Hello everyone.

Elder Scrollls Online has considerably grown in terms of available options during the last year and a half. Each DLC or update has provided us with more diversity in gameplay as new systems were integrated into the game. We already know the next update will be no exception, as it will bring housing and furniture crafting to the game. I don’t think, however, that the game has finished growing. More systems can still be added to the game. Crafting can still be enhanced (with jewelry, for example), it would be nice if we had daily hunting quests, and it would be awesome if we eventually had a questline for Vampires and Werewolves. I’d like to talk about one possible such addition, i.e. the Spellcrafting.
Spellcrafting is a very important part of the magic systems of all Elder Scrolls game, except Skyrim, that was lacking it (and it was one of its major flaws, in my opinion). A long time ago, the Devs were saying that they were working on it but we haven’t had much news since then.

An event like the Witches Festival gives an opportunity to talk about spells and magic. As I like to speculate and dream of new Elder Scrolls-themed gameplay systems, I let my imagination run wild and here are the ideas I gathered to make a great (well, in my opinion) spellcrafting system.



The crafting system would be expanded so as to allow us to create new types of items that can be slotted in the action bar. A “passives bar” would also be created to slot, well, passive spells. Among the new items that could be created, there would be spells, scrolls, spellbooks, grenades and throwable pets.

Creating spells would require some kind of stone (varla, welkynd, sigil, star teeth or whatever) and would involve a new skill called Spellcrafting. The type of stone used determines the quality of the spell (white-green-blue-purple-gold) and some other resources would be needed to learn and use the various types of effect.

Scrolls and spellbooks would rely on a new skill called Calligraphy (or would just be a part of spellcrafting). Scrolls would be consumables that can be slotted in the action bar and work as spells but don’t cost any resource, but they are single-use. Spellbooks would allow us to sell the spells we create to other players. The quality of the scroll (white-green-blue-purple-gold) or for the book is determined by the paper (papyrus, parchment, vellum, …), while the level at which it can be learnt is determined by the ink. Only a fully mastered spell could be made into a spellbook. Depending on whether intends on letting us hybridizing classes or not in the future, the class skills could or could not be written in spellbooks, but if so ZOS does, I think it should require gold quality paper.

Grenades would rely on alchemy and use a new type of solvent, different than potions and poisons. They can be used from the quick item wheel, like any potion, and don’t cost any resource, but they are, like scrolls, single-use. They have an area of effect, and they affect all players, NPC or creature in their area of effect, friend or foe, indifferently.

Throwable pets may or may not depend on a new skill. Once used, they provide you with an active pet which lasts until it is killed and provides some help in combat, for example by attacking the foe, or by healing you, or by tactical buff/debuff. They would be created in specific altars. For example, there would be a Dwemer craftiung station allowing us to create small animunculi, a Dreugh “genegineering” altar allowing us to modify mudcrabs or skeevers (remember the Venomfang Skeevers?), something like an Atronach forge allowing to create small golems and homunculi, a necromantic altar allowing us to create self-assembling balls of tiny bones and teeth, or even some spider altar in Mephala’s Realm allowing us to create modified albino spiders.

In order to be able to use a spell, which can be active or passive, the player has to invest a skill point in it. Passive spells add to all the passives the player already has, but only a limited number of these can be slotted in a new “passive bar” (the player has two of them, tied to their active bars), and slotting such a passive permanently decreases the powering gauges (magicka, stamina and health) of the player as long as the passives are slotted; the amount of the depletion depends on the strength of the effect. Some spells could be “morphed”, which would require to invest a secondary skill point. The ability to create morphable spells would be one of the passives of the Spellcrafting skill. Some combinations of effects would require a compulsory morph.


When one creates a spell, one has to take into account the following parameters:

Resource: What powers the spell? Magicka, Stamina? Something else?
Target: Is the spell single-target, several-target or does it have an area of effect? Does it affect the caster, the pets, the allies, the opponents, a combination of it? Or just the environment?
Vector: What is the spell “made of”? Fire, lightning, ice, steam, light, sand, metal, smoke? Raw Magicka?
Effect: What does the spell do? Does it heal or does it hurt? And how does it do it?

Let’s look at it in further detail.

Resource:

Basic (internal) resources for powering a spell are three in number: Magicka, Stamina, Health. A Spellcrafting passive would allow to add a fourth one: Time. More powerful spells can be created at the cost of an incantation time. Other spellcrafting passives would allow us to mix the three basic resources to power a spell.

Yet another spellcrafting passive would allow us to use external resources to power a spell. External resources would allow us to replace entirely or partially the basic resource. It could be, for example, meteoric sand, Red Mountain ashes, Welkynd dust, Hist sap, chaotic creatia, and so on. Some effects could actually require specific external resources.
The most powerful external resources are Drugs. Like Moon Sugar, Daril, Greenmote, and so on. Drugs allow to cast much more powerful spells featuring unique effects (for example, Moon Sugar could unlock Moonlight as a vector - see below) but should be used at a heavy cost only. Overuse as well as withdrawal should create major and lasting debuffs.

One of the special effects that the player could learn is “Sacrifice”. It can be used only once every hour and kills the caster of the spell, but allows for considerably greater spell strength for no additional resource cost. A weaker version that can be used as often as one wants and would consist in killing the active combat pets. The player who casts such a secondary sacrifice cannot summon or throw any new pet for a short duration.

Finally, another source of energy for the spells could be found in faith. Some spells could be aligned with some Aedra, Daedra, Celestials, Heroes, Saints or Living Gods, and some “faith currency” could be used to power such spells. (Think, for example, to the good old AlmSiVi intervention, or to some kind of holy damage - what is holy for some, is profane for others.)

When deciding how to power a spell, one also has to decide whether it is sustained or not. Sustained spells can be maintained to apply their effect continuously, but consume resource as time goes by.

Target:

A spell can target the caster, the pets, the allies, the opponents, the environment or any combination of it. Of course, the number of targets and the size of the area of effect affect the cost of the spell.

The “shape” of the spell has to be determined. Is it a beam, a lasting rune, a triggerable rune, a cone, a groundwave, a spherical wave, a projectile, a sweep? Does the projectile home on target?

The spell may have secondary targets. For example, when one a spell hits its primary target, it can explode and affect nearby target, or endow the target with a kind of aura that has a “secondary effect” on any ally or foe that comes near the primary target for some short duration. A spell cast on self can endow the player with an aura that affect nearby friends or foes. Adding such secondary effects or secondary targets requires a morph. Example of use: primary target (opponent) starts to bleed and is surrounded by a leeching aura that heals any ally that comes close to it by the amount of the inflicted bleeding damage.

Vectors:

Vectors can be of various types.

Elemental vectors include fire (ordinary fire, coldflame that also consumes stamina, and spectral fire that also consumes magicka), water (be it mist, liquid water, ice or steam), wind, lightning, raw magicka and so on.
Organic vectors include blood, wood, chitin, coral, ivory, bones, poison, pollen, and so on.
Mineral vectors include the various type of metals available, as well as rocks, glass, sand, dust, ashes and so on. Metallic vectors are obtained, for example, by summoning weapons à la Morkuldin.
Spiritual vectors include soul, ectoplasm, chaotic creatia and so on.
Radiant vectors include various types of light and darkness. The color of the light can be meaningful (for example, Aurorans will be resistant to golden light but apparently, they cannot use blue light). Its origin, too: light from Magnus will affect vampires, light from Masser and Secunda will affect Dro-m’Athra, and so on.

Not all vectors are compatible with all effects. Using more than one vector is compulsory for some effects (for example, erosion - see below), and some combinations (for example ice with ordinary fire) are more costy than others due to the interference of opposed vectors.
Some vectors can apply automatic effects if some passives are unlocked. For example, fire vectors can create combustion damage to some resource(s) (depending on the type of fire) over time, radiant vectors can affect precision, and so on.

Effects:

Combining effects is more difficult if the effects have different vectors.
The basic effects can be roughly categorized in three categories: healing, damage, conversion.

Healing can be of various types: radiant, magical, alchemical, holy (its efficiency would depend on the amount of faith currency its target has with respect to the divinity onto which the spell is aligned), …

Similarly, many types of damages can be imagined. Elemental damage (for example, with a fire vector, this would lead to fire damage, with raw magicka as a vector, it would lead to magical damage, …), thermic damage (heat or cold), cutting damage (with blades and axes), piercing damages (Aedric spear would inflict piercing damage with a radiant vector, for example), crushing damage (with hammers), bleeding damage, blast damage (inflicted by explosion and shockwaves), constriction damage, suffocating damage (with a water vector, it’s drowning, with a wind vector, it’s choking), poison damage, disease damage, corrosion damage, combustion damage, erosion damage (this would deal extra damage to the worn armor, and require stream-shaped targeting, and a combination of vectors, one for the stream (for example, wind or water or steam) and one for the tiny projectiles (dust, ashes, sand, wooden shards, crystal shards, bug swarms, hail, embers or even book pages if you like Hermaeus Mora very much)), profanation (its efficiency depends on the amount of faith currency the target has with respect to the divinity onto which the spell is aligned), …

Conversion effects involve converting resource a from target A into resource b for target B. They are typically resource absorption spells. One could imagine, for example, a "leeching wind" spell, creating a maelstorm of wind that sucks the Magicka out of any foe in it and regenerates the stamina of any ally in it.

Any type of healing or damage can be mitigated or enhanced using specific spells. Some creatures have natural resistances or vulnerabilities to specific kinds of damages, and similarly, some armors are better against specific damages, worse against other types.
Like with vectors, some passives can ensure that secondary effects can be automatically added to damage types by selecting passives. For example, cutting damage creates bleeding damage, crushing damage staggers, and so on…

To that, one has to add special effects, like paralyzing, staggering, cost reduction (which allows to reduce the spells’ cost, but requires a morph), delayed secondary effect (which requires a morph too), extinguishing flames, lighting the surroundings or immersing them into darkness, “encasing” (which encases a target into ice, ashes, stone, metal or whatever, preventing it to move but also shielding it from damages – this can be used offensively, as a way to control the mob, or defensively, as a way to allow a player to heal and recover a bit within the heat of the fight), invisibility, healing for the amount of some type of damage, modifying the environment, absorbing some types of vectors, resistance or vulnerability to some types of vector/damages, shields and wards, accelerated withdrawal (for drug users), and so on.

Spell cost can be reduced by restricting some effects, using conditions. “Staggers target” costs more than “staggers target if target was incanting/drops below 50% health”.




Well, that’s about all I could think of. What do you think? Do you have other ideas for Spellcrafting?