[Amber, Deutha]
1) Spells:
What name should be given to the witches' spell type things? (They'll
be listed under "spells", no avoiding that, I'm afraid, but a division
of the listing into "wizards' spells", "priests' rituals" and "witches'
whatevers" is possible.) Putting a curse on someone will fall under this
category, although staring would probably be better as a command.
2) Commands:
Mix - to activate herb mixtures
Brew - to activate a brew in a cauldron
Stare [diamonds|daggers] - to stare offensively at someone
3) Food:
It's fine to use Esme's kitchen for them to make their own food. In
fact, I'd like to get more cooking going on (there's the bakers' guild,
for instance) which would in fact be very much analogous to casting
spells in that the cook takes ingredients, performs actions and obtains
a result (the quality of the product would have to depend on a skill, so
a cooking category can be introduced to "other"). Each item of food
keeps a list of "eat effects" - effects it will add to the eater (and
strengths per weight eatern) - so maybe a "dip" command can be added
to food to get it to absorb an eat effect from a liquid.
4) Potions:
From the point of view of the player, some potions will be magical
(e.g. ones that boost or lower a stat for some period of time), while
others use natural materials (e.g. willowfine is aspirin, mouldy bread
is penicillin) and some are merely placebos. For simplicity (at first),
they should all be coded the same way, with the witch making a mixture
of ingredients and activating it with a command, leaving interpretation
to whatever they want.
5) Ingredients:
Esme's herb garden
Forests and fields in the Ramtops and Sto Plains
Apothecaries' Gardens in Ankh
Other more out-of-the-way sites
Pick command in plants should take account of time of day/year.
6) Identifying potions:
When a brew goes wrong, for whatever reason, or if an unlabelled
potion is left in a shop or other place, identification by some means
should be possible - magical, alchemical, apothecarial testing, etc. The
effects that can be used by potions (more generally, by food) should
have some well defined scheme for returning information about
themselves. One possibility is to have functions in them like:
string query_apothecarial_effect() {
return "will lessen inflammation of the ears";
} /* query_mundane_effect() */
for one of the effects in the woolly fellwort and treacle wormseed
herb potion, and:
string query_alchemical_effect() {
return "causes temporary blindness";
} /* query_alchemical_effect() */
in a blindness effect (surprise!) and:
string query_magical_effect() {
return "gives a temporary increase in dexterity";
} /* query_magical_effect() */
in a dexterity enhancing effect. There are then three areas that have to
be checked (either by the player, or by someone else) for an unknown
potion before they should be willing to risk drinking it.
7) Level criteria:
Generally when assigning levels (or difficulties) to spells
(similarly for potions) the more powerful or effective the spell, the
higher the level should be - for instance, we don't want witches being
able to rattle off a dozen strength potions in ten minutes and then quaff
the lot; there are other ways to limit this, of course, such as rare
ingredients and weird conditions, but the simplest to arrange is level.
Similarly potions that can be annoying probably shouldn't be too low a
level, or people will sign up as witches, gain a few levels and then
just go around annoying the hell out of everyone. The best approach is
probably to draw up a list of the various processes, assign rough-guess
levels and then we can fine tune it. I've had some experience with this,
not only from coding spells but also from the magical artifacts (mostly
wands) that I've been making lately, but I have no well formulated
system for this, usually going on my personal feelings.
8) Mini-quests:
The plan that the witch must complete the mini-quests is good,
and they may as well be coded in that order - could there be any
others or will there just be the three of them? Remind you to explain to
you how to use the fungus object; there are three at the moment, a
simple mushroom (the default), a mushroom that has spots on it that
begin the glow when it reaches maturity, and a toadstool that blasts off
into space (obviously a Ramtops variety - it also has a minor gp restoring
eat effect so could be used as the basis of a stronger gp restoring
potion).
9) Curses:
All curses should be written as effects, not using the /std/curses/
ones since they use and old system which isn't very good (they don't
save either). A lot of the priest effects are still on the old effects
system too, and need to be rewritten and moved to a more general
directory (priests will not be the only ones to make people blind).
10) Skills:
The magic skills category still needs rearranging, with the occult
category being absorbed into it. As a proposed preliminary breakdown,
I'd suggest something like:
magic
| spells
| | offensive
| | defensive
| | misc
| | special
| methods
| | elemental
| | | air
| | | earth
| | | fire
| | | water
| | mental
| | | animating [give a mind to something inanimate]
| | | channeling [convey mental energy]
| | | charming [convince someone to do your bidding]
| | | convoking [draw together other minds]
| | | cursing [affect the beliefs and other things of someone]
| | physical
| | | binding [attach a magical effect to an object]
| | | brewing [perform a magical reaction on substances]
| | | chanting [use the vocal aspects of magic]
| | | dancing [use the body-motion aspects of magic]
| | | enchanting [change the magic field of an object]
| | | evoking [draw forth the magical properties of an object]
| | | healing [boost the life force of a living object]
| | | scrying [send your senses to another place]
| | spiritual
| | | abjuring [force a spirit to abstain from some action]
| | | banishing [return a spirit to its normal dwelling]
| | | conjuring [request a spirit to perform some action]
| | | divining [extract information from a spirit]
| | | summoning [bring a spirit into your presence]
| items
| | held
| | | wand
| | | rod
| | | staff
| | | broom
| | worn
| | | amulet
| | | ring
| | scroll
| points
I know that this is a huge list of skills, so if there are any here that
ou think really won't be used (although I can think of uses for almost
all of them) please say so. Similarly if you can think of anything else
that ought to be in there. As with the other guilds, wizards and witches
won't have to learn _all_ of the skills in magic, but will get a select
12 to 14 which will determine their guild level and in which they can
advance to level 300 (a different set of 14 for each guild, with some
overlaps and some of the skills in neither - this is okay since I'm
planning a system of departments for the wizards so that the necessary
skills will change according to department).
