[crossfire] Spell brainstorming

[Mark Wedel]

  Lots of discussion about spells, etc, on the slow down combat thread, but I 
thought I'd start a topic with just general ideas on spells.

  The main points to think about is that we want a spell system that is 
meaningful from level 1 to 100 (in this case, meaning at higher levels you get 
new spells or the like).

  Also, with changes in combat, it is likely there will be quite a bit fewer 
creatures about.

  Spells should also be balanced with melee combat.  Hard to say exactly what 
this means - I'd say that a mage should be able to kill most creatures with 
spells at the same rate as a fighter in combat - maybe a little bit slower, 
based on the fact that they may be using range attacks and thus safer.

  It's also been mentioned that some of the magic skills are not balanced - it 
may even be worth rethinking those.  Instead of trying to separate by type of 
spells, maybe have what effectively amounts to just game points.  For example, 
you could have 'red' and 'green' magic schools - the red magic is derived from 
ancient dragon magic, and green from more recently researched human efforts, and 
thus not compatible.  In this way, you could pretty much put a spell in any of 
these different areas.

  Quick thoughts of mine:

With fewer monsters, things like cones and exploding ball (fireball) become less 
useful.  These spells were never really friendly for party play.  Right now, 
there is a magic bullet spell, but other than a couple versions (small, big), it 
just does physical damage.  Having other versions (magma bullet, ice bullet, 
poison dart, etc) that basically act the same way but different attack types 
would be a way to get some new spells that are useful for solo monsters.

  It may also be reasonable to make more ball lightning spells, but with 
different attack forms (chaos ball would be _very_ interesting I think)

I think bolt spells are pretty much OK as now - they will need some adjustments 
most likely, but probably not a big redesign.

I think character protection and stat improvement spells should have a much 
longer duration - probably at least 5 minutes.  In a sense, long enough to cast 
on you (or party members), and then be able to go and do a level of a dungeon 
before casting again.

I don't have exact numbers, but I think the number spells/school of magic should 
probably be about 50, maybe less.  If this is supposed to scale, it means 
roughly 1 new spell every 2 levels (not that bad actually - never too far away 
from getting something new).

  It be good to have new spell ideas for higher level spells.  It is simple 
enough just to increase damage, duration, whatever for higher level spells, but 
that isn't particularly interesting.  I find in games I play, when you get a new 
spell that does something interesting, that is pretty cool.