More exotic spells in RPGs.

[anvi]

In Noita you make your own spells by putting components together in freaky ways. The best I found so far was to use a component that says electrocute everything between the next two projectiles. Then one of my next 2 projectiles happens to be thousands of fuzzy little sparks that jiggle all over the entire screen. So it electrocutes all those sparks and it explodes blowing up everything for far around. And my character has immunity to electricity so I can just stand inside this explosion and not take a scratch. Fun times. Some stuff is immune to electricity though and can 1 shot me so I still gotta be careful.

EverQuest had some great spells. Memory Blur let you wipe the enemy's mind, it forgets who it was fighting which was super important when the enemies remembered everything you did to it =) Eye of Zomm weird giant eyeball that was invisible to everything except you, and you could control it and see through it. So you could explore a room to see what you are going to be up against, before you open the door. Invisibility was amazing too, you could reach almost anywhere by sneaking past enemies. Also Charm was awesome, especially when you can buff your pet with cool spells. Also the fire/frost/lighning Rain spells, lots of damage over multiple waves, but it could kill you too. So noobs would have their pet fight an enemy, then cast rains on the enemy, but it hurt so much the enemy would turn from the pet and come straight at the player. Then the rains hit killing the player. But if you knew how to keep your distance it was awesome. Also the Necromancer had a spell that converted their health to mana, and it would kill you if you weren't careful. But they could lifetap health from enemies, so you got into a kind of frenzy of killing everything you could find to keep your health from plummeting.

 

[anvi]

renamed pew-pew and summons! many exotic!

No that's only if it was only cosmetic. In good games the summons are tactical decisions. One form resistant to magic so you switch to that against some enemies. One form tanky and can stun enemies so switch to that if you are getting beat up. Etc.. In EQ the pets had different effects, a Necromancer could summon a Skeletal Monk or Rogue or Spectre. The Spectre lifetapped and was tanky, the Rogue was weak as shit. But if you could use Fear on an enemy the Rogue could chase it and backstab it to hell. The Mage pets were fire, earth, water, air. First one nuked, second one was tanky and would hold enemies in place, third one did good melee damage and would sometimes cast a slow spell. And the air pet stunned. Stuns interrupt enemy spell casters, so you had to pick the right pet for fights.

WoW Druid shapeshifting into different forms was really amazing.

 

[luj1]

Somehow multiplayer games such as MMOs and MOBAs have the coolest spells

 

[Cryomancer]

MMOs and MOBAs have the coolest spells

Disagreed. Most of this games tends to have combat only very vanilla spells and are mostly gear farming, cooldown managing chores. Can you name interesting games and interesting spells?

 

[Dyspaire]

Whether the spells are exotic or not is a matter for debate, but I honestly can't think of any other games that come remotely close to the number of different spells you can cast in the Infinity Engine.

And there are definitely some pretty exotic spells to be found among those, in my opinion.

 

[V_K]

I honestly can't think of any other games that come remotely close to the number of different spells you can cast in the Infinity Engine.

It's not such a huge feat if you consider that mechanically, a lot of these spells are just more powerful versions of one another, given the lack of metamagic/upcasting in ADnD.
Compare that to something like Wizardry 7, for example, which "only" has about 80 spells, but each of them has 7 levels of power, giving you over 500 options.
Not to mention games like early TES or Trazere duology where the number of spells is functionally infinite because you're free to combine effects and modifiers to your heart's desire (and e.g. Morrowind has over 100 effects alone).

 

[luj1]

MMOs and MOBAs have the coolest spells

Disagreed. Most of this games tends to have combat only very vanilla spells and are mostly gear farming, cooldown managing chores. Can you name interesting games and interesting spells?

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fevered_Dreams

https://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/skill/infest-320


wild example

 

[Late Bloomer]

Eye of Zomm weird giant eyeball that was invisible to everything except you, and you could control it and see through it. So you could explore a room to see what you are going to be up against, before you open the door.

The Eye of Zomm was so cool.

 

[Tweed]

Planescape Torment had the Mechanicus Cannon spell. Realms of Arkania had Great Need which made enemies run off the battlefield with a craving for strawberries.

 

[anvi]

I liked the damage shield spell in EQ as well, it did damage to anything that hit you, so you could run through a bunch of easy enemies and have them wreck themselves on your fire/spike shield.

Magic The Gathering is the champion of spells though. That game has the most amazing insane spells. Trying to find a crazy one to show.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Switching bodies or switching hp or other stats with another character/monster would be cool.

 

[Fowyr]

Trazere duology

Trazere had around 14-20 effects that were combined to your heart's content. Resurrect allies, kill enemies and heal yourself with one spell? Why not.
Sometimes I want to finish my walkthrough of Four Crystals of Trazere, but then I remember sheer quantity of random, slow and idiotic battles in it and stop.

 

[Red Hexapus]

A spell that would make a game finish itself instantly would be awesome!

Spoiler

Yeah, with a big YOU DIED letters showing up on the screen

There's Thermonuclear Blast from Quest for Glory 5
https://questforglory.fandom.com/wiki/Thermonuclear_Blast

 

[Fowyr]

A spell that would make a game finish itself instantly would be awesome!

Spoiler

Yeah, with a big YOU DIED letters showing up on the screen

There's Thermonuclear Blast from Quest for Glory 5
https://questforglory.fandom.com/wiki/Thermonuclear_Blast

Wrath of God from Disciples of Steel could destroy entire battlefield. If you cast on magnitude two, it's suffice to win most encounters.
Even Nuclear Blast from Wizardry 7 was less powerful.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

I want spells that extract money from the goyim without having any interactions with them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Whether the spells are exotic or not is a matter for debate, but I honestly can't think of any other games that come remotely close to the number of different spells you can cast in the Infinity Engine.

 

[Volourn]

Charm and invisibility may be fun and cool but they are not exotic. Charm is in 99% of fantasy RPGs, and invisibility is easily one of the most common non combat spells in game.

 

[Serus]

I'd go for more for varied and exotic use of common spells instead of making "exotic" looking or sounding spells. In p&p you can invent all crazy uses for spell if you play with the right people. Which is of curse impossible without proper AI in crpg but at least developers should try to include some scripted non-obvious uses.

 

[Tweed]

Quest for Glory also had the juggling lights spell, mostly novelty, but also important for a few quests. Ultima 7 had the dance spell which didn't use standard words of power, but rather the Avatar shouted "Everybody DANCE now!"
I think simulacrum in BG2 is kind of exotic, sort of non-standard and if you're powerful enough your simulacrum can create their own simulacrum.

The Eye of Zomm was so cool.

Used to be able to pull with it, but that made the devs unhappy.

 

[Norfleet]

Technically, you don't need special AI to do it, just some amount of environment or physics interaction. If spells can cause environmental destruction, that's pretty much all you need for crazy new uses for spells: Games with environmental interaction can have players causing effects just by destroying things with their weapons. Games with no environmental interaction won't have spells that do anything other than exactly what's on the label.

 

[sipibaki]

Guys, you are talking about exotic spells, but no one mentions Sacrifice?

Demonstration of just the most powerful spells in the game:


The game had 5 gods with its own spellbook, which on the campaign you could mix(to a limit) so it was a greatly replayable game. Every god had 9 levels of spells + summons. For more memorable mid-level spell is for example frog rain, which slowed and damaged units.

Edit: I'm an idiot and it was mentioned.

 

[Fowyr]

The Summoning had Gateway spell that basically sent you to the pocket plane (I think roguelike Valhalla had similar spell that sent you into the shop district). Summoning also had two quest spells, shapeshifting and mending.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Guys, you are talking about exotic spells, but no one mentions Sacrifice?

Demonstration of just the most powerful spells in the game:


The game had 5 gods with its own spellbook, which on the campaign you could mix(to a limit) so it was a greatly replayable game. Every god had 9 levels of spells + summons. For more memorable mid-level spell is for example frog rain, which slowed and damaged units.

It was mentioned on the very fist page, post #19.

 

[gurugeorge]

I want spells that extract money from the goyim without having any interactions with them.

Ah the Friendly Merchant, always saying the quiet part out loud

 

[LarryTyphoid]

The coolest spells for me are those in 3D games that allow new methods of movement, like flying, walking on water, etc. Those are spells that aren't just status affects. These were, unfortunately, phased out of 3D RPGs eventually for reasons that I'm sure everyone already knows by now.