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• New Ability: Cantrips

RavenRed: Just a brief idea for low-level magical abilities, mediated by a new ability called "Cantrips" (yes, conflicts with the basic spellbook name, but if you have a better suggestion). A low level of a variety of spells will be available, but there IS a catch. First, the spells

• Globe of light
• Detect monsters
• Phase Door
• Ent's Potion
• Dig

All bookless, for normal mana costs, and for a measly 15 points! (prereq Int@16, Magic@1).

Fantastic, eh!

Well... not so fast.

Firstly, all the spells are set at their lowest level of effect and cannot be improved upon.

Secondly, the spells use consumable (except for one) items for each casting. If you don't have the item, you can't cast the spell.

The items are:

• A light source (for Globe of Light, see "Tapers" for a way of making this less weighty)

• A crystal ball (a fragile item, destroyed by any sound attack, but re-usable, for Detect Monsters)
• A feather (for Phase Door (a feather was the best thing I could come up with for Conveyance))
• A potion of water (For Ent's Potion)
• A Rounded Pebble (for Dig)

Now on their own, the item requirements are all trivial, but taken together, characters will need to ration their use (except for Detect Monsters, which has a relatively low game impact) of their Cantrips

What it DOES do is give non-mage players access to basic spells without either requiring the full gamut of mage-skills or giving players unlimited

In order for this to work, I might have to set them up as a separate, duplicate school of magic called "cantrips". Yes, a pain, but it avoids issues like spell-power and the game having to check whether you're casting them from cantrips or from the normal GUSS spell and checking for spell ingredients.

Chatter

NeilStevens: This is the kind of thing new Mindcraft will be. That is: giving access to low-level utility spells to Priests in particular.

• RavenRed: Yes, I thought of you during creation, although this idea decouples it from a scalable effect (as per Prayer currently). The unchanging "base" effect is a big limitation, which will be minor to melee/missile characters, but might be extremely limiting to hybrid characters such as priests currently are.

JohnGilmore: This seems strange to me. I mean, we already have lighweight items that grant the ability to cast these spells - scrolls. And as a bonus, they're useful to unbelievers and those with zero magic skill, and don't require an expensive (in terms of skill points) ability. They come with built-in limitations - they're costly, somewhat anyway, and vulnerable to fire.

OK, so dig isn't available as a scroll. but the others are. It's definately colorful, but I would never (as a player) buy the ability, as it's pointless as described. Unless I'm blindly missing the point entirely, which is always possible

• RavenRed: This is more a Pipedream thing than something I'd like to integrate into the existig TOME, certainly. I don't like most scrolls, I have to say, especially when they simply replicate current spell effects. This is, I suppose, my replacement for that, not without further limitations of course. The "consumables" idea came to me as a thematic limitation on minor magics. Then I basically realised that it was fairly unreasonable to apply this to mages, so the 15 pt ability came to mind. Remember that it's an unlimited and relatively cheap ability (only the crystal ball would be anything expensive, and I'd expect they'd be under 500gp). It's basically a way of segregating "proper" magic from the magic that TOME players seem to require as de rigeur, or if you will of mediating between the demands of the game designon player abilities and the faint flicker of realism.

If we could come up with some other disadvantage it might be nice to save on inventory space by purchasing this ability. Maybe make the spells costlier than their "real" counterparts? Perhaps a minor sanity loss with each cast? A recharge time? A requirement for quite and concentration (I.E. no hostile monsters in LOS)? Reduce the power beyond the "real" spells? (0 radius globe of light, ent's potion only fills you up a little, phase door range limit is 2 instead of 10, detect monsters radius is only 10, dig works only every 5th time it's cast, or whatever) Can only be cast when HP is full (a concentration thing...) or maybe requires empty hands? (drop that sword to cast phase door to escape that monster...) or we could require the player to stand on one foot while whistling dixie backwards.

• RavenRed: The consumables was my attempt to thematically limit the effects. Remember that it's only 15 points, which is substantially less than even a mage would have to spend to achieve the same effects using "traditional" school skill acquisition. The limitation to "base" effects is another replication of this. HP and recharge times seem excessive for such minor effects.

I think the idea is sound, but the limitation needs to be rethought to make it a worthwhile ability even for a low-level character. If the ability was cheaper, perhaps only 4 skill points, it might still apeal strongly to low-level characters as written. But with over two levels worth of skill points in it for something that only saves a little money... No. I wouldn't, anyway.

• RavenRed: Remember that it's a big investment of skill points (even excluding Dig) to get this spell set. Cantrips are intentionally minor as more or less of a "player's" aid. Ent's Potion, Globe of Light and Phase Door are decent abilities to have, at pretty much any level. The consumables part of it is a limitation, but as long as those products are generously provisioned within the General Stores, it's manageable. Would you knock them back as a warrior? Or even a Rogue?

Orvin: I dislike the idea of making magic available in so many forms to everyone. Isn't it enough to be able to invest in magic devices? I would rather see players get by with more non-magical specialization, than with jack-of-all trades abilities.

JohnGilmore: Lets look at the skill point costs:

So, excluding dig, this costs 13 points for a mage, and 18 for a warrior/rogue who gets lucky with fumble fingers. Of course, FF requires some luck, some time (it's not an ability) and some work to kill all those monsters. But on the other hand you only have to carry one item and it's non-consumable and, at high levels, indestructable. The cantrips ability would also require int@16, which most warriors and rogues won't see until they start finding stat potions anyway, so maybe FF would be first for a few of these anyway. And as a bonus you get gyser and vapor! Throw a satisfy hunger randart in the mix and you've only got 6 skill points for rogue, warrior, mage, or whatever. Which is only one level's worth of skill points, and only requires two inventory slots - both non-consumable.

Ok, so maybe I'm over analysing it. The long and short of it though, is that I think the disadvantage needs to be rethought. It might also make sense to split it up - have three different abilities, each giving one or two spells at a "Barely Functional" level for 4-7 skill points and very minimal stat requirements - perhaps:

Note that this would actually require MORE skill points, but wouldn't require hording skill points across several levels of experience. And also doesn't require any inventory space (except, arguably, dig)

What I am saying here is that almost anything else would be prefferable to a consumable inventory item restriction. Thematically, requiring something like "full HP and mana" or "no hostiles in LOS" makes sense from the "You're not very good and have to concentrate extra hard." perspective. Thematically, you could also require a book - make it a sorcery-like effect, giving you the ability to cast spells from certian schools at school level 0.2. But four or five inventory slots devoted to this is excessive, and already covered by purchasing scrolls anyway. Incidentally, why don't you like scrolls? They're a wonderful stopgap measure for non-mage types until you can find nice rods and get the magic device skill up a bit. They're cheap and have a zero failure rate.

NeilStevens: The hoarding issue is a design issue that should be addressed separately, I think.