How do you design your magic?
10-18-2011, 07:35 AM
I hate tiered magic. I dislike the idea, because honestly it just fills up your menus with spells you'll never use again. Once you pick up the stronger spell, and a few levels - not to mention if there's an MP cost reducer, say in half or everything costs 1mp - there's less purpose for using the weaker spells. They just take up menu space. For this set up, I really break down into two thoughts.
I don't use tier systems with spells. I go for differing effects. The typical run down they aren't tiered but variations. You get a fire spell. Good, it's a basic single target spell, does nothing fancy. You then get a multi-hit spell, let's say. It's weaker than you're single target spell, and costs just a bit more. Okay, so you got a trade off. You wanna hit one person full force, or do you wanna hit everyone and weaken them up a bit?
Next fire spell's gonna be real powerful, but real hard to use. It'll cost maybe the same as the first spell, but do quite a lot more damage. The trade off is it's hit or miss. Mostly miss. And along the way you pick up weaker versions that almost always hit, or carry a special bonus like lowering defense or some crap. Double elemental (even though the RM games HATE dealing with those by default) works too. And don't forget the assist spells, that cause a target's attacks to start dealing fire element, or what not. I just got 15 spells off one element, and not a single one was tiered. And the whole system is built so once you get that first fire spell learned, you learn the rest at your leisure and expense.
The other thought is the one I prefer. You get one spell. You feed the spell. I used this in Cruxhound when I was working on it, you had 1 spell for every element. And the strength level was dependent on how much MP you'd put into it. Granted it was a tad annoying. You had to select the spells menu, select the spell, input an amount, and then cast the spell - but you had full control. Know the exact amount of damage it takes to take down this guy you've fought 18x already? Good, put in 17 mp, good job - he's dead. Put in 16, well, now someone has to clunk him over the head with a wooden spoon - but hey, you just saved 1 mp. Work it out, and figure it out, and play along. And despite ADDING menus, it actually really unclustered everything.
I don't use tier systems with spells. I go for differing effects. The typical run down they aren't tiered but variations. You get a fire spell. Good, it's a basic single target spell, does nothing fancy. You then get a multi-hit spell, let's say. It's weaker than you're single target spell, and costs just a bit more. Okay, so you got a trade off. You wanna hit one person full force, or do you wanna hit everyone and weaken them up a bit?
Next fire spell's gonna be real powerful, but real hard to use. It'll cost maybe the same as the first spell, but do quite a lot more damage. The trade off is it's hit or miss. Mostly miss. And along the way you pick up weaker versions that almost always hit, or carry a special bonus like lowering defense or some crap. Double elemental (even though the RM games HATE dealing with those by default) works too. And don't forget the assist spells, that cause a target's attacks to start dealing fire element, or what not. I just got 15 spells off one element, and not a single one was tiered. And the whole system is built so once you get that first fire spell learned, you learn the rest at your leisure and expense.
The other thought is the one I prefer. You get one spell. You feed the spell. I used this in Cruxhound when I was working on it, you had 1 spell for every element. And the strength level was dependent on how much MP you'd put into it. Granted it was a tad annoying. You had to select the spells menu, select the spell, input an amount, and then cast the spell - but you had full control. Know the exact amount of damage it takes to take down this guy you've fought 18x already? Good, put in 17 mp, good job - he's dead. Put in 16, well, now someone has to clunk him over the head with a wooden spoon - but hey, you just saved 1 mp. Work it out, and figure it out, and play along. And despite ADDING menus, it actually really unclustered everything.
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