Non-combat magic

[V_K]

In a recent thread a question arose about out of combat uses for magic in CRPGs. To not derail it further I decided to start a new one.
I've compiled a more or less comprehensive list of non-combat spell effects I've seen implemented in various games. Additions are welcome, although I must note that I didn't include healing (because obvious and arguably still combat-related) and "increase skill x"-style buffs (because boring) on purpose.

Transportation:
Waterwalking, waterbreathing, levitation, teleportation. Probably passing through walls, although that overlaps with teleporation a bit. Also, invisibility, because it isn't worth it to add a special "Stealth magic" category for essentially a single effect.

Mind control:
Charm, detect lies, read mind. Probably possession, but it's usually implemented as a combat-only ability. Probably fear/peace spells that let you avoid combat encounters, but that's borderline. Can't think of anything else that doesn't overlap with non-magical diplomacy and thus isn't redundant.

Divination:
Detect enemies/traps/doors/illusions/whatever, Skyrim's clairvoyance (kinda hard to coin a more generic terms for it), magical maps (although those seem to become obsolete), scouting (wizard's eye and such).

Environment interaction:
Light/dark, un/lock, disarm, tekekinesis, creating (and dispelling) magic walls, elemental interactions (freezing water, dousing flames etc), weather changes. Theoretically this category should be the one with most opportunities, but in practice only the first three effects are somewhat common.

Inventory interaction:
Identifying and uncursing items, creating food/water, transmuting metals. Wouldn't put item enchantment here as it's basically crafting.

Communication:
Spirit/demon summoning (for communication purposes only), talking to animals etc. Very rarely seen as a mechanic and not a plot point, and even more rare as spells rather than skills. Lots of wasted potential, could be extremely fun if done right.

Shapeshifting:
Mostly used for combat, if not - than as transportation means (see Lands of Lore 2). Although it could be pretty interesting to use shapeshifting in social situations (i.e. appearing as someone else), but the only game I can think of that does something similar is Star Trail, and only on one or two occasions.

Summoning:
It's possible to have non-combat uses for summons also (see U8). Although this is a tricky mechanic, because if you can have the same abilities as your summons, they become redundant, and if you don't - that limits an already limited spell list. There might be a use for summons without special abilities though, for situations like needing to pull a couple of switches simultaneously or to just set off traps with them.


So these are the non-combat effects I've already seen in different games. Why is it so then that no single game has more than a handful of them? Or maybe I'm just the minority here and non-combat magic simply isn't fun? Would you personally want to play a wizard in a game that has no combat spells at all?

 

[k0syak]

^^Good list is good.
An alternative implementation of non-combat "magic" : have a Shaman class/kit that has access to herbology/alchemy/animal taming/basic weather divination, i.e. no real magic powers, but rather relying on his social status and accumulated knowledge to get shit done. It would require both an appropriate world/setting (uneducated and superstitious population, no "real magic" on every corner) and game design that makes "peaceful" problem resolving viable. Less dungeon crawling, more politics and diplomacy

 

[Damned Registrations]

Part of the problem with non combat magic is that it makes creating obstacles without giant glaring plotholes rather difficult. It's already bad enough when you need to surrender to the guards you could kill, find the keys to a door you can break, and pass through a checkpoint because your character can't navigate a 1 foot ditch on the side of the road. Throw in things like invisibility, levitation, and so forth, and it becomes trivially easy to circumvent almost any challenge. Wizards aren't top tier in DnD just because they can kill shit. They can also replicate all the skills the ranger, thief and bard have and then some.

Consider how many quests in an elder scrolls game you ought to be able to trivialize with a charm person spell (or how stupid a game like Diablo is when you can teleport through an entire floor in about 5 seconds).

Of course, in a game built around wizards you could compensate for this sort of thing, but most games features wizards alongside the plebian warriors and rogues, and non combat magic would just make them terribly useless.

 

[Grimwulf]

I'll just copy/paste some of Realm of Arkania spells here (The Dark Eye setting):

WITCH'S EYE: This spell allows war- locks and witches to recognize each
other by looking at their eyes

DESTRUCTIBO ARCANITE: Magic Powers, Hide Away. Draws all astral energy
from a magic artifact, thus turning it into a mundane non magical item

DANCE!: Forces the target to dance until exhausted

GREAT NEED: Causes an overwhelming unspecified desire in the spell's
target causing him or her to ignore anything else

RESPONDAMI VERITU: Tell Me Now And Tell Me True. Forces the target to
speak the truth

SOLIDIRID RAINBOW'S HUE: Carry To My Goal True. Creates a magic rainbow
bridge of up to 50 paces in length

WITHOUT A TRACE, WITHOUT A TRACK: Be My Step On Sand. Allows the caster
to move without leaving any trace of his or her passing.

ABVENENUM BILE AND ROT: Leave This Food Without A Spot. Purifies poi-
soned or spoiled food

AEOLlTUS, COME AND VEER: Blow The Dust And Smoke From Here. Creates a
small breeze

BURN!: Can be used to light flammables, for example, torches without
benefit of a tinder box

SILENTIUM SILENTILL: All Is Still Suppresses all sound around the caster

I only mentioned those which I didn't see on your list. There are a lot more, and I belive the game has evrything from yer list. In fact most of the game spells are for non-combat use. So I disagree with

Why is it so then that no single game has more than a handful of them?

 

[Perkel]

Part of the problem with non combat magic is that it makes creating obstacles without giant glaring plotholes rather difficult. It's already bad enough when you need to surrender to the guards you could kill, find the keys to a door you can break, and pass through a checkpoint because your character can't navigate a 1 foot ditch on the side of the road. Throw in things like invisibility, levitation, and so forth, and it becomes trivially easy to circumvent almost any challenge. Wizards aren't top tier in DnD just because they can kill shit. They can also replicate all the skills the ranger, thief and bard have and then some.

Consider how many quests in an elder scrolls game you ought to be able to trivialize with a charm person spell (or how stupid a game like Diablo is when you can teleport through an entire floor in about 5 seconds).

Of course, in a game built around wizards you could compensate for this sort of thing, but most games features wizards alongside the plebian warriors and rogues, and non combat magic would just make them terribly useless.

Emergent gameplay. If game supports various systems amd ton of tags then no longer designer is constrained to creation of ton of different "what if" cases but to find failed "what if" scenarios in which player brakes game. The more systemic game is layered the less player can brake and the harder is to make use of that system to deliver story other than kill x guy.

Basically the more game is sandbox based on underlying systems for everything the more ways of doing things you have at your disposal to create for game.

The more focused game is the less stuff you can do with magic outside of battle as you need player to fallow some story in "linear" way and with things like superjump player would simply jump in siege over walls instead of triggering events or some crucial story arc.

 

[eric__s]

Yeah, it was mentioned above, Realms of Arkania has a pretty diverse spell list. I remember a few spells in particular - melt solid is used to free a woman named Helen, who joins your party, from a block of ice. You can dispell a ghost who blocks your path in a particular dungeon. Some businesses won't serve certain races so you can turn them invisible or temporarily transform them into children to get them to serve you. These are all pretty cool, the problem is that for the most part, these spells have one or two uses throughout the entire series. I remember there was this one transmutation spell, I can't remember what it's called, that is extremely difficult for any class to learn. You need to specifically invest in this spell every single level for 7 or 8 levels to get it to the point where you can cast it. When you eventually get there, the game tells you that it requires herbs that don't grow in the game region. Despite existing in the game and requiring a huge investment, the game specifically tells you that you cannot use this spell when you try to use it. That's how quite a few of them feel.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's not really a matter of linearity or not. It's just a matter of magical solutions eliminating the possibility of using something as an obstacle. If you have a wall in the way, you might be able to climb it, or steal a key, or bribe a guard, or smash the door, or disguise yourself to get in. But if you have a wizard, all that shit is irrelevant. Every fucking party with a wizard will float over the wall (or whatever other spell he has that can bypass a wall, I could name half a dozen easily.) So why even make those other options there? Why have a wall? If you can mind control people then you may as well throw out all the dialogue in the game, no need to convince anyone of anything when they're all your bestest buddies. Unless the game is just giving people plot armour from that effect, like the assholes in morrowind you had to appease instead of just charming them into giving you whatever you want. This is basically tantamount to invisible walls to keep you from going over the real walls.

Lets not even get into how much summoned minions trivialize a dungeon. Every trap ever is made essentially useless by summoning basically anything and having it walk in front of you and open shit in your place and stare at the funny glyphs on the walls for you.

 

[Perkel]

That is why imo magic system should always come with downsides.
Somebody mentioned pact with magical creature something like that.

Magic in games often is infinite. D&D in games menaged to curb magic spam but it wasn't great system.

Also this is why i talked about systems. If for example NPC would be able to raise alarm in case of someone floating over wall then that person will surely be taken down by crossbows and allarm raised which means party would need to run away as they can't fight whole garrison.

If there would be rumor system in place you killing left and right with fireballs could make people talk rumors about you being cruel as fuck and that would eventually lead to adventurers specialized in anti magic coming to kill you.

Same as for example you killing whole garnison for item in barracks. I doubt who ever rules in that area will care if your action were "just" as he lost military power for some unknown mage.

 

[Norfleet]

Every trap ever is made essentially useless by summoning basically anything and having it walk in front of you and open shit in your place and stare at the funny glyphs on the walls for you.

If you think that all traps can be disarmed just by having someone expendable go first, you will be in for a real shock when you encounter real traps, which are often devious enough to do stuff like NOT detonate when the first unit passes through, instead waiting until the trap further down the line has detonated, destroying the lead vehicle, before detonating to create a blockage of destroyed vehicles both front and rear, trapping the column in place.

In fact, even just detonating on the second target is a huge improvement in trap efficacy. The first guy through is usually either an expendable, a tank, or a rogue with evasion immunity to traps being pushed ahead to disarm them either by detection, or setting them off and dodging them, but the second or third guy through is probably a squishy. So a trap which explodes after the second or third man trips it will be nasty. So the guy trying the summon trick on a trap will run over it with the summon, arming it, but causing no detonation, and when he moves his real party through, boom.

You can make this further nastier and counter save-scouting by having only SOME of the traps be randomly active, with the decision of whether a trap "exists" being made only after it is either triggered, or detected to exist/not exist, and so the selection of possible traps that can be encountered will differ each load.

Traps are the most devious thing in both RPGs, if done right, and in real life, where they are more feared and hated than actual live enemies.

 

[V_K]

Part of the problem with non combat magic is that it makes creating obstacles without giant glaring plotholes rather difficult. It's already bad enough when you need to surrender to the guards you could kill, find the keys to a door you can break, and pass through a checkpoint because your character can't navigate a 1 foot ditch on the side of the road. Throw in things like invisibility, levitation, and so forth, and it becomes trivially easy to circumvent almost any challenge. Wizards aren't top tier in DnD just because they can kill shit. They can also replicate all the skills the ranger, thief and bard have and then some.

Consider how many quests in an elder scrolls game you ought to be able to trivialize with a charm person spell (or how stupid a game like Diablo is when you can teleport through an entire floor in about 5 seconds).

Of course, in a game built around wizards you could compensate for this sort of thing, but most games features wizards alongside the plebian warriors and rogues, and non combat magic would just make them terribly useless.

But there's quite a number of ways to combat that.
Magic could be expensive - relying on reagents, for example, like in Ultima games, only with reagents being much less common. Or magic skills can be ultra-specialized and cost a ton to develop.
Magic could have limitations - like for Charm to work you'd need a personal item from the target etc.
People in the gameworld could be actually aware of the existance of magic and build defenses to take that into account. For example, in a number of fantasy novels a caster can detect whether magic is used in his vicinity - so you can have some sort of a magic alarm.
Etc, etc. All it needs is a bit of creative thinking.

 

[V_K]

I'll just copy/paste some of Realm of Arkania spells here (The Dark Eye setting):

WITCH'S EYE: This spell allows war- locks and witches to recognize each
other by looking at their eyes

DESTRUCTIBO ARCANITE: Magic Powers, Hide Away. Draws all astral energy
from a magic artifact, thus turning it into a mundane non magical item

DANCE!: Forces the target to dance until exhausted

GREAT NEED: Causes an overwhelming unspecified desire in the spell's
target causing him or her to ignore anything else

RESPONDAMI VERITU: Tell Me Now And Tell Me True. Forces the target to
speak the truth

SOLIDIRID RAINBOW'S HUE: Carry To My Goal True. Creates a magic rainbow
bridge of up to 50 paces in length

WITHOUT A TRACE, WITHOUT A TRACK: Be My Step On Sand. Allows the caster
to move without leaving any trace of his or her passing.

ABVENENUM BILE AND ROT: Leave This Food Without A Spot. Purifies poi-
soned or spoiled food

AEOLlTUS, COME AND VEER: Blow The Dust And Smoke From Here. Creates a
small breeze

BURN!: Can be used to light flammables, for example, torches without
benefit of a tinder box

SILENTIUM SILENTILL: All Is Still Suppresses all sound around the caster

I only mentioned those which I didn't see on your list. There are a lot more, and I belive the game has evrything from yer list. In fact most of the game spells are for non-combat use. So I disagree with

Why is it so then that no single game has more than a handful of them?

Dance and Great Need are combat spells, of the rest you mentioned only Burn and Abvenenum have actual uses in game IIRC, everything else is just flavour.
RoA is one of the better series in that department, but it still has quite a few shortcomings.

 

[laclongquan]

Identify: It is vexing why you can identify some ancient artifact in the wild that easily. it should have been very limited, only big shop in big city can do it, each unit cost time AND money. As it is, currently the only cost associated with it is opportunity investment, as in your mages need expend some slots for spell, or your intellectual guys invest more in skills.

Say, your best identifier in your party can make a guess at semicommon items. For rare to artifact, off to the shop goes you. Shell out some pretty big shekels, and wait for, say, 30 minutes real time.

2nd: Camp making spell/skill.

You can sleep in the wild with no food, no water, and no fire? Fuck. You.
Spell to purify water, to reuse it from cleaning -- consume.
Spell to protect travel food from being rotten.
Spell to make fire, because you not always can find fuel. this is immensely important.

This is a complete skill set for ranger, or 3 spell slots in a mage's memory.
(Why three? Because a cave with brooks have no need for 1st spell, an dead grove with 3rd, or an ice field with 2nd. You can customize your set of spell for each dungeon).

 

[baturinsky]

Can you imagine ANY activity in game, or not game, in combat or not in combat, that can't be theoretically done by magic, or with assistance of magic?

 

[V_K]

Can you imagine ANY activity in game, or not game, in combat or not in combat, that can't be theoretically done by magic, or with assistance of magic?

I think making wizards "jacks of all trades at the cost of spellpoints" is also a wrong approach, as it makes them (or other classes - depending on how costly magic is) rather redundant. That's another principle I tried to adhere to when compiling the list in the OP: to avoid overlapping too much with other class abilities.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Also, invisibility, because it isn't worth it to add a special "Stealth magic" category for essentially a single effect.

D&D: Darkness, Silence (it isn't only for muting spellcasters, though I can't remember, off-hand, actual opportunities in games to use it for non-combat sneaking).
TES: Muffle, Chameleon.

There also were Light, Blindness/Deafness, Doom and Bestow Curse, but the problem with the latter three is the games were designed for violence, so there weren't non-combat uses for them, unfortunately (as far as I recall).

 

[V_K]

Also, invisibility, because it isn't worth it to add a special "Stealth magic" category for essentially a single effect.

D&D: Darkness, Silence (it isn't only for muting spellcasters, though I can't remember, off-hand, actual opportunities in games to use it for non-combat sneaking).
TES: Muffle, Chameleon.

There also were Light, Blindness/Deafness, Doom and Bestow Curse, but the problem with the latter three is the games were designed for violence, so there weren't non-combat uses for them, unfortunately (as far as I recall).

Ok, I stand corrected.

 

[TigerKnee]

I think making wizards "jacks of all trades at the cost of spellpoints" is also a wrong approach, as it makes them (or other classes - depending on how costly magic is) rather redundant.

This is a good point.

Usually if you're a fighter in an RPG, you get like enough skill points to specialize in 1 or 2 weapons and then fuck you for trying to do any non-combat stuff harder than tying a rope or something. Or the other way round with a Rogue class - mostly shit at combat, a bunch of non-combat skills.

Meanwhile, Wizards has access to everything as long as he has access to rest, which if you cut off access to, also affects the rest of the party (now they won't have magic support to back them up). Even if you pick a speciality wizard like Illusionist, he still has access to all the other Wizard spells like Web, Grease, Sleep, Unlock Trap/Chest, etc, just go to sleep and you'll get everything restocked.

It's like they have infinite Respecs just by sleeping.

Imagine if Wizard class actually has to choose their speciality and is limited to their branch unless you put in a lot of investment. You pick Illusionist and you get all the Illusion spells and if you spend skill points MAYBE you can branch out to get support spells. Or you pick Blaster Mage and now you have to pay out your ass for support spells, or etc...

 

[Glaurung]

Part of the problem with non combat magic is that it makes creating obstacles without giant glaring plotholes rather difficult. It's already bad enough when you need to surrender to the guards you could kill, find the keys to a door you can break, and pass through a checkpoint because your character can't navigate a 1 foot ditch on the side of the road. Throw in things like invisibility, levitation, and so forth, and it becomes trivially easy to circumvent almost any challenge. Wizards aren't top tier in DnD just because they can kill shit. They can also replicate all the skills the ranger, thief and bard have and then some.

Consider how many quests in an elder scrolls game you ought to be able to trivialize with a charm person spell (or how stupid a game like Diablo is when you can teleport through an entire floor in about 5 seconds).

Of course, in a game built around wizards you could compensate for this sort of thing, but most games features wizards alongside the plebian warriors and rogues, and non combat magic would just make them terribly useless.

There's two ways to counteract the potentially overpowered nature of he mage class - arbitrarily restrict a mage's abilities so they don't overlap with rogue/warrior (used by DA), or make mages dependable on magical instruments, becoming useless if they are ever parted with them.

For instance, in the fantasy setting I'm working on, a mage's spellcasting ability is entirely dependent on their book/scroll of spells and their mage staff. The only way to cast spells is by reading them off a magical book/scroll - simply voicing the words from memory does nothing, and you can store a finite amount of spells in your enchanted staff to quickfire them in combat. Take away the book/staff, put the mage behind bars, and he/she/it is just as trapped as anyone else. At least a rogue can hide a hairpin in his asshole and then pick the lock, a warrior could saw down and break a rusty bar.



If you're wondering about the magical theory behind this process, then it goes as follows. Mages are people who have learned to manipulate the primal substance known as Flux, from which the universe was created. In the moment of creating the entire universe was a hyper-concentrated core of pure Flux, but the ever-changing nature of the primal substance caused it to almost instantly collapse into four different kinds of matter, creating the elements of fire, air, water and earth from which the material universe is made. Residues of Flux are trapped within each of these elements and can be harvested and manipulated to create "magical" effects. These one magical craft for each of the four elements - Evocation, Alchemy, Artifice and Divination. Flux is also found within each living creature's spirit, and the only way to do magic is to create a resonance between the Internal Flux of a mage's spirit and external Flux of the selected elemental instrument.

Evocation is a craft aligned with the element of air, it involves the creation and usage of "spells" - arcane formulae inscribed on parchment (paper, stone, any flat writable surface really) in refined liquid Flux (provided by Alchemists who distill it from both organic and inorganic substances that are rich in Flux), creating resonant aerial vibrations when read by a mage (mage = person whose spirit contains an ordered amount of Flux). The only way to cast spells is to speak the incantation in the immediate presence of a corresponding Flux-inscribed formula, the words themselves have no effect.

Casting a spell essentially causes a tiny "counterfeit" moment of creation - basically a micro-Big Bang that creates a new micro-universe (that carries the desired magical effect) superimposed over the original one. This is to further drive the point that magic isn't simply advanced chemistry/science - your effect does not stem from any pre-existing physical laws or causal chains, but rather creates a new causal chain from scratch.

 

[Darth Roxor]

There's two ways to counteract the potentially overpowered nature of he mage class - arbitrarily restrict a mage's abilities so they don't overlap with rogue/warrior (used by DA), or make mages dependable on magical instruments, becoming useless if they are ever parted with them.

There's also the third - give every spellcast a chance to explode the mage.

 

[Gord]

With a large enough spell list, the mage can simply be forced to specialise enough to prevent jack-of-all-trades characters.
That is in principle what's happening in TDE, where it's unlikely that you can level enough spells far enough with one mage to make other chars completely redundant.

Besides, a certain redundancy isn't really a problem. In fact I think its a sign of a good system when there's some overlap between different classes as long as they stay unique and provide enough variety to play them instead of just picking one that anyway can do everything you'd want him to.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Yeah, it was mentioned above, Realms of Arkania has a pretty diverse spell list. I remember a few spells in particular - melt solid is used to free a woman named Helen, who joins your party, from a block of ice. You can dispell a ghost who blocks your path in a particular dungeon. Some businesses won't serve certain races so you can turn them invisible or temporarily transform them into children to get them to serve you. These are all pretty cool, the problem is that for the most part, these spells have one or two uses throughout the entire series. I remember there was this one transmutation spell, I can't remember what it's called, that is extremely difficult for any class to learn. You need to specifically invest in this spell every single level for 7 or 8 levels to get it to the point where you can cast it. When you eventually get there, the game tells you that it requires herbs that don't grow in the game region. Despite existing in the game and requiring a huge investment, the game specifically tells you that you cannot use this spell when you try to use it. That's how quite a few of them feel.

Do you remember which game had it ?

 

[baturinsky]

http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/supernatural/witches.php
Random item conversion, charm, cure or inflict some states, raise or drop some needs, upgrade appliances, clean house

http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/supernatural/fairies.php
Mostly pranks, accelerate plant growth, some boosting auras - improve performance, give positive moodlet.

There is also alchemy and chemistry that can alter sims in a lot of different ways and overlap a lot with each other and with witchcraft/fairycraft.

 

[Mangoose]

Lol dude you can't avoid combat in RPGs

 

[V_K]

Lol dude you can't avoid combat in RPGs

Oh, but your wrong. There already are a few RPGs where completely or nearly combatless playthroughs are possible. In Quest for Glory series, for example, if you're playing a mage or thief 80% to 100% of your challenges are non-combat.
I even have a sorta design doc somewhere of a dugeon crawl, built completely around auxiliary mechanics like traps, stealth, survival and some very limited magic. It's some pity it's never going to be made into actual game.

 

[Mangoose]

Lol dude you can't avoid combat in RPGs

Oh, but your wrong. There already are a few RPGs where completely or nearly combatless playthroughs are possible. In Quest for Glory series, for example, if you're playing a mage or thief 80% to 100% of your challenges are non-combat.
I even have a sorta design doc somewhere of a dugeon crawl, built completely around auxiliary mechanics like traps, stealth, survival and some very limited magic. It's some pity it's never going to be made into actual game.

Traps, huh? Sounds like violence to me.