warcraft RPG magic system

Just a draft I cooked up

 

attached is a list of sample arcane spells, to see what the designs are aiming for.

 

Quick question: Is this lore adhering to the warcraft lore of old times, or are you adding/changing/inventing it?

 

This is assuming this is a tabletop.

I'm imagining electricity based spells fall under air? If so, it seems to be a little more versitile than the others, depending on how lenient the DM is, simply because you've got two elements to work with.

I'm not sure how this would fit in, either as its own, or part of Arcane or Mental, but a Physical or Force magic type would be interesting. It can be used to use actual force blasts (uses Physical defense instead of Magic defense), but it's main use would be manipulation of physical elements, such as magnifying strength, shrinking enemies/friends, weakening physical bonds making solids weaker. I dunno, I'm just throwing this out there.

 

Would the manipulation of metals fall under Earth?

 

If there's no Force school, yeah, the manipulation of most constructs would fall under other schools (Metal and stone would fall under Earth, wood structures would fall under Nature ofc, and Otherplane materials would probably be Fel).

I'm trying to remember what I played with Force in it. It was either Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age(possibly bot)h, and it's also in a few Forgotten Realm novels and I really liked the idea. If you really wanna go with it, involved physical manifestations when combined with other schools, eg Blade of Flame, creating actual walls with Arcane shields.

 

Why wouldn't Otherplane materials fall under Void? Or is the idea of 'Void' the inverse of "materials?"

 

It's drie's system, so I might be interpreting it wrong.

Fel seems to be magic from other planes (demonic planes primarily). Void, to me, seems like antimatter type thing.

On the flip side, there ARE Void planes in Warcraft (at least, I assume that's where Voidwalkers are from AHEM), so if you have materials from those planes, then yeah it would fall under Void.

In a Warcraft setting, there's not much Otherplane stuff to work as an example, at least in the games (I'm not familiar with extended universe as far as novels go). I suppose Saronite might qualify as Otherplane, as well as Nether items from Outlands (specifically after the destruction of Draenor, after exposure to the Twisting Nether)

 

Generally it adheres, though there are some mild tweaks. The spell-schools that were not previously defined were corruption, mental, spiritual, time and void, but those were pretty obviously present in story. Corruption are those tentacle-summoners, mental are the priest powers that do shadow damage in WoW, spiritual are the various spirit summoning abilities of the shaman and priests, time is the domain of the gold dragons, as well as the spells slow and time warp, and void is wielded by the voidwalkers.

One-player RPG. If it was a tabletop, there would have been more non-combat spells. I think all these spells can be converted to game stats pretty decently, though if I want to keep moddability, pretty much every spell will need a script.

aye.

 

And now, for something completely different; non-magical techniques.
Any commentary or ideas for attacks I didn't put in there would be welcome


edit: any device-based attacks, whether it is magical arrows, smoke bombs or traps will be implemented through devices.

 

I love you because the file format is odt.

 

it is the international standard

 

And even after converting it has 0 views. Oh the pain! Oh the shame!



On a related note:
DRUIDS
The original WCIII featured the druids of the claw and druids of the talon. The RPG added druids of the antler, aquatic druids and druid of the nightmare. WoW had druids of the fang and druids of the grove.

This game will feature some minor retcons/updates/fixes regarding druids. I would like commentary if peeps think these are good changes or whether they are too radical with little gain. I would also like to hear any suggestions for better names.
Aquatic druids get a name change to druid of the shell and keep only their dragon turtle form (rather than whale, frenzy, crocolisk AND dragon turtle). Minor group with their barrows on a small island between azuremist and darkshore. Concidering leaving this one out.
Druids of the grove are now associated with the tree of life form (They were a minor presence in alterac valley, summoning up Ivus the forest lord. I thought it fit)
New druid group: Druids of the sabre. Take the form of a riding sabre. Inspired by cat and travel forms in WoW. Major group with their barrows in Nighthaven.
New druid group: Druids of the stars. Take the form of the moonkin. Small group. Inspired by moonkin form in WoW. Minor group with their barrows in Darkshore.
New druid group: Druid of the fin. Take the form of sea lions. Inspired by the aquatic form in WoW. Minor group with their barrows near the Feralas coast.

 

I don't know the warcraft lore, otherwise I would have taken a look.

 

I already know the system adheres to lore, but I'd like some comments on it as a combat system as well.

 

Bah.


Anyways, on to the main story. The final stages of the main story are the same no matter what race you start as, but the earlier stages are determined by your starting race (though with a high enough reputation, you can unlock other parts as well). Each faction's story will deal with them discovering the existence of the old gods. The alliance(human/dwarf/gnome) are infiltrated by the twilight hammer cult and will face Ragnaros. The horde(orc/troll/tauren) will fight the council of shadows and the dark horde in blackrock spire, and will find accounts of The three corrupting Deathwing. The night elves will deal with the emerald nightmare. The forsaken will travel with Sylvanas Windrunner to northrend, and deal with faceless and forgotten ones. The draenai and blood elves will have a short story of themselves before merging with the night elves and forsaken respectively. At this point, the first Silithid start emerging. The player must defeat the attacking swarms, recruit the bronze dragonflight and the cenarion circle, gather the resources for war, re-assemble the sceptre of the shifting sands and finally wage an assault against Ahn'qiraj itself.

 

Huh, just realized I don't have to leave out the goblins and worgen as playable races. The new horde used goblins as mercenaries before Hyjal, and the worgen curse can be transmitted to any human. So starting as a goblin is possible, and you just follow the main horde questline. worgen is something you can become as a human player. To balance out starting races, humans get high elves, which follow the main storyline of the alliance.

And speaking about the main storyline of the alliance:
The player starts in stormwind, during the Defias riots. The riots have reached stormwind keep, and the tutorial is defending the keep and driving the Defias back. Queen Tiffyn Wrynn dies at the end of the riots. At this point, the player is given full freedom. If he continues with the main quest, he joins SI:7, and given orders to investigate and root out the remaining Defias, eventually leading to the death of VanCleef and the destruction of the deadmines. It is however apparent from VanCleef's personal logs that the Defias were manipulated by someone within Stormwind (the player doesn't actually figure out who this is in the main quest). After the death of VanCleef, king Varian leaves on a mission to Kalimdor and vanishes. The player is given the task of investigating cults in stormwind and finds several (the player can choose to join, extort or report several of them, like the warlock cult in the slaughtered lamb), including, eventually, the twilight hammer. The true power of ragnaros is discovered, as well as the presence of a greater power behind him. This is the catalyst for Anduin and Bolvar to ignore lady Prestor's advice and reforge the old alliance. The player forges bonds with the dwarves of Ironforge, who agree to join if you rescue Moira during your assault on blackrock mountain, the gnomes, who agree in return for a promise to help free gnomeregan when the time comes, Jaina Proudmoore, who joins freely, the high elves of the eastern plaguelands, who want a place to freely practice arcane arts in stormwind, and finally the night elves, who want support in Ashenvale. The player then assaults blackrock mountain to banish Ragnaros, though during the assault, resonating crystal formations start appearing and summoning colossal anubisath warbringers. After defeating Ragnaros, the player will segue into the shared main story against Ahn'Qiraj.

 

I would play just for the Deadmines. I LOVE THE DEADMINES.

 

yarr, the deadmines be a heap of fun.


Some general stuff
Mechanisms:
Nation leveling: The game starts at a point where many of the races have either lost large portions of territory(blood elves, gnomes) or have only recently started building (high elves, orcs, trolls, tauren, forsaken). This means a world that changes a lot. Since it would be either utter madness or completely illogical for every change to appear after a specific quest, a counter is used instead. There are counters for military power, commerce for a faction within a zone, strength of a certain faith and faction population. Most quests, as well as some NPC deaths increase these counters. Some changes are still done by quests and some changes require both a quest and counters(1). I think the best example of this would be ashenvale. The warsong clan starts here with but a small presence; two medium military outposts(the one from the fourth orc mission and the one from seventh orc mission of WC III), a lone watchtower inbetween the areas of those missions, a goblin mercenary camp (fourth mission of WC III) and four war mills that stand on their own (3 near the night elf bases destroyed in the 4th mission, and another one closer to the barrens border).(2) Splintertree post, the various outposts, and most war mills of the warsong lumber area are all founded through nation leveling. Karstaag keep is founded after the player becomes warlord of the warsong clan, but the various buildings around it, as well as several outposts near it, appear after the player has both become warlord and the various counters are high enough.

Which brings me to my next point: Joinable factions. This is not a complete list, but you will at least be able to join the silverwing sentinels, warsong clan, violet eye, night elf wardens, temple of light and cenarion circle.

(1)
(2): This may not seem like a small amount, but remember that the game map is much larger compared to WoW.

 

Also, since EMR said he loved deadmines so much, let me unveil the dungeons that made it to the RPG (dungeons defined as large continuous areas filled with organized enemies and good loot.)
All of the vanilla dungeons, with the exception of Naxxramas, make it to the RPG. The barrow dens from WCIII make it to the RPG. Karazhan and Zul'aman from TBC make it to the rpg. sunwell isle also makes it to the RPG, but acts as a city, not a dungeon. Parts of Azjol'Nerub make it to the RPG. In addition, some areas have profited drastically from the rescale and have become full-fledged dungeons instead of small terrain note, such as Satyrnaar, Deathholm, Jintha'alor and Mazthoril.

And if you are wondering how such a large world could be achieved: recycling graphics from WoW. Some models should be improved a bit to be en par with graphics from cataclysm (and later expansions). Improve the lighting system, and you got yourself a pretty good-looking game. Some new models will probably be needed, like different armours for the different sentinel groups, but seeing as how WoW has a couple of hundred-thousand armour models, you could probably get really far with slight alterations.