[crossfire] [IDEA] Reagents for cast magic

[Brendan Lally]

On 10/19/05, Anton Oussik <
     antonoussik at gmail.com
     > wrote:
>
      On 19/10/05, Brendan Lally <
      brenlally at gmail.com
      > wrote:
     >
      > On 10/19/05, Anton Oussik <
      antonoussik at gmail.com
      > wrote:
     >
      > > IMO this would make spellcasting less useful, as it would be easier to
     >
      > > take a dragon and claw through armies of monsters, picking up reagents
     >
      > > as you go. You can then sell the reagents to the poor spellcasters
     >
      > > struggling to get enough for a zombie-killing cast.
     >
      >
     >
      > You make an assumption that it can't be balanced in game.
     >
     
     >
      OK, but you would have to do it so as not to make alchemy even less
     >
      useful - would you either carry about one easy to find reagent or find
     >
      an easy to find ingredient, then a cauldron, and then risk your life
     >
      making something that can cast the spell for you?
     
Ok, lets consider the following model as a starting point;

there are 5 magic skills, let each of them have their own reagent.

also allow 3 extra (general) reagents of varying price, call these
expensive1, expensive2, and expensive3

now, each spell would be able to belong to certain skills (more than one)
the 5 base reagents would only be usable by someone who could use the
associated skill. The 3 expensive ones would be usable by anyone but
no spell would use only them.

The base reagents would all be cheap and plentiful (alters to generate
them for a couple of plat)

I'm inclined to say that expensive 1 would probably be directly
purchasable (for 50-100 plat maybe)

expensive 2 might be creatable with alchemy with ingredients costing
500-1000 plat (ish)

expensive 3 would be very rare, and not used or sold lightly.

each spell then would need different combinations.

firebolt might need 1 pyro token
burning hands 2 pyro + expensive 1
faery fire 2 pyro + 1 evocation + expensive 1
icebolt would be 1 evocation
icestorm 5 evocation + 1 sorcery + 1 expensive 2
coldfront (a spell to replace icestorm at low levels, without the same
damage and range progression) 2 evocation + 1 sorcery
magic missile would be 1 sorcery + 1 summoning
small lightning 1 pyro + 1 evocation
steambolt 2 pyro + 2 sorcery +1 expensive 1
charm monster 5 summoning + 1 sorcery + 1 expensive2
comet 50 pyro + 10 evocation + 1 expensive3
meteor swarm 100 pyro + 20 evocation + 3 expensive3

done properly, this would start to look like a periodic table, with
the start of the table having every possible combination of tokens, so
that mixing various combinations of reagents, the effects might be
guessable (ie, a spell needing 2 pyro + 2 summoning would probably be
summon fire elemental or something like that.)

This could also make the spells easier to document (a diagram rather
than a big list as it is currently.

The other nice bit about doing that, is that exp could be shared based
on the ratio of base tokens used, so it would be possible to level up
sorcery more easily. (in game terms it would make the different forms
of magic more integrated, and it far easier to have crossover spells.)

If there are only 8 different reagents, then the easiest way to use
them is to equip them. If there are 'spell reagent' body slots, then
they can be equipped, and used if equipped.