mage knowing most or all of the spells on the list. That may be by design. However I propose a way for players to create a pure mage character, and also would help others create Paladins, rangers, and massive variety types.

What I propose is that instead of putting skill points into spells individually, let us put skill points into the base skills to act as levels for each school of magic.

For example LIFE MAGIC: Life power, and Life Reach are the backbone skills. By leveling those up you would have the "potential" of casting the spells in the tree based upon what level of Life magic you attain. That could also determine the number of these spells you can use in your deck, more of the lower level spells up to the higher tier spells on the chart. So if you have 5 points in Life Power and life Reach then you can have up to 5 cards for the first tier, 3 for the second tier, and 1 card for the healing grace and ressurection spells.

THE REASON FOR DOING THIS:

1. Warriors can have something around 20 to 27 different skills to master if they want to fully master their weapons their armor, and a shield. If somebody wanted to be a paladin he would have to sacrifice a lot of combat skills to master some healing spells unless all he needed was to put some skill points in the base of life magic only.

2. A pure mage that focuses primarily on magic has the potential to learn all or almost all of the schools using about the same number of skill points as a warrior trying to master his skills. So a mage learning all the innate skills of magic, and learning some light armor skills would still be a little more skill points than a warrior class, but that actually works out well. (That would be 20 innate skills for all the schools plus any armor skills (there are 10 skills for light armor) they need to pick up.) That's not counting bludgeon skills if he carries a staff.

Conclusion:
I think this would help combination classes tap into a little bit of a few schools of magic or learning an individual school much easier for them so they can focus on their main skill set, and also gives us the potential for creating a pure mage with similar numbers of spells that previous Ultimas had while keeping the relative number of skill points close to becoming a pure warrior.

 

Wouldnt a paladin need more fighting skills since he is a warrior first and formost? and then have to take some skills in healing etc...
Clerics would also be more magic, and less combat i would assume, although some clerics ive seen in action are just as damaging as a warrior.
how would you separate skills to match those criteria?

 

Exactly the "traditional cleric" if you wanted to build him out would be made up of most of the heavy armor skill, and some of the bludgeoning skill tree. Then he would have to focus on life magic, death magic (optional), maybe some sun magic, and some water magic.

Traditionally clerics were decent in weapon combat and are heavily armored with healing spells etc.


Think about the druid! You can mix archery into the mix, Earth Magic and some Life magic.... etc. Then rangers would be interesting.

I think only having to learn the base magic skills creates more variation in they types of players out there, and of course it allows for a pure spell caster with vast knowledge. Or maybe somebody who wants to be an animal tamer might pick up only 6 of the schools of magic to be a mage/tamer. They could be mostly healing spells with all the buffs etc.

 

Being a fan of MTGathering, I would be favorable to a card system. However, it would have to include enough cards to keep it interesting. Can't do a great game of magic with 4 suits with 13 cards each alone.

I'd like a card in my mage deck to summon a spell to my characters "mind" or hand. Or something that allows me to exchange a card for a random card in "life" magic. Things like this make MTG fun despite being limited to 7 cards in your hand and having to wait for your good stuff. I could go on about neat cards for spells but anyone who has played MTG knows what I mean.

 

Say you level up your life and fire ability as you say, so that you can have 20 cards in life and 20 cards in fire.

Maybe you have a "hand" or a "memorized spell" list. - 5 cards by default. You could upgrade this to 10 as a GM mage maybe.

Have an ability to "forget" a spell and draw a new spell into memory, cooldown every 10 seconds or so.

By default a lv1 spell from chaos allows you "summon" a spell from your spellbook to memory from a select school of magic - allowing some control over the deck.

Higher levels allow you to summon more precise approxomations of the spell you have in mind. - and a GM can summon the exact spell he needs. -All subject to consideration of "random" effects - maybe there is a penalty chance for summoning precise spells of any sort. Hair change, backfire, wrong spell, etc.

Heres another idea: Have another "hand" of memorized spells that are CONSTANT. Say only 4 or 5 max? These are weaker spells but, always dependable. You can choose whatever spells you like to go here, as long as they are part of the "limited" spell group. Maybe the CONSTANT cards are non-chaos chards?

 

If you want a card system but, need to cloak it behind a normalish UI you could do it this way:

Think of spells as memories rather than cards for a moment and consider point-based vs. time-based cooldowns on memories.

### Point-based cooldown spells ###

Every spell has say a cooldown based on points rather than time.

At any given time a player can only have enough points to have access to any of 10 spells from the entire spellbook of point-based cooldown spells.

When a player casts a spell, the spell points are expended and that spell cannot be cast until points are replenished in it.

Perhaps a second or two later, those points spent will reappear -making a random spell now available to be cast.


### Time-based cooldown spells ###

Now, on the side a player has access to spells that have a normal "time based cooldown" - these spells are weaker spells. These can influence the way the "random" points are reassigned into the point-based spells.

- example: replenish the next points into a random life spell, or a 6 circle spell, etc

Time-based cooldown spells are limited to a fixed 10 instead of a fluxuating list of 10 as in point-based.

The spells in this list of 10 is determined when out of combat by selecting them from a book.

### Chaos magic vs. normal magic ###

Chaos magic users will have less control over how their spell points are replenished but more power, and higher consequences for fizzles. Normal magic users have much more control over where their point-based spell replenishment is invested, less power and less consequences for fizzles.


### Notes ###

Of course, you may wish to change the amount of time-based points a player can have depending on skill level, granting them less or more spells able to be cast at once. The same for time-based skills..

 

To be perfectly honest I'm one of those guys who is NOT a big fan of a card system for spells. I would rather we only have cards for custom spell combos we create, and for individual spells I believe we should be able to cast them any time we want from our spell book or from icons/macro keys.

The focus of the first post of this thread was regarding the skill point allocation required for us to gain mage skills. It isn't attempting to resolve the card system which I personally believe is better for combat skills, armor skills, and spell combos only. The rest of the skills and spells ought to remain available to us any time.