Hey /tg/, I've been working on a tabletop system & setting and recently I've felt a lull in progress because my casting system needs work. I've thought of a new system but it needs aid in making it easy to read for new players; here's the jyst of it:
>15 or so "Spell Seeds" (Fire, Mind, Holy, etc) and associated "Rituals"
>Each Spell Seed gives 1 passive ability and 2 spells to cast. This is the easy part, pick a seed and get your 3 abilities.
>You can learn a new Spell Seed by purchasing all 3 of its abilities over time.
>Some Spell Seeds have higher levels (Ice 2, Ice 3) to give more powerful basic spells and rituals.
>Rituals can be used by knowing the right Spell Seeds. Example, Matter 1 and Fire 1 can be combined to enchant your weapon with fire.
My problem here is that I don't know how to properly display the Rituals in a way that's easy for new players to understand which Rituals they have. Any suggestions on how to present them clearly, or any suggestions on better casting systems?
>>43806680
I'm interested in the idea, have a bump
>>43806680
Why organize them into seeds if you have to buy the abilities one at a time? Aside from thematic reasons, I guess.
Also, what's the incentive to learn all of a seed and not just its most useful attributes?
>>43806680
If rituals rely on different combinations of seeds, why not just give casters a recipe book, rather than a spellbook? It comes with a few known combinations, and they can learn new ones by experimenting or reading about them?
You can prevent experiment spam by having bad experiments be highly dangerous. So, creating new rituals is high risk high reward, and discovering pre-existing ones is low risk, low reward.
>>43808099
Knowing the full Seed unlocks the rituals that it grants. Let's take Bob and Kevin as examples.
Bob knows the Life seed (healing, immunity to disease, maybe some physical buff) and he knows one spell from the Holy seed. He doesn't have the full Holy seed so he can't use it for rituals, but he also didn't have to buy 2 more spells, so he bought some from other seeds and picked the best ones that fit him. Bob has exactly what he wants, and only what he wants.
Kevin knows the Life seed and the whole Holy seed. He has 6 spells, just like Bob, but since he knows two whole seeds he can use Rituals that involve them, like summoning an Angel (which requires the Life and Good seeds), or any other combination rituals that he might learn in the future. The more full seeds you know, the more rituals you unlock.
Spells are more for combat, while Rituals are for serious magic or weird experiments. (Custom rituals will be a thing later, custom spells never will be)
>>43806680
How about you divide every ritual into a phrase-based system that makes all the options clear? For instance:
You have the Matter seed, so you can use the Enchant Ritual. Check the table below to find what enchantment each other seed gives.
>Matter - Reinforced
>Fire - Flaming
>Ice - Frost
>Holy + Fire - Cleansing
>Life + Death - Vampiric
You have the Life seed, so you can use Summon rituals. Check the table below to see what summon each seed gives.
>Holy - Angel
>Fire - Fire Sprite
>Matter - Simple Objects
That way, players can check an index and think 'Ok I need an enchanted weapon' then find what they need to enchant it, and from that what enchantments they can perform with other seeds.
>>43808525
You know, I like that a lot more. Thanks anon this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I'll still have weird combos to explain anything that doesn't fit into the normal system, but giving each seed a basic type of ritual sounds wonderful to write and easy to follow.
>>43808587
No problem anon. Got any other ideas you want to work out?
>>43808719
Still working on martial equivalents but my plan with them is to add passives instead of offer rituals, so they do less but they're constantly better without using any energy.
I'm trying to assemble that list of ritual types and starting to run dry.
Enchant Object (Matter)
Summon Creature (Life)
Bless (Heaven)
Curse (Hell)
Animate (Force)
Mind???
Blast (Fire)
Ice???
Light???
Death???
Space???
In theory this setup can already do almost anything. I'm lacking sonic damage and I'm considering dissolving Light/Space into something else, maybe include sound in there, but I'm also low on ritual type ideas.
Space currently covers teleportation and scrying but I think teleportation could be a Blast - Life ritual, as weird as that would be. Unsure on scrying.
>>43808955
When I built my first system, I rolled teleportation and scrying and conjuration under the general category of portal-making, which I find works better. You can differentiate between summoned creatures and animated ones as well, which is nice.
Secondly, you might do well to have a set of general fields (matter, energy, life) and a different set of application fields (earth, fire, water) which may correlate to general fields (earth/matter) so that your system can cope with different levels of specificity.
