what is your favorite type of magic?

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

What kind of fantasy magic do you like best? demon summoning perhaps? or are you more for mana and fireballs. or are dwarven runes more your thing. let me know what your preferance is.

[walker_boh_65]

It used to be Dark Arana/Arcanic type magic, because well demons and death and hell are just cool to play with. And any character you play like that can be made more interesting by making them go insane. But now with Skyrim, I really enjoy setting my foes ablaze in a multitude of ways. So, both? :P

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

Insane Demonologists are fun for awhile but when I get to into that sort of character for awhile it sorta disturbs me for some reason. I also really like the alchemy type stuff. potions would have been my favorite class at hogwarts regardless of what house I would have been in.

[Hisco]

My favourite is blood magic in dragonage.

[BinoAl]

I like techno-magic. Like, classic dwarves and that sort of thing. Especially some of the things the dwemer in TES did :D

[EvilSheeper]

Necromancy! There is something special once you raise undead dragons. I also like swords that steal souls of those you kill. (Frostmourne)

[Ribky]

I'm a fan of good old runes and rituals. A lot of games have that shock and awe fireball/lightning bolt/exploda-yo-head instant cast stuff, which is all fine and dandy, and makes for quicker play, but in terms of the stuff that I actually find interesting, it doesn't cut it. The concept of runes conveying magical power to items and places (even people if they are tattoos or something) is neat, and can be incorporated as a system of enchanting. And ritualistic magic (e.g. vodun, shamanism, diabolism, etc.) is so much more epic on a theatrical scale. Unfortunately, they don't "play well" with fast paced gaming, so you don't see a lot of it in most video games.

[jorgebonafe]

Check out a game called Eternal Darkness, for Game Cube. It has a very interesting system of magic with runes. Kind of a survival horror X Magic kind of game.

[Ribky]

Eternal Darkness was one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life.

EDIT: Ever.

[Horizon]

My favorite magical system is Vancian Magic, while my favorite type of magic is either thermokinesis or chronokinesis.

[Elensaar]

It all depends really. Back when we played Ars Magica, I really enjoyed either spontaneous (albeit a bit uncontrolled) magic - something akin to the sorcerer in the newer D&D versions. But a mechanic I find more and more interesting to play with is ritualistic magic and runes. Especially having it based around predefined shapes that modify each other to produce some result. Not necessarily easy to implement in a game, unfortunately. Would lend itself well to a game like Minecraft though. Forcing the player to build a huge, rune-like structure of some kind in order to achieve the desired result. Especially if you allow for emergent gameplay... (I have to try playing around with making something like this... ;)

[Horizon]

I'm also partial to magic being a resource, and using it as a catalyst for spells and such.

[johnt]

I'm actually a big fan of more modern ideas of magic like Chaos Magick.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24506/Pop-Mag ... t-Morrison

The original Mage RPG from white wolf was kind of built around those ideas as well.

I think the worst thing that D&D did for fantasy was systematizing magic, assigning everything points, probabilities, numbers, spells, powers, etc.

If it's predictable, understandable, practical, manipulable, that's not magic, that's science.

See, Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality for a fairly funny and well written piss-take on 'rational magic'.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/H ... ationality

[elipod]

Summoner, no matter what exactly do you summon, as long as it gives you a small army to solve the problems.
Magic and mayhem, Sacrifice, Diablo II MedianXL, Overlord.
For fast paced games i like Magicka for element/projectile type mixing, rather than relying on predesigned spells. Jet another good thing in Magicka - there is no hard spell casting limiter like cooldown or mana management, you can rain spell as fast as you can, until you start making input errors, where things become extremely dangerous both for you and your enemies.

I think the worst thing that D&D did for fantasy was systematizing magic, assigning everything points, probabilities, numbers, spells, powers, etc.

If it's predictable, understandable, practical, manipulable, that's not magic, that's science.

Agreed, wild magic has certain
drawbacks, but to me it´s the
only true magic left in this world...(c)
Rhialto the Marvelous, Wild Mage
and Spellshaper extraordinaire

[Elensaar]

The original Mage RPG from white wolf was kind of built around those ideas as well.

This is the Ars Magica variant I was talking about. Though, to me, the Mage version always felt like a "simplified" version of Ars, probably since I played Ars first. ;)

I would love to see a game get ritual magic right. Not sure I agree the D&D model has "ruined" anything, but it has certainly taken over as the go-to magic system for computer games. Bit of a shame, really, even if I do understand the design and balancing reasons.

[Itamarcu]

I really like Illusion magic, and basically all magic that isn't "made" for batles.
For instance, Fireball is only useful when in combat, but Mind Reading is useful in almost any situation.

[Flesh_Engine]

Death magic ;)

Undead have always interested me.

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

I am big fan of the universally useful stuff, teleportation mind reading and all of that. Invisibilty is a special favorite of mine.

[Husbag3]

Is Harry Potter magic a category? ;)

[jorgebonafe]

Is Harry Potter magic a category? ;)

Yeah, its a close relative of "Sorcerer's Apprentice" type of magic

[Husbag3]

Is Harry Potter magic a category? ;)

Yeah, its a close relative of "Sorcerer's Apprentice" type of magic

Cool, but necromancy FTW!

[Pseudosavior]

I really like magic interlaced with technology. Technomancers are definitely the most interesting mages I've seen.

[Zhil]

Yeah, technomancing is fun. Systems where magic is harvested as a fuel for technology is fun.

Or the other way around, mages that influence technology, but that's less fun than the above :)

[Husbag3]

I really like magic interlaced with technology. Technomancers are definitely the most interesting mages I've seen.

Seen?

[Zhil]

Seen?

Yeah, I didn't actually read or watch much fiction with technomancers, it's sad :(

Time to do a technomancer mod for minecraft