Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Fight with a Dragon and Magic Musings

I put up results of a mid-level play test for a dragon fight on the forums. It turned out quite well, and I learned a few things... one of these is about magicians and spell books.

One of the things a magician can do is cast a spell from his or her spell book during combat by spending a Resolve point. This begs the question- how many spells can a magician have in his or her book? Casting from your book is different than casting from a scroll; a scroll also requires the use of a resolve point, but it destroys the scroll in the process. Once you copy a scroll into your book (which also destroys the scroll), you infuse that magical energy permanently into the tome.

My instinct is to keep this relatively low, and to tie it to one of three things: level, arcane bolt rating, or lore rating. Here are my thoughts:

- Level keeps it pretty uniform, and makes sure that you don't get too ahead of yourself too early. I don't like this, because this is a step towards 'all level 3 magicians are created equal'. If all level 3 magicians have 3 spells in their book,
- Tying it to Arcane Bolt is better, but Arcane Bolt is already pretty powerful as it is. I'd rather...
- Tie it to Lore. This makes the most sense. Lore is your 'secondary' ability as a magician, but it reflects your care of study and the craft of magic, whereas your arcane bolt rating more directly reflects your quest for pure power. The best magicians will balance these two things, but you definitely get to choose where you put the focus. I'd think that the scholarly types would be more likely to have gathered a wider range of spells and to have thicker spellbooks. Another one of those world synergizes with game synergizes with characters moments.

Hmmm. By the ways, this is post #192 for the blog. I think that post 200 should be for the release of the game... I either need to pace my blog entries, or pick up the pace of writing (or I could just accept that the release might be at post 250, and post like CRAZY until then).

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