Plan carefully to avoid damaging and splitting your own party members. Collapse ceilings and drop floors – logical and tactical. Of course, it was weak and didn’t last long, but if taken a bit further… What? Impossible to implement? Diablo’s Bone Wall spell. Narrow corridors and let your party members deals with an upcoming horde of enemies one foe at a time. No longer you have to exploit dumb AI and draw enemies 1-2 at a time from large packs. Split your enemies into smaller, more manageable groups. Raise walls and barriers – lot of fun and tactical possibilities. The statue can be destroyed, of course, without any (much?) harm to the mage. The statue can't wander far from the mage's body which would be the natural limitation. Needless to say, the statue must protect the mage's body for if it’s destroyed, the character dies. In game terms the latter would mean that the player loses control of his mage character and gains control of the statue. You can either animate a statue or, better yet, possess it. Bring statues to life - a lot more interesting and tactical than summoning wild animals out of thin air whenever you feel like. In King's Quest 6 you can actually enter a castle by casting a Magic Paint spell and painting a door on one of the walls. Using my favourite "guarded gate" example to illustrate different ways to deal with game’s challenges, fighter fights his way through, thief either sneaks in or climbs the wall, diplomat talks his way through, and mage just opens a passage and travels in style. Open passages and portals – walls are never an obstacle for you. All we need is to take it one step further and build the mage concept around environment interaction: Even though Daggerfall mages were stereotypical magic fighters, a few non-combat, gameplay-altering spells made playing these mages a memorable and somewhat unique experience. Daggerfall’s massive, fear-inducing dungeons were cleverly designed, featuring air shafts, pits, underwater areas, large, open, multi-level halls, which worked great with climbing, swimming, levitating, jumping, walking on water, etc. Not surprisingly, these "game-breaking" abilities didn’t break these games as they were designed with these features in mind. They could walk through walls and soar through the air at will. Mages were no longer restricted by walls and gravity. These spells gave mages a very unique way to play the game. That's better than being just another fighter, but one can’t help but wonder if more could be done with the Magic Boy concept.Ĭonsider Arena and Daggerfall spells like Passwall and Levitation. Invisibility spells can make him stealthy, mind affecting/illusion spells can make him very persuasive, etc. Versatility, as his spells' repertoire allows him to temporarily tap into abilities of all the classes. What's a Magic Boy then? At worst - which is about 90% of games, he's merely a Fighter. Over the years we've slowly developed different gameplay concepts - Fighter, Stealth Boy, Diplomat (aka Charisma Boy), and Science Boy. At best we are offered creative explanations of magic and its origins, but gameplay remains the same.
It exists in vacuum, nothing more than a meta-gaming feature with the single purpose of providing the player with a different, more colorful way to kill things. The problem is that magic is not integrated into settings. What you do see are firebolts and fireballs, ice storms and chain lightning, magic missiles and meteor swarms. I'm talking about protection against enemy's wizards entering towns and opening portals for troops waiting a thousand miles away. You don't see anti-magic defenses and I'm not talking about protection against fireballs. You don't see improved communications ("Crystal Ball News Network"?). You don't see wizards transporting goods and golems employed on construction sites. That's all magic is apparently good for as it doesn't seem to offer any benefits to the setting, local industries, and the player. What comes to mind when you think about magic in RPGs? Medieval Europe-like place with pointy hats wizards firing brightly colored "magical" projectiles at various creatures.
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