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[Little Pandemonium]

First words,
I'm basically just a long time lurker and first time poster
My favorite topic in DF forum is magic related thread
When I browse some thread in the suggestion I realize that there's already some thread dedicated for a certain topic that being neatly arranged, so I decided to create this thread
Besides, although the idea of magic will only be implemented in the future, I think it will be a good idea if we have some strong concept of what magic should look like

This is an aggregate thread about magic. I gather many things from the other magic related thread and put all of them together within several segments. There's also some additional information that I've quickly searched from google. Please feel free to fix and add something I miss. I copy paste the format from the other thread with quick edit. So, if there's anything that seems to rude or make you discontent I will quickly remove it for you.

Although there's a lot of debate in magic, there's still a lot of inconsistencies about how magic in DF should works. I think this happen because magic itself is a vast topic that can act as new culture and technology itself. Just like how we produce food, from the choice of gathering, hunting fishing farming to the processing of food: grow, gather, cook, etc. The process of producing and using magic itself should be complicated. Talking about magic without proper directions can lead to an endless debate. Thus by dividing the entire flow of magic in each parts a better discussion can be reached.

UNDER NO CONDITION is this thread meant to be the end all, be all absolute PROPER place to post related suggestion. DO NOT go around berating others for not posting here. Instead invite them here, or link their suggestion into this thread.
The Roles of Magic:

The first thing that should be talk about when we come into a new features is the roles of it. The woodcutter cuts tree, the carpenter create wooden object, the object is being used by the dwarves. By understanding the concept of these roles we should be able to create the a balanced features that can fit into the game without ruining the roles of other. The first question that come into mind when magic is introduced should be why, why magic, what the purpose of it and what can I do with magic. There are several roles of magic that has been mentioned which is:

• Tools and Skills - Magic is just a tools and skills that the magic user use. Fire wand can cast fireball to shoot enemies or deer, earth rune gem can petrified soil or creature, etc.
  
  
• Technology - in this roles, magic is the technology. By flowing mana into a certain places with certain mechanism some unique things can happen ranging from simple glow, magic trap, or magic alarm to more complex magical structure such as gate portal that act as a wormhole that can teleports dwarfs and stuff. By engraving magic into a certain items, the items will react differently or reinforced and imbued with unique properties (fire sword etc). By creating and gathering some items a magic mechanism can be created and thus golems will be born.
  
  
• Miracle - within this context, magic will act as a miracle. Only a noble, magic prodigy, or holy figure can perform magic. The person itself can act as little as a simple priest, just healing some people, re-imbued some weapon or warriors, speed up the crop growth, to a holy figure that can perform divine miracle with messiah-like attribute like the ability to make a volcano erupt, wither or grow crops instantly, produce unlimited wine, divide oceans, strike invaders with disease etc
  
  

The Wielder of Miracle

Every roles needs an actor, and every magic needs a magician. Who's the one that gonna cast the magic? And what will he do with the magic? The wielders of magic can be very different depends on the roles but overall here's what the wielders could be:

• Spell-casters - Everybody can cast spells, with this system magic will appear as a new skill just like swimming or wrestling. There's no specific places to use them, everyone can use magic and get benefit from magic in their works.
  
  
• Magician - Unlike spell-casters, although there's only a little restriction on who the one that can be a magician, magician gives an important roles for magic, magician stands as a profession that either civil or military-related. The wielder will be having his/her own workshop like small library with cauldrons or small table with rune engraving/writing tools or perhaps some microscope for charging gems and diamonds with magic. They can also participate in war as a different type of soldier. Unlike spell caster that having one professions to cover the whole magic, magician will have different type of profession for different kind of magic related task such as: Rune Master, Earth Magician, Fire Wizard, Magic Warlord, Sorcerer, etc...
  
  
• Wizard - They are usually an innate magic user or a prodigy, a kin to noble. They act as the representatives of magic in the fortress as only a few can become ones. They should not have a personal workshop like magician but rather a shrine or temple that everyone can pray upon. The proffesion should be like: Priest, Shaman, Shrine Maiden, etc.
  
  
• Sage - Greater than noble, sage is the result of years or perhaps centuries of study. This people devoted their life for the purpose magic. Sage might come to your fortress after some condition has been fulfilled.
  
  
• Sorcerer - They are the entity of magic itself. Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, instead they run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct their own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where they are engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as they create minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes.
  
  
  

The Embodiment of Spell

How did magic happen? Is it just 'This is a fuckin magic, no explanation'? Or perhaps there are systems and laws that creating the foundation of magic.
There are a lot of ways how one can perform magic. Those are:

• Spell - By having some certain items or skills the magic can be cast just like how woodcutter can cut trees with axe
  
  
• Ritual - After fulfilling the conditions, a ritual (sacrificial, prayer, dance, etc) need to be performed before magic can be cast.
  
  
• Invoke - Magic can only be cast by combining several magic entities. (rune, circle of magic, incantations).
  For examples:
  
  <Rune>
  -1 fire runes = Fire Spark
  -2 fire runes = Flame
  -3 Fire runes = Fire
  -2 Fire Rune + 1 Air rune = Inferno
  
  <Incantations>
  Consists of Verbs - Adverbs - Adjectives that when combines will create some magic
  
  Example link for both : http://mer-kay-zim-gel.deviantart.com/art/Magic-Rune-Aphabet-60627981
  
  <Circle of Magic>
  The inner circle define the components of magic
  The outer circle define the form of the magic
  The extra circle define the logic of the magic
  
  This circle will blast fire three times to three different object [Impossible with current ASCII graphics though]
  
  

The Source of Mana:

We're all believe that energy can't be destroyed, it can only be transformed from one form into another form, by understanding this we can calculate how much energy it needs for magic to damage or fix something by merely comparing it to a physical stuff, the energy of magic itself could be abundant or scarce depends on some variable, either way there is only two source of magic:



The caster, by harnessing the power of self magic can be cast, there are several common list of this:

• Mana/Spirit/Chakra/Chi - The most common said source of magic. This energy is different and separated from the caster strength and stamina having it's own pool of energy. Everyone might have a different amount of mana thus making this a variable to determine whether a person is suitable to become a magician or not.
  
  
• Stamina/Vitality - Albeit the rare one some said that magic come from the stamina or calories of the caster. The more magic the caster use the more exhausted he become which means the amount of work he can do is limited for the day.
  
  
• Soul/Emotion/Memory/Strength- Often said in literature that magic has a dire consequences to the caster. A quick spell might result in nothing but an over cast will give great toll to the caster ranging from physiologic like becoming emotionless or a loss of 'unimportant' memory making him unable creating a good relationship. Some literature said that it will result in permanent damage in the body implying that over use of magic will make the caster incapable of physical work.

.
.


The magic user can gather the power of gaia using it for his own purposes, the external source of magic will include:

• Natural Animism - The magic itself is the entity, they are the natural ether that can be gathered. Created either by merely the soul of the living or perhaps the existence of a sacred places
  
  
  
  This belief is hold by most old tribes, from native-indians to a bushmen from australia. They believe that they can harness the power of nature. Bear can give them strength, crocodile can make them a better swimmer, deers can make them a better runner etc.
  
  Example in DF:
  A bird nest might contain air magic entity, while tree might provide with nature magic entity
  A whale corpse might provide water based entity, a
  
  There's also things called sacred in Natural Animism. This place contains high magical properties because the place itself has become some kind of magical.
  
  Example in DF:
  A bottomless pit might provide with time magic while lava stream might provide with fire magic
  A workshop that has undergo a strange mood might become sacred, a bed used for healing might have live magic while a graveyard might provide with dark magic/necromancy
  
  
• Mountain of Faith - The magic is the embodiment of faith. Act as a commodity to create magic, faith system can stands as an aggregate of power or magic amplifiers of the magic wielders. By a massing the believers into a single temple or multiple shrine faith can be gathered.
  
  
  
  The western view of faith is that faith is used as a favor for god. The more faith you give the higher probability the god will do something good or fulfill the wishes of their worshipers. By creating shrine, temple, festivals and statue favor of the gods can be won
  
  
  
  The eastern view of faith act a little different. God itself is the entity of the faith. They will fulfill the wish of their worshipers, they will give strength to the people that gave prayer to them. The faith act as a reservoir of magic power that can be used by the believers.
  
  
  
  
• River of Magic - or more known as stream of live, the great force, etc. This kind of power acts like a water, mostly flows from place to place unbound with altitude and materia.
  
  
  
  Some even form a pond or oasis of magic. The magic that use this source can either be cast straightly, the closer the caster to the source the stronger the magic, or perhaps can be used to charge magical items
  
  
• Great Deity - A magical creature that are either the manifestation of magic itself or simply having a natural source of magic. Possessing an enormous power of magic many seeks power for this creature. 
  
  
  
  By having a pact or deal magic wielders are being blessed by these Deity to be able to perform magical actions.
  
  Example : Making a deal with demon, respecting the presence of native spirit
  
  Magical Environment:
  
  
  
  
  Magic itself is a strong things that a strong magic source will definitely affect the surroundings ranging from:
  
  
  • Creatures- Many magical creature are things that fully created by magic, for example fairy which is the magical embodiment of nature, undead magical embodiment of war, etc
    
    
  • Plants - Some plants will become magical if they live in the magic source. Giant tree or magic mushrooms, etc.
    
    
  • Places - Even a stone can become magical if it keeps being flowed by magic. Magic crystal, magic cave, etc...
    
    
    Formatting inspired by Othob Rithol's Underground Diversity Thread
    Also, we now have an Eternal Voting Suggestion option. VOTE HERE!

[Cruxador]

Wow, that's a lot of ideas. Good job getting this all together.

My thoughts, going down the list:

The Roles of Magic:
I think we should use all of these, to some extent. Though the Fire Wand is not such a great idea, as it shares functions with the crossbow, but I understand it's just an example. That earth gem sounds like a lot of fun. Just the ability to turn soil into stone would be great.
Miracles would go with the religion system, which I'm not going to discuss much here because I'm of the opinion that Divine magic should be separate and different from Arcane magic.
Technology is awesome and fits with the feel of DF.

The Wielder of Miracle:
I think there should probably be two levels of magic users. The first should be like what you call the Spell-casters and Magicians. There should be different skills related to magic. Runecrafting and a channeling skill for each sphere, at least. This would happen in workshops, and getting someone good at it would be difficult. This would allow enhancement of items beyond just increasing value, primarily. It would also allow magic based traps.
Minor stuff from the Technology section above could be made this way. Channeling energy could, perhaps, be used for the Miracle topic there.

The other magic users would be more akin to what you call a Sage. (What you refer to as a Wizard, I'd call a demigod and mix it in with the religious system).
The sage  like pretty much as you said, and should be the only one to get combat-usable magic. Even so, it should be grand in scope and preparation time. Perhaps a sudden inferno takes out a squad of goblins, but it most be invoked through a summoning circle and takes a long time to prepare. These guys would create the components for the larger-scale things listed in Technology, such as your Portal and Golems.

The Source of Magic:
I think it should use a few of your options. For sages:
It is physically draining (as per Stamina/Vitality) but an Attribute modifies just how draining it is.
Other magic-users won't be directly channeling magic, and thus that wouldn't apply to them.

All mages would use magic from outside sources, whether through Animism (which ties in very well with spheres) or through Leylines and Nodes (which is generally what your Rivers and pools of magic would be referred to.)
Of those options, I'd prefer Animism. Magic can be draw upon anywhere, but spheres effect it. In a life sphere, for example, you would be unable to channel death magic, but Life magic would be stronger ad easier to channel.

Magical Environments:
This is Spheres. Toady already has plans for that.

[dragnar]

I think that the different races should each treat magic differently.
Dwarves: focus on the mechanical side of magic, things like rune-crafting, or golem creation. dwarves should treat magic as a science, a spell-caster acting as a different kind of engineer. Probably involved in the creation of overcomplicated traps(like a pressure plate that teleports magma onto itself)

Elves: focus on the spiritual side of magic. elven druids should be capable of manipulating plant life, or turning wild animals against you. Most likely magic wold be deeply ingrained in their religion.

Humans: humans should use a great range of magic, seeing it as yet another tool. human spell-casters would be closer to the traditional view of a wizard, throwing fireballs at their enemies or calling down rain. humans should be focused more on the destructive, flashy magics.

or to shorten that:
dwarves-practical
elves-religious
humans-flashy

[Granite26]

I may dig up a link, but the short version of my feelings is:  Use mana as a behind the scenes intermediary, like a gear.  Different types of magic produce mana in different ways, and have different means of using it.  The player never sees the mana stat, just, when he casts a spell, the system looks at the power generation methods he has and uses one, be it drawing from Willpower, hunger or ritual.

Allows spell costs to be balanced against each other without ruining the feel by exposing a number system.

[Neonivek]

Then of course there is the Wizard for the Wizard Arc who takes magic to levels of mastery where it is indeed everyday for the Wizard (it needs to be since the Wizard is effectively playing Fortress mode solo)

Though Wizards don't count for this discussion for the most part anyway since they arn't just powerful. They are world powers.

[LrZeph]

I'm sorry if you said this (didn't read all of it) but.... Would it be at all possible for the <Mage> (for lack of a better word) to be able to transmute stuff. Not at all like Microcline > Adamantine, but to be able to transmute a stone into wood, or vice versa if they had the right materials, Being able to make Green glass gems into REAL gems would be awesome too.

Just my opinion.

[Little Pandemonium]

The main purpose of this thread is actually the concept of the magic, not the magic itself
But perhaps I should make a new segments regarding the look of magic,
Should it be tangible - like common fireball or lightning strike or material transmutation?
Should it be act intangible just like electricity, mana exist, they can be used to reinforced items or charge golems, etc?
Or perhaps we should make magic become more mystic, similar to god's blessing or a witch curse, beyond the understanding of logic?
Will it be light and dark magic or will it be elemental magic or perhaps something more complex like arcane and divine magic?

And the in-game systems can be put in here too
Should magic countable like items, 1 fire rune or 1 water entity?
Or uncountable like plentiful ice rune or small nature spheres?
Or perhaps we only knew it exist in certain places but we can't grasp the quantity of, only by casting spell  the quality of the source can be determined?

Hmm, regarding each different roles for each different races is indeed interesting
Dwarves for Technology
Elves for Miracle
Human for Tools

Multiple source, roles, or source will make it harder to code but will also provide the game with more possibility and complexity

Perhaps I missed about the spheres, I'll look into that

[Dakk]

I dunno, I sorta like Toady's views on wizards and magic. Wizards being actual world entities instead of fireball wielding douchebags we see in most media, to the point that its been mentioned somewhere in the dev list that wizards are planned to be so powerful that they'd possibly be able to create new creatures, travel through planes, etc. Not that the average concept of magic couldn't be used, the adventurer should also be able to have some/full access to magic, full probably being most likely, since Toady has also mentioned the possible fusion of adventurer mode with other modes of gameplay. Not a complete fusion, me thinks, but you'd probably be able to jump from one to another.
Example: You start off in adventurer mode, wandering around, and somehow learn a mind spell that you can use to eslave creatures. You build a small hut near the closest dwarf fortress, sneaking in there every night, eslaving 10 dwarves after some time, then you leave with them to a certain site, where you'll "switch to fortress/wizard mode" and order them around to build you a personal tower for you to use as your personal mansion, lab, and magic-channeling structure, and advance your study on magic.

[Neonivek]

It is best to think of Wizard mode Wizard as seperate entities almost all together when it comes to magic.

They are like gods of magic.

Id love to see Wizard mode having many end goals. Ascension through magic or obtaining the ultimate knowledge.

[dragnar]

wizard mode seems to me to be what a spell-caster could potentially become after centuries of study, nearly omnipotent beings, but sill fundamentally the same.

Also for the different races, I didn't mean entirely different systems of magic, just different uses culturally. all races could use all magics, but they prefer/are better at certain uses of it. (plus this allows things like crazy elves building magic stone fortresses, or dwarves creating forests)

[Little Pandemonium]

I see
Added a new roles of magic
Divine Entity as every magic wielder itself is a very powerful entity and can act as a god
[Any good description on this?]

[Neonivek]

I see
Added a new roles of magic
Divine Entity as every magic wielder itself is a very powerful entity and can act as a god
[Any good description on this?]

Ohh no not every magic wielder is a very powerful entity. Just the Wizards of Wizard mode and possibly some magical based powers and megabeasts

CONTROL A WIZARD ENTITY: Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes

[Little Pandemonium]

On second though I'll put them in the magic wielders segments since we already have Miracle in the Roles of Magic

So, the new wielders will be
WIZARD ENTITY: Not just one of those guys that backs up the team and shoots fireballs, but run something more like a dwarven outpost and construct your own multilevel tower or other such dwelling. This could include adventure style elements where your wizard is engaged in various activities, as well as larger scale army battles and so on. Randomized creatures could also be introduced as you create your minions, and they should be able to breed and expand outward, perhaps becoming a playable race in either adventure or civilization modes. They are not bound to the fortress

Is it something like this?

[Neonivek]

Wizards I think are bound to the fortress to a certain extent. Think of it like Playing Fortress mode where you can only control one person.

[Dakk]

Since even fortress mode isn't going to be bound to a single place in the future, I don't think the wizard will either.