Separate magic systems for different styles

I really like the idea that magic is like a nuclear energy that is powerful but can have dramatic consequences I have seen similar in previous games and it works well. I also like the dragon getting so powerful it is like a titan going after the town I hope they keep that too. If they keep the “magic styles” separated so they take different resources/buildings/character classes it would make it very difficult to become powerful in all different magics. I dunno if they want to get that in depth with magic classes or if players will be adding some with mods? Mages of any style would be difficult to acquire and they no longer do menial labor so it uses some population towards casters.

Demon magic - lots of people like demons they could have like a dark acolyte/demon summoning class. There could be matching dark altars, dark temple, buildings devoted to demons, they could demand treasure/gold or even high level boss demons could require humans to eat like Lord of the Pit from MTG. As the demon gets souls he can become more powerful until hes no longer controllable and could be a Titan or slash some rifts to the netherworld triggering nasty enemy encounters difficult to survive.

Necromancy - they could have a separate line of black arts devoted to undead maybe necromancer an even turning your little guy into a lich? You could have necromancy lair and have to build dark libraries. Maybe you need bodies of foes to raise up your army? If you go all out you could have an undead horde of skeletons,zombies,wraiths,vampires. Maybe you have to raise enough animals to keep the zombies fed or the more powerful undead like vampires or wraiths find the occasional peasant victim. If you don’t keep up with the growing upkeep of your undead army they could turn on your own town and cause a real mess. Both evil arts could make your humans not very happy morale wise.

Elemental magics - could be mages or archmages? You may need high quality libraries for you to search for knowledge maybe some sort of elemental magical building to tap into power sources? Spells could run off of some elemental system you need to gather/recharge. White Wolfs mage had a great negative system set up where humans aren’t meant to tap such power alone and if you use too many spells that are powerful they can backfire and have great negative impacts like lighting your own town on fire. Maybe the mages have a chance to go crazy or start powerful experiments that go awry such as summoning Titan elementals they cannot control.

Divine magics - Could go with one good god or a mythology style different ones. Priests may have to spend time praying, more powerful magic takes big fancy churches, maybe altars, maybe you have to provide food/animal sacrifices or even human to appease the god or gods? If they become unhappy or their priests get killed in battle they could punish with natural disasters, workers struck by lightning, sending down angels or maybe even a celestial titan to punish them.

Maybe that many magic styles is too grandiose? I kept it pretty broad strokes and modifiable I know from playing D+D people have their favorite type of caster and following with the theme of magic is powerful but it has dangers I tried to make each demise of your town unique that whatever you are going for. I saw a few posts similar related about religion and spells and necroman

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I think that the “styles” of magic is a pretty fun idea, and it would allow a lot more creativity and/or self-created narrative. Want to be the super-religious community? Divine is right for you. Are you more of an evil overlord? Try out the Necromancy/Demon Magic. Or, to use my own MTG comparison, are you more like the Izzet? Try your crazy, dangerous and downright wacky ideas out in the elemental path. I actually think that you could add even MORE styles to that list (more Druidic nature-focused magic, for example), and while not all of them may end up in the actual game, due to the nature of the coding and such, I think it would be (relatively) easy to branch one style of magic into the others.

I definitely think people could come up with other ones. I just hoped these might give a possible alternate idea to the game makers or modders who are looking into magical ideas :slight_smile:

well… my point in magic it’s the next one,
first, you should never mix Divine powers, with magic. Divine powers come from the Gods, and it’s made by religious people like Druids, Clerics, Paladins… etc.
While magic, it’s a power that comes from the surroundings thanks to a force called magic (that has a disappointing fluorescent greenish-yellowish-purple colour :wink: )

Then we also don’t know how it’s going to be implemented the magic into the Lore and the class system in the game. Maybe it’s a super high end-game class because it’s very powerful and it’s dangerous to use, or maybe they make it accesible from the begining… and this kind of information can affect a lot the gameplay mechanics.

Soooo… as for your topic about magic styles and i would classify the wizards regarding their most common magic they use, and this can be easily categorized in:

  • Abjuratiion
  • Conjuration
  • Divination (not divine magic)
  • Enchanment (not enchanting items)
  • Evocation
  • Ilusion
  • Necromancy
  • Transmutation

(Yes, this are the D&D magic schools but i think that these work pretty well). Here there’s a good start to make really powerfull classes, but we have to think that the important thing in the game it’s going to be the city!! not the actual classes we can have… so this clasification will require some changes to make the wizards useful for the city apart from spaming fireballs and resurrecting people.

So which it’s your idea?? you will only allow to have 1 specialization to your wizard in the city??

Also, as part of the topic, i would make the next specializations:

  1. Instead of the Demon magic, i’ll just make a summoner specialized, because Demons usually come from other planes, and the summoner it’s specialized in treating beasts from other planes, so they would be able to control them.
  2. To have an elemental wizard focused in one of the elements seems really good… but with that you’re limiting the variety of spells they can make (i think that wizards should have at least a hundred spells to play with :p) so i would make a wizard with the 4 elements.
  3. Necromancy: Yeah! just be aware of posible Zombies invasions xD.
  4. The Enchanter so he boosts your armor and weapons, this would fit into the Transmutation school.
  5. Trickster: the ilusion specialist…
  6. just keep adding the other schools :stuck_out_tongue:

So i would make some classes like those. And yes, i talk s much about this because i’m planing on making my own magical mod, and i’ve plan to be it pretty big, including all the aspects that the Radiant team doesn’t place in the game for whatever reason.

BTW, archmage it’s the prestige class of mage, so first you could have some class like: mage initiate, then mage, then archmage.

Also, about the resource for the elemental magics… maybe to make specialized resources for every kind of wizard doesn’t seems good to me. Every wizard uses the same fuel to power their spells: magic, so maybe, specialiced classes can use another systems to build up more power, at the cost of something (like souls, burning things, and perjudicial things to you in general). It’s not a bad option, but i’m not sure how to implement it :S .

About the white wolf magues… I’ve played sometimes to that books (they are awesome!!) and magic can be your ally or your worst enemy hahaha, i think that magic should backfire in one way or another!! i like the comparison wth nuclear power :D. In my mod, when the player starts to play with magic maybe he just sees some aesthetic effects, but the more he starts to use, the more changes he’ll see, and at some point well… let’s just say that i’ve a hundred ideas to let you know that you’ve played too much with magic xDD.

Sry for the suuuper long post, but i really like this kind of topics hehe, i hope i had helped you aranging the casses and adding some ideas!

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Ah the D&D magic system is really nice. I think you have some good ideas in there. Remember though that D&D magic is a system optimized for parties wandering around and exploring as opposed to defending a home base. You could easily tweak some of their general concepts to more fit a base RTS styled thing. For instance you could have a magical building which is difficult to enchant and buffs nearby fighters to it or a druids could make a magic healing tree that regens nearby units. You could have a tower which shoots out spells and needs recharged by your mages after so many shots kinda like a tower defense game. You could be able to magically enchant walls around the city to strengthen them. You could be able to use illusion magic to set up “scarecrow” style distractions for raid parties. Stuff along those lines falls nicely into the D&D schools of magic but more suitable for the game.

Also the nuclear power thing was a reference the game devs made in their video its not mine :wink: I just think its a great idea and it needs to be taken into account for balance. If the devs make an archmage that can go insane and smash your city with powerful magic or his spells can backfire, then a mod creates a druid or illusion wizard with no similar downside it probably won’t be a good balance ingame. Thats why I tried to have some unique downside to a style of magic in exchange for power. I do think magic should be very hard to get and if you want two styles of huge awesome magic it should be very hard to have them both. If theres many styles of magic it should be hard to have a undead necromancy army and super powerful necromancers and ALSO demon summoners with really strong demons too. That would get crazy.

If magic is this dangerous, I think I would build a super secured area and then my wizards can do whatever they want and if an enemy tries to attack me I just release this destructive power (like the cage of wild bears) or I just build the magic tower far away in the woods. But I really love all these ideas!
What about an error rate. If you summon a demon there is the chance X% that he’ll go crazy and if you’re very unlucky you summon a more powerful demon that could try to destroy your village or to free all the demons you summoned before (and then they destroy your village). I would like to summon lots of weak demons so I can create a little army :smiley:
What do you think about mixing those different styles of magic (like undead demons?Or a cross between demon and human :wink: )?

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Put simply, void magic is the magic of reality in it’s truest form, detached from the mind and it’s filters. Thus, the more attached a person is to their own concepts and understanding of reality, the less mastery of void magic they can obtain. This is almost the inverse of other magic types; other magics, taking cues as they do from the person’s mind, are strengthened when the person has a clear and unquestionable conception of what they are doing (even if it is merely a psychological construct). Conversely, the more a person is able to shed their own beliefs and preconceptions, the more power they will obtain through the use of void magic

I like void magic for a very good reason and think it has some very interesting aspects to it. One aspect is that all the usual bets are off; void magic is utterly dependent on the mind of it’s user, with all other factors being secondary at best. Even mana seems to be a questionable issue in the use of void magic; some void mages don’t even seem to need it. This could end the game by maybe he goes into a big battle, goes crazy, and comes out killing everyone including your own guys