I''m trying design a magic system that doesnt rely upon casting chances, (i.e. every spell the player casts works) but that encourages players to cast spells dependent on the state of the game "universe".. Example: In a universe that is heavily biased toward the element fire, you shouldnt be able to move with out tripping over a fire elemental or two however it''s virtually impossible to find a water elemental... This should also be reflected in spell casting, in a heavily fire biased universe I want the majority of the spells the player casts to be fire rather than water based... If i was using casting chances then this would be easy.. Fire spells have a 100% chance, Water spells 10%,.. But I dont want to use casting chances. One way I thought of doing it would be to adjust the mana cost accordingly. However this creates the problem that the players constantly having to check the cost of the spell he wishes to cast. Can anyone think of any other ideas?? Any way of influencing spell casting choices without the player constantly having to check numbers b4 casting the spell... (or has any comments on this system of spell casting)

This isn''t exactly what you are talking about... But hopefully it will give you some ideas

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Already read that, although the balance idea is a good one, I want the player to change the nature of the universe in an effort to better bring thier more potant spells into use.

It did give me one idea which is to influence the strength of a spell.. i.e. in a heavily fire world a fire ball could quite easily wipe out a small village. however in a heavily water world it will just be enough to light a candle... (Note: These are heavily exagerated..)

Just not sure how to reflect this in summoning spells.. (Its still early here [i.e. the morning] so my brains not upto speed, so I''m bound to have missed something obvious here)

well, this is sort of a toughie as there are many ways of going about magic. no one way is the right one or are any wrong. I personally like setting it up so the characters magic is their own and dependant on the environment that they are in. this is very nice as the character is effective regardless of the environment. although, there could be some kind of limiter as a character casting water in a fire world would basically be a god. how about this. a characters mana level is dependant on the area''s element however this does not mean that they cast lower power spells, they just can only draw so much power from it to cast it. Say your magic system calls energy from the land to cast the spells. this would be interesting if you set it so your character has a stat that determines this. the element that you are casting draws energy dependant on the area but you will always be able to cast the spell with 100% accuracy, however you will have to deal with a degrade in its power.
Say the character needs to sit there and accumulate energy for a spell to be cast. essentially you would just limit the energy that can be called from a region based on the element.
there is another problem with this. a character would basically have unlimited mp. the way im doing it in my action/adventure is like this.

My main character has no MP. instead she has an accumulate command which allows her to absorb energy from the surrounding area to give her some mp. this takes what in some games is considered a turn but in an real time battle system this will just be marked by time. in this case, she cannot do anything until the accumulate command has completed. as your character grows, the time this takes to do is increased but you also get more mana from it. the way im doing this, mana is temporary. once you accumulate, you have to either cast the spell you want or accumulate again as the mana does not stick to your character. One of the most powerful items in this game allows the player to accumulate energy while they attack and another item automatically accumulates. this means that your character really doesn’t have any mp. now how does this pretain to your question? well here.
Assume that you have to accumulate energy for each individual spell. since you are getting energy for lets say water, you will be able to get only so much per round when you are in a fire based area. does this make sense?
hope I was of some help. Oh and dwarf, this s "Vedic Mirage’s magic system if you were interested (action/adventure design discussion)


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Yeah I understood it, and I quite like the idea... Actually I like the idea a lot... its more the sense of manipulating whats arround you, rather than creating it (which is something u dont see much.. or at least I dont see much)...

It may be an idea to have so much mana available for gathering, after all in a fire based area there''s only going to be so much water mana arround anyway.. maybe making the ammount of mana gathered a function of the total mana an area can "hold"...
This may make things overly complicated and not work (I dont know).. but its an idea..


I am thinking more from an RTS than an RPG style standpoint (which is why I want to make it reasonably simple.. ) However the idea should work whatever the game type..

read my post " an interesting way to look ant magic" to get a more complete look at this. I came up with this for an action Rpg and it seems like it will be easy enough for a beginner to learn but be massively cutomizable for a seasoned role player. this would work well in a turn based game but I am doing it for a real time action Rgp which maked it all the more challanging.

I am not text, I am not organized pixels, I am not killed by turning off your monitor, I am not isolated by turning off your computer. I just am.

Conshape Electronic Arts