Custom class spells not set by skills.

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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Rand
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Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Rand »

One of the things that bugs me most about Daggerfall (either version) is that custom classes get the shaft with spells.

Really, it's almost a bug, and definitely a quality of life improvement (that should be built into the base game) is that spells should be given to characters based on their selected skills.

When I select Restoration repeatedly, as both a major skill and as the one I studied the most, I should damned well get a healing spell at startup! :x

Instead, the three it gives me are shock (didn't choose destruction), chameleon (cantrip: useless), and slowfall.

There should be one useful spell for each magic skill given for each primary, major and minor magic skill chosen at startup. If you want to differentiate between the spells' quality depending on primary, major and minor, there is an argument to be made both ways.

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Ralzar
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Ralzar »

Or:

Simply have a character creation question at the end that lets you select 1 low-cost Spell for every.. 20(?) points in Intelligence?

Firebrand
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Firebrand »

I agree. You can customize every bit of a class, why not let choose which starting low cost spells to have?

If your class have for example Restoration as a primary or major skill, and we are then assuming you spent years practicing that kind of magic, how is possible that you don't even really know a single spell of that school? :roll:
That's really nonsense :lol:

Jeoshua
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Jeoshua »

My preference would be to have a spell at starting the game for every magic school you have more than 15 points in. Two if it somehow starts at 30.

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pango
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by pango »

+1

Early game with caster classes is hard enough, it would make sense you start with spells you can make some use of!
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Ralzar
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Ralzar »

Jeoshua wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2019 1:56 am My preference would be to have a spell at starting the game for every magic school you have more than 15 points in. Two if it somehow starts at 30.
Agreed. Sounds like an easy way to do it.

Alterantive:

Have a list in the code with 3 deafault spells from each school, ranked 1, 2 and 3 based on usefullness/cost.


Default: No spells

If you have any magic schools as class skills:
Primary Skill: Adds all 3 spells for that school.
Major: Adds the two lowest ranked spells.
Minto: Adds the lowest ranked spell for that school.


So for example, Resttoration could have:

1: Cure Poison
2: Stamina
3: Heal (or Balynas Balm or whatever it's called)

So only if you had Restoration as your Primary skill would you start with Cure Poison.
(Spells made up on the spot without checking costs.)

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Leeux
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Leeux »

There's an inherent problem with this kind of thing, and is that most "circinate" (i.e. standard) base spells are useless. You'd still need to go to the MG and make your own spells if you'd want any hope of being able to actually use them in realistic situations.

I.e. take Cure Poison, for example... the standard base spells costs around ~100 MP for a Restoration skill of around ~50, I think. While Heal costs ~40 or so. Balyna's Balm costs around ~15. And Balyna's Antidote also around ~90 or so.

So, they'd be unusable for any character that doesn't have the Increased Magery perk at character creation of at least 1.0x (assuming modicum amount of INT too,) even if you have the skills as part of your class.

But yeah, I agree that it would help t have *some* spells at your disposal at the start, in contrast with just having a few fixed ones, or none at all! :)

Perhaps a solution would be to add more lower tier spells as Circinate option, for common things like healing, recovering stamina, levitate, etc.

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Ralzar
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Ralzar »

True, a set of really low level spells. Maybe that could actually also serve as training spells if you did not feel like (or could not, because you got kicked out of MG) making your own super cheap training spells.

Heal Bruise (Small heal)
Gentle Fall (Short Slowfall)
Arcane Shot (Small magical ranged attack.)
Candle (Short duration Light)
Silver Tongue (Lower effect or duration Tongues)
Rise (Short duration Levitate)

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Jay_H
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Jay_H »

Actually, I like the idea of modding the circinate spells altogether. I wonder how hard that would be. They're certainly useless as they are :)

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Rand
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Re: Custom class spells not set by skills.

Post by Rand »

Yes, I avoid the standard spells, too. Too weak and random for my taste. They need to be seriously altered.

Take Restoration. If I want to heal in battle, I don't want to risk failure, but I especially don't want to maybe heal a bit or a lot. I want reliable amounts, at least 1/3 health if possible.

I don't mind failure chances on cure disease spells (and so on) so much, because I can just re-cast.

The corollary, though, is that potions use the standard spells (which especially suck for them).
Potions, at least, need their own spells. It doesn't matter if their mana casting requirements would be nuts, they should just work, and work well, for all the effort you put into getting/making them/lugging them around.

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