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| Thread: Magic System Ideas |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
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posted October 11, 2020 09:02 PM |
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Alon said:
There are a lot of special actions for might heroes:
- Inspiring units to act a second time.
- Using tactical acumen to merge and split stacks mid-battle.
- Controlling siege engines.
- Directing one stack to charge for extra damage, or to strike-and-return.
- Expanding the map on the edges to flank enemy units hiding in a corner.
Yup, that's the approach I am using in my proposals with the tagging system. However, 'might' actions are tagged, whilst 'magic and commanding' actions are from the sidelines.
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
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posted October 17, 2020 07:38 PM |
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MattII said:
Okay, after a bit of thought, I've come to the conclusion that the magic system in the HoMM series is in need of improvement. Heroes 3 is perhaps the most egregious offender in this regard, mixing mass spells with regular ones, but all of the games are flawed to some degree. Some of the big flaws are a fixed cost, and fixed effect. So here are my ideas for fixing them:
In my opinion the biggest flaw in the magic system is not the fixed spell costs but rather the scaling of magic and the importance of some spells.
A "mage" class hero with 50 spell power will cast the same slow as a level 2 babarian, -60% movement for all units. Its a joke. Now consider the power of some single spells like "Blind" or "Slow" is totaly enough to have a few spells in your reportoir and you will be fine for 95% of your battles. Even if there are some spells that would be situational better, you will do fine by just learning Expert Earth and than foucs on fighting secondary skills.
Damage spells scale very bad on big maps with a lot of creatures. Its just not fun at all to use them at some point in the game.
Magic gets countered so easily. If your units gets blinded you must heal and all your spell casting is wasted for that round.
Magic heroes must scale better and get a way to have an edge over other heroes in terms of using magic.
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Alon
Known Hero
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posted October 18, 2020 08:36 AM |
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So... a friend who's doing a lot of indie TTRPG design brings up how hit points are useful as an abstraction for physical combat, and can also be used for magic. In D&D, the sleep spell targets creatures by hit points, to avoid being too OP. This can also be done for mind-affecting spells, for example a charm spell would not be a yes-or-no wisdom saving throw but rather an attack on the target's pool of mental hit points. This is also how morale works in Legend of Keepers - the heroes you fight have a hit point pool and a morale pool and you can target either, and when their morale pool depletes, they run away.
If everything is abstracted as hit points, then spells scale very easily. A lightning bolt reduces the target's physical hit points, by an amount that scales with the caster's spell power or the size of the unit stack; a protection spell gives the target extra hit points to absorb. A slow spell reduces the target's movement hit points, and a haste spell increases that pool. A charm, fear, etc. spell reduces the target's morale hit points; this also works well as realism, since there's safety in numbers so a bigger army is harder to demoralize than a smaller one.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 18, 2020 11:37 AM |
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Alon said:
So... a friend who's doing a lot of indie TTRPG design brings up how hit points are useful as an abstraction for physical combat, and can also be used for magic. In D&D, the sleep spell targets creatures by hit points, to avoid being too OP. This can also be done for mind-affecting spells, for example a charm spell would not be a yes-or-no wisdom saving throw but rather an attack on the target's pool of mental hit points. This is also how morale works in Legend of Keepers - the heroes you fight have a hit point pool and a morale pool and you can target either, and when their morale pool depletes, they run away.
If everything is abstracted as hit points, then spells scale very easily. A lightning bolt reduces the target's physical hit points, by an amount that scales with the caster's spell power or the size of the unit stack; a protection spell gives the target extra hit points to absorb. A slow spell reduces the target's movement hit points, and a haste spell increases that pool. A charm, fear, etc. spell reduces the target's morale hit points; this also works well as realism, since there's safety in numbers so a bigger army is harder to demoralize than a smaller one.
What about creatures of different tiers which are the same race? Should (taking H7 as a reference) a Guardian or Blade Dancer take more magic to charm than a Sentinel or Hunter?
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Alon
Known Hero
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posted October 18, 2020 12:32 PM |
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MattII said:
What about creatures of different tiers which are the same race? Should (taking H7 as a reference) a Guardian or Blade Dancer take more magic to charm than a Sentinel or Hunter?
Yeah, presumably stronger units should also have higher morale pool... unless they're specifically designed to have that as a weakness, of course.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted October 18, 2020 09:09 PM |
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MattII said:
An interesting idea. But if you have to pay for each spell, why are you paying rare resources for the Mage Guild? IMO, the cost of the spells is included in the building, given that it costs increasing amounts of rare resources as you go up levels..
As I said the same you must build dwelling and its not enough. You must buy creatures.
Quote:
The difference between a might and magic hero are based on which skills (both primary and secondary) they're likely to receive at each level-up. And I'm fine with that, I don't think heroes should be pigeonholed into just 'might' or just 'magic'. That's like saying an artist should only be able to get a job as an artist, or a lawyer a job as a lawyer.
Specialisation is better. Worst is if all hero of all castle is nearly the same. If we have class we must have specialisation.
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veteran_player
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 18, 2020 10:18 PM |
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Baronus said:
Specialisation is better. Worst is if all hero of all castle is nearly the same. If we have class we must have specialisation.
Yes, I agree. The one exception I see, is Stronghold heroes. They are mostly terrible at magic! But, another approach is blending the different hero classes, so they can both cast useful spells and successfully use their weapons... ;So as to unleash their full strategic potential! 
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted October 19, 2020 04:53 AM |
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Baronus said:
As I said the same you must build dwelling and its not enough. You must buy creatures.
Once spell is in your spellbook you never have to bother with the Mage Guild again. Not so creatures.
Quote:
Specialisation is better. Worst is if all hero of all castle is nearly the same. If we have class we must have specialisation.
Choice is better, forced specialisation isn't fun at all.
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Alon
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2020 12:17 PM |
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I just read this study of people's intuitive understandings of relative effort for spellcasting - might be useful for assigning spells to different levels and SP cost...
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217513
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PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
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posted October 19, 2020 03:47 PM |
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My classification would be considerably different.
____________
"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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Alon
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2020 04:13 PM |
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What would your classification be?
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PandaTar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Celestial Heavens Mascot
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posted October 19, 2020 09:32 PM |
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Top to bottom.
Teleport
Conjure | Cease
Transform
Stone
Invisible
Big
Split
Levitate
Color
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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