[crossfire] Spell idea: Elemental skills

[Mark Wedel]

Lalo Martins wrote:

> 
> No.  What I'd do is 4 elemental classes, each "attuned" to one elemental 
> skill and "blocked" from the opposite one.  All of them would start with 
> the "attuned" skill plus what I'm calling "sorcery".  Then they could 
> learn the other two if they want, but not the "opposing" skill.

  Note that while spells have attunements, they don't directly correspond to skills.

  While there are things like path_fire, path_frost, etc, not all fire spells 
are necessarily in path_fire right now.  For example, protection for fire should 
be in the fire spell, but as of now would be in the protection path.  Likewise, 
summoning and wall creation skills fall into different paths.

  Now the paths could get changed in the spells so they do correspond to a 
skill, and that may not be a bad thing - all fire spells have path fire (along 
with perhaps other spell paths, so talismans that give summoning attunement are 
useful for the non attuned skills, etc).

  That also makes other aspects easy - if the fire skill has attuned fire, 
denied water (frost), no extra work is needed to prevent character from learning 
the water skill - they can learn it just fine, but since all the spells in it 
are denied, they can't cast anything.  OTOH, it would probably still be better 
to disallow learning of the skill (maybe a check in learn skill where if 
target_skill->attune & player->denied, don't let them learn it) - otherwise I'm 
sure we'd see a bug report of 'I learned this skill but can't cast any spells in 
it'.

> 
> Could we want a "sorcerer" class that starts only with "sorcery" (and 
> maybe alchemy and thaumaturgy?), but can learn all 4, with the price of 
> not having any attunement?  Maybe.  I think it would be reasonably 
> balanced, by not having any bonuses.  Specially if the elemental skills 
> aren't easy to get.

  As per other e-mail, my main concern is balancing the sorcery skill with 
enough spells, but still make it somehow inferior to being an element skill.

  One method might be that if you choose the sorcery path, you are repelled to 
all the elemental skills - instead choosing to focus on pure magic, it distances 
you from the elemental magics.

  The problem is that at first level skill, that causes some problems.  I'd be 
more tempted to have different versions of the skills, such that the exp gain 
rate is quite a bit slower (50%) such that it is quite painful to go that route.