[crossfire] [IDEA] Reagents for cast magic

[Alberto Sáez Lodeiros]

>
        The problem is that either you make the reagents common enough that finding
     >
      them isn't much an issue, or they are so rare that finding them becomes a real
     >
      pain, basically making some spells uncastable.
     
Yes, i think that Ultimate spells reagents, must be hard to fing, but
not impossible. For example, imagine a spell called "Apocalipse". This
will need "Volcanic dust", "Eye of a Dread" and "Spider Silk". Maybe
Spider Silk is easy to earn, but to kill a Dread monster, is quite
more difficult, but not impossible. The Volcanic Dust, can be found in
a Demon's Volcan, where you need to kill some hard demons or
Behemoths, or so. And also, if U are level 200, not all Dreads will
leave an eye, so U can cast Apocalipse 5 times. No more. This is, the
"Ultimate reagents" can't be bought anyway, except any player have
sold them, and if this is the case, it's costs will be nearly
unreachable.

>
        Getting the balance of them being common enough but not too common is very
     >
      difficult.
     
The same as above ^

>
        If playing for 3 hours is a tough dungeon only gets me enough reagents for 5
     >
      comets, that pretty much makes the comet spell useless.
     
Not necesarily to play 3 hours. I thing the hardiest job is to know
where those Ultimate Reagents are. And also, player must be powerfull
enough to try to retrieve those reagents. A reagent can be Wyvern's
Wing, so, a level 1 player, can't go to Scorn's Jail and killl those
wyvern's, but when he becomes level 7, he can.
The most common reagents will be for the most common spells, but the
reagents must have a "union" with the spells. This is, Burning Hands
can have Sulfur and Ogre's Finger, but no an Icecube and Goblin's
head.

>
        If I found 200, no real issue on reagents then.
     
Of course, more common spells will have common reagents, but uncommon
spells, will have uncommon reagents.
Also, reagents (common or uncommon) must be considered like a
treasure. If they are buyable, you can set the price of each 5 gold
coins, or 10 gold coins. And if they are not buyable, the player will
not found 200 ultimate reagents, and then he will cast those ultimate
spells carefully.

>
        My thought however is that if reagents cost money, it will start taking wealth
     >
      from the players at a fairly low level (say 10?)  So player is constantly buying
     >
      reagents, using up his money
     
I think 5 or 10 gp is not an high prize, but the issue is that the
caster be carefull and don't cast spells massively, because reagents
consumes. Also, this will make caster to use different spells, not
only icestorm and Burning hands, because those spells, destroy the
objects droped by killed monsters.

>
        So how wealthy the character will be at high level is hard to determine.
     >
      Constantly sucking money from the character may make it so characters are not
     >
      incredibly wealthy.  Or it perhaps add the dimension earlier on that 'abc is the
     >
      best spell damage wise, but not reagent cost wise'.
     
Yes, then the best spell is the more destructive spell necessarily. It
will be the most cheap in the sense of reagent cost/kind.

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