Magick in the Arcanum 2

Mgick in Arcanum was in my humble opinion totally screwed. There were waaay too many colleges and most spells were utterly useless. This is what i think would be a good way to go:

There ought to be only four colleges that would combine each other. Certain spells would require certain degree in one OR MORE of different scools of magick. These scools would be:
*telepathy
*telekinesis
*(something that would alter phisical properties of things)
necromancy (scool that would affect life force)

Telepathy would be used for mindreading, horror, mental domination, etc ..
Telekinesis would be used for moving objects without phisical contact.
Necromancy would affect healing and harming spells.
That other scool would do stuff like spontanius comustion (immolate) or lightning bolt and such.

Combined spells woud however combine the knowledge of different scools. For example magick missile would enclude telekinesis (for hurling a little ball of some strange stuff, wich would then be altert while in flight wich would make it burn or perhaps even explode on higher levells.

So .. that's my view of what magick should work like in games. Tell me what you think.

_

 

You could base the heiracthhehy of the spells from the four schools of Pelojian's diagram

 

I'd say:
Mental: Mind reading, divintation, but also picking up Items with a thought (telekinisis, as it IS done with the mind) and teleporing.
Elemental: Basicly the 4 elemental school, maybe include lightning and such as well.
Alteration: Morphing, timestopping, hasting, anything that alters reality.
Necromancy: Healing/hurting the life essence of things.

 

I think that the spells you can learn should depend on your Magick Aptitude, not on how many spells in the college you've already mastered. If the spells colleges were broken down into bigger groups (same colleges, bigger names- like White and Black Necromancy would be part of one group, and the elemental colleges part of another), then you could learn say Vitality of Fire, whatever the next few were, and then be able to learn anything up through that in any other college in the group.
It would make it easier to get to good spells like Teleport without going through the crap before it.

 

Spatial Distortion is. The only thing I ever managed to achieve with it involved trapping myself behind a wall. Besides, when you have Teleport it's redundant.

 

Spatial Distortion should be more precise. It kinda puts you CLOSE to where you told it to, and usually doesn't take you as far as you can see. It only takes you about 5 tiles worth. It should be made to take you to the precise tile: as far as you can see without anything blocking your view.

 

You can't really change the magic system because (according to some book in arcanum.. sorry forgot where it was... maybe the library) The entire magic system is based on fours, there are 16 spell collegeseach with 8 spells in them the final 3 were lost to time because people are stupid. Mass ressurection, or revive, or something was mentioned too... there was one more... sorry i forget.. heh heh

I like the current magic system and in Arcanum 2 which will probly be after Acranum 1 people should know magick better and know the last 3 spells of the college...

 

I think spatial distortion is meant for situations when you're with your back against the wall, and you can't move due to the enemies al around you.
In those cases, you can teleport/distort behind your own line of fighter, and cast from there. However, is most cases like that, people toss 2/3 fireballs, and problem = solved.

 

I'd say, certain spells only available to specific groups... like, wouldn't dwarves have a more earth based group?
And please, my dearest Arcanum collegues, let us stay away from DnD, hmm? I hate DnD spells and spell groups.
So...
Let's base stuff on alignment, shall we?
Healing- The good healing spells are higher alignment, like the stuff that actually HELPS you. The lower your alignment, the more your spells hurt, or perhaps you can gain spells that harm. Healing is related to the body... so anything that affects the body should be here.
Elemental-Weather stuff. (I'd like to see more weather related spells, like making it rain over all of Tarent, etc; as well, fire spells, water, earth, etc etc etc....)
That's about all I can think of right now... this is mainly conglomeration of ideas I've had for a while ^_^

 

I don't know, Sereina, making stuff unavaliable to certain people is pretty against the spirit of Arcanum. One of my favourite things about the game is that you can make any race of any alignment into any charcter type, dual character type, or even a limited three or more element focused character.

 

I think if there is only 4 spell schools, then they should be the 4 in the diagram, each with 4 schools in them, each with 8 spells in them (because of the 3 'lost' spells in each school)

That seems to be the best option unless they want to alter what happened in the 1st game...


I think it should be the sameway it is now BUT it shows the 4 major schools and seperates it into that and maybe you can get more magick aptitute if you are learning spells in the same 'major school'


Yeah... that sounds cool

 

Perhaps the best way to enhance the magic system would be to simply leave the colleges, and completely REDO everything below that, in fact, make the spells work more with the terrain then they used to (hehehe, mix a little Zelda into the works ) oh, and by the way, about spatial distortion...i find it very useful when entangled :smile: I actually got caught with a viscious bug which caused my character to be indefinetly entangled, and spatial distortion was the only way I could play him (he was a really good character :cry: too bad I had to trash him) wow, parintheses within parintheses :grin: )

 

Perhaps you should use square parentheses to help differentiate. Or perhaps I'm thinking mathematics.

 

No, you're right. That would help. Like in the following incident:

I like fish (fish that are fresh water [big fish {not too big of fish, though}]).

Although it may be a little hard to read, but in math, the order is {[()]}, but it would be easier to read in a sentancer as ([{}]), that way you can really tell when the whole added idea begins, while it would look funny if it started with { and }.

 

Thx...I'll be sure and remember that, what a help...(I was hoping someone would comment on my ideas more than my minor quips about grammar [hmmm...I suppose Zelda wasn't the wisest thing to use as an example....but it was all I could come up with at the time...])

 

Why didn't you just cast Dispel?
:???:

 

But I did...you see it was a monster glitch, especially because the guy who cast it on me ... well ... died, and it didn't lift.

The place it happened was at that schulyer and sons point, the guy I had was rich, and strong, and I think it did that to me because I killed the guy before the spell was done being cast (my guy was an archer) I pity I had to throw him away... :cry:

 

I agree that magic was under-represented one new college I would really like to see would be one that manipulates the elements to create weapons (which are permenent) and monsters and such like. It would also be good if there were a "college" which allowed you to create and enchant magical weapons.