Spell Amount or Mana?

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To take a sidestep to skilltree's. what I mean is that leveling is done with skilltree's, not the casting itself. you know, you get points to put into stats that mostly end up in the fighter classes. the problem for me is that spellcasting in games that use this system is fueled by mana. I target games like diablo, divine divinity, sacred, dungeon siege.

So when someone says: "dozens of spells and mana, free leveling etc etc", and not D&D3.5, i suspect it is just an other diablo clone. And those are the rpg games I like the least.

So I hope that Bioware does not make a diablo type game, but a D&D clone

 

Oh yeah ... that system in Diablo where you got stat points at every level up that you had to put in Strength or Vitality or Dexterity or Magic was limiting.

I like the D&D system, specially the freedom in IWD II of leveling, feat & skill selection,etc., but agree that spellcasting limitations were bull****. Taking IWD II as base, I would want changes to be made.

Whenever a charecter levels as a spellcaster, his spellpower/mana should increase. This mana should regenerate at a slow rate which is influenced by fatigue. Mana can be topped up or added to with items, potions, etc. As a spellcaster levels up he can cast higher level spells.

Mana itself must be of different flavours/schools. Every spell is associated with a school or a combination of schools. Specialist Mage types get no mana of opposing school and double mana in their own, when leveling up as Specialist Mage.
All spells associated with a school, if known, can be cast so long as there is mana of that school left. None of that fixed spells per day business. Also, no need for restricting number of different spells.

Devine spellcasters only spontaneously know the entire pool of spells at/for appropriate levels.
Arcane spellcasters must learn each spell from some source; be it from scrolls, books, items, teachers, quests rewards.

And a spellcaster should have the ability to choose on his own what spells to cast per day. Choose what pool of spells you want to remember per day like a Wizard and spontaneously cast any of these like a Sorcerer.
Healing from Devine casters must simply be a HP-mana relation. No casting multiple Cure Light Wounds or one unlimited effect Mass Heal.

XP gained via battle and quest can anyway be tagged seperately. But knowing how much of battle derived XP came from using spells and how much from slashing, for each individual charecter and spell and weapon, is too complicated. Tagging individual spells used in and out of combat is just bogging down the computer.

At level up, player must have a choice of broadly increasing effectiveness of spells or decreasing mana amount used. Getting both simultaneously is cheese.
I'm not too sure if I like the idea of having to use components to be able to cast magic.

 

Every CRPG has their flaws and there seems to be no way around it. So no matter how hard the developers of DA try to make us all happy, they won't have 100% successes, but they may come closer than others.

As for what I would like in a spell system is spell grouping. As a first level spell caster at creation you select 3 spells from 5+ school/spell classification. (Elemental, physical, defensive, Protection, Stats) At each level up you are able to select one new spell from one of the schools or you could increase one of your currents spells as long as the current spells does not exceed your level. Also as you use certain spells your character gains level in that spells after x amount of uses or time.

To provide better understanding of this subject please see the example below.


Spell-caster: Level 1
Level One Spells:
Flame – Elemental
Acid – Elemental
Cats Grace – Stats

This character constantly uses Flame and Acid. He reach level two and choose a new level one spell, splash.

Spell-caster: Level 2
Level One Spells:
Flame – Elemental
Acid – Elemental
Cats Grace – Stats
Splash – Elemental

Before he reach level three his flame spells is increase and is allowed to select from one of two fire spells from level two.

Spell-caster: Level 3
Level One Spells:
Flame – Elemental
Acid – Elemental
Cats Grace – Stats
Splash – Elemental
Level Two Spells:
Flame Thrower – Elemental

This caster has been using Cats Grace more regularly and upon reaching level 4 receive a second level spells for his experience with Cats Grace and also receives new spells to select from.

As the character levels up they are able to gain spells levels for lower level spells more easily. For instance if you are a ninth level spell caster and you are using a first level spell after 2 or 3 uses it would open up the second level spells. This is due to the character understanding of magic. Meaning you get the same xp for any spells that you cast at that level, but you only gain that spell xp if the spells actually had some type affect. Example using a healing spell to heal someone who is already heal will not grant you the spell xp need to raise the spell to the next level, etc…

This system works great if the number of spells learned and spells level are limited according to an ability score that would reflect upon spell caster. Or each spell level may require certain scores for the spell to be cast.

To me this system would allow you to create a caster of your preference if you don’t like the D&D system or any CRPG system that limits the spell casting ability in most CRPG games.

Also I would prefer mana over the D&D resting rules. It would be nice if mana regenerated through some skills/abilities. This is most useful considering that a wizard mana level tends to be just as weak as their HP at lower levels which makes for one or two spells tops usually; that is why I highly believe a regeneration of mana is critical if mana is the route they go.

[ January 04, 2006, 16:35: Message edited by: Abdel - Bhaal Spawn ]

 

not bad, this way you force a mage to use more different spells or to really specialize.

 

I'm not sure. Honestly, I've never been wild about breaking arcane magic into schools, or even magic in general. Personally, I say only one type of magic. Maybe you can divide it by element, healing, boosting, etc. but no more Divine vs Arcane. Also, remember that, by using a computer, a lot of very complicated tracking and calculating can be done very easily. XP based on spell casting being limited to spell casting is not rediculous at all, its just 1 more variable. I've also always liked the idea of direct XP spending. This could be especially good if XP is broken into types (spells, skills, melee, ranged, etc.). This way, you character will get better at what they do and you can't get a mage with spring attack because he took levels in fighter, but never uses anything fighter-ish.
At the same time, I hope they will make this like a fusion between Fallout and LionHeart, only without Lionhearts stupid spelltrees and some of the other mistakes. Also, remember BioWare, adventuring parties are GOOD. People want to have COMPLETE or NEAR COMPLETE control of their allies. No AI you could ever come up with could be as good as us just havign control ourselves. And if you could, my computer couldn't run it. BG set the standard in terms of party systems. ToEE was good in that respect as well.

 

We can't really decide whether there should be a distinction between divine and arcane spells because we don't know if religion is playing a big part in Dragon Age.

Heck you are talking about fighter and mage levels and we don't even know if there is a leveling system just as D&D.

I still think reagents for spells and skillpoints for practicing any part of you arsenal is an option.

 

I think reagents should be used for making magical items (of any kind) but not for spells. I would love to see an XP spending system if it were worked well. The problem with something like that is that people tend to play jack-of-all-trades and if the system isn't ballanced properly, a joat is better than a specialist.

 

My favorite non-D&D CRPG has been Betrayal at Krondor. Magic there was a mana-based system, with spells being learned from scrolls or from observation. You could choose how much mana (within a range) to use to cast a spell, with more mana producing a better chance of success/greater damage.

There were no experience levels, rather skills, statistics and mana levels increased with relevant experience--fight enough and your fighting skill goes up, pick enough locks and lockpicking goes up, etc.

That system seemed more "realistic" to me than arbitrary levels--an incremental increase in abilities, rather than "I was a level 3 wizard, suddenly I am level 4."

 

Gawain the D&D system is based some what on you said. If you are a pure thief chances are that as you gain levels your skills as a thief will go up. Yeah I think there should be some modification to the system such as increasing or decreasing of certain skills if you don't use them or use them more regularly. But as I mentioned in my post all systems are flawed and not everyone will like what is offered.

 

The D&D system in PnP works that way. In CRPG's a thief gains lock picking skill points by killing things.

 

In BG2 you gain xp for open locks and F/R Traps. As a thief you gain it in both fashions. d

 

To receive xp is a point of debate all around. Most will agree that it must be earned on a class objective complete mission base and not plain kills.

So if a wizard gets her or his spell off and the foe has one hitpoint left, and the thief kills it? How do we divide the kill if killing this foe was the objective? Or a cleric that keeps on casting heal spells with mana that gets xp that way. How does the computer keep up. It is not so straightforward.

still, giving it for kills is not the way to go. It will be a compromise.

 

That's easy. The mage gets XP for succefully casting the spell on the enemy. More powerful enemies will have more HP, thus more spells, or magic resistance, thus more XP per spell but more failed attempts. The thief gets XP for the succesful attack/sneak attack. The cleric gets XP for healing and anything else (s)he does. If the quest was to kill the thing, the entire party gets XP for completing the quest, but there is no XP for directly killing the creature.
Also, with this system, a party can intentionally take their time to kill the enemy slower, getting more XP, but this means greater risk. This is very realistic.

 

true but not what i meant. The game must keep up whit all this information and with the situation. so how much more programming is it going to take. How much more chance for bugs.

Or a scenario like this: fight with an large enemy but do not kill it. go back to a other area and return. the enemy is healed and you go at it again. this way you can get much xp early if every hit, sneak and spell counts. Or a wizard/cleric that cast spells just at thin air for the xp.

Pen and paper lets the dungeon master do things realistic. A computer does not know that people are cheating, or one step less, cheesing.

 

Ok, no XP for 'practice'. You get XP for it actually having an effect. If you fireball air, nothing gets hurt. If you fireball a chest, the chest takes damage, but that was easy. If you fireball a group of goblins in the heat of battle, that was hard. Think 'skill rolls' for everything and XP is based off of how hard the roll was. Not that I'm suggesting that exact system, but that's the idea.
As for running from bosses, just do what NWN did. If you run, enemies follow, even to new areas. If you rest, the enemies spent all that time looking for you and didn't. Take away the warping out and this is an effective system.
If your worried about bugs, the only thing you really need to worry about is Atari publishing it. If they avoid Atari, the game should get a descent debug time. If they use Atari, you'll be relying on patches to fix all kinds of bugs anyway.

 

(Off topic)I will say one thing for atari, at least they publish rpg games. Most only want to sell shooter or strategy games.

But still, returning to the topic, how to fuel the spells. I am not yet convinced to let the D&D system go for a mana system like sacred or dungeon siege. A hybrid is the logical thing.

 

mana points per level? Interesting, but no. Maybe all spells of the same level cost the same MP, but you have to be level X to cast level Y spells. Or is it level Y to cast level X spells? Oh well, sounds good to me.

 

The last thing we want is mages to just level the place with the use of mana potions. As in collect many potions and cast away at key situations. The resting in D&D makes it more tactical. So restriction in use per day and power of the spells is a must. regenerating mana sounds good, but that means to keep the mana potions out.

what I want to avoid is that magic becomes the basic attack. That way it is just an other hit and not something divine or arcane that makes a character special.

In hybrid I do not mean mana points per level as rule but a time factor in recasting. Give the body a timeperiod to regenerate from a magical attack in which a normal attack can occur.

To make it more difficult: what about spell failure due to armor or distracting. in many non D&D games mages can wear armor and slug it out up to some point. A magic system is not just the fuel or amount.

 

What about using HP as source for the magic? I know there have been games where you actually used your own life to fuel your spells, though admittedly, you usually were something like a vampire or other non-standard humanoid.

 

Not bad, but that way you can use healthpotions or spells to fuel other spells. Games like vampire the masquerade?

It is quite a debate. Many will understand that I am a fan for the 3.5 ruleset, and not for the manasystems used in diablo type games. The reason why is not the spells itself, or the class like wizard or fighter. My problem is that if the spell is used as a weapon like a sword in the diablo games, the tactical aspect is gone. Those games always end up in hackfests that requires fast and constant clicking.

So is dragon age going the way of the hack and slash, a path that sells fast but for a short time, or will it go the way of the rpg like NWN that still sells?