Water is the most underrated element on fantasy.

[Thac0]

I love strong water magic in games. Water, wind and earth have always been my favourite spell schools, as opposed to fire, dark or light they tend to get all the weird abilities, buffs, debuffs, ailments or complete rule breaks like time manipulation.

In the game where my avatar is from, Romancing SaGa 2, Water magic is completely busted. For most of the game it has a nice repertoire of utility moves. Heals, aoe ice showers, status cleanses, defensive buffs and the like. The final water magic however is Hasten Time. Hasten Time is a buff that for the next few turns allows all your units to always take the initiative first before the enemy. Nice and dandy, a cool buff. It has however a second effect, if you cast Hasten Time before the enemy all moves of the enemy get cancelled. You can cast Hasten Time in the guaranteed first strike you get from Hasten Time, to loop Hasten Time and lock your opponent out of the game.

In this speedrun you can see the final boss of Romancing SaGa 2 being slaughtered by infinite turns with Hasten Time.


Water Magic is obviously better balanced in the sequel, where every character can only cast Hasten Time once per fight. But the sheer magnitude of locking the final enemy out of the fight for as long as my casters had MP through temporal manipulation portrayed very well what max level water mages should be capable of.

 

[Poseidon00]

2nd and 3rd edition Plane of Water would absolutely be a great place for an rpg. No idea how they handled it after that but they had some really good and never explored concepts.

 

[Ziem]

question is why the hell would i want to be a fucking water boi
if i wanted that id apply for an internship

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Water has a lot of interesting properties, like incompressibility, hydrogen bonding, and a high specific heat capacity. The main reason people think water is boring is because game designers are pig ignorant, so they can't come up with any ideas on their own and must copy ideas others have already done.

 

[Cryomancer]

I think the problem with water is its competition. Fire can harm and destroy simply by being there

Well, destruction is not the unique utility of magic. A water elementarist can for example, raise walls of water and freeze it, essentially creating a defensive structure with little to no effort. Flood enemy agriculture and help ally agriculture, can have 1001 uses on agriculture and in battle, doesn't need to worry much about collateral damage. Creative usage of magic in interesting ways, in and outside combat makes magic far more interesting than just "flashy big numbers".

Just my opinion.

Everyone agrees that Pillars 2 naval battles are trash. But imagine if you had a battle more akin to the game mode where yuo control a ship and could use water spells there...

And is not as if you don't have good offensive water spells on gurps.

• Flesh to Ice - Equal in power to flesh to stone on D&D.
• Dehydrate - Eqqual to Horrid Wilting
• Ice Dagger
• Hail
• Tide
• Geyser
• Steamjet
• Rain of Acid
• Acid ball
• Acid jet
• Rain of Ice Daggers
• Icy Breath
• Storm
• (...)

All from GURPS 4e MAGIC book.

Seems way better than "aquaman powers"

Maybe it's just that water is a pain to animate and make effects for?

Nice point.

Animation is relative hard

2nd and 3rd edition Plane of Water would absolutely be a great place for an rpg. No idea how they handled it after that but they had some really good and never explored concepts.

I agree. If I ever make a RPG or a module for a game, it will gonna be water heavy.

like time manipulation.

Time bubble on G3.

Best end game spell ever. In cool aspect. Meteor and army of darkness was technically stronger but time bubble was the coolest one.

 

[deuxhero]

The reason Maelstorm isn't included in Kingmaker is pretty simple: It's dependent upon 5 critical words "in a body of water".

 

[Hag]

You don't meet any water mage because they all go to live under the sea away from the other dorks (source : Conquest of Elyseum).

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Seems some effects require other elemental influence. Hurricanes-air, geyser-fire, mudslide-earth, any ice-air.

Meh! Maybe I should look at Dark Sun for further suggestions. Its true I often avoid water magic unless it has major healing/cure poison/clending powers and/or ice/freezing effects.

 

[Daemongar]

Maybe it's just that water is a pain to animate and make effects for?

Think it just comes down to limited resources. While water magic in games may be underdeveloped, so what? Fire magic is limited to Fireball or some derivative in 90% of games.

You know what games do when they have both water magic and fire magic? They just take the water elementals and make them blue instead of red. Same for fireballs, or wall of flame, all that. Instead of burning damage you take cold damage or splash damage.

Before anyone mentions it: The only exception would be the revolutionary effect of Magikarp in the Pokemon universe. That was lightening in a bottle. That fish set the gold standard for water magic, and everything else a little watered down. There is no pc game equivalent to "splash attack" and while it's unfortunate, guess in some ways PC's have a ways to go to catch up to consoles and mobile game devices.

 

[Rewrite]

OP, this is you:

And is not as if you don't have good offensive water spells on gurps.

• Cum to Flesh
• Ejaculate!
• Cum Dagger
• Jizz
• Bukkake
• Geyser...
• Streamjet
• Rain of Acidic Tasting Cum
  
• Cumblop
• Cum jet
• Rain of Cum
• Cum Breath...
• Storm of Cum
  
• (...)

Water Mages on returning :

• Circle 1 = Small jizzy, Cum Arrow
• Circle 2 = Cum spear, summon CUM wolves
• Circle 3 = Jizz ball, Cum block
• Circle 4 = White Strike, Summon Goo Golem
• Circle 5 = Piss First, Cum Wave
• Circle 6 = S E M E N

 

[vota DC]

Because lizardmen in Age of wonders 1

 

[Gregz]

Elemental magic is a relatively new, and in fact, limiting paradigm. It’s convenient to use in cRPGs, but stunted.

Spell casting in older PnP D&D was far more imaginative, poetic, and fantastical.

 

[Metronome]

Most underrated element in fantasy

That would be wood.

 

[0sacred]

ur right water is gud

 

[Serious_Business]

So convos about the aristotelian four elements, I see. Some metaphysical shit. True rpg talk. Feeling like I'm back in the first year philosophy classes. Look at all these little bastards looking to believe in reason, these soft brains that are ripe to be molded... I will fucking tax you lunch money

Whatever man. What about that piss elemental. Did you think about this. I guess piss isn't pure and simple enough to be an element, but then you perhaps never properly tasted it

 

[Pink Eye]

In the Ravenloft games, you can create water from air! The power! The Create Water spell is invaluable when navigating the scorching deserts of Har'Akir!

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Water is everywhere. It's in the air, in the flora and fauna of the earth. The sea, the rivers and the streams; the rain, the snow and fog. As others have said, lack of creativity is the only reason it doesn't get used more, especially in gaming. One only needs to watch the Avatar cartoons to get their fill of unique ways water can be used offensively without resorting to to Ice, not that Ice and Snow aren't welcome aspects of it to include.

The Earthsea setting is ripe for use in a CRPG and water magic would really shine given that it's an archipelago spread over unending tracts of open sea. The utility alone would be worth specializing in when travel often relies on fair seas or a mage skilled at weather-working.

 

[Sykar]

Water Blast is a cool power set in City of Heroes:



Berserk has the cool fight against the Kundalini, a kind of serpent water spirit iirc:

Arcanum has one magic school for each element including water, which is more defensive minded though offers summining a decent elemental.

 

[Cryomancer]

Seems some effects require other elemental influence.

On Kingmaker, Kineticist water element can deal bludgeoning damage or cold element. And if both are used at the same time, it makes a ice spear dishing cold + piercing damage. IRL, water jet can be used to cut stuff. The "power" to manipulate water, even if only on liquid state would be amazing, not only in "warfare", but in agriculture, in naval transport, medicine(...) and if you can change the state from solid to liquid and gas, then you have even more options. For example, mixing poison in water and using it to create poisonous fog. Kiill someone with a ice spear and evaporate the ice, getting rid of the "crime weapon", throw water into your enemy and quickly freeze it, locking him in ice.

Water Blast is a cool power set in City of Heroes:

Amazing. Is sad that this mmo is now dead...

 

[Sykar]

Seems some effects require other elemental influence.

On Kingmaker, Kineticist water element can deal bludgeoning damage or cold element. And if both are used at the same time, it makes a ice spear dishing cold + piercing damage. IRL, water jet can be used to cut stuff. The "power" to manipulate water, even if only on liquid state would be amazing, not only in "warfare", but in agriculture, in naval transport, medicine(...) and if you can change the state from solid to liquid and gas, then you have even more options. For example, mixing poison in water and using it to create poisonous fog. Kiill someone with a ice spear and evaporate the ice, getting rid of the "crime weapon", throw water into your enemy and quickly freeze it, locking him in ice.

Water Blast is a cool power set in City of Heroes:

Amazing. Is sad that this mmo is now dead...

Homecoming does fine. Couple of other servers around, too.

 

[Cryomancer]

Seems some effects require other elemental influence.

On Kingmaker, Kineticist water element can deal bludgeoning damage or cold element. And if both are used at the same time, it makes a ice spear dishing cold + piercing damage. IRL, water jet can be used to cut stuff. The "power" to manipulate water, even if only on liquid state would be amazing, not only in "warfare", but in agriculture, in naval transport, medicine(...) and if you can change the state from solid to liquid and gas, then you have even more options. For example, mixing poison in water and using it to create poisonous fog. Kiill someone with a ice spear and evaporate the ice, getting rid of the "crime weapon", throw water into your enemy and quickly freeze it, locking him in ice.

Water Blast is a cool power set in City of Heroes:

Amazing. Is sad that this mmo is now dead...

Homecoming does fine. Couple of other servers around, too.

IMO when a company decide to kill an mmo, they should open the source code of the mmo. Meridian 59 is alive thanks to a code leaker.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Pathfinder Water Elementarist is a wizard specialization which I always wanted to try but I no longer have a 3.5E/PF1E group and could't find any mod which adds it to 3/pf1E games. Modern games like Solasta tries to implement more verticality. Water current naturally created or created by magic would be a pretty interesting way to explore the game's verticality. But no, zero water based spells on Solasta.

Dungeons & Dragons almost from the beginning had Ice Storm as an iconic 4th level spell, introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk. Just as the element of air is generally represented by lighting/shock effects, so the element of water is generally represented by ice effects. Solasta does in fact include Ice Storm, as well as an ice-based offensive cantrip (Ray of Frost). Cold-based spells are also often linked with water, e.g. Otiluke's Freezing Sphere. If anything, it's earth-based spells that tend to be scarce in both D&D and in CRPGs.

 

[MartinK]

´What they really should do is to replace boring water with some more fun liquid. Blood, bile, semen... so many fun fluids.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Tar, acid, ectoplasm.

 

[CanadianCorndog]

Water is a pain in the ass to make look like water. Transparency, refraction, splashes, wetness, etc. So, it's often avoided or made a major feature to justify the expense.