Grimrock

Brainstorming ideas for new spells for DLC/Expansion/sequel. Feel free to add to the list!

note: to make room for new Earth spells I perhaps all poison related spells should be moved to (Earth+Death)
idea: add Arcane, Life and Death as skills to specialize in. Arcane combines Spirituality, Physicality and Balance and replaces Spellcraft

Air
Levitate (Air+Earth) - Descend into pits without taking damage
Windwall (Air+Balance+Physicality) - A powerful barrier of wind around the party deflects smaller missiles and gives flying creatures within 1 square an Accuracy penalty
Tempest (Air+Spirit+Life+Physicality) - Persistent AoE deals lightning damage over time, square where spell is cast is unaffected (if party moves they start taking damage)
Stormwind (Air+Life+Physicality) - Powerful wind pushes enemies back and causes physical damage when they hit a wall or fall down a pit
Void (Air+Death) - Sucks air out of a square, reduces Attack speed and Evasion and causes damage over time for anyone remaining in the square
Gift of Air (Air+Spirit+Life) - Increase party Dexterity

Earth
Stoneskin (Earth+Balance) - Increase the Protection / Armor rating of a party member
Stonefist (Earth+Air) - Flying fist of stone deals physical damage and has a chance to stun / knockback an enemy
Earthwall (Earth+Physicality) - Surrounding stone/roots are shaped into a wall in front of the caster. Short duration, has HP with high Protection rating, can be bashed down by strong monsters.
Earthquake (Earth+Life+Physicality+Balance) - Shakes the area violently, creatures get thrown in random directions and can take damage from falling rocks, square where spell is cast is unaffected.
Rootgrapple (Earth+Life) - Roots surface to entangle enemies
Gift of Earth (Earth+Spirit+Life) - Increase Party Vitality

Arcane
Disorient (Spirit) - Reduce enemy Accuracy, duration depending on caster vs. target Willpower
Scrying Eye (Spirit+Balance+Air) - Projects an "eye" the player can assume control of to scout the dungeon for a short duration
Binding (Physicality+Spirit) - Shackles of magical force hold an enemy in place, duration depending on caster Willpower vs. target Strength
Domination (Spirit+Life+Death) - Mind control an enemy to fight for you, duration depending on caster vs. target Willpower
Arcane Armor (Physicality+Balance) - Magical force deflects attacks, significantly raises Protection rating and resistances for a short time, caster only
Elemental Ward (Balance+Air+Fire+Earth+Water) - elemental protection against all elements (less powerful than the element specific ones)
Spell Mirror (Balance+Spirit+Life) - Deflects next hostile spell back at caster
Dispel (Balance+Death) - Removes or suppresses a spell or magical effect
Arcane Hand (Physicality) - Interact with nearby object or pick it up without touching it (say it's booby trapped?)
Wall of Force (Balance+Spirit+Physicality) - Indesctructible wall of force blocks movement for a short duration

Death
Weaken (Death) - Reduces targets Attack Power (or Strength), duration depends on caster vs. target Willpower
Soul Burn (Death+Spirit+Fire) - Causes great pain and damage over time, only works on living targets, duration depending on caster vs. target Willpower, AoE?
Life Steal (Death+Life) - Drains life from target
Spirit of Vengeance (Death+Spirit+Physicality) - summons a vengeful spirit to fight for the caster
Pestilence (Death+Air) - Spreads AoE disease to targets, reduces Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Willpower

Sounds really good. I like the idea of making mages a lot more about support and play style.

Looks like you've really put some thought into this.
Expanding on the spells and their variants cries out to the devs to allow spellcasting for ALL character types (like in DM). This way each could specialize in fire, air, etc.
That being said, the entire character engine would have to be re-written, as in Grimrock 2.

What do you think? Stay the same, or re-write the character abilities?

I like a lot of these ideas!

1varangian wrote:Air
Levitate (Air+Earth) - Descend into pits without taking damage

That's already a spell, it's called poison bolt.

Edit : Actually, that's not the only one. I mean I like the idea of more spells and all, but they would all need different combinations and then some of them wouldn't really make any sense at all with their combination.

great spell ideas

luthur1964 wrote:Looks like you've really put some thought into this.
Expanding on the spells and their variants cries out to the devs to allow spellcasting for ALL character types (like in DM). This way each could specialize in fire, air, etc.
That being said, the entire character engine would have to be re-written, as in Grimrock 2.

What do you think? Stay the same, or re-write the character abilities?

I say stay the same and keep magic exclusively for the Mage., but re-write the Mage and give them more uses.

I do not know if this has already been mentioned but I would like to see a spell system like in Dungeon Master where you can set the strength level of a spell. At the beginning e.g. the fireballs were small with a low level FUL IR - but later, when you became more powerful, the fireballs became bigger and bigger...

More spells would be very cool indeed, thanks for sharing these!

I really like the idea of more spells. I have always picked a mage for my party so far, but that was mostly for the light spell so i didn't have to carry torches around. Having new spells would make a mage or more than one a viable solution.

Also, this would bring a lot more variation into the spell schools. So far every single school has a basic attack, an arrow enchant, a bolt and a shield. With the sole exception of invisibility, that is all that each school has to offer. And Spellcraft currently has only 2 spells, that needs to be expanded as well.

One problem that would raise is the limited skill growth if you focus on more than one ability. if you reach level 14, you barely get over 50 skill points. Which means that if you want the master swords skill but you have heavy armor proficiency already, you can give up on sword master.

I would really like to have more skill points avaiable. Or perhaps give the character points to spend on active skills (weapons, assassination, magic schools) and passive skills (dodge, athletics, armor, spellcraft, staff defense) seperately, so you can focus on more than one thing without ending up unable to master anything.

That's just some ideas. For the next game (which will hopefully be longer) I would like something like this to be implemented so I don't have to hammer my points into one skill exclusively and fully ignore everything else to reach mastery.