Tartarus Sorceror
Posts: 1698
Joined: Saturday, 18th June 2016, 13:57
A Species That Doesn't Need Books
The idea is that of a species that doesn't gain new spells through randomly found or gifted books. Instead, the player uses skilling to control what spells become available in his library. Once the spells are in the library, they have the usual prerequisites for learning and casting (slots and failure rate).
One of the aims is that of allowing certain playstyles without having to rely on book gods to make up for the rarity of certain spells. Certain backgrounds also need new spells before Lair, when, probably, only Kiku will have gifted new books. So e.g. Wizard can get alternative conjurations or hexes or summons, and VM can get Poison Arrow. Transmuters can play Cheib or Dith and be sure to find lvl 6 transmutations and upwards, and so on.
How do they get access to new spells?
There are many ways in which this can be done; I prefer options 1 and 4.
Option 1: As one of the school skills increases, they gain access to all spells of that school. (elegant in simplicity)
Option 2: As the spellcasting skill increases, they gain access to all spells. (it is also simple, but could be overwhelming, so I would avoid it. Plus the whole "no brainer" thing.)
Option 3: As they level up, they gain access to all spells. (setting the right rhythm in a way that is easily understandable would be difficult. Also overwhelming)
Option 4: A combination of the previous ones: you gain access to spells by e.g. 1/2 spellcasting + school skill. This is the one that would imo work best mechanically, allowing access to higher level spells at lower levels IF the player is interested into putting some skill into making them available by investing in spellcasting. At the same time, you gain a pool of lower level spells available from schools you didn't specialise in.
How would higher level spells be made available? My idea is, e.g. (the numbers need fine tuning):
skill level 0 unlocks level 1 spells
skill level 3 unlocks level 2 spells
skill level 6 unlocks level 3 spells
skill level 9 unlocks level 4 spells
skill level 12 unlocks level 5 spells
skill level 15 unlocks level 6 spells
skill level 18 unlocks level 7 spells
skill level 21 unlocks level 8 spells
skill level 24 unlocks level 9 spells.
With option four, for example, you would need fire magic 18 to unlock ring of flames, or fire magic 12 + spellcasting 12. How high INT is would probably play a role in choosing how much to train spellcasting (because of spell power + spell success), but I suspect that these mechanics are unclear to most players (they aren't all that clear to me, too).
How do they interact with spellbooks?
I prefer to cut them off from spellbooks, because the two mechanics overlap too much. Also, by the time the spell would be safely and reliably castable, it would also be available by skilling. Maybe an exception can be made for randart books, but I am not sure that it makes sense.
I also thought about allowing them to use books, and forcing them to learn a spell of a certain school from a book to be able to progress in that school and autonomously get to other spells of that school. This would make starting backgrounds more important and choosing new spells to learn somewhat less overwhelming (otherwise, you would be able to learn any lvl 1 spell at game start, which means choosing from a dozen spells).
Please discuss!