[crossfire] Spellcasting skills definition

[David Hurst]

As stated, i'm trying to enhance the messages that players receive when
learning spells. To make this more engaging I wanted to have a clear
picture of what we all think these spellcasting skills represent. As a
starting point I presented this list as a definition of what is *currently *in
place:

Evocation <http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/spells:evocation>- Spells
that remove energy (cold spells, poison, draining?, depletion?)
Sorcery <http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/spells:sorcery>- Spells that
create things (physical damage, food, strengthening)
Pyromancy <http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/spells:pyromancy>- Spells
that add energy (fire, lightning, light)
Summoning <http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/spells:summoning>- Spells
that call and control monsters (golems, pets, etc)
Praying <http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/spells:praying>- Spells gifted
by channeling your gods wishes through prayer

You can check the above links to see what spells are currently available
for each skill. I don't think the spells that are in the wrong place are
not even remotely going to cause balance issues. Large bullet moving to
sorcery is not going to break evocation which currently has all of the cold
spells to level with including icestorm at level 1. Ball lightning moving
to pyromancy isn't going to wreck evocation.

Having said that, I had this thought as I was writing the text for
evocation and it dawned on me that I have no idea what evocation actually
is. Ruben pointed out (and I agree with him) that the current spells don't
line up very well with historical definitions of evocation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evocation>and sorcery
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery>. As far as I can tell it would be
straightforward to flip all the spells in the two skills over so that we
have:

Evocation - Spells that create things (physical damage, food, strengthening)
Sorcery - Spells that remove energy (cold spells, poison, draining?,
depletion?)
Pyromancy - Spells that add energy (fire, lightning, light)
Summoning - Spells that call and control monsters (golems, pets, etc)
Praying - Spells gifted by channeling your gods wishes through prayer

Thoughts?
Saru

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 9:10 AM, Rick Tanner <leaf at real-time.com> wrote:

> On 8/20/17 1:53 AM, David Hurst wrote:
> >
> > While working on this I noticed some odd places for spells such as
> > ball lightning in evocation (all other lightning is in pyromancy) and
> > large bullet in evocation while bullet is in sorcery.
>
> As I recall, some of the spells & skill classification were made with
> the intent to give some of the spell casters some kind of offensive
> ability to kill monsters since that is the only way to gain XP in those
> skills - even if it seemed to defy classification logic.
>
> (Unfortunately, the gmane service crash makes searching for this
> information not very easy.)
>
> If lore is needed to explain this, then perhaps something along the
> lines of:
>
> While many wizards are able channel the arcane arts, it takes great
> dedication to master these arts. This is why many wizards can use spells
> like Magic Bullet but only those specialist can master the spell's more
> powerful form of Large Bullet.
>
> > I also notice that the current information on our website is very out
> > of date and doesn't include skills like pyromancy.
>
>
> Which page(s) are missing this information?
>
> By chance, is it the Crossfire Handbook section?
>
>
>
>
>
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