Non-combat magic

[DraQ]

The notion of "combat magic" at all is fairly recent, really.
Mythical heroes that use magic to defeat their foes never simply fling fireballs at their enemies until they die. Magic was never that overt.

Another thing is that throwing multiple fireballs or anything else in quick succession just cheapens them and robs them of impact while giving nothing in exchange.

Even if you have flashy magic capable of creating massive fiery explosions, they either take out what they are meant to or they don't. Well designed magic shouldn't be spammable nor have any rationale for being spammed.

The notion of wizards that can ONLY use magic, also pretty much created whole-cloth by D&D. All mythological wizards, and even the base source material of modern fantasy, Lord of the Rings, has wizards that are fully capable of physical exertion. In fact, in mythology, people who can't use some kind of magic are nobodies.

Actually, it might be neat approach, to make the hero use magic by default and that being his sole edge against numerically superior and physically comparable (people) or better (all sorts of monsters) foes. The exact kinds of magic would mix&matchable with the rest of the build.

Thinking back to my time playing Morrowind, I recall running through some cave after stealing an artifact, eventually escaping (narrowly) by leaping over a pit of lava. But thats about the only thing I recall doing at a low level. I have lots of memories of cool shit I did later, like murdering Vivec, becoming permanently invisible and chasing imperial guards around, or flying around the island with insanely potent levitation potions. Or wiping out the mage guild in Aldrhun so I could use it as my personal house.

Low key fantasy adventures tend to just be really forgettable. You're not risking much as a character that can be easily replaced by any other character that can do basically the same shit. And the rewards are obviously shit. So you have small risks and rewards... rather dull.

Actually it's the other way around. Low key fantasy is the most memorable because you aren't running around facerolling shit after you have established your power, but actually win using your wits.

When you can do everything, nothing really matters. When you can do little, what you manage to achieve with it is important. Killing tens of enemies at once with spell while you could have just as well done it nearly as fast by farting at them or throwing lockpicks at them is unmemorable.
Murdering five dudes (4 quest targets, 1 extra) 2 or 3 of whom could have easily soloed you, in a cramped inn in the middle of a town, using specifically crafted spell, without actually having it traced back to you is awesome.

In the former case your stats win the battle for you, in the latter you do it yourself.

Would you have wanted to play a mage in Morrowind if you had no direct damage spells at all though? If you HAD to kill all your targets by drowning them in rivers? That'd suck balls.

Well, first and foremost that would get awfully repetitive - just like killing all the targets by flinging poo fireballs, lightningbolts or other colourful magic projectiles at them.

Pretty much any situation where these things were really useful had to be hand crafted specifically to make them useful, it wasn't 'emergent' at all, except for the exploits. Using slow fall or levitation to avoid splattering when you use an icarian flight scroll isn't emergent gameplay, it's the only thing you could have done which the devs specifically designed the scenario to make you use. It feels incredibly contrived and even worse than an outright scripted event.

Personally I used CE slowfall as an alternative to my built-in "airbrake" in my own, more practical Icarian Flight counterpart - would more or less have to use it if the levitation didn't conveniently break conservation of momentum.

I also don't consider anyone carefully crafting "drown the fucker in the nearest body of water" as a solution to any "kill X" quests a particularly plausible scenario.

Most of the spells in morrowind were useless anyways. The only time I'd ever use a levitation spell is specifically the one room in the game where you need to levitate to get up the mushroom house. So why not use a potion and avoid wasting space in your spell menu? Oh, or you can enchant a weapon to cast 1 point levitation on striking and have it be functionally equivalent to paralysis that nothing is immune to. Cause that makes sense. Water walking? What purpose did that ever serve? It's marginally faster than swimming, but then you have to recover your mana anyways, so you've actually wasted time or resources. I can't even think of any places where you need to cross a body of water anyways. Water breathing is laughable as well, camouflage was relatively pointless unless you had 100%, invisibility was pointless, telekinesis was useful for stealing a handful of things in the entire game.

Levitate is one of my most used spells in Morrowind. You may not strictly need it all that many times but it is very nice to be able to go over a mountain instead of around it, go straight to the top floor if there is an opening inside or a door on the roof, or simply levitate above a melee character's reach.

Also tons of rare/unique phat lewt hidden out of reach.

Stealing aside TK was good anti-trap spell, I guess with better AI/encounter design it would absolutely rock for purposes like opening doors from afar and not risking close combat.
Waterbreathing - there quite a few underwater areas in game.

I'm also pretty sure I've used Water Walking at least some 40 times on my current playthrough as not only is it faster than swimming, it also makes it possible to avoid those annoying little fishes that come biting. It also uses very little mana (practically nothing) so that point is moot. I do not know how exhaustively you've player Morrowind or how enthusiastic a boat-user you are but I have had to cross water many times.

This. You can also use it for combat advantage when fighting near a body of water, either by casting it on yourself and retreating onto water, or by casting it on your enemy and diving.
Plus, at the beginning slaughterfish could murder you.

Invisibility is useful when you don't want to kill anyone in a particular place (e.g. the floating prison above Vivec.) It is also a relatively cheap spell (at least in comparison to Chameleon.)

Even more useful on escort missions.

 

[V_K]

Would you have wanted to play a mage in Morrowind if you had no direct damage spells at all though? If you HAD to kill all your targets by drowning them in rivers? That'd suck balls.

I played Morrowind as a mage and never used direct damage spells at all. I used bound gear and summons instead.

 

[Damned Registrations]

In other words you played as a warrior mage with strictly inferior weapons and armour. I can see why you'd find slaughterfish threatening.

 

[V_K]

In other words you played as a warrior mage with strictly inferior weapons and armour. I can see why you'd find slaughterfish threatening.

Selective reading is so selective. You can't even tell between different users.

 

[DraQ]

It's not really a matter of linearity or not. It's just a matter of magical solutions eliminating the possibility of using something as an obstacle.

Maybe just any simple obstacle is a shit obstacle?
If you want a meaningful one, maybe it should be something more complex and structured than a single dumb thing bypassable by a single skill check?

If you have a wall in the way, you might be able to climb it, or steal a key, or bribe a guard, or smash the door, or disguise yourself to get in. But if you have a wizard, all that shit is irrelevant. Every fucking party with a wizard will float over the wall (or whatever other spell he has that can bypass a wall, I could name half a dozen easily.)

So, options are good, but another option is bad?

So why even make those other options there? Why have a wall?

Indeed, why have a wall if any dumbfuck can just levitate over, or climb it or steal the key?
Maybe if it was a more involved obstacle plans for bypassing it by any means, including levitation would involve more than a single step, for example the one involving not making an impression of failed attempt at making a pincushion out of tomato getting dropped from the roof?

If you can mind control people then you may as well throw out all the dialogue in the game, no need to convince anyone of anything when they're all your bestest buddies.

Unless you can mind control everyone indefinitely, nope. People are usually averse to mindrape.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Your shortsightedness is astonishing. Yeah, the guards are totally going to pincushion the invisible mage as he floats over the wall. And it's vastly preferable that every party includes 6 mages and 0 any other fucking class because the mages do everything better than everyone else, including stab people with swords. Truly, you are a visionary of design.

Do tell, describe this 'involved obstacle' that isn't basically a scripted affair with a single way to solve it.

 

[Mangoose]

Well that's true, Cthulhu would be omnipotent if not for Old Man Henderson.

Or that one dude who rode a boat through his its ITZ head.

I bet he would still die pretty quickly to entire police department firing at him.

Who was that? There's another Henderson?

But srsly I'm so proud of myself for this trolling run. Thank Andhaira for the inspiration.

 

[baturinsky]

"Combat" and "magic" are similar thing in games. They are dumbifications. Reduce social interaction to bare minimum and you get a combat. Throw away realism completely and you get "magic". So, "combat" and "magic" are mostly negative therms, denoting lack of that depth which differentiates RPG from other genres.

 

[DraQ]

Who was that? There's another Henderson?

Have you *read* The Call of Cthulhu?
You know, the one written by that HPL bloke - maybe you have heard of him.

Your shortsightedness is astonishing. Yeah, the guards are totally going to pincushion the invisible mage as he floats over the wall.

There is a highly technical term ordinary low- to mid-level guards without support or at least magical detection have for a guy who can both levitate and sustain invisibility while going over their wall.
It's "above my fucking paygrade".

Seriously, any spell that overtly shits on the face of physics - like levitation - should be considered high level spell.
A good system should also provide further limitations, for example things like levitation and invisibility requiring constant expenditure of effort to upkeep (which coincidentally means that if you pile a huge mountain of buffs on yourself or anyone else you'll end up curled in fetal position, with massive nosebleed and killer headache, if not worse within seconds - choose wisely). Bonus point if upkeeping such spell requires mage to maintain the proper magical gesture - at this point it becomes pretty limited when cast at yourself - then you're basically a dude who sucks at sneaking (unless a hybrid, but then you're much shittier at either casting or stealth) that can chose to either be invisible, inaudible or floaty and not leaving traces on the ground (you wouldn't believe how detrimental to invisibility is a mundane patch of raked ground or a shallow pool of water), only do it for limited time and can't do anything with his hands when doing it.
At this point, while all those spells are useful and make you quite versatile, you're not a substitute for a proper sneak (OTOH you make an excellent support for proper sneak, as you might be upkeeping one of the aforementioned spells cast on him while he bypasses the security - of course this can be further complicated by throwing in additional factors like spell only working if if the caster can maintain visual contact with the target - meaning good vantage point or getting into target's head magically at which point the caster is not only occupied but effectively oblivious of his surroundings and needs to be guarded as actively casting or upkeeping spells should be detectable magically.)
Want multiple such buffs running? Find a ring of invisibility or something. Of course, it's an artifact quality item (see Tolkien for reference) so pretty much at the point where a wall with a bunch of bored guards is no longer meant to be a meaningful obstacle to you, and you can also put it on a rogue or fighter.

Lockpicking? Ok, how does mage open a locked door? They can blow it up, but it's effectively a more powerful but even more conspicuous version of what fighter can do. They can have unlocking spell but how does this spell work? Overall spells should be at least conspicuous enough to be noticeable by default - a guy can't just walk up to a guarded door and start manipulating the lock while mumbling or chanting something. If that's not enough you can be nasty in defining the way spell works - is it vibrating internal elements of the lock? Audible. Does it involve sticking something animated into the lock? Make it require material component, like mercury, and be a relatively high level spell. Of course if you can waltz up to the lock and pour mercury into it, so can a warrior and - if he can't just break it down - pour some some sulfuric acid (known since at least late antiquity/early medieval period so it should be very much available in setting) bought at local alchemist onto the lock or hinges. Without muttering anything besides maybe "fucking door." Does it involve telekinetically manipulating tumblers? Line of sight bitches. You need to have a spell active that allows you to see through metal to grasp at what's inside (implementable as having TK trigger normally invisible and filtered only for spells allowing you to see through stuff. Or intimate knowledge of locks at which point you can just as well pick it the normal way.

A well implemented system should also consider any unsolicited casting of spells on people a hostile action, with possible exception of healing spells. So if you just walk up to a guy in the middle of town square and start charming him because you wanted to buy some shit cheaper, you might end up fighting the entire fucking town because they see a fuck in a bathrobe walking around bewitching people and mindraping them for no reason (which is what you're doing after all).

And it's vastly preferable that every party includes 6 mages and 0 any other fucking class because the mages do everything better than everyone else, including stab people with swords. Truly, you are a visionary of design.

Shit design, actually.
Just like you shouldn't have "something for nothing" loopholes in your systems (like magical creation of permanent materials - metal, actually nourishing food, etc.), you shouldn't have option to get ability that gives you any other ability.

So, for example, even if you can have wizard summon temporary energy blade that cuts through pretty much anything, at best he will be effectively a wildly swinging bumpkin with a lightsaber as far as melee is concerned. And no, a bumpkin *without* force powers.

Any melee character that doesn't rely on directly parrying the blade, blocking it or absorbing blows (blocking or striking weapon *hand* still allowed) will end him within seconds, even if naked (not that armor would help) and equipped with mundane/low quality weapon (or barehanded if monk).

You should be able to become faster or stronger magically, but not more skilled.
Unless inhumanly fast it should still give you insufficient advantage against actually skilled combatant and "mundane" buffs should also exist in the form of potions (AKA combat drugs AKA "I WANT TO BE A GERALT").

Stoneskin? You know what has always pissed me off about games featuring such spells? Inabilty to just wrestle the invulnerable fucker to the ground. Even if his skin is magically impenetrable and even if bludgeoning him doesn't work either you should be able to bullrush him, grab him and just sit on him till his buffs expire. Even invulnerable he is still a frail bookworm in a bathrobe, you don't need to hurt him to stop him from making gestures and chanting, being physically stronger and somewhat more agile is more than enough. If you do want to hurt him just press his face into the ground (or water) and wait 'till he suffocates.

Any more powerful magical defense is easily nerfed without diminishing its raw power by making it active and/or directional.

Do tell, describe this 'involved obstacle' that isn't basically a scripted affair with a single way to solve it.

Just pile obvious countermeasures on it.
Is the wall even supposed to defend against high level threats like invisible levitating mages? Magical detection and someone who can cast dispel. If not, it's as inane as complaining that a high level mage can just fireball 20 goblins at once, being therefore a gamebreaker.

Your beloved scripted affairs only differ in that they break on attempted cheese unless you muzzle&leash the player.
If I wanted to be muzzle&leashed through someone else's story I'd get into BDSM go for an non-interactive medium - one actually capable of telling a good story in a competent manner - instead.

 

[k0syak]

Just pile obvious countermeasures on it.
Is the wall even supposed to defend against high level threats like invisible levitating mages? Magical detection and someone who can cast dispel. If not, it's as inane as complaining that a high level mage can just fireball 20 goblins at once, being therefore a gamebreaker.

I think the answer is in world balancing. If the PC is able to casually levitate while invisible, even the lowliest shopkeeper should be expected to have both magical defenses and hired goons guarding his stuff.

 

[Norfleet]

Actually, it might be neat approach, to make the hero use magic by default and that being his sole edge against numerically superior and physically comparable (people) or better (all sorts of monsters) foes. The exact kinds of magic would mix&matchable with the rest of the build.

That's the approach which would make sense, yes: That the hero is the hero specifically BECAUSE he is magic, as opposed to because the hero has million hitpoints and can survive being dropped from orbit and then nuked with only the loss of a few hundred thousand hitpoints. You would still have various ways to differentiate yourself in the direction of traditional classes, but as the hero, you would use magic to facilitate all of these things, because you're a mythical hero, and not some random nobody.

I think the answer is in world balancing. If the PC is able to casually levitate while invisible, even the lowliest shopkeeper should be expected to have both magical defenses and hired goons guarding his stuff.

This quickly degenerates into silliness, with everything in the world being unnecessarily filled with magic. This is why magic needs to be more subtle and interesting, and not simply an arms race.

 

[TigerKnee]

I think the answer is in world balancing. If the PC is able to casually levitate while invisible, even the lowliest shopkeeper should be expected to have both magical defenses and hired goons guarding his stuff.

This quickly degenerates into silliness, with everything in the world being unnecessarily filled with magic. This is why magic needs to be more subtle and interesting, and not simply an arms race.

Plus there are also other "logical" issues - shopkeepers are trying to earn a profit here - there can't be enough magic defenses and hired goons to guard EVERY shop, because not all shopkeepers are going to be able to afford those and still remain in the black... otherwise it's going to be appear pretty damn artificial that you're trying to "screw" the player.

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, I would argue that the "lowliest" shopkeepers probably DON'T have this stuff because their stuff isn't valuable enough to warrant being robbed by a demigod-wizard.

 

[Mangoose]

Who was that? There's another Henderson?

Have you *read* The Call of Cthulhu?
You know, the one written by that HPL bloke - maybe you have heard of him.

Hm.. Actually I was reading through his stories and read about a third of them alphabetical order... So I must have read that one.. Must have forgotten it so I didn't lose my sanity. (or did i)

 

[DraQ]

Just pile obvious countermeasures on it.
Is the wall even supposed to defend against high level threats like invisible levitating mages? Magical detection and someone who can cast dispel. If not, it's as inane as complaining that a high level mage can just fireball 20 goblins at once, being therefore a gamebreaker.

I think the answer is in world balancing. If the PC is able to casually levitate while invisible, even the lowliest shopkeeper should be expected to have both magical defenses and hired goons guarding his stuff.

I think an even better answer is hidden post-factum detection mechanics.
For example commiting a crime completely undetected should still roll for a chance of it getting traced and pinned onto you, meaning that some time after you pulled off something seemingly flawlessly (usually days or more) you suddenly become wanted for this crime or a wronged guy in a position of power (if you did something stupid like crossing a major player) sends a level-appropriate band of (for your abilities AND his financial means) goons to ambush you in an awfully pragmatic manner, gut you and bring him your head on a platter (by "level appropriate" I mean "capable of wiping the floor with you" by which I mean an optimal outcome should consist of getting out alive, anything else is a bonus).

It's a bit of a cheat but characters should be smarter than the AI would let them, so this is a bit of a two wrongs make right kind of situation.

 

[V_K]

Am I having a deja vu or we've been having exact same discussion about two pages ago?
Oh, the memory span of contemporary humans...

 

[DraQ]

Am I having a deja vu or we've been having exact same discussion about two pages ago?

Make it years.
And "for", not "ago".

 

[SymbolicFrank]

It's not really a matter of linearity or not. It's just a matter of magical solutions eliminating the possibility of using something as an obstacle. If you have a wall in the way, you might be able to climb it, or steal a key, or bribe a guard, or smash the door, or disguise yourself to get in. But if you have a wizard, all that shit is irrelevant. Every fucking party with a wizard will float over the wall (or whatever other spell he has that can bypass a wall, I could name half a dozen easily.) So why even make those other options there? Why have a wall? If you can mind control people then you may as well throw out all the dialogue in the game, no need to convince anyone of anything when they're all your bestest buddies. Unless the game is just giving people plot armour from that effect, like the assholes in morrowind you had to appease instead of just charming them into giving you whatever you want. This is basically tantamount to invisible walls to keep you from going over the real walls.

Lets not even get into how much summoned minions trivialize a dungeon. Every trap ever is made essentially useless by summoning basically anything and having it walk in front of you and open shit in your place and stare at the funny glyphs on the walls for you.

On the other hand, many CRPG designers expect you to try, die and reload until you find their only sanctioned solution.

Give me simulationist any day.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

I think making wizards "jacks of all trades at the cost of spellpoints" is also a wrong approach, as it makes them (or other classes - depending on how costly magic is) rather redundant. That's another principle I tried to adhere to when compiling the list in the OP: to avoid overlapping too much with other class abilities.

When playing a mage, I would like to blow stuff up, with a big bang on higher level.

What I get is an effect that is calculated to have the same DPS as the fighter swinging his sword...

 

[SymbolicFrank]

There's two ways to counteract the potentially overpowered nature of he mage class - arbitrarily restrict a mage's abilities so they don't overlap with rogue/warrior (used by DA), or make mages dependable on magical instruments, becoming useless if they are ever parted with them.

Sounds very boring.

How about the Morrowind approach: require specific magic or items to be able to enjoy the high-level content. Like levitation, jump or such for the mage houses.

And make wings or a flying carpet for that boring fighter who doesn't want anything to do with magic.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

With a large enough spell list, the mage can simply be forced to specialise enough to prevent jack-of-all-trades characters.
That is in principle what's happening in TDE, where it's unlikely that you can level enough spells far enough with one mage to make other chars completely redundant.

Besides, a certain redundancy isn't really a problem. In fact I think its a sign of a good system when there's some overlap between different classes as long as they stay unique and provide enough variety to play them instead of just picking one that anyway can do everything you'd want him to.

Yes. Exactly. Like in Real Life, where you cannot actually grasp or lift a sword without having proficiency with it. Which is exactly the same mechanic as when you're unable to cast a spell.

 

[k0syak]

Am I having a deja vu or we've been having exact same discussion about two pages ago?
Oh, the memory span of contemporary humans...

I got an SMS saying "Has gud stuf" (rough translation), so there goes the memory span

 

[QuestionMan]

Interesting topic.

When I elaborated RPG mechanics once, I came to the point of asking: "and what exactly is the difference between a spell which makes 20 damage and a crossbow which makes 20 damage?". Obviously nothing. It was just another form of attack. Eventually this kinda sucks.

I believe it's difficult to get magic usable in RPGs, if it shouldn't have anything to do with combat, however I could imagine that you could strictly separate it like that:
Magicians can only heal, enchant or produce status effects, but they can never do direct damage.

Edit: on a sidenote this system might suck too, because then you could never do an Armageddon spell killing all NPCs in your nearby area, and you could never do solo-runs etc.

 

[Gord]

Yes. Exactly. Like in Real Life, where you cannot actually grasp or lift a sword without having proficiency with it. Which is exactly the same mechanic as when you're unable to cast a spell.

If you assume that being able to cast any spell=being able to cast all, which isn't the case in most magic systems.
And even if you can cast it, it wouldn't mean that you are good at it - you might be able to grasp or lift a sword, but using it in a fight with someone who knows what he is doing is something else entirely.

 

[DraQ]

Yes. Exactly. Like in Real Life, where you cannot actually grasp or lift a sword without having proficiency with it. Which is exactly the same mechanic as when you're unable to cast a spell.

Actually I'd consider raping reality in highly specific ways with your mind to be in a different league than swinging a piece of metal around.

Everyone can be a shitty swordsman, but entry requirements for casting *any* spell should be quite a bit higher.