AMOUNT OF MAGIC IN FANTASY

author=Crystalgate
What we get then is an RPG that doesn't have magic, but is instead more focused on martial skills.

You have a good point, expanding the skills of non-magic class types/characters is certainly a way of giving them the same effects of magic in game without there actually being any. Of course doing so could take most of the fantasy out of the game, but then RPG's don't have to be fantasy based at all, just look at Earth Bound. Errr, maybe not the best example, but you get the idea. There is also the option of Mundane Vs Fantasy in a game, with characters akin to what Crystalgate is describing being forced to deal with monsters and magic useing nothing but skill and wit.

You could add limited amount of magic to the mix, say only the main character has it and it's use is fairly limited. You will not be able to use it even half the battles, so for the most of the time, the main character has to fight with cold steel like everyone else. But when you do use magic, it's way more powerful than anything you can accomplish with weapons.

It's not uncommon that fantasy books have magic, but for the most of the time, the heroes have to solve their problems with other means.

I was not really intending non magic to have the same effects as magic though. My idea is more on the line to instead create other effects in lieu of the magical effects. For example, no skill that hits multiple targets. Instead of that, we have a lot of skills with both offensive and defensive properties to compensate. Heavy Blow can both deal damage and stun. Blade Storm deals damage and the barrage of cuts make it hard for the enemies to approach, resulting in an evasion increase for the user. Cripple can both weaken an enemy and cause it to bleed. And so on.

author=Desertopa
I personally like the idea of an RPG without magical elements, which separates characters' abilities into "techniques" and "armaments." Characters become progressively more versatile through accumulation of techniques, but have limited space in which to carry auxiliary weapons like crossbows, flails, naphtha grenades, etc. Combined with real-time combat and mobility over the battlefield (as in the Star Ocean games, for example,) distance, timing and area become as important to the value of abilities as damage, cost and weakness exploitation.

Also, since the mechanics enable tactics involving outright avoidance or control of the enemies' ability to effectively attack your characters, it becomes more practical to minimize or eliminate the role of in-battle healing (something that generally doesn't make a lot of sense without the invocation of magic.)

I get where you're coming from with this, but it does nip at the heals of action game territory, which is in no way a bad thing. Quite a few modern RPGs have begun embracing more action based combat, though I'm not sure that in battle healing will ever go away. Now having a character that acts as a medic and takes a short amount of time to patch up another character could work well in a party style situation. Of course at that point you could end up with combat becoming one fighter distracts the monster while the other attacker gets healed and the two switching places until the battle is over.

author=LightningLord2
In defense of in-battle healing, it is usually necessary because combatants deal very high damage relative to their health, which makes healing needed to keep the battle from being over in a few turns. Also, it is your only answer to damage in turn-based games usually as you can't prevent your opponent from dealing damage in most games.

Well, yes, characters usually receive very high damage per turn relative to their total health, in games where the combat is designed to account for in-battle healing.

The reason I'm interested in systems that do away with in-game healing isn't because I particularly hate in-game healing as a mechanic (although it does seem pretty silly if you try to portray it in any context other than video games. Imagine any movie based on a video game showing the protagonists fighting powerful enemies by getting wailed on and healing themselves over and over.) It's because doing away with it basically forces you to do something significantly original with your game's combat tactics.

If you count healing factors, I've seen quite a few, but there's a difference between tanking damage because you regenerate almost immediately, and alternating between wailing on someone and patching yourself up. Having to divide your attentions between hurting your opponent and un-hurting yourself is generally going to look sillier, and I can't think of any media other than video games which use it off the top of my head (although maybe it's showed up in stuff I haven't seen?)

Which is another way you could get novel strategy out of different healing mechanics. If all healing is regeneration-based, rather than restoring health in one shot, it forces the player to plan around the relative rates of damage taken and healed per time.

Well, I don't think games with heavier use of fantastical elements are inherently better. There's a lot of potential to do interesting stuff with them, but the same potential exists for less fantastical works for pretty much the same reason; it pushes you to do something original with the setting and mechanics.

author=Desertopa

author=LightningLord2
In defense of in-battle healing, it is usually necessary because combatants deal very high damage relative to their health, which makes healing needed to keep the battle from being over in a few turns. Also, it is your only answer to damage in turn-based games usually as you can't prevent your opponent from dealing damage in most games.

Well, yes, characters usually receive very high damage per turn relative to their total health, in games where the combat is designed to account for in-battle healing.

The reason I'm interested in systems that do away with in-game healing isn't because I particularly hate in-game healing as a mechanic (although it does seem pretty silly if you try to portray it in any context other than video games. Imagine any movie based on a video game showing the protagonists fighting powerful enemies by getting wailed on and healing themselves over and over.) It's because doing away with it basically forces you to do something significantly original with your game's combat tactics.

You should check out the Fire Emblem series if you never have before. While they do have in game healing you have to be VERY careful about when and where you use it as your healers often tend to be squishy, usually can't counter attack while equipped with a healing staff, and use an entire turn to do said heals. It is a tactical based rpg, true, but in my opinion it is the best of its sort out there. Might just be up your alley.

As for magic in games I guess it all depends on a lot of factors including function, lore, and how game breaking it is. I think something out of the ordinary should be present in anything that deems itself fantasy but I'm more excepting of some things than I am others. For instance I am not a fan of the magic system in Dark Souls, but I love the weapons system. They fixed the "magic" system from Blood Bourne in a way I think works better, but at the same time there are some abilities I won't use due to lore reasons or what I have to do in order to get them. Of course this is me as a player and my personal gripes, but I prefer a lightning spear to shooting bolts of lightning from one's hands.

I like sometimes using magic as a bullshit way to weakly excuse or justify plotholes / shenanigans...

Then there's also shenanigans and the essence of wack to excuse those things.

In terra, a game you definitely shouldn't play that I made, Magic was generated by the two moons closely orbiting the planet, which themselves were magic... I uh, hmm.

Nowadays I have a Demigoddess known as Blu who is all hella magical, in fact she's the mother of all magic and intellect, so there's that. Now I can point at things like the rapid growth of intellect in mammals in Intelligence or the like and say 'was Blu'.

It's flimsy but it works.

As for the actual topic discussion, I think yeah, there's definitely some points to be admired when you're comparing magic against physical strength, that said usually there's a limit to ones power, or to their kind of abilities, the hybrid of necromancer, mage and elementalist is very rarely all in one design, and in the scenario they are, they are usually brutally overpowered or difficult to defeat. From a gameplay standpoint, in RPG's it makes very little sense, unless there's actually shields most warriors naturally have against magick.

In action games like P:A, Spells are definitely the most dangerous of monster abilities, that said you have ranged attacks (guns and one or two spells) yourself, if in a game like such you were a slow heavily armored brute, oh yeah... you'd have a hard time, but since you're a dextrous red cat with a bunch of ethereal weapons, it's actually pretty justified, especially since in a lot of cases a deadly spell will take off a third of your health at the very least.

There's also the juxtaposition and at once cooperation of science in tandem with magic, people look at legendary abilities like summoning a meteor as radical but you know what's even more powerful??

A fucking nuke, because not only does it obliterate a massive area, it also makes said area barren and uninhabitable for DECADES!

My problem, in general, with magic in fantasy is that it takes inordinately less work to do something with magic, in most settings. While most standard settings (especially those based of D&D ages ago, like final fantasy) will state that mages must practice their whole lives to learn their skills, we still see young mages flinging around spells with the effect of modern weapons with ease, while their companions swing a sword.

These worlds also tend to ignore the societal implications of the same spells. You will have spells that can revive someone from near death, mend hundreds of stab wounds, and yet can be restored with a simple potion, or resting a day. Admittedly, a lot of this is simple ease of use, but if you've ever played a game with a smart-ass mage in D&D who tries to unbalance the economic system of a town with create food/water or tries to do massive damage by summoning a whale above an enemy...well, you realize how silly some of these things are.

Thematically, the best magic systems I've seen tend to put a huge onus on the mage, physically and mentally. The Fate/Stay Night universe tends to posit that magic is limited to those with innate talent only, and requires just as much exertion as doing the act physically would. So doing something that requires inhuman amounts of energy can possible kill you.

Game wise, magic systems should be balanced with non-magic. Linear warriors/quadratic wizards is way too common, but at the same time having dozens of spells you no longer use because you're using the next incremented version is just as bad. Spells should grow in power with their user, just like skills should.

Bioware kinda pulls what Warhammer does. Magic is dangerous, deadly, powerful, and can summon demons to tear apart the nature of reality.

Shadowrun also does it well system wise, in that every cast doesn't cost you MP, but tires you out (through stun damage), or if you're pushing yourself way too hard, can hurt you. So, the more powerful the magic, the more it wears you out/hurts you, but you can choose how much magic to put into each spell.