[crossfire] Spell idea: Elemental skills

[Mark Wedel]

Lalo Martins wrote:
> Another possibility would be to go for 5 skills: the 4 elements, plus 
> "sorcery", which would include things like "Detect magic", mana bolts, 
> and all the chaos stuff.  It would start out much weaker than the others, 
> which might be an interesting challenge for some.

  I thought about a fifth skill which covers the leftover stuff.  I'm just not 
sure there are enough spells to make it worth while.  I sort of fear it could go 
the way of summoning - could be useful, but would be a lot of work.

  That said, taking a quick look at the current spell list, and trying to 
categorize them:

Level 1
Armour - earth/air (creating force around to reduce damage)
Burning Hands - fire
Create Missile - earth (creating solid substance)
Detect Magic - ???
Icestorm - water
Magic Bullet - earth
Magic Missile - maybe air (electricity)
Marking Rune - ??? (earth maybe - its on the ground?)
Probe - ???
Slow - air (presume it is a slow gas?)
Small Fireball - fire
Small Lightning - air
Small Snowstorm - water

Level 2
Confusion - air (same basis as slow)
Detect Monster - ???
Earth to Dust - earth
Firebolt - fire
Paralyze - air (same basis as slow)
Poison Cloud - air (same basis as slow)
Strength - ??? (maybe try to associate stats with the elements?)
Summon Fog - air or water
Summon Golem - probably earth
Summon Pet Monster - should be unique for each element

  A note on strength - one could sort of come up with lore that basis different 
stats on different elements.  EG, when man was created, the gods took some earth 
for strength and constitution, fire for power, air for dexterity, etc, and thus 
have some basis of different stat adjustments spells per element.

  That said, there are a fair number of spells which sort of fall out of 
categories.  Elemental skills may not be ideal - I just think the current 
re-organization of how things are now really isn't that good either.


> 
> Re Earth: I used to have a spell on my server which essentially throws 
> rocks at enemies.  It was intended as a way to do physical damage with 
> magic.  I never balanced it enough for submitting, but it might be a 
> reasonable idea.

  I doubt there would be a problem coming up with appropriate damage spells for 
all the domains.

  a slightly harder challenge is trying to make them unique.  At one time, the 
only bolt spell was lightning bolt (now frost of firebolt) - this had some 
definite implications on when and what spells you use for different creatures. 
Now with the 3 main bolt spells, if a bolt spell is appropriate, you have your 
choice of best spell to use, instead of before having to decide if a lightning 
bolt, even though not most effective against that creature, is better than 
something like icestorm, which is highly effective.

  So along those lines, while damage spells are still needed to kill creatures, 
it might be nice to have other effects.  For example, something like an 
earthquak spell, which sort of operates like destruction, but also leaves 
earthwalls scattered about to denote the collapsed ceiling.  Or some of the 
water/ice spells leaving a layer of ice on the map which is slippery with some 
defined effects.  In a sense, enough difference so that spells and playing 
actually is quite a bit different, and not just that instead of doing fire I'm 
doing cold, but otherwise things are the same.