[CF-Devel] more skill/spell musings

[crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com]

  Started coding the skill revamp.  One of the ideas in that was to split the 
wizardry spells into a few skills.  Reasons for doing so:

1) Wizardry is probably one of the best skills right now, as shown by polls.

2) As more and more spells are added, wizards get more an more powerful (more 
tools to kill monsters with).  People tend to notice when new weapon artifacts 
are added that are over powering.  But new spells with a different attacktype 
(or better more effecitve use of one that already exists) probably are less noticed.

3) different skills would mean a bit more difference in classes.  That summoner 
will look different than the evoker for example.

4) Even if you don't really like this idea, it is much easier to merge such a 
split (via sed or the like) back into a skill than the reverse

  One can look at the archives on past discussions.  The main point to remember 
is that in any split, one must be able to gain exp in the skill (at first 
level).  So split just by spell path often won't work.

  Looking for inspiration, I looked at the starting wizardry spell classes 
(warlock, evoker, summoner, wizard, sorcerer, devotee, alchemist).  Most of them 
are non specific about what spells they use.

  Note one thought I had is that given the split in skills, we can perhaps give 
exp for successful use of spells which we didn't before.  Eg, if you paralyze a 
creature, you'd get some exp for that for example.  Sure, this could be open to 
some abuses, but there are already otehr abuses out there (maps you go in and 
fire 20 fireballs or whatever).

  Other thought on this is when something is killed, we could look in the 
inventory for certain spell effects that made killing it easier, and give some 
exp to the owner of the spell effect (eg, if a paralyzed monster is killed, 
whoever cast the paralyzed should get some credit.  Likewise, for slow, beserk, 
etc).  Even things like identify or detect spells could get a little exp based 
on what they find (just as sense curse/magic do now)


  all that said, I see the following 'schools' of magic as a first pass:

summoner - matches the class.  This gets the summon spells, as well as most of 
the item creation spells (build xxx wall, create ..)  Given directors are a very 
popular tactic, this category could be useful just for that.

evoker - covers a wide range of damage spells.  Since this is most useful, it 
gets split with:

pyromaniac: Gets fire/lightning spells, as well as bomb.  That leaves evoker 
with cold/acid/poison/bullet.  Evoker could also get some of the pyro spells 
perhaps.

discover: The alchemist class falls into this. Gets alchemy spell.  Gets spells 
that let them find information out (identify).  Gets spells that help survival, 
so that it can learn (study) things, eg, some number of protection spells.  Also 
toss in things that perhaps change behaviour (slow, haste, paralyze).  Toss in 
spells to help get away (dimension door).  In a sense, this sort of gets the 
leftover that dont' fall into the ones above.

  As a note, the idea is that most of the spells would belong to only one 
school.  However, some spells could certainly belong to more than one school. 
For example, detect magic is probably a fundamental ability that everyone should 
know.  The pyromaniac should probably get pro fire/electricity so they don't 
kill themselves, but the discover might also have those.

  Note one of my thoughts would be that we perhaps limit characters to knowing 
only 3 of the 4 schools above - thus, higher lever characters are likely to look 
a bit more different and/or players have to make some actual decisions.

  The unresolved issues on this:

1) For spells that belong to more than one school, what school/skill is used to 
cast it.  My thoughts would be 1) school you are best in, 2) have all spells be 
unique, so detect magic for discovers would have a different name than the 
evoker uses, 3) Player can specify a search order to use (eg, spell_search 
evoker pyro summoner) 4) use currently active skill, then a fallback of either 1 
or 3

2) Starting skill for classes.  It would be pretty clear that the summoner 
starts with that school, and same for alchemist (discover) and evoker.  However, 
some of the other classes are less clear cut.   One could certainly make a 
pyromaniac class to get that skill.  But the devotee, which is sort of a 
cleric/wizard crossbread is more difficult - should it get pyro, or something 
else?  This can obviously get 'fixed' by a more ala cart class system.




_______________________________________________
crossfire-devel mailing list
     
     crossfire-devel at lists.real-time.com
     
     
     https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel