Spell-casting System:

[The Crazy Animal]

This is one of those things that has been talked about for MMud off and on for many years and normal went like this: ?Should spells be learned using the current system of restriction being that a class?s magic rating and level determine the spells they learn or should a characters spell casting ability be taken into account??

I know DC listed this is things that need to be reworked but I?m wondering what you have in mind?
http://www.forumshq.com/showthread.php?p=86430
"Spellcasting System
The current system is rather out dated. Creating a system where learning spells is based on spellcasting ability rather than magic level would help balance both races and classes. What other changes should be made?"

Personally though I think about switching to a spell-casting stat based system I immediately think wait should the magic rating system for spells stay or should it go. If we get rid of it, this could really mess up the little bit of balance that the rating system gives.

I have some further ideas on this subject but I?d really like to know what the consensuses of this is what would other people like to see?

I know Bong had a good idea for filling the level gaps between learning new spells:
http://greatermud.com/forums/index.php?topic=75.0

TCA

[DeathCow]

Myself I'd make sure I balanced such a thing by creating a much larger disparity between each magic levels spellcasting ability.  I could easily just triple magic-3's sc ability and make their success rate be SC/3+DIFFICULTY=CAST RATE, rather than just SC+DIFFICULTY=CAST RATE.

Of course not every spell would be open for all spell casting level.  I already have plans for spells such a gypsy's alter fate ability that other classes, even magic-3 classes, can't get.

[The Crazy Animal]

Ok that sounds fairly close to what I had in mind:
I would double magic 2?s in addition to tripling magic 3?s ability though also so that it makes the spread a little more even across the board.

From a class-based perspective, I think each magic using class needs a strong theme to go with it; this theme has to take into consideration the general theme of the magic type they are using as well, as how their class would make use off it. Similarly to what you said this means that each class within a magic type needs to have some class specific spells that are there to re-enforce the divisions between the classes as well as to enforce some basic balance issues. I think the only exception to this might be in the priestly spell types where the priest should know all the spells below it.

From a magic based perspective, it makes me think that if switching the learning system around the actual coding system will needs updating too. Since most spells, make a call for the level of the player to decide its max effect. It might be a good idea to change a spell power gain from primarily level based to being spell casting based too. This would make a spell be more variable in it effects based on the casters skill rather than level alone. Secondly, the minimum damage a spell should do needs to be changed so that it will keep early-learned spells from being too overpowered.

I suggested in Bongs spell filler thread that spells should be given a quality field like, weapons currently have. The basic thought behind this is, classes with high magic ratings should be able to get better versions of spells simply because their greater reliance on magic results in better refinement of their skills. I?m not exactly sure how you would code this in but it would basically let you have child data sets in each spells main data set. Each version would have its own data perimeters so that instead creating an entire new spell you just add a version to the existing data. Then when a updating a players spell list you would have an unseen variable that would tell the game engine what quality version of the spell to call when being cast.

I have a some other little odds and ends I?ve been thinking about as well as some class specific stuff but I?ll post that later because I have some other stuff to do now.

TCA

[The Crazy Animal]

Theses are some spell devices that I?ve been thinking about some of these I know you can do in script form but that?s a pain in the butt if you want to use them a lot and personally I think we should be also try to make some things easier to do within the system.

Difficulty Override:
I was thinking the other day that it might be interesting to have a way to do feats of magic. Currently the system only lets you have a hard coded spell casting difficulties and this would let you open the system up for other stat checks that are normally out side of a given magic types perimeters mainly those not used in calculating spell casting.

Spell Targeting:
This is just pertaining to spells that are attack based and to be more specific things like meteorstorm and similar where objects are hurled at an opponent it might be interesting to have a way to make spells, dodge-able, or have a user succeed in casting but otherwise miss their target. Personally I think this should be something that?s on a spell to spell basis.

Room Spells Effect Assignment:
Maybe this can already be done but I can?t recall seeing it, it would be nice to be able to make some room attack spells that exclude the party list for damage assignment. Also vise versa heal spells effect an entire room not just party.

Required Object: (I just found that this is in MMUD but I just never seen it used must have missed it.)
I was thinking about this a little while ready on focuses for a RPG system and basically goes like this a spell or cantrip requires a particular object to function. So this would basically be a check for item on cast or force spell to fail with message type of thing. I thought this might also be useful in an alchemy type of magic or transmutation of one item to another.

Conjure/Transmute Object:
On some more thinking about how to do some interesting things, I thought hey wouldn?t be nice if we could have an easy way of temporally removing one item and replacing it with another while holding the removed item in memory. Something like this could be used to transform a twig into a longbow for 30 some rounds and then back again. While I realize this could be slightly buggy as long as the object called into existence has an auto poof in x rounds or the following; cannot be given, dropped, or otherwise removed from a character, or destroy on death, then all of those bugs would be avoided.

More to come later

TCA