So, what do you think of the Legend of Grimrock Magic System

[Stalkingwolf]

the EOB system was fail. You had to know what enemies are in the area to pre select your spells.
And if you used all your spells, you had to run away to rest, or start melee hacking on them.

[fuzbaul]

Only trouble I had was I was levelling skills faster then I was getting scrolls to tell me what the spells are - which means you have to engage in random casting to try and work them out

[Lilan]

With a words : the system is nice the way it is, being logical within the global game mechanics. HOWEVER it coule use some upgraded gameplay, more specificaly with the ever closing casting window (It's a bit like having the sword going in the inventory after each strike...).

On a personnal note, i do miss some clerical class (something like the DM Priest, able to cast some protective spells), but the game does not seem to need one so far.

[Goffmog]

hmmm... I'm just a little conflicted over the system to be honest - I love the use of runes. I was a huge fan of the spell system in dungeon master, and never liked simply selecting a spell from a list (EOB). I love the idea of preparing and casting a spell - it's a bit more interactive!

The one thing I'm not so keen on is that it seems I need to be X number of levels into Air magic, or Earth magic etc to unlock a spell. I would have prefered there to be power levels of each spell, the basic versions all being castable from the start, with more powerful versions later by practicing casting. I suppose all I am asking for is a complete copy of the DM system

That being said, overall I'm still happy with it!

Might have been interesting to have seen something like the casting system from Arx Fatalis... That was a nice take on spellcasting

Edit: just to add a note - I didn't find the DM spell system clunky - Once I had memorised the spells, and practiced a bit, I could rattle off a whole mixture of fireballs, poison clouds and bolts etc very quickly from all my charaters (once leveled a bit!) without any problem...

Completely agree with everything you just said! I think this spell system will grow on me though, I guess I'm happy too that DM remains unique. One thing that not many people have mentioned about DM's casting system is the fact all of the runes had names. You didn't find spell scrolls with diagrams on them, you found spells rescribed, sometimes cryptically, by the names of the runes, not even the symbols (which you then had to look up at the back of the manual) There were so many symbols and I became so familiar with them that I frequently found myself muttering the spell under my breath as I cast it

[synthetictruism]

Completely agree with everything you just said! I think this spell system will grow on me though, I guess I'm happy too that DM remains unique. One thing that not many people have mentioned about DM's casting system is the fact all of the runes had names. You didn't find spell scrolls with diagrams on them, you found spells rescribed, sometimes cryptically, by the names of the runes, not even the symbols (which you then had to look up at the back of the manual) There were so many symbols and I became so familiar with them that I frequently found myself muttering the spell under my breath as I cast it

Absolutely!

But not only that, but each rune had a meaning and origin, eg Mon the highest-powered "power" rune represented a mountain (hence the name "Mon" and the triangle shape), if I remember correctly.

[cncfreak]

I was wondering if anyone could see this idea working? Maybe use the numeic key pad keys to input spells? 1-9 for the runes and maybe 0 to activate? This would speed the inputting of spells in. What do you think?

[Stalkingwolf]

maybe when you have 3 hands

[cncfreak]

hehe nah i would use my right hand since it controls my mouse. it's not too far from the numeric key pad.

[Goffmog]

With a words : the system is nice the way it is, being logical within the global game mechanics. HOWEVER it coule use some upgraded gameplay, more specificaly with the ever closing casting window (It's a bit like having the sword going in the inventory after each strike...).

On a personnal note, i do miss some clerical class (something like the DM Priest, able to cast some protective spells), but the game does not seem to need one so far.

I actually prefer Grimrock's classes over DM's - what I prefer about DM though is the way that the classes are skill based and everybody is essentially multi-classed. I always found Ninjas and priests useless in DM except as a way to get more health, etc, for my wizard/fighters

Been a long time since I played DM with a full party actually, I usually take Zed or Leif on a solo run.

[Dalton]

the EOB system was fail. You had to know what enemies are in the area to pre select your spells.
And if you used all your spells, you had to run away to rest, or start melee hacking on them.

It wasn't "fail", it was a challenge. That's the reason why "choosing spells from a list" didn't make the game easy-mode, because you still had to do all that planning and play very conservatively.

If they let you "choose spells from a list" but you also used a mana system so there was no planning, then it would lack challenge. That's why games with mana used runes instead.