Ideas for Magic

Gameplay
1

I thought I would create a topic that we could compile ideas for magic in the game; essentially a resource directory for Tom and the crew to look through when looking for spell ideas.

I know Tom said that they haven’t decided if magic will be rare or very common (personally I would like to see it as very commonplace but difficult to unlock and VERY expensive to use) but regardless, nothing annoys me more than all the lazy videogame developers out there who make magic basically a rock/paper/scissors projectile system.

So, here, I’m looking for CREATIVE uses of magic we’ll put aside projectiles, big area of effect spells, force shields, enchanting weapons and armour with an element (fire, water, blah, blah), etc. because anyone can come up with that. Let’s see what we, as the community can muster up!

So when posting your idea, please give each spell one of the following headings first (bolded please):

Domestic (spells that affect your city growth because if magic did exist, it wouldn’t ONLY be for battle)

Battle (spells that actually attack or defend or are required to cause damage or prevent damage or heal damage)

Magic Item (an item imbued with magical properties)

Give it one of the 3 categories as a heading, name the spell, describe the spell, how it would be used and its downsides (nothing can be too powerful; let’s give the guys a break and help balance these things in conception).

I hope this thread grows with a ton of great ideas! I’ll try and get us started with three of each!

Domestic

Fantasia

An advanced sorcerer (with a background in carpentry and architecture or something like that) who is given a house to build would begin to float in the air, and as if he were conducting an orchestra, have the material float to the right spots and build the building itself! No workers required and it would build very fast. The downside to this would be that the spell is very expensive and exhaustive to use (the sorcerer would tire out and need to go to sleep right away for a long while). Also, the building would be more brittle and easily destroyed in a battle (lacking experienced hands putting it together). This could be used if adventurers are far from home and need a place to stay the night or trying to repair a crucial tower in a battle quickly.

Magicloud

Your sorcerer can summon a magicloud, a little magical raincloud that would rain over your crops. It would be VERY expensive to use and only cover a small area (should only be used to put out fires or ‘fix’ bad planning or crops damaged in an attack. Never to replace proper farming). The spell in battle could cause a little cloud to move around and strike with lightning (as well as cast shadows - *See Black Ring)

Battle

Spill

All the characters affected by Spill immediately exploded and spill into little voxels. The enemy would assume they are dead and move on but after a certain time, the voxels reform into the characters. This can be used to save yourself in bad situations or protect players from raids but the downside is that the characters can not act while “spilt” so if the enemy camps in the spot, it would be wasted. Ideally used for adventures as a last ditch emergency or to protect people during a raid (save the people but watch helplessly as the buildings are destroyed).

Stickstone

A rune is drawn on the ground and within a certain area, any enemies that step into it are frozen in place for 10 seconds. Positive side is that it could help heads up raids or slow down titans. Downside is that it takes a while to put the rune down and will expire after a day.

Natura

A sorcerer would drain the life out of a tree to heal an entire party. Positive is that it would heal your party quickly. Downside is that it would require a tree and, if done enough times, all woodland and peaceful creatures begin to attack the characters for a day or so.

Magic Item

Wardens

Stone statues that come to life to protect a city or town. They are built by a mason and a rune is placed on them and they activate once enemies come within a certain range. On the plus side, they would be larger and have more health and power and never tire or need food or sleep. But, on the downside, they are slower and can not be healed (must be replaced by a rare magic material as well as the material used to build one). Depending on the material used to build it, it could have higher attack and health and you would get a portion of that back when it is broken or defeated.

The Black Ring

A magic ring that when worn, makes the character invisible when standing still under/inside a shadow or at night and increases their defence. Could be used to keep players out of harms way as well as plan night raids. However, it can only be equipped or unequipped at night and if it is worn during the day, defence is penalized.

Hatchet of Treachery

A cursed axe that, when picked up, immediately takes over the mind of its wearer so that they begin to attack their own. It is a trap that your own players will not pick up but if left somewhere and picked up by a goblin, would turn them against their own. Could also explode after a certain amount of time for additional hilarity. Downsides: if no one picks it up, it’s a waste of rare material.

8 Likes
2

I don’t have ideas for specific spells (will want to see the ‘rules’ in greater detail first) but I STRONGLY support the idea of non-combat magic. Magic shouldn’t be all about blasting the enemy into small smithereens.

-Will

1 Like
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Ok, here it goes :slight_smile: I’ve tried to come up with some really different ideas!

Domestic

Concealment

The caster can create the illusion of a building (or the opposite, conceal a building) making it possible to avoid enemies getting inside that building during a battle or hiding it from a terrible Titan, thieves and other menacing stuff. The downside is that it also works for your own villagers, making the building pretty much useless during the time it’s concealed since no one would be able to use it.

Affection

Creates a magical mist devised to entice those affected to be more prone to… love. Very useful for accelerated animal breeding or repopulating your town after a battle. But beware: misuse or abuse of affection might result in unexpected and undesired relations… and eventually jealousy, vengeance and death.

Dreamscape

During evil times and times of war, the hearts of the people are always troubled and dark. By conjuring a dreamscape spell, the conjurer can take away all the fey moods and bad dreams of your sleeping villagers, making them get up with their hearts lighter and their souls soothed in the next morning. It’s a spell about self-sacrifice tho, as the caster will absorb all the bad dreams and negativity for itself. Can your sorcerors handle that?

4 Likes
4

Battle

Ilusion of Grandeur

Temporarily transforms one of your villagers into a mythical hero. Any normal enemies that try to engage him will run away in fear instead (for a short while). Since it’s only an illusion the villager doesn’t do any more damage than usual.

Feast of Dreams

Causes a NPCs favourite food to randomly appear and disappear in a given area for a short time. Any NPC that is not directly occupied at the moment (in battle for example), will forget about their current task and try to eat it. While doing so it is oblivous to anything else around it (unless interupted of course). Distraction spell.

Rumble Tumble

This is the perfect spell for our geomancer. It causes a tremor in a larger area, thus causing all enemies to repeatedly fall down and be unable to fight. Unfortunately it affects friendlies as well. Effectevely stops combat in a given area for a time, but doesn’t do any damage.

I tried to go for more of a crowd control approach to magic.

3 Likes
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Am I the only person that enjoys the classics i.e Fireball, Freeze, Earthquake, etc?

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With the inclusion of elemental beings from the hopefully achievable stretch goal magic would certainly fit even better. Perhaps slaying the fire demon or whatever would give you a fire stone evolve your Caster to a Fire summoner ( <3 Pokemon).

Non combat magic to boost build speeds or even crop growth would be nice if balanced :smiley:

1 Like
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I think the magic system should be rune based. Now you could obtain them from elementals, but i quite like the idea of alternate planes (and this would make great lore-basis). You would have to venture into other (elemental) planes to gather runes. Some runes would be harder to get than others since the sheer difficulty of the plane which creates a nice little diversity. The amount of runes obtainable in one elemental plane run should not be too large, on contrary i think it should not exceed 2-3 or maybe keep the amount of runes (per element) you can have dependant on the size of your city (I’m still thinking like 1 for small village 2 for med 3 for city and like 5 for large city). runes would use up their magic power over time and should be recharged by using for example a mana spring.

Runes could be adorned into buildings to either automate them (Watch tower with a life rune would send back info automatically and alert the player) or act as a source of power (Watchtower + Light rune = Lighthouse).

Runes also could be used for the contruction of golems which can help around the city and do battle, i personally think that 2 runes should be used for each golem because a life rune is kind of the basis to animate a golem. The golem itself could be smithed together and then adorned by a sorcerer.

The magma smith would also fit in this, adding a fire rune to a blacksmith could be one of the steps to making a magma smith.

A smith/sorcerer combo be able to create enchanted weapons and armor which harness the powers of the rune. for example a life rune in a staff would make an healing stave for use by a cleric and a darkness rune enchanted on a cloak would greatly benefit an assassin. A fire staff should be able to fire balls of fire and a sword with a fire rune should just deal burning damage, thats kinda basic. A small usage per swing or per cast would deplete the rune.

Obviously these runes could also be used by mages. using runes to cast spells and depleting the rune in the process.

This rune system would create a neat little micromanagement and is great for lore purposes and would prevent magic from becoming too overused and easily obtainable.

5 Likes
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We could have a battlemage.

Bad music beware.

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What would be pretty awesome, is if either:

    A. Each race used their own 'version' of magic.

    B. There were multiple sources of magic in the world, and each faction randomly used one of them.

    C. You choose at the start which magic your faction uses.

Granted there would be difficulty in choosing your own magic, primarily aesthetic, and if each magic use had specific classes, then there would also be issues etc., but hey, we’re just chucking ideas out there right?

If magic was specific to each race then it could be something like:

Humans would have magic in the traditional sense, as in drawing from the four elements - utilising runes in specific circumstances, acquired through trade and good relations with the faction who use runes.

Bunny Faction (they are the dwarves right?) use Runes, and everything associated with them.

Goblins utilise Shaman’s and rituals etc

TL;DR My knowledge of Magic is actually pretty poor.

2 Likes
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Magic can be divided in many categories. It can be willpower, knowledge, wisdom, or sheer battle prowess. A warrior with tons of battle experience can conjure his rage into physical form, like a Battle mage.

A scholar can learn about ancient forms of magic or discover his own with research; he could somehow make crops grow faster or make another different crop from his sheer knowledge of life.

Willpower would be more of a last attempt of living. Think of a child about to get killed by a goblin after witnessing his parents die. He could gain a power he was unknown to him that came to him in this one situation and would affect his entire life, he could summon a living guardian spirit to fight for him.

That’s my understanding of magic. A school yard kid cannot hope to control magic gained through wisdom/knowledge unless hes some sort of prodigy. But a kid can learn magic through sheer willpower. A warrior can discover his own magic through battle experience and rage, creating a physically magical form of his own aura.

That’s my take on magic.

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Problem with that is that humans will be the only playable race (non-modded) at the launch. The other magic in the races would be kind of wasted as its only seen in mob battles.

Saying that the bunnies are dwarves is quite a far stretch, they are as their name says, bunnies. dwarves may come in later stages of the development.

I think with your system that magic would become too normal and it would kind of take away the statisfactory feel of creating a great magic structure/being/spell, gathering the resources for this is a significant part of the gameplay. Whilst your human side uses runes aswell, I don’t think that you meant that they relied heavily upon it.

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Dreamscape

how many times did your fortress die because of tantrum spirals? if i could suggest a change it would be that there would be a healer caste as a progression for mage and he would be able to sooth your villagers 1 at a time and costing some time and the random chance of the villager getting angrier and attacking the healer

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The reason I say the Bunny faction are the equivalent of dwarves, is because I thought someone had said, quoting Radiant, that the Bunniers were the equivalent of Dwarves, living underground etc.

Yer you’re right though, I think that system is more RTS style of difference rather than RPG, if ya know what I mean.

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I for one dont like Runes very much as a source of magic BUT it would be a great basis for world lore and faction struggles.

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I have one more suggestion for the use of magic; Pacts. This would yield a high basis for world lore. and magic would still have an RPG-Esque feel. Making a pact with a magic creature could cause an other magic creature to hate you (and when the hate meter goes high enough it would trigger a titan fight). The origin of the hate between the magical creatures would provide a very nice lore. Some obvious choices could be elementals, angels and demons (does anyone know if there is a priest class in game?, this would confirm that there is the basis of theism in the game). An eternal fued could be raging between the elementals. For example fire and water oppose eachother, creating a pact with fire (for fire related spells duh) would render a pact with the water elemental impossible and vice versa.

Angels and demons would create another nice little effect, and having class affiliations with them. A warrior who has made a pact with an angel could become a paladin wielding light magic to inflict extra damage on monsters of demonic origin. A warrior with a demonic pact would be able to enter a state of bloodlust, a spell that triggers and will cause the warrior to attack at increased intervals and/or dealing more damage. Mages would fit in this model aswell, with examples as the necromancer/summoner for demonic and priests for angellic.

and @Geoffers747 Yes i know exactly what you mean but most rpg’s still have the magic is freely usable without any costs besides the auto-refilling mana. (And i have not read about the bunny = dwarf thing yet, might read it somewhere else later XD)

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@Nyrixa Here’s the [urlhttp://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/will-there-be-dwarfs-or-dwarves-if-you-prefer/254/3] link [/url]

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given the modeability of Stonehearth i belive there will be lots of magic “sources” its just a matter of modding it in and desgining it.
what i would like to ask is how will progression work? how does a hunter become a large game hunter? how can a blacksmith become a magma blacksmith? will it be expireince? items? Runes? Pacts?
this is a core mechanic that we need to understand in order to incorparate any basic principel of magic.

my suggestion would be progression through expireince and items
1st tier Mage becomes one of the following through progression in certain skills combined with a certain item:
healer
druid
necromancer
geomancer
shaman
priest
chanter
elementalit

2 Likes
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that is exactly the basis i wrote my ideas with, that system would work the best in my eyes. The pacts would incorporate some unlockable class choices

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A few times, actually. But to be honest I didn’t even think about that when I wrote the Dreamscape magic idea. (Seriously!) I was more of imagining this really powerful guy entering the villagers’ dreams (and nightmares) and fightng their fears so they don’t have to worry about that. That’s a big responsability tho, that’s why the downside :slight_smile:

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think this might be considered scouting spell (if a spell at all)

Battle
Wildvision

there are a few ways we could go about doing this but here’s my suggestions:
you could make a mage/healer/priest caste/progression to druid. the druid as befits druids in general would have semi control over wild animals and growth speed of plants later on maybe ents but im not in favor of that. the druid would be able to take control of a wild animal for a given time or radius reach or both and be able to scout with it the enemys movement without them being able to distinguish the animal (rabbit, rat, boar, bird etc) as a spy. as of reason the druid would have to be in a certain range of said animal and thus if not handeled right might be seen and die escaping. if animal gets out of control range it would turn back to its wild state and you will lose the vision. precautions could be taken by you or the enemy, like shamans who’re able to distinguish controled animals from normal ones or just sending your hunters to kill any roaming animals nearby