Larian Studios Forums General Suggestions Some idea for magic for some game, one day

I've always found that Magic, in most RPGs, was too common. If we look closely to the characters animations in Divinity - Original Sin 2, we can see that the characters seem like to make an effort in order to throw whatever wonderful and impressive spell, for that much extraordinary effect. So, I began to tell myself : "well it should be very hard to learn magic in such universe". That's why I started to dream about a video game classical RPG a la Divinity or Baldur's Gate where magic would be well, not impossible, but HARD to get.

Maybe, to make a parallel with the Summoner of DOS2, we should learn it few by few by inversting rare points in that competence. And, if we hit 10, we can then start to use magic. During all the process, your character could not do much else, except defend himself with whatever falls into his hands. (that could make him a good grenade launcher ! or a terrible archer -maybe some side and hidden competences would improve when you use them frequently)
OR, we could make so that the character learns magic little by little, by doing firstable ridiculous (but however useful in some circumtances) spells, like hand sparks (i mean a small light in the hand, to light the paths of the adventurers in a cave for example, but, to me, this might still be pretty powerful, compared to reality at least haha ! so maybe at level 4 or 5), and having access to more "true" spells at level 10. Fun fact : with such magic initiation, the RNG could play a role, small or big, in that some effects could be uncontrolled : either the spell is smoke, either it's a huge explosion that can touch allies. (depending on some characteristic/requirements ?)
AND/OR, we could make use of parchement more intelligently, like, reading a parchement could cause a spell, but according to the Memory of the character, it could be definitely learned or just partially learned. The more the same parchement is used, the more the text enters into the magician's head, except if he has not enough Memory / Intelligence.
More simply, we could limit magic to very clever/with high memory/with high knowledge characters, without specifying it anywhere (?).

I'm not sure if I have other ideas here or if I told them all. Anyway, this is becoming a bit confused, so i will stop here. Thx for reading.

I'm split on the idea. Part of me says, that makes perfect sense. However, characters already seem rather weak - not any more powerful then many NPCs and often less powerful. Also, many people like playing magic characters and would complain (a lot!) if it couldn't be used for so long. If it were that way, I'd want the cast spells to be much more powerful then the current ones so it'd be worth the wait. You know, one-hitting a knight or something (while he runs around screaming in pain while becoming a pile of ashes).

As far as very weak magic until much later, I feel it's already that way. It takes multiple hits of civilians with no armor to kill them now and it scales up as you go so there's not that much difference after becoming a master mage.

Thx for your reply caninelegion !



Actually, magic in Original Sin saga is quite generalized, even for warriors : who could think that one could make the earth shake by stomping the ground and make fall several characters in one shot ? And magic is pretty powerful, even at low level, especially in DOS1. Even in DOS2 it scales with level, of course. So, I think that magic has a constant power now ower time. (power increases but enemy level too) And I mean, it can do actual damage, since level 1. A lower-growing magic could basically not serve to hit efficiently the enemies, unless the magician has innate abilities to it, that stay to be mastered. (like a "Stability" attribute that starts at 0 and must be improved.)
So, we can imagine a character not good at magic, and have little success with it, whatever be the situation. But, we can imagine a character gifted for it, and, by lack of mastery, can have great differences of effect and control on his magic. (like throwing a huge fire ball instead of lighting the characters paths)



Yeah, totally. Magic would be as powerful as rare. And it would be rare especially if the devs just hint the players about 'magic' existing in the universe, but not telling them how to use it. Fun in that being the player could see some enemy magicians on his path too...