SouthLab: revising magic.
I spent some time today paring away spells in SouthLab's spell catalogue, although I added a few different ones as well. It's down to 37 spells total from the apparent previous total of 45. I reorganized the current spellbooks. They're very compact now, all containing 3-4 spells. Anything related to companions is now gone; companions will either be deemphasized or completely eliminated.
Something else I'm looking at is magic skills. I've tentatively separated the divination- and translocation-type spells from Enchantment into a separate skill category, Spatial Magic. It's an attempt to even out enchantments and conjurations. As this stands, Conjuration is now the largest category, by its nature being the most diverse; there are 16 conjurations, 14 enchantments, and 7 spatial spells. I'm not sure if I'll retain these distinctions, though, or if I'll revert to a single-skill system. If I keep the distinctions, I can also retain the current interdisciplinary spellbooks, but I'd also add specialized spellbooks. There are few enough spells in each category that that should be doable enough, even justifiable within the coursebook concept as representing different departments, as it were, of the School of Magic Studies. Whatever the case, there are no player classes that specialize by default in any one area of magic, so any distinctions are just meant to force the player to work for their rewards. And that's hardly a bad thing, in a roguelike especially.
Stuff to work on.
Something else I'm looking at is magic skills. I've tentatively separated the divination- and translocation-type spells from Enchantment into a separate skill category, Spatial Magic. It's an attempt to even out enchantments and conjurations. As this stands, Conjuration is now the largest category, by its nature being the most diverse; there are 16 conjurations, 14 enchantments, and 7 spatial spells. I'm not sure if I'll retain these distinctions, though, or if I'll revert to a single-skill system. If I keep the distinctions, I can also retain the current interdisciplinary spellbooks, but I'd also add specialized spellbooks. There are few enough spells in each category that that should be doable enough, even justifiable within the coursebook concept as representing different departments, as it were, of the School of Magic Studies. Whatever the case, there are no player classes that specialize by default in any one area of magic, so any distinctions are just meant to force the player to work for their rewards. And that's hardly a bad thing, in a roguelike especially.
Stuff to work on.