Death to the Mana Bar!

[Weslebear]

Magicka did this pretty well, unlimited magic, great amount of variety in combos of elements for various spells as well as a decent list of set spells, you can even summon an infinite army of minions if you want, has got me and my friends through many a challenge arena. Yet it was still challenging and interesting.

 

[JMeganSnow]

So in short, my answer to the 'mana bar' is the existence of a 'stamina bar'. Drain that thing, and there are more consequences than a simple lack of spellcasting ability... and taking real wounds does more than just drain the red bar.

I think the main reason why a lot of this stuff isn't implemented in PnP games, in particular, is that it adds a HUGE amount of paperwork because ALL of this has to be tracked. There's NO reason not to implement it in video games, however, because the computer can easily track all of this stuff for you. However, most computer RPG's hearken back to their roots in Pen and Paper so they don't do it, either.

There's lots of room for different types of games that use different types of systems for all this sort of stuff, and making the mechanics interesting and varied might be one way to save your recycled elves-and-orcs epic fantasy from the slush bin.

 

[Alphakirby]

I thought this was going to be about Yahtzees bar in Australia, I am actually kind of disappointed as it would have made an interesting topic.

YOU TOO
So yeah,seeing as this thread is about an age old gaming mechanic I'll file it under...

GOOD DAY SIR!

 

[JMeganSnow]

I receommend reading the Silmarillion.

Don't read the Silmarillion. Unless you're one of those people who likes to watch "The Making of . . ." segments and so forth.

It's not a "Making of", it's description of everything happening in Tolkien's universe, starting with the creation of the world and ending with the end of the War of the Ring.
It's difficult to read, but fascinating. Amazing what Tolkien invented.

I know what it is. I read it. But it won't appeal to people who are looking for a great story. It is like reading the encyclopedia or the bible or watching a movie clip ABOUT a movie. Hence why it probably won't appeal to people who don't like that sort of thing.

Reading comprehension tip: just because someone says that something falls into a the same category as something else, does not mean they're claiming that something is IDENTICAL to that something else.

 

[Battenbergcake]

Megh still doesn't protect you from Rogues, i'd like to see you summon you skeleton army when your back resembles a wooden pin-cushion.

To be honest if you'd so bothered go routing for a game that fulfills your needs for unlimited magical power.

Speaking of wizardy, the best wizard game hands down for me was Lost Magic on the DS, criminally underated and over looked, a fun little rpg-rts styled with elements of occult symbol drawing and pokemon monster catching.
Serious, drawing the runes for your spells was fun as all hell and suprisingly deep.

 

[JoshGod]

Becaues otherwise the most powerful spell would be spammed, ruining any challenge taking away skill or thought, you might as well just have one long QTE.

 

[loc978]

So in short, my answer to the 'mana bar' is the existence of a 'stamina bar'. Drain that thing, and there are more consequences than a simple lack of spellcasting ability... and taking real wounds does more than just drain the red bar.

I think the main reason why a lot of this stuff isn't implemented in PnP games, in particular, is that it adds a HUGE amount of paperwork because ALL of this has to be tracked. There's NO reason not to implement it in video games, however, because the computer can easily track all of this stuff for you. However, most computer RPG's hearken back to their roots in Pen and Paper so they don't do it, either.

There's lots of room for different types of games that use different types of systems for all this sort of stuff, and making the mechanics interesting and varied might be one way to save your recycled elves-and-orcs epic fantasy from the slush bin.

Honestly, it's not that hard even in pen-and-paper games. The SWD20 wound system is still just numerical values. Wound points simply equal Con+feats(Which I've had to replace with class-specific bonuses), and losing wound points puts a stat penalty on you (which is healed when the wound points are). It's a little more complicated than HP, I admit, but it's not terribly difficult to track.
As for reasons not to implement it in video games... unfortunately video games have to be made with user-friendly appeal, playable by the lowest intelligences among us. Telling a player that they actually have more consequences than strawberry jam on the screen when they're hit seems to be taboo, these days.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Well if unlimited power and no recharge are your thing I'd look at Magicka, that game is mega fun with friends.

IIRC in Magicka, magic is the ONLY thing going. The whole concept of a mana bar only really has relevance in games where you have other options going on at the same time. I take it in Magicka the brute force application doesn't really accomplish much most of the time?

 

[Nightvalien]

I thought this was going to be about Yahtzees bar in Australia, I am actually kind of disappointed as it would have made an interesting topic.

I was kind of hoping for that, too. I'd kill to have one of those here in the States.

You could open one in the US just go to the mana bar site and checkout how to.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Honestly, it's not that hard even in pen-and-paper games. The SWD20 wound system is still just numerical values. Wound points simply equal Con+feats(Which I've had to replace with class-specific bonuses), and losing wound points puts a stat penalty on you (which is healed when the wound points are). It's a little more complicated than HP, I admit, but it's not terribly difficult to track.

My games tend to involve battles on a scale where it becomes difficult to track just plain hit points for all the stuff going on. (That and I like to keep fights moving instead of having every attack followed by a minute of everyone sitting there watching me scribble.) That, and I've seen all kinds of systems for this sort of thing, and they almost always end up with multiple layers of math involved. You start out saying things like "when you take x damage, you get y penalty", but then you start adding in items and abilities that affect x and y in different ways and at different times and maybe add a new z stat that does something else and it becomes a nightmare to manage.

As a GM, I've developed all kinds of workarounds for this situation, however, all of them basically amounting to ways in which I don't have to track stuff. Or, I just offload all the paperwork onto my players, which works fine. They have nothing else to do when it isn't their turn anyway.

 

[JMeganSnow]

Becaues otherwise the most powerful spell would be spammed, ruining any challenge taking away skill or thought, you might as well just have one long QTE.

That takes timing, though, which defeats the "no skill" aspect.

It might be amusing to make a free web game in which you just *run past stuff* and it explodes in all kinds of bizarre and interesting ways. I'll bet you could actually make a fun game out of that, too.

 

[Glaive_21842]

Rather than simply ripping the resource management out of a game that needs it, why not make a game where magic doesn't need to be balanced with resource management. Magicka is a great example of this! The magic is all you do, fun as hell, and you need every last drop if it to win.

 

[TheIronRuler]

The whole point of magic is unbalanced.
Magic is accessing abilities and objects that are out of your reach by using.... magic.
What's magic? Why isn't there a downside to it?
Therefore you have the nicely written yet poorly executed answer from BioWare in the shape of Demons possessing mages. Other examples may vary, but in order to allow magic to exist it must be a great burden for the user.
Example of such may be the animation series 'Fullmetal Alchemist' in which alchemy is a form of a developing science. With it you may create things and destroy but you have on limitation- the starting input must remain at the output, but the shape of it may vary. in such a case you may be able to fix a radio and turn existing trees into processed lumber (though I doubt one can make a profit off it), but not summon demons from hell or conjure a heavenly sword with a sarcastic talking blade.
I can say that magic brings a natural curse with it. Socially mages will be feared, not because they can transform into demons - but because they can do everything. Therefore they will be hunted down and executed, due to their extraordinary powers. A mage can serve a king but he can also vaporize that king as he pleases. That is a LOOPHOLE.
And in your perspective of magic, mages should have been obliterated at the dawn of history!
That's why you have a mana bar.

 

[zehydra]

Balance is king. Without balance the game world would be...well, unbalanced. You can't have unlimited magic, because it would be unbalanced.

BALANCE!

Plus, it's good enough just to have it recharge, like in Oblivion, or just have the abilities themselves recharge, like in Mass Effect.

actually you could have unlimited magic and still have balance, it would just have to be implemented differently, where there would be some other kind of limitation on the ultra-powerful spells.

 

[Gunjester]

I thought this was going to be about Yahtzees bar in Australia, I am actually kind of disappointed as it would have made an interesting topic.

That's funny me too xD

I don't agree by the way, as a long time RPG fan who thinks of mages as an already unbalanced "necessary evil" (Prefer Rogues or Warriors any day) I think mages should have more limitations, not less. Otherwise, that'd be the only class ever played. Besides, if the point of magic is to be unbalanced, it makes more sense to remove completely by the topic-posters logic...

 

[crudus]

I think you assume that magic is just something you can do with no effort. When you use magic you are bending space and time to fit your needs/wants which would wear you out. That is what the mana bar represents. It is just your endurance for casting spells.

 

[Saviordd1]

Its there for balance.

And if you read the WoW books they don't actually refer to any mana, just that casting spells exhausts mages, do your research next time

 

[Sicram]

In the DA universe there's even a background codex where it says that "mana is the magic potential of how much a mage can draw from the fade before exhaustion", there was even writting something about that trying to cast a spell with too little "mana" would make the mage faint... or something.

Yeah, and it might actually have been interesting if they'd implemented mages fainting or going into shock in the game. As it was, you just had a mana bar like any other game, and it didn't matter in the least because you could drink mana potions endlessly with no repercussions.

Having mages collapse and die when they abuse their spells would be a lovely mechanic in a multiplayer game for the humor factor ALONE. Or if Bioware had implemented it that the whole demonic possession thing actually had some kind of mechanical effect in the game. It really felt like the mage protagonist and party mages lived in an entirely different mechanical universe from the other mages you encouter, who are constantly getting possessed by demons or summoning demons or pulling off impossible feats. I would have really enjoyed it if I overcast my mana pool (through inattention) and my mage promptly turned into a demon and annihilated everything in sight, followed shortly thereafter by a "game over" screen, particularly if nowhere in the manual does it warn you that this can happen.

You could very easily implement this sort of thing, too, by having your health bar and mana bar be the same thing. They do that a little with Blood Magic in Dragon Age, but it's poorly implemented because you can just switch back to using your mana bar. Worse, if you build your character in a specific way, you will never run out because healing yourself is low-cost, and both your health and mana regenerate. So all you do is turn on blood magic mode, cast until you're low on health, switch, heal, switch back. Jade Empire did the same silly thing where you could heal yourself by dumping your mana, and then they gave you a power that let you recharge your mana by punching things.

Indeed, it would've been nice with a toxity meter a la witcher or the like for regaining mana and maybe stamina. Hell, ditch mana and only use stamina!

Although having you go on an uncontrolled rampage due to exhaustion would be a wee bit much. Having you temporarily collapse would've sufficed, or starting to eat away at HP or anything. The lore explanation was decent but you only know this if you read about it, otherwise it's like any other game.

And not only did blood magic do little difference gameplay wise, it did absolutely NOTHING lore wise. All this talk about how magic users are opressed and how dangerous blood magic is and yadda yadda and still it's ALL OVER THE PLACE! Interesting premise, nice lore but horrible execution.

 

[Mordwyl]

Frankly I'd prefer a system where instead of an actual mana bar casting spells would tire you out. MP always felt arbitrary and restrictive, especially when you consider in most RPGs the power of a spell isn't as variable as physical damage.

 

[JMeganSnow]

I thought this was going to be about Yahtzees bar in Australia, I am actually kind of disappointed as it would have made an interesting topic.

That's funny me too xD

I don't agree by the way, as a long time RPG fan who thinks of mages as an already unbalanced "necessary evil" (Prefer Rogues or Warriors any day) I think mages should have more limitations, not less. Otherwise, that'd be the only class ever played. Besides, if the point of magic is to be unbalanced, it makes more sense to remove completely by the topic-posters logic...

I think one of the biggest problems with magic vs. non-magic in fantasy games is that they have opposing arcs. Mages are fun as heck to play at high levels when you can simply wave your hand and make enemies vanish, and you have all kinds of cool spell effects to throw around essentially at will. GETTING to those high levels from the initial "I have a magic missile. Pew. And I'm spent." stage is a horrific grind.

Whereas for the warriors and rogues, it's generally the other way around. You're effective and fun from the get go. Later on, when you're getting spammed with instant-death effects and need a healer glued to your ass at all times even to stay upright due to the stupid amounts of damage monsters output, it gets boring and annoying.