Some things to know and discuss

[Tom]

I'm working on the backend engine. The engine will manage your characters, with experience, skills, etc. as well as spells including research and stuff.

It will have a "parser" part which allows you to write your roleplays in a form that basically authenticates them. I'm not yet sure about the technical details. The idea is that there will be a way to post a roleplay using spells, etc. in a way that not only manages the relevant details of energy and concentration, but also verifies to the other players that you do, in fact, know those spells you use and that you have the necessary skills to use them.



The other thing is the bases and intents. I will need to have a basic collection of those and some initial spells to start. Some of the ideas can be taken from the older games.

There won't be many intents, really. Harm, Protect, Control are the main ones I can think of, but please post ideas below.

There will be more bases, but not too many. The basic idea is to group them. So Fire will also stand for heat, burning, etc. while Water will also stand for ice and thus cold. Aside from the elements, there will be bases like Death (for all those necromancers out there), Body (for healing and direct-damage) and Mind (for all those control and influence spells). I can think of a few more, but once again, please post ideas you have below.



The game will need plenty of spells, and the basic concept here is that once we have a basic set, there will be a laboratory where your characters can spend time to invent new spells. Inventing spells is basically creating one and proposing it to the GameMasters, who will decide if they accept or reject the spell. Rejections will have comments, so you can refine the spell and try again - that simulates the research process. Except for spells we already have. There will be only one Fireball spell, making up your own won't work. Because getting spell formulas, trading for them, etc. is a major part of the game. And control of some especially interesting spells will be part of what the councils powers could be.

Once again, if you have ideas for spells that you are dying to get heard, post them below.


For everything you post, please don't expect individual answers, but I will read it all and you may find it incorporated into the engine.

[Nathan]

There will be more bases, but not too many. The basic idea is to group them. So Fire will also stand for heat, burning, etc. while Water will also stand for ice and thus cold. Aside from the elements, there will be bases like Death (for all those necromancers out there), Body (for healing and direct-damage) and Mind (for all those control and influence spells). I can think of a few more, but once again, please post ideas you have below.

Aether, for things like teleporting & making things invisible.
Entropy, for shape shifting and various chaotic effects (not quite sure what can be said to be "chaotic" but I'm sure someone can think of a use).
Nature, growing / controlling plants & trees

[Anaris]

There won't be many intents, really. Harm, Protect, Control are the main ones I can think of, but please post ideas below.

Move is another obvious one.

What about Change? Polymorphing, transmogrification, etc?  Presumably such a change could only affect shape, not material.

Are divinations allowed? I thought I remembered someone saying something about it one way or the other; anyway, if they are allowed, there should be a Know intent.

What about conjuration?  Would a Create be allowed?

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head that seem relevant.  I can think of a few others, but they wouldn't really be applicable to SM.

[Indirik]

How about some kind of Know or Learn type of ability for research purposes, like learning the history or background of an object.

[Zakath]

Move is another obvious one.

What about Change? Polymorphing, transmogrification, etc?  Presumably such a change could only affect shape, not material.

Are divinations allowed? I thought I remembered someone saying something about it one way or the other; anyway, if they are allowed, there should be a Know intent.

What about conjuration?  Would a Create be allowed?

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head that seem relevant.  I can think of a few others, but they wouldn't really be applicable to SM.

Harm, Control & Protect more or less cover those areas IMO, with the possible exception of the Divination.

Polymorph: Change + Body/Nature
Create: Change + some element or Alchemy

Divination is trickier and, if allowed at all, I'd either lump it into Control or introduce some new intent to deal with divination, farseeing, scrying and the like. Possibly make a 'Sight' intent, although that might be a rather limited intent.

For the transformations, Control is perfectly suitable for yourself, but how about Alchemy for inert substances?

Some spell ideas:

Polymorph
Control + Nature
Changes a living creature into a different creature. Need not be static but one picks the target creature while learning the spell, might be changeable.

Shapeshift
Control + Body
Much the same as Polymorph, transforms yourself into some other creature. Both this and Polymorph should perhaps respect the original mass to a certain degree, so a person cannot become a small mouse. This limitation could be skipped to permit more fantastic transfomations. Human -> Eagle or somesuch.

Swiftness
Control + Wind
Makes the caster swift as the wind, able to run at tremendous speeds and avoid blades.

All the different Fireballs, Icebolts etc could be good ideas. Balls could target a small group, while bolts would hit a single human. The extravagant caster might even make Infernos and the like, increasing target to strength 4 or even 5.
Shields have already been mentioned, so I won't suggest those again.

Create Golem
Control + <Any base>
Animates a golem of any (suitable) base. Earth, fire, death etc. Different sizes could be either creating several, or creating one big golem. Probably most useful as a ritual, but being able to summon a few of those would be useful in a pinch.

Purify
Protect + Nature (Other bases would make sense as well - water/earth etc depending on the location)
Sanctifies an area cleansing any harmful effects or opposing taints. Death would cancel life, but leave a death taint alone. Obviously many different spells with same basic purpose, just widely different Base.

Banish
Harm + appropriate base
Banish a creature belonging to the appropriate base, or a set of related creatures possibly. For example banish undead, banish water elemental etc. Shouldn't kill the creature outright, but make it avoid you or an area. If the creature in question presses on, for example it's forced by some other controlling wizard, it's hurt or maybe even killed. Size/power of creature vs the effect could determine the outcome. Effect 1 would cause no real harm to any elemental, while an effect 3 would render lesser elemental incapacitated (if they could even be forced to approach), while more powerful elementals would only be hurt.

Philosopher's Stone
Alchemy + Earth (Alternately Control)
Creates gold from base metals. Should obviously be used with care since the infusion of too much gold would not only make the character suspect, but would also tend to cause inflation in the area.

Farseeing
Sight + Mind (Control might be sufficient, Wind might be an appropriate base as well)
Enables the caster to see far off lands. Not sure how the rules would apply to this seeing as the effect is cosmetic, the target is likely a 4(house) or 5 (field/village) and the duration would likely be between 2 & 4. However this doesn't take into account the distance you project your mind, without some sort of limitations the spell might be too powerful. If it's even allowed.

Past Sight
Sight + Mind
See the past as it happened around the caster. Could either be limited to the casting point, or a bubble around the caster. Has some of the same problems as Farseeing, needs a check on how long ago the actions may be. Minutes, days, hours? Could perhaps be solved by using the duration creatively. Durations 1 is useless, you see what's happening now. Duration 3 for example allows you to go back 45 minutes, and see 15 minutes of events, or go back 30 minutes and see the next 30 minutes. Similar with higher durations, you can go far back and see for a lil while, or stick to the closer past and see more of the events.

Not sure if the more mundane spells would be appropriate, or if they could be assumed to be known by any initiate. Things like boiling water (Control + Fire), lighting a torch (Control + Fire), creating a light ball (Control + Fire again) and any other practical yet not astonishing spells.

Trying to think of some sort of enchanting or magical smithcraft, but I'm not sure how it would fit into the current world. Probably shouldn't be too easy since an abundance of magic swords and wizardly staves would likely follow.

That's some of my less flamboyant spell ideas. I'm just not certain how useful all of them are seeing as the effects are rather vauge, but they're some of my ideas. If they don't make it into the engine, yet are permitted, I'll be getting myself a nice dry cellar in which to study them later :)

[Tom]

Not sure if the more mundane spells would be appropriate, or if they could be assumed to be known by any initiate. Things like boiling water (Control + Fire), lighting a torch (Control + Fire), creating a light ball (Control + Fire again) and any other practical yet not astonishing spells.

Oh, absolutely. Remember that when you start to learn something, you will be very limited in your spell selection, to low power levels, until you have put some XP into it. The other way to gain XP - by casting spells - requires that you know a couple low-level spells to train with.

[Meneldur]

Banish
Harm + appropriate base
Banish a creature belonging to the appropriate base, or a set of related creatures possibly. For example banish undead, banish water elemental etc. Shouldn't kill the creature outright, but make it avoid you or an area. If the creature in question presses on, for example it's forced by some other controlling wizard, it's hurt or maybe even killed. Size/power of creature vs the effect could determine the outcome. Effect 1 would cause no real harm to any elemental, while an effect 3 would render lesser elemental incapacitated (if they could even be forced to approach), while more powerful elementals would only be hurt.

Which begs the question- will any summoning of sorts fit into the world? How would semi-sentient or even sentient undead/elementals/demons/whatever fit into Spellmaster?

[loren]

Which begs the question- will any summoning of sorts fit into the world? How would semi-sentient or even sentient undead/elementals/demons/whatever fit into Spellmaster?

Yes.  Absolutely.

[Nathan]

How would semi-sentient or even sentient undead/elementals/demons/whatever fit into Spellmaster?

If they have a short lifetime then there's probably no need to worry about them - they'll be summoned, do their job and then disappear back from whence they came. If they're permanent, then they could be treated as NPCs?

[Zakath]

If they have a short lifetime then there's probably no need to worry about them - they'll be summoned, do their job and then disappear back from whence they came. If they're permanent, then they could be treated as NPCs?

They'd probably be your NPC's. The summoning/animation doesn't take very long, but that doesn't have to mean the duration of the spell is as short. Actually I'm not quite sure how that would be treated, is it a duration 1-2 for the summoning or is that also the lifetime of the summoned creature? Would probably make sense to make a spell summoned creature live as long as the duration, while a ritual summoning would last longer or even be permanent.

[Tom]

They'd probably be your NPC's. The summoning/animation doesn't take very long, but that doesn't have to mean the duration of the spell is as short. Actually I'm not quite sure how that would be treated, is it a duration 1-2 for the summoning or is that also the lifetime of the summoned creature? Would probably make sense to make a spell summoned creature live as long as the duration, while a ritual summoning would last longer or even be permanent.

Yes. For creation spells, the duration would be the length of time that the thing/being lasts.

[Bedwyr]

They'd probably be your NPC's. The summoning/animation doesn't take very long, but that doesn't have to mean the duration of the spell is as short. Actually I'm not quite sure how that would be treated, is it a duration 1-2 for the summoning or is that also the lifetime of the summoned creature? Would probably make sense to make a spell summoned creature live as long as the duration, while a ritual summoning would last longer or even be permanent.

No no no no no.  If you are summoning (as opposed to creating) a creature, the summoning will be very short.  The control is what sets the effective duration...Unless you, say, summon a troll into the middle of the gatehouse and don't care about controlling it.

[Tom]

No no no no no.  If you are summoning (as opposed to creating) a creature, the summoning will be very short.  The control is what sets the effective duration...Unless you, say, summon a troll into the middle of the gatehouse and don't care about controlling it.

Interesting approach.

Right now, I have creation and summoning as the same Intent, but we could seperate them and require that a summoning be followed by a successul binding like in the RPG Sorcerer. I like that approach.

So creation would make something new, and that something disappears after the duration. Then again, lots of spells do that inherently, e.g. a Fireball already creates fire. Maybe creation is not really an intent, but a means.

But a summoning would bring something that exists elsewhere to your current location... I'll be thinking about it.

[Anaris]

So creation would make something new, and that something disappears after the duration. Then again, lots of spells do that inherently, e.g. a Fireball already creates fire. Maybe creation is not really an intent, but a means.

But sometimes your Intent may simply be to have the thing that you're creating.  Either that, or you have to branch out rather dramatically in Intents, for things like creating gold coins that will last an hour to pay for a sword and a horse to ride off with it on.

On a couple of related notes: Would there be any way to permanently change one thing into another—or create something permanent—with a spell? Or would that require ritual magic?

Also, if you have summoning spells, can you have banishing spells?  The Intent there isn't so much Harm as, well...just not being there to be a danger to the caster himself anymore.  Presumably, if you can cast a spell to summon a troll from somewhere off in the hills, I can cast a spell to put him back where he was summoned from?

[Zane]

I like the concept of summoning as separate from creation as well.  Creating something out of nothing seems to be more difficult than summoning something that already exists.  However, creating something means you're getting exactly what you want.  Whereas summoning has a lot more uncertainty - what if you're wanting to summon a ferocious bear to scare off some brigands, but the nearest bear to be summoned is a cub or old and toothless?

I especially like the consequences if the subsequent attempt to control the summoned creature fails. :-)  Alternately, if no attempt at control is made (like the troll in the gatehouse scenario), perhaps the summoned creature seeks out the summoner for revenge or a ticket back home.