Why you no likie magic?

[Stella Brando]

I'm not interested in magic and don't want to play a spellchucker. I'd rather play Sigfried than Sigfried and Roy.

But I tend to think of fantasy as Conan or those 80's skill/stamina/luck fighting fantasy books.

I'd rather play in an ersatz historical setting with no elves and wizards (wizard villians are good). Conan, in other words.

We really need more creativity in settings, any historical period would work as a good basis.

 

[Latro]

playing glass cannon mage is boring

summoner or alchemist with buffs/debuffs is way more interesting

 

[FritzedProcess]

I probably have already mentioned this elsewhere, but as a general rule I don't like magic in any settings because rather than "thinking outside the box" it tends to be "Fuck the box! There's no box", in other words, a way to resolve practical problems by mumbo-jumbo instead of craftiness, especially in pen and paper games, where it usually requires its own separate subsystem of rules to add insult to injury.

In videogames it's just an excuse to have a mobile artillery platform with colorful projectiles. I actually like it in games like Arx Fatalis or the Ultimas, where spells aren't there just to inflict damage and conditions, or increase armor/evasion, but the best way is to have it be miraculous, like in LotR, where magic is a rare thing.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

playing glass cannon mage is boring

summoner or alchemist with buffs/debuffs is way more interesting

A few RPGs make that type of mage good but mostly they're crap.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Arcanum seems to have good magic. Lots of different ways you can buff and help your party as well as do interesting things. Morrowind has good magic too. I like when there are utility spells and spells that aren't just damage dealing but let you approach combat and dialogue in different ways (charm, buff/debuffs, levitation, etc..) Baldur's Gate is good in this way too. But I like when magic also impacts the game world, like Detect Evil or Know Alignment, which adds little scenarios where you can use it to see if someone is lying to you or what not. Heck, Detect Key in Morrowind should have been used more, where you can find keys to chests and doors hidden nearby if you had the spell effect strong enough. It was underused but more magic like that would be great, so it's not just pew pew kill magic.

 

[Background Character]

I love Magic, we can play Commander if you wanna

 

[Hassar]

I probably have already mentioned this elsewhere, but as a general rule I don't like magic in any settings because rather than "thinking outside the box" it tends to be "Fuck the box! There's no box", in other words, a way to resolve practical problems by mumbo-jumbo instead of craftiness, especially in pen and paper games, where it usually requires its own separate subsystem of rules to add insult to injury.

In videogames it's just an excuse to have a mobile artillery platform with colorful projectiles. I actually like it in games like Arx Fatalis or the Ultimas, where spells aren't there just to inflict damage and conditions, or increase armor/evasion, but the best way is to have it be miraculous, like in LotR, where magic is a rare thing.

Eh, the only reason magic was not seen often in LotR was because there was only one magic user in the party who was absent for most of the quest and under strict orders not to use his full powers until he returned in overtime.

Gandalf used a lot of magic in “The Hobbit” and it was literally all over the place in “The Silmarillion.”

Ironically, the magic of the elves was more miraculous then the magic of the Wizards with Gandalf throwing light beams in LotR & improvised fireballs and thunder in TH (though even that is a stretch because it seems mainly a question of degrees of understanding - Elrond is implied to do the heavy lifting when he created the river wave with Gandalf making the water churn & their associated elven rings are not even affiliated with the elements their feats were connected to).

In Tolkien, magic is woven into the fiber of Middle-Earth and has been from the very beginning (see the first chapter of The Silmarillion). The only reason it can seem uncommon is because the world of Men does not have many people who can use it and/or not many magic users were in the main story in LotR since that book series was all about a secret quest and the open use of magic would have drawn attention to the Ring Bearer. I would say that magic was more of an art form then mere esoteric lore in Tolkien’s land, though. And the only reason Tolkien’s magic seems mythical is because most of it only appears once and the greatest works are used to create new things. You’ll see multiple sleep spells used by the elves in TS with Luthien’s feat being the mightiest but they don’t seem less mythical or miraculous because Tolkien’s framing of that story in and of itself was mythical and about gods, demigods, and immortal elves (angels?).

LotR was more like an adventuring party with one mage, four fighters and four thieves who lose their mage for most of their gaming sessions thus explaining the absence of magic then something thematic.

I think Chronicles of the Black Company May be a better thematic match for how most CRPGs play out then LotR. Magic is present, there are degrees of magic users, and there are multiple battles but magic is also not always a GOJF card and can often be underpowered or seem better than it is. There are times when using weapons is just more efficient and times when magic is more efficient & enemies where using magic is the only way to win but because every type of character is useful, it never becomes degraded.

 

[Stella Brando]

What level is Gandalf?

 

[Hassar]

What level is Gandalf?

He was around helping the world be created so very high level. Heck, he even says in LotR that he knows so much magic that remembering how each race uses theirs can be exhausting when he was trying to figure out the door puzzle (speak, friend, and enter).

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

What level is Gandalf?

Wizard 1/Druid 3/Fighter 16

 

[Excommunicator]

As far as I see it, the main problem with magic in videogames isn't that the spells are uninspired but that magic has no use outside of combat. Tell me, how many RPGs do you know that let you solve quests using magical means? The only ones that come to my mind are the Quest for Glory games and some of the NWN 1&2 modules

Is that not by definition, uninspired?

.

Developers do lack imagination but culturally they don't really care about doing this any more, and culturally the gamer population isn't asking for it. It's been a pretty prominent trope for years now that throwing spells around is for superheroes, not wizards. All they need to do is appear powerful. Hence the rise of special abilities in games with a simultaneous simplification of what those abilities can do for you.

I'm not so positive about D&D magic. On the one hand it is definitely vast and detailed and interesting, on the other hand having the same damn spellbook in each game takes the very soul out of what magic should be. It becomes a book of functions, it's not magical. You know what you're going to get and you know what it's going to do.

Also, saying these sorts of features should be reserved for Mage Simulators sells the whole idea short. We definitely should be asking for it more often, but I don't remember the last time there was a frenzied discussion about interesting and intricate spell offerings in an upcoming RPG.

 

[Ysaye]

What level is Gandalf?

Gandalf is (in DND3.5X rules) probably an Aasimar Bard Level 10 -> Loremaster Level 10.

Remembering that he is basically an "angelic" creature in the form of a human sent by Manwe (essentially the beneavolent form of Tolkien's Creator) to help the prosperity of middle earth and fight evil.

Most of his magic performed in the stories are either illusion, abjuration or divination based and are instanteously cast, and fundamentally he knows a lot of lore about the world from travelling back and forth and reading stuff and he inspires others to do stuff (hence why I would argue Bard as a base class). Saruman is in a similar position - fundamentally lore, enchantment, trickery and inspiration are his portfolio but probably with a higher charisma score.

You could argue he is a Favoured Soul or a Sorcerer as a base class, but probably not a Wizard because he has naturally inherited his magic as an internal source of whom he is. Yes he interacts with animals a bit but I don't see him as a druid either.

 

[anvi]

They don't need to make interesting magic because the majority of gamers are retards and think Skyrim is awesome. That's why.

Best you can get is older stuff like EverQuest, Vanguard, Final Fantasy (and FFT), and the few D&D games that are not shit and are high level, so you can play with Timestop and whatnot. There is also Magic the Gathering but that is a rip off. Get a free version and it can be amazing though.