Hello everyone. I am not sure how many of you all are familiar with Age of Conan, or what their origonal idea for spellweaving was, but it sounded great. It was the first time I actually got excited about maybe playing a caster class. They spoke about weaving multiple spells together for one giant nuke. However, the spell would obviously become unstable the larger it got, and you could of course bite off more than you could chew, and mess yourself up. What they released was nothing like this, of course.

Anyway, it has always really bummed me out that they never got it in the game, and so I was kicking around an idea of my own, so please let me know what you think! Here it is:

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Every spell can have it’s casting “turned on” by clicking the spells’ hotkey. Clicking it again will end the buildup, and cast the spell at the target. If the player is moving when the spell is activated, it casts instantly. The longer you leave the spell to build up before releasing it, the more damage it will do. The maximum amount of time a spell can build up is 10 seconds, at which point it is cast at the target automatically.

Below is the damage calculations of a normal nuke spell:

Instant: 10 Damage
1 Sec: 20 Damage (100% increase)
2 Sec: 40 Damage (100% increase)
3 Sec: 80 Damage (100% increase)
4 Sec: 160 Damage (100% increase)
5 Sec: 208 Damage (30% increase)
6 Sec: 270 Damage (30% increase)
7 Sec: 324 Damage (20% increase)
8 Sec: 389 Damage (20% increase)
9 Sec: 467 Damage (20% increase)
10 Sec: 700 Damage (50% increase)

After 5 seconds of buildup, there is a 10% chance that you will take 50% of the damage you deal when you cast the spell.

After 7 seconds of buildup, there is a 20% chance that you will take 50% of the damage you deal when you cast the spell.

If you cast a spell when it is fully built up, there is a 25% chance that you will kill yourself when casting the spell.

If you take damage from a direct source (not from DoTs) while you are casting a spell, it is instantly cancelled. If you are above 5 seconds of buildup, you will take damage equal to 20% of your maximum health.
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My fear with this is that it is just too powerful. Lets say the average tank class has 600hp at this level, and the average clothy has 300. This makes it possible to one shot even tanks if you let it build the whole time. While risky as all hell to yourself, it would still be devestating to other players, and especially mobs. I could see people abusing the hell out of this. Also, the instant nuke is next to useless, because 10 damage is very little in the grand scheme of things. I would assume that people would want at LEAST 3 seconds worth of casting to deal 80 damage, but even that is very little, not even 1/3 of a caster's HP.

The solution of course is to ramp up the min damage. However, then I don't think people would bother building the spells up very much at all, and would let them one shot people even easier... So, you would need to lower the max damage. However, then it would just make better sense to just use very short cast spells, because the benefit of building the spell up to max is very little, but with a lot of risk...

So, please let me know what you think, and maybe how it could work out better! Thanks!

You could instead have everyone casting spells.  After all if you're going to have a complex system why keep it only in the hands of 10% of the player base(probably the reason it was ditched).  have them be along the lines of an ace up the sleeve you know everyone has one, just not what it is, what the effects are, who's going to use it first, and who is going to use it at best effect.   It also makes sense from a logical standpoint in that if magic were real it would just be another form of science everyone has access to.

So your only archtypes are along the lines of: archer,  light infanty, swordsman, heavy infanty, and engineer.

So while you're doing normal combat stuff you have a side game of drawing energy together and keeping it stable.   Then you release everything in one go and the effects that you were charging are released.  Depending on the combat situation you might force hands or get called.  This means that casting magic isn't just a matter of stand still and pray, and that normal combat isn't just a matter of target and wait.  It also adds some nice layers of depth to combat while just basing it on 2 simple systems(normal combat, and spell weaving).

I'd imagine the spell effects would be along the lines of this:

10 fire damage for every charge level to current target

20 earth damage to a random enemy for each charge level. requires atlest 3 charges.

heal 5 health for each charge level.

remove a status effect from yourself for each charge level.

90% chance to fail.  cause 3 random earth status effects on current target.  reduce the chance to fail by 10% for each charge level.

your next spell can only be from fire pools.  fire magic charges 5% faster for each charge level.

your next spell can only draw from water pools.  fire magic near you charges 15% slower for 5 seconds times the number of charges.

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you could charge as many as you wanted to at one time but you'd slow down the speed that stuff charges and you can only release everything at one time not seperately.

With a bit of focus you could easily set up a system where the tank doesn't just tank and where healers aren't pegged into being the wimps.

You also give yourself a whole bunch of lines of advancement instead of just up in normal combat level.  IE: get a new spell part.

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If you add other mechanics like different actions causes different energies to charge faster: someone dieing nearby 10% boost to the charge speed of magic that would normally fall under nercomancy, charging forward boost to the charge speeds of emotional magics like fire and rage,  taking damage boost to the charge speed of your blood magics,  standing still not doing anything boost to the charge speed of arcane and meditative magics, enduring/dodging damage boost to earth and air magic charge speeds.  

Then toss in environmental effects like a volcano area having charge speed bonuses to fire and earth  magic.  

Of course these last bonuses aren't just there to be used by people to be stronger they also give hints to enemies which pools of spells you're probably going to draw from.

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Granted it's also going to be very painful from the design standpoint to get the combat pace just right.

I should mention that risk vs. reward systems don't need to be in the traditional sense that MMO players think.

If you focus solely on fire you open yourself up to the reward of only having to worry about one type of spell type charging.  You risk getting countered in your physical combat stuff because you're going to be trying to focus on specific abilities that buff your your fire charge,  you risk getting countered on your magic side, and you risk being very predictable.

 Ah, interesting thread. Let me keep the ball rolling here.

So let us take this a slight step further.

There's a school of wizardy called Powe Circles. The first thing a player learns is how to set up a power circle. When activated, the wizard will take his cane and scrape it in the ground with the butt end to produce a circle around him. The ability is over... but it does nothing. However, the player may insert different runes into his circles, in a radiating pattern.  

Anyway, these runes are all induvidually cast upon the circle. Some may be instant, and some may have 10 sec casts. So in the gameplay, the player is supposed to defend himself and fence of the opponent (or have his friends do it)  while drawing the power circle. Think it could result in an interesting gameplay situations. 

So when a practitioner inputs these runes, the resulting spell is read in the order the player places them on the circle. Somewhat like with stanzas in Ryzom. Let me illutrate.

First the player places out "Rune of Missile".

Only thing this does, is to create a ball non potent energy. No damage and small range, instant, but slow traveling speed, if the engine was to support such options.  Also, a +1 Ciritical Mass (CM for short) is added to the spell effect. Inside this CM, a modifier is hidden that tells what outcomes may result from different degrees of Crirical happenstances. It's important that this is hidden, since we want the players to experiment and feel like true wizards.

Then our hero casts a "Rune of Fire Damage".

It adds 100 fire damage (lets pretend this is much, but not alot) dmg and faster traveling speed, but 2+ to cast time. It gives +3 CM.

Hero casts "Rune of Splash"

Adds a splash on single target missile with 5yrd range. +5 CM

Hero casts "Rune of Ice damage"

Adds 50 dmg. If the spell is a splash at this point in the "spellchain splash", it adds 30 dmg.  +4 CM

Hero casts "Rune of Frostrange"

Adds a greater range of either X or Y, depending if its a splash or a single target spell. Also target become frozen for 2 sec. +14 CM.

To activate the spell, the caster, or a party member with an appropriate spell, the player casts a specific ablility within the circle.

Our heros spell does the following: He casts a fireball at the target, dealing 100 dmg, 2 sec cast time, medium traveling speed, average range. When it hits the target, it splashes, and does 50 ice-dmg to his friends surrounding him, and freezez them to the ground for 2 sec. Total risk is 27 CM. Thats a medium to high risk (crowd control should obviously be expensive). 

Oh, and if the hero does something weird with the power circle, like having the runes in an orer that just doesn't make sense, it 100% guaranteed Critical Mass efffect.

Dunno. Just something that might spice it up but also balance. Good damage, adaptability and crowd control VS high risk, tricky casting, sloooow cast time if you add all the runes and the circle and circle activation together, and - of course - not knowing what will happen. Runes can, and should, have all kind of hidden modifiers. Even entire runes people can't decipher, so they have to use their own intellect.