Barren Realms MUD

This was an idea that I had posted a while ago on the old forum boards. It's probably something that might need a lot of coding, but people generally thought it was a worthwhile idea that could add a lot to gameplay. Here's the gist of it as best as I remember.

Right now, there's no real fundamental difference between our spells. To make things more interesting, I thought perhaps we could divide spells up into several schools. Say, for example, fire spells, water spells, air spells, earth spells, and, for others that don't quite fit, spirit spells.

If different spells had an associated school, there are a lot of new and interesting doors that we could open up. We could create mob that are immune to fire spells, but take extra damage from water spells. We could have spells that reduce damage from fiire-based creatures, and so on.

We could also have specialized guildmasters scattered throughout the realms. A normal guildmaster might teach the basic spells, but to get really powerful water spells, you'd have to seek out a water mage hermit somewhere.

There are plenty of other options too, but this is enough to get some discussion started. So what do you all think?

I don't know if this falls under this topic but I guess it makes sense that if we cure an undead, it will cost more damage.

Anyway, the idea sounds really good.

I forgot to include another possiblity - We could also have a fire/water/earth/etc. bit for weapons, so that a sword with the water bit could do extra damage to a fire type creature.

And I would also love to see healing spells damage a mob with an undead bit.

This sounds very interesting. However, I would like to see "dark" and "light" as categories. We could classify both of these into the two sides of the "spirit" school. Light spells would include healing and giant str. Dark would be harm and blindness. Since there seems to be balance among the other schools of fire, water, air and earth then I think dark and light spirit spells would be appropriate. My only concern is that with the addition of these elemental schools, then all the spells of every race will have to be adjusted, which may be a good idea anyway. (I think that most of the race spells should be exclusive, at least renamed if not entirely altered as Everybody has suggested for humans. Non-magic skills are different, and at least some of the basic ones should be left for all races. This doesn't have a lot to do with Faustus' idea, but are just ideas on my part.) As for the elemental spells idea, I believe it would make gameplay much more fun.
Which spells will fit into which schools? Should there be new or altered spells for every race?
-Stars

As far as making a shift to a system like this (if it even dooes ever happen) I'd personally like to see some of our spells kept as is and simply assigned to the different school, other altered slightly to fit in with a particular school, and a number of new spells added to round out each of the cateegories.

Yeah all the ideas sound great...

But i'm sure due to the enormous amount of reworking in the code it'll be a while, but we'll just have to stick around for a long while to see

And what would we do with the characters already created before the new system?

I'm not sure if i like this more for elves or if we could introduce professions, like merchant, necromancer, priest, etc.

By Necromancers, you meant like the profession in D2 with the reviving of dead mobs, right?

maybe... maybe i'm just crazy..

How about adding a "neutral" school of magic, one that doesn't belong to any of the other elemental schools?

Professions seem an awful lot like classes. I'm not against the idea, as long as the races retain their unique qualities. I definately think something should be done to liven things up around here.

ok, here i go, well, i dont like classes, duh, you all know that. now, i play mostly humans and elves, two pretty straight forward races, but i ALWAYS multi-class. however, you cant multi-class until you reach the level required to practice the out of guild "different class" spell or skill. why not make these proposed proffesions be like that. for example, once you reach level 40, you can go to the umm, priest guildmaster and spend say... 15 practices on the proffesion that has OOG penalties. once you do, you open up maybe 5 new spells or skills that ONLY priests can learn. maybe make it so you cant be more then one or two proffesions and you can never change.

next, give these "schools of magic" to different proffesions. you wouldnt be integrating a new class system, simply adding on to the races after you play them enough to even consider specializing in a proffesion.

and lastly, only give certain proffesions to certain races. that way, if you want to be a human, you can. but if you so choose, you could become a human/priest/ranger, or a human/priest or human/ranger. see where i am going with this. I KNOW IT WOULD BE VERY HARD TO CODE, but really, we want to draw new blood correct? instead of creating all these new races, why not just super enhance the ones we have.

i know my opinion doesnt me jack squat so, ill just stop rambling.

Every opinion is worth something.

no, i just have my moments

Wll I dont think it should really be classes but the profession idea I do like. IE) Say for instant you can become a priest as a profession, instead of getting new spells why not just improve the ones a priest would do? example being heal or cure critical might cure a little more (15-25% more, nothing too extreme). Merchants can sell items for more and buy for less and im not sure which to do with the others but im sure I could think of a bunch. Now this surely would make things easier right? Well make a penalty for doing so. I think for becoming a certain profession there should be a OOG penalty, say for instance the equivlant of 2 or 3 oog skills. Keeping it like this makes it I think more realistic, that way we arent seeing Dwarf or Kender priests. at least one profession should be made for each race (excluding demons of course). Making it something like this allows players who dont like the idea to just play a race as they normally would but adding extras into it like this. Heres some examples of what I think could be the benefits:

Dwarf: Merchants (sell higher, buy cheaper) or Mercenary (not sure what to do with this)

Elf : Necromancer (not sure either but perhaps have even smaller mana amount to cast spells or allow certain spells (teleport) to be higher then 95%(tp can still mis teleport at 100%)

Druid : Obviously the Priest idea

Human: Humans being the norm could probably a bunch of different ones (Merchant, Priest) except with lower advantages as a druid as a priest or a dwarf as a merchant

Avian: Not sure what to call it (the tan skill comes to mind, but since avians are great trackers , have an ability where you can make something out of corpse's or body parts

Illithid : No idea what to do with this one....anyone?

Kender: Thief comes to mind...and as I see it have it so steal can actually swipe a piece of equipment

How about elves having an archer profession for their warrior side and put the necromancers for illithids?