Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

I hate magic.

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Going the sterotypical RPG route - with warriors, archers, mages, etc.

Warriors are easy - the player just clicks on adjacent enemies and they roll to attack.
Archer even easier, no need to be adjacent anymore, maybe code in a nice little arrow object to go from the shooter to the target.

MAGES - god I hate them. You're supposed to write up 50-100 magical spells each with their own unique effects, and unique animations. You might get away with reusing some spells, but you know you're supposed to make some of them truly epic and game-changing. It's driving me nuts. And these animations need to look COOL, you can't just make an arrow go from one place to another, no they need to sparkling glowing shit and go all over the place depending on the spell. Need to learn shaders and particle stuff just for these damn spells. I'm going to take all my revenge out on this by making the mages in my game puny little ants just waiting to get squished. Rant over.
 

GrafvonMoltke

Shoutbox Purity League
Shitposter
Joined
Dec 2, 2016
Messages
2,527
Location
Land of the Great Steppe
44f.png
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
12,603
Location
don't identify with EU-NPC land
Strap Yourselves In
Going the sterotypical RPG route - with warriors, archers, mages, etc.

Warriors are easy - the player just clicks on adjacent enemies and they roll to attack.
Archer even easier, no need to be adjacent anymore, maybe code in a nice little arrow object to go from the shooter to the target.

MAGES - god I hate them. You're supposed to write up 50-100 magical spells each with their own unique effects, and unique animations. You might get away with reusing some spells, but you know you're supposed to make some of them truly epic and game-changing. It's driving me nuts. And these animations need to look COOL, you can't just make an arrow go from one place to another, no they need to sparkling glowing shit and go all over the place depending on the spell. Need to learn shaders and particle stuff just for these damn spells. I'm going to take all my revenge out on this by making the mages in my game puny little ants just waiting to get squished. Rant over.

Simple, start a "Developers against mages in RPG" lobby and convince general public that mages are bad.
 

Reality

Learned
Joined
Dec 6, 2019
Messages
333
Kinda makes you think of how in other genres like 4X / TBS the wizards can be distilled to just their basic attack.

Granted that's because the Wizard (unit) in games like Heroes of Might and Magic, or Master of Magic is just a glorified ranged attacker.
Those games do still have the 50+ spells, but they are for the over-wizard only and he at least doesn't have to fight himself.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,991
Location
USSR
MAGES - god I hate them. You're supposed to write up 50-100 magical spells each with their own unique effects, and unique animations. You might get away with reusing some spells, but you know you're supposed to make some of them truly epic and game-changing. It's driving me nuts. And these animations need to look COOL, you can't just make an arrow go from one place to another, no they need to sparkling glowing shit and go all over the place depending on the spell. Need to learn shaders and particle stuff just for these damn spells. I'm going to take all my revenge out on this by making the mages in my game puny little ants just waiting to get squished. Rant over.
And also good luck writing competent AI that knows about magic.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
27,385
Location
Copenhagen
MAGES - god I hate them. You're supposed to write up 50-100 magical spells each with their own unique effects, and unique animations. You might get away with reusing some spells, but you know you're supposed to make some of them truly epic and game-changing. It's driving me nuts. And these animations need to look COOL, you can't just make an arrow go from one place to another, no they need to sparkling glowing shit and go all over the place depending on the spell. Need to learn shaders and particle stuff just for these damn spells. I'm going to take all my revenge out on this by making the mages in my game puny little ants just waiting to get squished. Rant over.
And also good luck writing competent AI that knows about magic.


https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/tweaks/scs/
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
10,991
Location
USSR
MAGES - god I hate them. You're supposed to write up 50-100 magical spells each with their own unique effects, and unique animations. You might get away with reusing some spells, but you know you're supposed to make some of them truly epic and game-changing. It's driving me nuts. And these animations need to look COOL, you can't just make an arrow go from one place to another, no they need to sparkling glowing shit and go all over the place depending on the spell. Need to learn shaders and particle stuff just for these damn spells. I'm going to take all my revenge out on this by making the mages in my game puny little ants just waiting to get squished. Rant over.
And also good luck writing competent AI that knows about magic.


https://www.gibberlings3.net/mods/tweaks/scs/
If I understand it right, it's just an extremely long, very long list of "if, else" instructions which took years to compile and which is impossible to debug, balance or otherwise work with.
 

bionicman

Liturgist
Joined
May 31, 2019
Messages
674
If you hate magic so much, why have it in your rpg? Just pick another setting where there is no magic or a low-magic setting.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,463
Location
Frostfell
Create a RPG in a magicless world.

Mount & Blade, Fallout New Vegas, there are a LOT of amazing RPG's without magic.

About

and unique animations

Why?

Why casting a ice spear, a lightning bolt and a fireball needs to have different animations?

And you can include spells like telekinesis which just move stuff around, if there is fire in your game, you can have a "default casting animation" to cast fire wall which reuses the default fire in your game. You can literally make ice lance 1, ice lance 2 <...> just by making the ice lance spell a big bigger.

Just be creative on how to make more spells with less work or don't put magic in your game.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,347
Location
Lusitânia
50-100 magical spells each with their own unique ... animations.

What?
Mages are the ones that can get away with the simplest animations - 5 of them, depending on the cast speed and form, should do it
Warriors on the other hand are the ones that require too much animation work for all the different weapons they use
 

Ysaye

Arbiter
Joined
May 27, 2018
Messages
771
Location
Australia
Why do you have to have 50 spells? Why not make a game with ten meaningful utility -ike spells? I have been thinking about having only the following in mine:

  • Double: Multiplies normal damage x 2 for spell target for next attack
  • Triple: Same as above but with x 3
  • Shield: Blocks for n damage for the target, where n scales with the casters level
  • Mirror: next attack on target, any damage is taken by the attacker.
  • Escape: 100% escapes battle
  • Return: teleport to the last town
  • Negate: Negates any bonuses the enemy may have on next attack on the target
  • Siphon: Target's next attacks steal n health
  • Power: Target's next attack is automatic death unless target roles (1-n) save
  • Entrap: A successful attack by an enemy on the spells target results in that enemy being turned to stone.
Most of these I plan to have as just different color higlights/glows of characters.

I also have non-combat spells Compass, Levitate and Detect.
 

Quilty

Magister
Joined
Apr 11, 2008
Messages
2,406
I've never liked the way magic is usually implemented in RPGs: it's always too "visual" for my tastes, too flashy. When I think about a magic caster, I envision a guy sitting somewhere in the back of the room while the rest of the party is fighting, meditating and screwing with the enemy's mind, not waving his hands around and making holograms of dragons appear out of thin air. I'd love to see magic implemented like a psychologically-based effect, with the game merely informing me, perhaps in text-based form, of what the effects of the caster's actions are. I think being told that the enemy's mind has been set on fire or his sanity reduced to nothing would spark my imagination far more than seeing a fireball shoot across the screen. Who knows, maybe I'm just too biased toward old, text RPGs I played as a kid.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
I like the few RPGs with spellcrafting mechanics. Either things like Tyranny mix-n-match runes or Morrowind-style spellcrafting.
I'm aware that Arx Fatalis has some sort of non-standard magic but I've actually never played the game...
 

Krice

Arcane
Developer
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
1,287
The role of magic at least in D&D is maybe too big, because every character class needs it in one way or another. It's extremely hard to create a RPG system from scratch, that's why developers take most of the stuff from D&D and try to work with it. One solution is to not have magic at all, but it's kind of easy way if you ask me, and you still need to figure out how to balance combat without magic etc.
 

WhiteShark

Learned
Joined
Sep 17, 2019
Messages
370
Location
滅びてゆく世界
The role of magic at least in D&D is maybe too big, because every character class needs it in one way or another. It's extremely hard to create a RPG system from scratch, that's why developers take most of the stuff from D&D and try to work with it. One solution is to not have magic at all, but it's kind of easy way if you ask me, and you still need to figure out how to balance combat without magic etc.
Agreed, magic is far too all-encompassing in D&D. Full casters can do everything and more, and if they can't it's now a betrayal of player expectations. I think for game design it makes sense to have very specialized magic users instead of generalists for this very reason.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom