a while back, it was mentioned that it would be nice to reduce the number of spells to some extent (why have small/medium/large fireball? small & large lightning bolt, etc).
I agree that cleaning that up would be nice, and that there should perhaps be certain points in the spell progression where things change more drastically. For example, one reason right now small & large lightning bolt exist is because the large one has higher damage & longer ranger, and the expense of higher mana cost. The incremental increase that is done by normal level progression can't do those large jumps, but they sort of need to be allowed. Another thought I had on this was exploding ball/bullet spells. Right now, there is a magic bullet spell, and also a fireball spell - for the first part of the spell, they use the same code/type (magic bullet), there is just the link that the bullet explodes for fireball. It could in fact be interesting to abstract - a first level fire magic doesn't get small fireball, they get fire bullet. At some point (level 5?), it now starts to explode, with that explosion getting bigger. But at the same time, if the character wants to cast a firebullet and not a fireball (save mana, and maybe only a single target), they should be allowed to. This allows the spells to be generalized, so not quite as many. Perhaps via key value in the objects or something, these notable adjustments can be made (eg, for bolts, it could be something that sort of states at level 5, the spell can do 10 more points of damage at the expense of 5 more mana points). The trickier part is how to interface this to the user. You could certainly allow things like 'cast firebullet mana=10 explosion=0' type of thing - that gets messy, but is doable. A better solution is probably for the client to provide some form of better interface and write those rules for them. But not sure if maybe this is more complication than there is benefit. But it does seem that if spells are redone so that the level range is greater, and one gets small lightning at 1, one probably shouldn't ge medium lighting until maybe level 20, and large until level 40 or something, but one may want to see bigger jumps between those points. _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire