[crossfire] [IDEA] Reagents for cast magic

[Mark Wedel]

  My personal thoughts:

  doing this should be based on gameplay, not sorcery vs witchcraft or any of 
that type of things.

I'm a little reluctant to do it food based - for some characters, it is enough a 
pain just to find enough food on some maps, if I now have to worry that I'm 
eating the right type of food, that just adds a lot of hassle.

  However, having continued consumption of some food times giving bonuses seems 
reasonable.  At the same time, if a character stops eating those foods, those 
bonuses should go away.  This could perhaps be done by very long lived forces - 
eating the corresponding food creates the force, and each time you eat it, the 
duration of the force is increased (to some maximum).

  But to me, that is seperate from the reagants.

  Doing reagants probably wouldn't be hard.  But if done, I think the following 
should be considered:

1) Prepared reagants for most (all?) spells shoud be available in shops.  That 
said, you may not get reagants for destruction in scorn, but in brest perhaps. 
It shouldn't be a requirement that I be an alchemist as a spell caster.  That 
said, a caster could make them if he wanted to (and save money).

(following from economics, if there is demand, people would make it).

2) PRices for reagants, especially for high level spells, could be quite costly. 
  1000 pp to cast comet?

3) Reagants should be quite light, so that you can carry a bunch of them without 
much effect on weight (or perhaps give players a reagant pouch that reduces 
weight quite a bit).

4) Not all spells should necessarily require reagants.  Most lower level spells 
perhaps shouldn't, with more requirement for higher level spells.

5) Use of reagants should be similar to arrows, eg, happens automatically. 
Player shouldn't have to be fumbling through their inventory for them.

6) Could perhaps be interesting to have alternate reagants for spells with 
different effects (less or more powerful, etc).



  The basic gist of this is don't want to make it such a pain to play 
spellcasters that no one does so.  If I can only carry 50 reagants and have to 
keep popping back to town, what fun is that?  Likewise, if I have to be hunting 
through the forest looking for some herb for a spell, I'd not consider that 
especially fun either.

That said, pricey reagants could certainly make using some spells less appealing.