[crossfire] Spellcasting skills definition

Mark Wedel mwedel at sonic.net
Mon Aug 21 23:29:05 CDT 2017


On 08/21/2017 05:49 PM, David Hurst wrote:
> 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

  The definitions can be hard to map, because in dungeons of dragons, things 
like fireball, lightning bolt, and almost all damage spells are in the 
'evocation' school (they have different and more schools, so there isn't a 1:1 
mapping)

  As Leaf noted, in the past, there was some issues with balance in schools - 
sorcery didn't have enough damage spells, so was hard to level.  Note that there 
also isn't any reason that there can't be some overlap in those skills - 
certainly the reason that there was pyromancy in addition to evocation is all 
the fire spells got put in evocation, it would have been an overly good skill. 
And in some cases, I think there is basically the same spell (with slightly 
different name) in multiple skills.

   I'm not sure if you are looking for definition only, or if you plan to move 
some spells to different skills.  If the former, it will probably be hard to 
really come up with too good a definition that covers everything for the reasons 
above (this spell matches pyromancy definiton, why is it in evocation, etc).

  If you are going to move spells around, you could also rename the skills if so 
desired at that point to have better mapping (not that I necessary have better 
ideas for new names).  I think summoning is the most well defined and clear cut. 
  But there are also some spells which got dumped into sorcery as it was 
basically the catchall for anything that did not fit evocation, pyromancy, or 
summoning.



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