[crossfire] [IDEA] Reagents for cast magic

[Brendan Lally]

On 10/14/05, ERACC <
     eracclists at bellsouth.net
     > wrote:
>
      Needing items to cast spells is more along the lines of witchcraft
     >
      than sorcerous magic (read some Steven Brust <
      http://dreamcafe.com/
      >
     >
      to see what I mean). In CF the magic system seems to be sorcerous
     >
      based. The witchcraft based magic is more akin to alchemy in CF.
     
Why do you take this to be your reference point?

Real world magic is mostly con tricks and illusion anyway, and there
is therefore no 'correct' way (consistent with the real world) to
model the invocation of magic in a game.

Using items for spells to my mind is as such more an issue of game
balance than adherence to the fictional work of some random novelist.

Anyway, the old amiga RPG worlds of legend (I never did win that
game...) used a similar system, and I think runescape does too.

If you really want to get around the issue of carrying ingredients,
have it incorporated into diet. - define certain magic ingredients and
have food be able to contain them. eating that food would then
increment a counter stored as an invisible object on the player (or
directly on the player struct - that would be faster in combat). Then
decrease that back to zero every few hours (as the ingredients break
down in the players body), or whenever a spell is cast.

For extra effect, there could be variant sources of these foods which
did nasty things, like permanently reduce stats. Then there would be a
trade off (nice spells, or not needing to use more stat potions)

In terms of game balance, spell ingredients /could/ be useful.
Especially if they were created with alchemy/woodsman skills at high
level. - That skill could then become essential to the ongoing
usefulness of a wizard, and high level spells might be used a lot less
if they were sufficiently expensive. (probably that means not using
comet or meteor swarm against everything around - burning hands and
firebolt could be useful even at higher levels if they cost much less)