Nicolas Weeger wrote:
Hello.
Here are two proposals for spells. They are not totally incompatible, but
well, even only one could fun IMO :)
The aim is to reduce the number of spells, and also make it more customizable
for players;
I'll use the fireball spell as an example.
Spells with options.
--
Basic idea: level 1 fireball does x damage for y ticks on z squares.
Each spell have defined bonus in damage, duration, range for one level.
When casting a spell, you can add options, like:
1) /cast power 20% fireball
2) /cast range 15% fireball
3) cast damage 90 fireball
4) cast range 5% duration 2% fireball
1) means add (20% of levels over 1) * y ticks to duration, the rest split
between range and damage
2) means add (15% of levels over 1) * z to range, the rest split between
duration and damage
3) means add (90 * x) to damage, extra levels above split between duration
and range
4) is left as an exercice to the reader :)
Obviously, you could then have a client-side interface to tweak spells / help
define your spells.
I do agree with James' post that this could result in some level of
min/maxing. That said, a lot of crossfire can result in that (best weapon,
etc), so min/maxing is itself not bad.
My concern would more be balancing this - I can think of all sorts of
scenarios which may result in bad gameplay. 2 quick examples off the top of my
head would be putting all the extra into damage, and now having a spell that
one
shots most monsters (or other players) - probably not good. Another would be
putting all the extra into the area of affect, and having a spell that hits
most/all of a dungeon level, letting you hit/kill monsters which have no way of
hitting you.
I'm sure players would come up with many more examples. One way to limit it
is to put limits on max damage, area of effect, etc - but the end result may be
it removes too much flexibility.
It is also tricky because the importance of certain aspects (range, duration,
damage) of a spell vary based on the type of spell it is - range and duration
are fairly meaningless for bullet (non exploding) type spells. But range (area
of affect) is also much more important for something like an exploding ball
spell than say a bolt - increasing blast radius of one on a fireball gets you a
lot more than increasing the length of a bolt by one.
One other thought is that I doubt anyone would tweak spells realtime -
instead, while in town (or sitting in an otherwise safe place) they would tweak
the spells/set up keybindings (this is really true for any spell proposal,
including mine at the bottom of this message)
Player-made spells
--
Basic idea: get a spellbook for a standard level 1 fireball.
Use alchemy (or other means) to tweak the parameters like range per level,
duration, and such.
Ingredients to customize could be costly, or different for spells, or
whatever.
Once leant, the spell has its own special parameters.
Like above, balancing that can be tricky - have to be careful what you let
them tweak to once again not get overpowered stuff.
Here is an idea I have, which takes some of these ideas into consideration.
This is sort of an amalgam of the custom spell creation in the elder scrolls
games as well as a rune idea a friend of mine used for a tabletop game.
Each spell is made up of various runes. Damage type rune (fire, cold,
physical). Form of spell (cone, bullet, bolt, exploding ball).
Players basically learn those runes. So a fireball is a fire + exploding ball
rune combination.
However, in addition to those, there are other runes. There is a base damage
rune, which determines starting spellpoint cost (eg, 5 damage base may be 3 sp.
10 damage base is 8 sp).
You could also have duration modifier runes (+1 duration). Because of
balance, I'm reluctant to have area of affect modifiers (as noted above, +1
area
to a fireball is much better than +1 range to a bolt).
The other runes have a modifier, in percentage, to the base SP cost. Maybe
most all of the elemental forms are now difference (100%), but because physical
is weaker, it costs 75%.
Likewise, the form would have cost. Bullets would be cheap (100%). Bolts
are
more costly (200%), cones more so (400%) with exploding balls being the most.
So you take that base 5 damage rune (3 sp) put on a cone (X4) and do fire
(X1), so that 5 damage cone (burning hands) cost 12 sp.
This allows a fair amount of tuning - if cones seem too cheap, increase the
cost (or reduce the area of effect)
In terms of learning spells, characters would learn different runes. So at
first level, the character may just have fire, 5 damage, bolt, and bullet. So
he can do a 5 damage bolt and bullet. As he gains levels, adventures, etc,
maybe he finds the small exploding ball rune - now can do small fireballs. Or
maybe he
