From: Paul Reilly (paul@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Fri 26 Jul 1991 - 09:56:33 EEST
A short reply on Sorcery
> From abf@cs.ucc.ie Tue Jul 26 09:56:33 1991
From: Andrew Bell (bell@cs.unc.edu)
> Subject: Ken McKinney's Sorcery
>It seems to me that there are two fundamental _game_balance_ problems with
>the default sorcery system, and your system mainly addresses one of them.
I agree.
[ good stuff about spell dificulty deleted ]
>The second major problem is that if you can cast a powerful spell, there's
>little that prevents you from doing so lots of times. For example, if you
>can cast one damage boost 5 with duration 10, every ally you have will
>soon have that spell on every weapon. I don't see how your system addresses
I have thought about his problem and have tried a couple of solutions.
The most recent one was to say that the magical currents through Glorantha
at Sacred Time dispell almost all "temporary" magic. To counter this, I
allowed sorcerors to concentrate on keeping personal spells (i.e. on
them or stuff on them) up, up to POW in number. Second, I allowed them
to enchant "spell tokens" for any Rune that would be physically near a spell
and keep it up in Sacred Time. Third, that spells cast from a matrix onto
that matrix (e.g. Damage Boost in a sword onto that sword) would stay up.
This approach has some drawbacks but has the advantage of giving
more Gloranthan flavor to the sorcery, and also helps make Sacred Time
dangerous. Also, as Sacred Time approaches people cast bigger spells
(more Intensity) because putting too much Duration in becomes redundant.
This also gives a Gloranthan flavor as it makes people really keep track
over Sacred Time.
Sorcerors under this system accumulate no more than a year's worth of spells
(which is still alot, but not enough to equip an army) and it also
encourages matrices to have some relation to the spell cast.
Other solutions at another time as I must run.
-Paul Reilly
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