Wishlist: Why magic paths are like mod Nations.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Endoperez--you can pick those apart all you want, it took me less than 2 minutes to come up with each one I can guarantee, however, that with time and effort, I could make each one unique against all the paths we currently have in the game.

I think I actually did describe how Metal and Mentalism magics could replace two existing paths, and described how Animism could be implemented, and said that I'd play a Five Elements conversion. I'm with you there, the paths could be made unique. I just don't think it will ever happen.

[JimMorrison]

It depends on the context of the mod, as to what makes sense as a "path".

But in current Dominions terms, it seems that most of your list would be schools of magic, not magic paths. The difference of course being that a school describes what can be done with your magic, and the path is where you derive your energies. So paths necessarily must be something primal, such as elements, but I fear the most you can really hope for is recategorizing of what exists, it doesn't seem that there are many "previously unheard of" sources of magical energies. Sex magic is good, but perhaps not entirely appropriate, as Endo complained.

[HoneyBadger]

I think you're grossly underestimating the modding community. It would happen, in some form, if we had the tools to make it happen. Somebody, at some point, will mod something in, if it's possible to do. Just having the ability to clear spells and schools puts us a step closer. If the long standing modders don't want to, someone new will show up who does.

It would probably happen something like this:

Lots of people hate how the blesses currently work, not just me, so that would be the first thing to be modded, as a fix, but eventually someone would want to add new blesses, and since the only way to do that is to add new magic paths, eventually someone adding new blesses would want to add a handful of spells to their path, because-well, why not? If nothing else, it helps to legitimize the new path (it's not just to add a nifty bless effect, see it's got spells, too!). That effort would lead to more and more advanced efforts, and eventually I'd guess we'd probably end up with atleast 4 new, quality paths. 33% more isn't such a high figure, considering we've accounted, with mod Nations, for atleast 20% of the total Nations available to play, while having 60 vanillas to choose from.

Since there's only 8 paths available, the total number of additional mods is likely to be higher.

And ofcourse, as far as random effects go, we would want to have those tools. That's what I'm asking for, though, the tools to make this happen.

[HoneyBadger]

If blood magic is appropriate, so is sex magic. The others are all potential sources of magic:

Metal-as in the "Asian" element.

Crystal-not Earth magic, but the historic belief in the power of crystals, used for healing, divination, psychic energy, to power Atlantis, what have you. Nothing particularly "earthy".

Numerology-the power of the underlying mathematical basis and language of the Universe, itself. It's good enough for physics, and it pops up in various forms of real-world occultism/magic, such as Qaballah.

Mentalism-psychic energy, and the power of the mind and will, over matter, over fate, and over the wills of others. Not Astral magic, which comes from the stars, but power derived internally, from pure imagination and perception.

Shadow magic we already sort of have in the game. Shadow beasts, strength in darkness, banefire, etc, but this would be power derived from light and darkness, and their interplay.

Animism, what I had in mind, would be power derived from *all* the beings, competing for Godhood at the same time, and all the other powers who aren't necessarily after godhood, but are caught up in that. Sort of the magical "waste energy" from all that. Holy magic, of a sort, in a sense, but not pure or direct.

Chaos/Wild Magic, in this case, wouldn't just be random effects, it would also be the power of unrestrained Creation, itself. This would include such things as "faerie magic".

[JimMorrison]

I don't think I'm underestimating anything, other than humans' propensity for creating something out of nothing, though with no profit margin here, the market for this is small.

All I am saying is to clarify Endo's point, that essentially just about anything that you can come up with, will either be an aspect of an already existent path, or will consist of and overlap with multiple paths.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that you are limited in what you can accomplish here. You can add a Psionics path, but with current game mechanics, and all the spells that already exist, what will this path do? It seems most of what you'd want exists in Astral already, and while you could add a few more, the largest benefit would be in the creation of another bless opportunity.

This seems entirely out of the range of the modding community, only because the hardcoded structure of the game does not allow for it. If you are capped at 8 paths due to game mechanics that you can't change, then you have a bit of a conundrum. The first part being that you wouldn't be able to add blesses, not anytime too soon, but then you would also be limited to 8 of them regardless, so inventing new paths is somewhat silly, if all you can do is push around the spells that already exist.

If it were at all possible though, I think it's an intriguing idea. But broadening and diversifying the sources of magic would require a massive overhaul of the game, to the extent that you are envisioning. For example, if you have 12 paths, then likely the multiplier for pretender acquisition would need to be dropped from 8 to 6, as each path contains less power than previously. Likewise, all mages in the game would have to be modded, and many of them would require immense amounts of guesswork and testing to place them in the approximate power range that they occupy in the current game balance. Then you get the magic sites, and the gem issue would only exacerbate the problems with alchemy, where now you have 12 actual gem types, and so your chances of A) not finding sites, or B) ending up with gems you don't need, seem to both begin to rise. The obvious answer would be to make most sites cross-path, so that when you find one gem type, you usually find 2, however since you can only search for that site through one of the paths, your site acquisition will still be terribly hampered, you will essentially find 66% as many sites in any given game as you would now, because the others are in paths that your nation can't access.

The complications with this really are innumerable. It would be interesting to play with for another game, or really cool if they made the paths/schools fully moddable for the eventual Dom4 (people are acting like children lately, directly construing the "won't come soon" of Dom4, to a "won't come ever"), then if you wanted to really put in the effort, some truly unique and bizzare scenarios could be developed. But for now, there's just no way it can become anything other than an interesting mental exercise.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

If blood magic is appropriate, so is sex magic.

Explain to me then how battlefield Sex Magic works. But..... you don't have to get into the effects..... the US government supposedly tried to develop a "Gay Bomb" to distract and pacify enemy soldiers. o.O

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Explain to me then how battlefield Sex Magic works. But..... you don't have to get into the effects..... the US government supposedly tried to develop a "Gay Bomb" to distract and pacify enemy soldiers. o.O

It's easy! Say you summon a spectre, and it has a sex random. Then you summon a succubus and have them form a tantric communion and... well, I'm not sure what they're going to do with it, cast spells that make allies feel good?

[HoneyBadger]

Other sources of magic might include (with better names, ofcourse): Enlightenment/Nirvana, Time and the turning of the seasons, Communication (we already have musical magic in the game, and the game itself is about the power of myth and storytelling. Add to that the power of words.), Blasphemy (the opposite of holy magic), and Emotions (love, hate, war, desire, despair, etc.).

Ofcourse, the schools themselves could be added to, as well, but schools filter the raw power itself into what you *do* with that power. They aren't the sources of power, just the specific engine the power turns.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Crystal-not Earth magic, but the historic belief in the power of crystals, used for healing, divination, psychic energy, to power Atlantis, what have you. Nothing particularly "earthy".

Mentalism-psychic energy, and the power of the mind and will, over matter, over fate, and over the wills of others. Not Astral magic, which comes from the stars, but power derived internally, from pure imagination and perception.

The Crystal magic I mentioned replaced Astral, not Earth. Astral Healing, Crystal Sphere/Astral Window, Mind Burn/Paralyze/Mind Hunt etc, it would pretty much cover the same stuff you listed. Besides, since all Dominions rituals use gems/crystals as a power source, the idea wouldn't be exactly "ground"-breaking, pardon the pun.

Mentalism is Astral by a different name, judging by effects. And it's not like the "from the stars" actually affects any in-game effects, besides Gifts From Heavens.


And regarding Blasphemy, there used to be Holy and Unholy priests. Holy priests could preach, Unholy priests could reanimate undead. It was removed, the reason being that e.g. Marignon thinks that the Mictlan priests are unholy, but the Mictlan priests think they are holy.
It would be easy to just give each nation a bunch of national holy spells, perhaps available at spesific research levels. And that'd actually be a good idea and not too hard to do, either, since we already have examples:

Pangaea: Carrion spells
MA/LA Ermor: Unholy Blessings, Anathema, Apostacy etc etc
(LA) C'tis: spells providing +MR or +ATT for undead
MA Ulm: Iron Darts, Iron Blizzard
Marignon: Holy Pyre (just change it to F1H1 at the same research level)

[HoneyBadger]

JimMorrison, you're turning this into an entirely more complicated proposition than it ever has to be.

I was referring to Endoperez, when I said he was underestimating the modding community, but you clearly are as well. Not being able to come up with anything new beyond the 4 elements, and 4 fairly random power sources is hardly fair. Better to say that we'd never be able to come up with any new and unique Nations-after all, we've got 60! Nations that come with the game! we could *never* come up with anything that wasn't just a rehash of what's already been done... In this, I refer you to Amos and Sombre's mods.

Why would any of the current paths be diminished? Sure, they might be altered a bit, but you don't cut down a tree just because you want it to grow in a slightly different direction. Mages in the game would go unaltered. Why should they change at all? some might gain a path or too, possibly, but it hardly can be said that we have a perfect balance in the game, in it's current form.

And if you have death gems, where you were hoping for sex gems, that doesn't make death gems useless, in any way.

The random sites are "random" for a good reason.

I have no idea what you mean by "Pretender acquisition". Do you mean when you "buy" Pretenders in the beginning of the game? In that case, there would be very little, if any, change to the process. Adding fire to the Niefel Pretender is the same as adding crystal magic would be.

The only path that would necessarily overlap would be the metal path. And that would just make sense, because Earth is already such a powerful path. Ofcourse, the key here is that it would be *optional*.

And we're already adding magic sites, so that's really a moot point. It's not that far-fetched for one determined person to come up with 100 new magic sites in a month. Creating a site is not terribly labour-intensive, after all.

And ofcourse, as I explained, some or all new paths could be alchemized from pearls.