How to improve the magic skill

[massimoC]

I still think the current problems of magic as a career are that

 

(1) there is nothing in EL preventing any characther from doing magic without spending a single PP on magic-related abilities, and

 

(2) the progression in magic, that is the order and ease of casting the spells, is the same for all charachters.

 

All the examples of magic in combat I have seen, they rely on the fact that high-rank pkers can cast essentially any spell they want after practicing thousands of restores, and bringing with them tons of SRS. I'm starting to see it as a form of doping....

 

note A (see discussion on using magic nexus or ethereality for exploiting scrolls or stones, or runes; IMHO this makes sense, magic nexus should be needed to build such things like other nexuses are needed to harvest and craft; and ethereality of the caster seems also appropriate to condition the probability of failure and/or the strongness of the effect)

 

note B (this is essentially the same that happens with summoning stones: the solution found for summoning is to require costly stuff to make them; but on the other hand, as summoners want to level up, summoning stones are quite easy to find on the market; we should avoid loosing control of this kind of effect with magic; the idea on non-transferable "virtual" essences fits role-playing and also solves the problem)

 

Back to the main discussion, if you compare the situation of magic with the fact that to buy and create ordinary things you HAVE to develop abilities and buy nexus points with PPs (or very large amounts of money), and that magicians get essentially no economic benefit from their abilities, this makes the game quite unbalanced toward pkers and crafters. This despite the magic system of EL is quite interesting and open to many developments. I think that applying more strict requirements to cast spells (including the current ones, from restore up) AND generating new spells (the combination system is quite interesting and fits with EL, though we do not need to enable any combination immediately) it would make the game more variate.

 

This also connects with the anecdote cited in a previous post: if not all characters have the same ease or possibility of casting different spells, then it is much more to the smartness of the player to exploit at best what he can actually cast.

 

So I share some previous proposals and make two new ones

 

1 - having virtual essences to be used for casting spells; non transferable, they should not reduce the cost of spells, but allow more spells to be casted in sequence;they make you spend some PP in magic nexus, and maybe incentivate a mixed magician/crafter caree path; moreover, normal essences spent this way are gone, so this could impose a limit in the mindless use of more advanced spells.

 

2 - condition the spell effect on the ethereality/reasoning etc. of the caster. Some spells should not be easily accessible to you character if you e.g. kept reasoning stuck to 4...

 

3 - apply the same to a few magical artifacst: you need nexus to build, much like you need to craft magic swords, and they are conditioned (maybe more lightly) to the caster stats. Avoid restore stones, that makes trivial the fight....

 

My additional proposals are that :

 

4 - different spells are conditioned by different characteristics of the caster. This is not possible for all spells (little use for a shield that is proportional to you physique), but it might be feasible in some cases, e.g by conditioning different spells to a different mix of reasoning, rationality, ethereality, and possibly charm or instinct.

 

5 - Some probabilities may be related to special items that amplify a specific magic (more "virtual essences"? bringing in your inentory enriched essences as talismans to amplify some spells?) These items would be analoguous, for magic. of saving stones or rostogol stones, they would reduce falure or amplify effects of a specific spell or set of spells.

 

 

Xam