[crossfire] Spell idea: Elemental skills

[Mark Wedel]

  Going to try and reply relatively quickly and broadly, so I may miss some 
specific parts.

  Your point about spell paths also applying to praying spells is well taken - 
given someone denied fire would make certain prayers also impossible.  There are 
a few ways to take this - one is to say, that yes, if your choose a magician 
type that is denied to fire, you can't cast those fire spells, even god given. 
Basis being that fire is really your antithesis, and you just can't manage to 
cast it, even if it is god given.  I don't know if any classes start with 
talismans that give them repelled or denied, but that also would apply to cleric 
spells.

  Another approach would be to make the magic vs cleric spell paths unique.  For 
example, one could create new spell paths that are used just for grouping within 
the magic skills, and thus don't mess/interfere with cleric spells.  Perhaps not 
really clean, but could be done.

  While rebalancing the existing skills is also an idea, that seems harder to do 
and still keep them as is.  Summoning is probably the most difficult skill to 
level, and one big reason is that most anything you summon can only attack one 
creature at a time, where as the mages get nice cone and bolt spells that can 
kill a bunch of monsters at a time.  While similar type of offensive spells 
could be added to summoning, then it takes away a bit of that uniqueness - if as 
a summoner I get bolts, is that really much different than the other skills now?

  In retrospect, if I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn't have made 
summoning a distinct skills.  And even the general sorcery one has problem - I 
put some spells in there simply because it needed some offensive spells, not 
necessarily because they fit.

  Now that could get changed if you could get exp for casting spells and not 
killing things - thus things like protection spells and stat improvement spells 
give you exp, making sorcery perhaps more interesting.  While giving exp for 
just successfully casting spells can be done, doing it in a way that you don't 
get exp for it is difficult.

  In terms of electricity resistance - I should note that right now, the 
lightning bolt spell is available at relatively low level, so the fact that many 
monsters don't have protection against that doesn't really shift whether or not 
things move to elemental spells. I may be that lightning spells need to be tune 
differently than some of the other versions, and it may be that some monsters 
need to get adjusted.  That said, I think that starting at some point, pretty 
much all monsters have protections against a variety of attacktypes, and if the 
monster is reasonably balanced, is more vulnerable to a certain attack type. 
You're not going to kill a titan with electricity for example.

  And it may very well be that some skills are better than others - in fact, I 
don't think that can be avoided.  The more important point is to try and keep 
them at least somewhat balanced (if the air mage is clearly the best to play all 
the time, then some rebalancing is needed).  But we know all the spells 
basically need to be rebalanced, so I don't see that as necessarily a stopper - 
in fact, by segregating skills, it may in fact be easier to spot balance issues 
- it seems pretty clear now that most of the summoning spells are underpowered 
relative to other skills, but before that was split it, you didn't see that as much.

  If the appropriate skills only have have spells of that type, and people say 
'well, I got to level 20 in fire easily, and level 20 in water was a bit harder, 
but level 20 in earth was next to impossible', it makes it pretty clear that the 
earth spells - probably as a whole, need balancing, and not just individual 
spells - it would be a case that monsters are obviously more resistant to earth 
type magic than others.

  My thought for attacktypes is that at low levels, spells would still be magic 
| element - after all, it is 'elemental magic'.  At higher levels, as you master 
the skills, you get some spells that are just the pure element - you've been 
able to master the skill enough that magic is no longer mixed in.

  As far as specialists and generalists - that is fair enough - a generalist 
that can learn every skill might be reasonable.  The problem here is actual 
balancing of that - the current bonuses for attuned and repelled probably do not 
make up for the advantage of having all the elements available, so I'd think in 
most all cases, that is what people would do.  You may get some people that 
specialize - a fireborn may very well be a fire mage simply for his own safety 
as much as anything else.

  AD&D balances things in a different way - specialists get a bonus spell in 
what they are a specialized in.  But it uses a memorization scheme, so if you 
only get 1 second level, but as a specialist, you get 2, that is a big bonus.

  You're proposal is an interesting one - I take it you really mean that 
effectively, the skill level is half, eg, if I'm a level 20 sorcerer, than when 
casting elemental skills, I cast them at effectively level 10?  And likewise, if 
I'm a level 20 fire specialist, I cast the general mage spells at level 10?

The idea/plan to rebalance spells is there, which includes having spells going 
from level 1 to 100 (or thereabouts), so your point about some spells not being 
available would be true. (and the reverse is true - some powerful general magic 
spells would be unlearnable by the specialists)

  A question, however, is actual skills - such a method would sort of suggest 
that spell skills really can't be gained - if a fire specialist gets a scroll of 
sorcery and learns it, then that penalty is effectively lost, and some for a 
generalist he gets a scroll of fire magic.  I have no problem with that in 
place, but it does mean that that what skills you start with is what you've got 
for the entire game - many other games already do that.

  While one could do the right at higher levels, whatever, that can cause 
problems in its own way - if I'm a level 80 generalist, is it even that worth 
while to get fire magic at level 1 at that point?  And maybe more to the point, 
shouldn't we maybe really be suggesting that instead of doing that, such that 
all high level characters would have all the skills, that they should just start 
a new character and play again?

  Last point - I actually disagree that there needs to be a generalist class 
that has every spell accessible.  If one takes that with spells, one could also 
extend that to skills (which I think causes some balance issues).  And right 
now, on the praying side, that isn't really true either - there are certain 
unique spells for each god, some gods have certain spell paths denied, etc - 
there isn't any single character that can have all the cleric types available at 
the same time.

  What I would say, however, is that the generally useful ones should be fairly 
readily available in scroll/potion/wand form.