As we approach v1.0 I am going to start adding some new spells for the new Chaos Groove Spell pack (the current ones only will still be playable in the Chaos Funk pack).
So, I am looking for some good spell ideas to possibly implement. Sadly the old suggestions on zunked.org have long since disappeared. Anyway, please feel free to post suggestions here and I’ll see if there are some I like that are implementable..
November 18, 2007 at 2:54 pm
How about a spell that works a bit like teleport, but instead of just moving your wizard, it exchanges your position with that of another wizard. Would be useful for turning the tables on whoever cast that gooey blob on you.
If that would unbalance things to much, you could make it so you can only swap positions with one of your own creatures maybe?
Could be called ‘interchange’?
November 18, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I did think of something like that already, might be a bit too unbalanced. I might add it and see though..
Any more ideas, people?
November 19, 2007 at 2:55 pm
What about a “disenchant” spell that gets rid of (or maybe has a chance to based on the owning wizards magic ability) all illusions, raised dead, magic weapons, wings, and all other such things?
November 19, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I’ve seen a few games that have a ‘clone’ spell, temporarily giving you another player, so you effectively get an extra attack each round for the duration of the spell?
November 19, 2007 at 9:39 pm
I’d quite like to see some kind of attacking spells that have an area effect – maybe not especially powerful, but that you can cast to attack a group of monsters who are all together?
Maybe some kind of Chain Reaction or Plague spell, where after you target one creature, it’ll jump to another nearby (indiscriminately, including your own creatures) until it fails to kill something…
Or a Mute spell, that prevents an enemy wizard from casting a spell the following turn?
One thing I’d like to see is some kind of spell (though I can’t see exactly what) that you could use to clear out either magic fire or gooey blobs; just because, after a while, you sometimes end up in a really dull stalemate situation where neither player can effectively get to and attack the other one anymore.
November 19, 2007 at 10:13 pm
How about a Living Death spell, that transforms a still-living creature into Undead?
A Double spell that allows you to duplicate a creature on the battlefield (including an opponent’s), with the duplicate under your control?
Drain Magic, a kind of last-ditch spell that wipes out every other active spell in play?
November 19, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Ah! Now the ideas flow…
One thing I do want to be wary of is not having spells that unbalance the game. That is one thing that I think Total Chaos on the Amiga sadly got drawn into. For example they had spells like Combat which rather than adding to the existing combat value (as in magic knife, magic sword) replaced the existing value with a maximal one. You had a similar situation with a recovery rate statistic.
As a result if you had a blocker creature (full defence, no combat, large movement, flying) and cast combat on it, then straightaway you had perhaps the most powerful creature in the entire game that couldn’t be countered properly..
Keep the ideas coming!
November 20, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I like Alpha Pair’s ‘Living Death’ spell idea – I was about to suggest something similar myself.
November 21, 2007 at 7:40 am
How about a third area effect: water? It can drown creatures that can’t fly and put out small fires (large ones would dry the water up)? Also, gooey blob will absorb it, doubling its spread rate over those squares?
November 21, 2007 at 7:41 am
Maybe Undead wouldn’t be affected either…
November 21, 2007 at 7:50 am
OR, how about a type of magical bomb spell? Give it an area effect of, say four squares in each direction, and then give any players nearby two turns to get out of the way before she blows and causes some serious damage.
Tactically, this would be great fun throwing one at players jammed into tight spots and watching them sweat!
November 23, 2007 at 3:51 am
On the boring front, I’d like to suggest adding a Werewolf as a new creature type. It seems rather remiss that he should be left out, when most of the rest of old English horror-movie fare has made it in. On other ideas…
A Cripple spell that drops a target creature’s movement rate to 1 permanently, and stops it being able to fly?
Liberate, which removes a creature’s allegiance so that it’s now independent from its caster? (Fails against illusions, obviously!)
Expose, which drops a target creature or wizard’s defence by a random amount, and Weaken, which drops their attack? (Minimums of 1)
Charge, which allows a wizard to store power for the following turn and increase their chance of casting a spell successfully?
Hand of Fate, which adds 1 to all attacking rolls for your side that turn? (I don’t know the range of the maths involved, so I’ve no idea if this would be unbalancing or not – if so, an alterntative option could be Rule of Law / Rule of Chaos, which would do basically the same thing, but affect all Law or Chaos aligned creatures on the field respectively.)
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I’d also propose comedy spells, but I don’t know if they would have a place in the game!
November 23, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Nice ideas. Not sure about all of them, but keep them coming!
December 2, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Fog of Gwydion (or something)
Creates a fog that covers a big part of the map around the caster. The fog stays for a random ammount of turns. Long enough to let the caster move the creatures beneath it.
If player 1 cast it, player 2 and 3 cannot see how player 1 moves the creatures beneath the fog.
If player 2 have one creature or wizard inside the fog, player 3 cannot see it. Player 2 is only able to see the tile the wizard/creature is standing on, and only a small portion of the tiles surrounding it.
Put animated sprites above the affected tiles. If the fog is cast by player 1, the sprites is drawn with a high transparency for him/her.
Might not work if the game is played on one computer with 2 or more human players. Would work against the computer or over the net.
December 2, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Sounds very complicated and I think this fog would only really work when playing on different machines. :/
December 10, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Hi all, its being a while.
First thing first…Sorry to HappyMonster. The new graphics are as dead as a dodo. The person I was hoping to get them done has declined via no response since my last post. All I can presume is she, yes a she! is busy in “other lines” of software work.
Spell ideas..hmmm the floodgates open.
River…casts river from one point to another. Effects movement of land based units, and maybe depending on river speed their finnal crossing point
Lava….creates a pool of hot molten lava that has a possibility effect like fire, but does NOT effect vertain creatures, and does NOT spread.
fork lightning….covered above. Details incude will spread from one target to any other target within a range of 3 until all legal targets have made one saving throw vs magic resistance.
magic sprite….creature who wanders under independant control. contact with said ‘magic’ creature has random effect vs maigic resistance. Effects could be tempory (one round or pernament) increase/ decrease of movment, attack, defence, etc.
New method of magic casting could implement the need for “mana”. Need x amount of mana to preform spell (start with x amount and creatures with hands can collect further amounts in screen. This mana required along with standard percentage chance of success result of compling spell. This would give the “wizard” player the concerns of powerfull creature vs low cast percentage balenced with the high risk factor of using most mana crystyal resorces. So question becomes should I create many small weak or chance large strong?
mutate……cast spell against two of your own creatures (must be next to each other). If sucessfull (result taken from lowest magic resistance creature) then creatures combine into a “new” mutation with increased strength stats and random other stats.
Extra life……. when casts gives the wizard or creature one extra “hit point” against enemy physical or magical attacks. (Needs to be killed twice)
Slow….covered above, again if sucessfull results in enemy target becoming unable to move and fight. Player must choose one action only.
Invisibilty…..reuslts in random rounds (1 to 3 maybe?) of target recipetent of spell having free movement without fear of enaged to hostile.
Creep plant….cast 1 to 3 plants that like the shadow trees have attack and defence stats. Can not move BUT will attack all (This includes caster and casters creatures) in close range 1 maybe 2 squares?.
Manipulate or mind twist….this spell is MOST powerfull and allows player to attempt to change a A.I. players hostility to him/her. Favourable result leads to the A.I. player in question siding with you, making yo and your creatures unable to attack or harm each other.
Butter fingers….causes opponent to drop x amount of spells from their knowledge/spellbook. These can disappear fro good or be randomly placed upon the game area.
clone…..as mentioned above…this spell makes a clone or x clones of YOUR creature. Opponent get to copy spell and attempt it on one of theirs.
Armaggedon……….wipes all creatures, effects, fire, walls, woods, etc leaving just the wizards (no armour knifes etc)
Creates wizards with new tactic. Do I save spells just incase opponent has armaggendon, or go for an all out spell fest?
cage……range 7, effects locks creature or wizard, or fire etc in a speel bound state which is released upon wizards dimise, or succsesfull creature hit, magic attack.
December 11, 2007 at 9:57 am
Another mangled outpouring then…
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Mind thief – successful casting allows you to steal a random spell from another wizard’s listing and add it to your own?
Phase – removes a wizard from the field of play for a random number of turns. His creatures continue to behave as normal, but while he is missing he can’t be attacked and can’t cast spells.
Changeling – a creature type that randomly changes after every turn, and has the stats and abilities of whatever creature it turns into?
Fading Wings, or Angel Flight – a one-time spell you can cast on any creature, including an enemy creature, moving it from wherever it is to another spot within line of sight?
Mindshock – reduce target wizard’s chance of successfully casting a spell the following turn?
Wand – another weapon, but one which gives you a 10% boost to your spell-casting chance instead of a combat boost?
Staff – like the above, but 20%?
Sacrifice – kill target creature (friendly only), and then boost your spell-casting chance the following turn based on how powerful that creature was?
Prismatic Goggles – an armour type that replaces any other protective armour. Instead of providing protection, the Goggles allow you to see through intervening terrain or creatures for spells that require line of sight?
Summon – brings any target creature or wizard within line of sight into contact with the casting wizard?
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Thorsfew – Armageddon reminds me of “Drain Magic” from an older Warhammer edition, but I think it might be excessively powerful in Chaos – to balance it out, though, maybe FAILING to cast the spell would only destroy all of your own creatures through a spell-casting backlash? That would make it a risky strategy to use it…
December 11, 2007 at 10:06 am
And introducing “Comedy Spells”…
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Monty Python’s Black Knight – instead of dying when killed, his attack power halves each time until he’s down to one, at which point he’ll finally actually die?
Boomerang – a magic-missile spell that, if it doesn’t kill the target, zips back and has a go at the casting wizard?
Bodyswap – switch bodies with a target wizard and take over all of his active spells and creatures, but retain your existing spell list?
Timewarp – moves the game back a random number of turns? (Don’t know how simple that one would be…)
Lilliput Effect – change it so that every creature and wizard has stats of 1/1, regardless of other spells in effect?
Red Dwarf Triplicator – produce two “duplicates” of the casting wizard, but with either the defence or attack dropped to 1 point respectively?
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And it’s 2 in the morning, and I should probably be going to sleep – I’m sure this’ll all look stupid in the morning. G’night guys…
December 11, 2007 at 10:09 pm
A lot of ideas there, some I think are pretty good. Thanks!
December 13, 2007 at 8:41 am
Stoneskin
For a creature or a Wiz.
December 13, 2007 at 8:43 am
How about goblin sappers as a new creature with an explosive AOE attack
December 18, 2007 at 3:58 am
Too bad I forgot most of my suggestions at Zunked
- Rock < Paper < Scissors system for Blob < Fire < Water tiles.
- Tower: Offers protection similar to a castle and once inside you can use it to shoot arrows.
- Infestation: Curse any creature (friend,foe,wizard) with a seed that hatches into some kind of monster when the host dies.
- Phoenix: Similar to Warcraft 3′s creature, when it dies it reverts back to an egg, which hatches after an X amount of turns. To kill the Phoenix you’d have to destroy the egg.
- Inversion: Change any real creature, friend or foe, into an illusion or vice versa, an illusion into a real one.
- Chain Lightning, always cool when a wizard is foolish enough to put all its creatures around 1 spot.
January 3, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Reflect – cast on self, lasts for a few turns. Any wizard foolish enough to cast a spell at you gets the spell reflected. – could also work as a lesser cancellation effect or an absorb spell effect.
Reveal illusion – highlights all illusions on the battlefield (for all players) for that turn.
Pit – effectively a wall spell, but line of sight is not affected.
Lifetap – destroys one of your target non-illusion creatures (in LOS) and gives either extra defence or hitpoint(s) – amount relative to power of creature destroyed
Stealspell/destroyspell – randomly steals/destroys a spell from target wizard
January 27, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I remember one Chaos remake where some monsters had the option of casting spells instead of the wizard (you could summon a lich, which had a couple of bat summons and lightning, red dragons knew fireball, that sort of thing). You could also clone yourself, in which case your spells were split randomly between you and your clone.
To keep it from being too unbalancing, you could only allow one creature to cast a spell at a time. Sure, your dragon can cast fireball, but if you do that you can’t summon more monsters.
January 29, 2008 at 11:28 am
One thing I quite like the idea of is summoning creatures that are more powerful than they should be for their casting cost, but who only have a few turns to survive after which they vanish, a bit like the castles or citadels do.
Or maybe creatures that don’t just die when they die, but instead turn into another stage, or somesuch? Such as a storm of swords, which loses one sword every time and grows weaker, or a creature that divides into two weaker creatures instead of just dying the first time, with the smaller creatures working the same way as other, regular creatures?
Or in reverse of that, some kind of pack creatures that can choose to combine together into something much stronger, a bit like those five Transformers my friend had (and I, sadly, did not) when I was a kid…though there’d probably have to be less than five of them, and you’d need to get all of them to be able to combine them, or they’d just behave like regular creatures? Can’t see how you’d know to combine them without being told so, though…
Or transforming creatures, which can either move and attack or choose to transform in a turn, with each of their two forms being better for different situations – maybe one faster, the other stronger, or some such?
All probably both bad ideas, and painful to code in…
January 27, 2010 at 9:25 pm
how about a spell that steel all of a wizards magic
April 14, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I still like the idea of a spell called ‘Boomerang’ which can be cast on a creature and if it is successful, it sends the creature from the game-board back into it’s owns spell list!
February 23, 2012 at 9:43 am
hello i am not in English so i will try to tell this very simple. I was thinking about spell for Keeper of the Grove, you can tell me name. Its about transforming land with healing rain, like tranquility but casted on target point and heal allianse over time. My other idead is for ”Heart of the Crusade” you will heal more if your health get low. One more idea for the crusader is ”Target the Undead” crusader will do more damage on it