From: raeky
Date: 2002-01-27 01:27:50
Its briefly mentioned in the magicsystem that you can permanently enchant objects, but doing so means you must permanently loose something, either your own energy or a sacrifices energy.
What should be discussed is what is acceptable for a sacrifice, like can some magician come up and zap energy away from you, or can animals/plants be used as sacrifice?
What types of enchantments are possible, items that give the wearer what abilities?
How much energy is permanently lost, and how much can be given to a single object?
Can more then one person cast on the same object, allowing for objects of unlimited power to be created?
From: beregar
Date: 2002-01-27 15:10:09
In-Reply-To: 346
1. I think the sacrifice in magic system desc meant a creature sacrifice, but imho there are other things that have power so you should be able to sacrifice other than creature's too. Also, what is the thing that fuels the item from your sacrifice?
2. I believe items can have any enchantment power that a spell has. So items can set afire, throw fireballs, shield creatures, disintegrate creatures by touch, cause sleep, show visions, allow communication between two items, etc etc. I think fantasy books give you quite a good idea what an item can do.
3. As to how much energy is permanently lost. I believe it depends on how much the enchanter channels it to item. I believe there is no limit how much an object can hold "energy" as there is not any limit for how much living beings can possess it, or is there?
4. I don't see any reason to prevent this. After all, many powerful items in fantasy books are created through combined efforts of spellcasters.
I'm actually more interested to know WHO can create magic items. As far as I understand, magic items are related to (material) symbols and thus it is not available for primal magic who can depict only verbal and somatic symbols. They might use their power to enhance growth and durability of some materials, but they couldn't "charge" items with power.
Sorcerers and Academic magic users should be able to do this easily as they both use (material) symbols, especially sorcerers since runecasters and such are among their ranks.
- Beregar
From: raeky
Date: 2002-01-27 16:25:00
In-Reply-To: 354
1. what other things have power? (everything should be defined.) So human sacrifice is strictly forbiden? We discussed on irc that a player had to permently give up mental endurance to make a magical item. But that would prevent "magic" shops where one could buy swords magicaly imbuned with spells or something, since the creator could only make so much before hes a useless character that can't do anything but walk arround.
2. So just buy holding a ring or sword you can have access to a spell you couldn't use otherwise? And if so these items can't give the weilder unlimited use of that spell, the item has to either rest or be recharged by some magic person?
3. IF its animals then a sorcerer could just kill off every animal he finds and boost his items power to great levels, Monsters naturaly posses higher magical power then say a cow, a monster that on its own can cast magical spells that would be logical you could take its magical powers (the known spells of that monster) and transfer them into an item. But for a cow who has no magical ability, you couldn't get fireball out of a cow, possibly some other attribute, maybe just endurance, or strength, or something the cow posses, (all of what magical abilities an animal has needs to prolly be defined.)
4. Thats fine because the world is so large, that such items likely would be very rare, because there wouldn't be alot of magic users running arround or so thats what we are trying to design it as, not many magic users could exist because not every player class is able to do magic, and the ones that can have to learn there own magic on there own, maybe with a little guidince from a sage or book?
5. The who can create magical items, I think player classes within the races should be explicitly defined. and what there abilities are and specificly what magical abilities they have and are able to learn.
-raeky
From: darshan
Date: 2002-01-27 16:43:50
In-Reply-To: 357
Re #1: You're damn right it prevents magic shops. Only a suicidal idiot of a mage would start doing business making magical items and selling them. That's a very good thing.
Re #2: if some magician thinks so highly of you that he's willing to sacrifice his power to recharge your Ring of Watermelon Creation, let him do it. Chances are he doesn't.
Magic isn't something you can just hoard and spend endlessly.
Re #3: If object X possesses magical power, it is up for grabs if you can somehow grab it. What X is, is irrelevant. It can be a flying cow, a dead cow, The Unholy Kvurgleschmooz Orb of Pjup or a dried turd.
What contains magic, can be emptied of magic.
Re #4: Erm? Could you rewrite that as coherent English sentences?
Re #5: No, they shouldn't. Some races may be more or less susceptible to magic than some others may or may not be. And there are no player classes, in case you haven't noticed.
From: beregar
Date: 2002-01-27 19:19:48
In-Reply-To: 357
1. Human sacrifices are certainly NOT forbidden, they are even encouraged by some twisted individuals like Yorka. ;)
Considering that magic item creation should be both quite taxing and lenghty process. Besides, you have to remember that most forms of magic in majik are quite rare so no, I don't believe there will be magic shops.
One thing, when people think about magic items, they usually think magical weapons and armors that give D&D style bonuses (+1 to attack, ability to hit creatures with DR +1, blahblah). They also think that magic items are something easily distributed and that there are "high level" monsters which have magic items. This is complete crap and should be avoided, a magic item can be as well a scrying pool as it can be a sword.
I believe "magic" items will be more common among academic mages and sorcerers. This is because they both deal with material symbols. Academic mages will have spell scrolls, enchanted staves and such and sorcerers, such as runecasters, are actually almost always forced to use some material symbol as it is obvious that runes must be carved on something, you can't just trace them in the air.
2. I believe magic items should be somewhat uncontrollable for those who do not understand magic. For example a scrying mirror might work for everyone but would show random images for those who can not control it. Also, a standard stereotypical "flaming sword" could actually hold essence of some demonic creature and thus be very unreliable, even damage its user by launching a fireball in melee combat. These are just examples and imho, magic items should always have a purpose, no random wands of fireball.
3. How do you know that a monster possesses a higher power than a cow? What makes monster any different from a cow? I don't believe spells have anything to do with sources of magical energy. You imbue an item with power that YOU know. I don't see spells as something concrete, they are just ways to control magic. I believe the point in sacrifices is that you either:
a) bind a soul of a creature that can cast spells into item. As it has no physical (or mental?) statistics, such soul can only draw energy from the user and cast spells that it knows. This way the caster is in mercy of the creature's "soul" though he or she could attempt to control the item.
b) bind the very same mental and physical "power" that fuels the spells into an item. The amount of this power is defined by creature's own mental and physical strength (as are caster's). This makes the item less risky since it is only a power receptacle but the energy can be only used to cast spells the caster knows OR to fuel spells that are bind permanently in the item.
4. Remember that there are no player classes. Majik is entirely skill based system. Your character is defined by what you do, so this allows anyone to be a mage if he or she knows how. I'll see prevalence of magic this way. There are multiple ways to learn magic of which books are only one. I will start a new thread where I'll going to discuss about nature of magic (not magic system).
5. Heh, your whole suggestion fights against everything that is said about magic system and nature of learning in Majik. Any race can learn any magic, magic has nothing to do with races, nothing ability or skill related has nothing to do with races. If something can be learnt, anyone can learn it. Read above, NO PLAYER CLASSES! :)
- Beregar
