Shattered Kingdoms

Since pretty much everything found has some sort of magic on it. This spell doesn't see as much use and could use a improvement with the ever growing magic-infused world.

I see the spells uselessness stemming from its lack of information that it provides. Here is a couple of ways that can improve it:

1)Allow detect magic to be used in conjunction with locate object.
2)Have the spell give more information about the item such as the amount of runes it has on it. Be it exact info or more blurred like most of SK.
3)Allow it to detect people as a room effect who have magical items or magically buffed. Ex. "you detect a magical presence" or "a magical presence has entered room". *Almost everyone would be detected.
4)Detect if an item from a store vendor is magical on the purchase list.

I could definitely see some of these as being viable. It'd just be incorporating some Dungeons and Dragon's detect magic properties. I know it would be sweet to be able to determine the relative strength of magic on an item before messing with it. On adventures 1238741324 things drop and maybe only 4 or 5 are any good, this might help cull the inane spam-identifying required to make sure you're not missing a single tiny thing. This could be especially helpful to those of us who may have to leave very quickly but don't want to get looted by logging out with too many items, a quick scan would help check and see which items you'd want to keep and which to discard before leaving in a hurry.

c 'detect magic'

look at so-and-so


Powerful could mean a number of things, like scripts or having exceptional runes on it.


Strong aura would determine an item of total greater runes. Has great runes in any combo? Strong aura. 1/3 or 2/2 or just 4 runes on a single piece etc etc. (This would encompass 4-5)


Weak aura would simply be a item with a slight. Possibly slight, moderate, and upper moderate if need be. There could be an in-between for 2 and 3.

Whether or not detect magic would serve as lore when determining the power of an item at a glance would be up for question. Lore looks at only the original innates. Does detect magic take into account actual runes or just beginning runes? This might include items of the upper exceptional tier (total runes) which isn't that uncommon. Plenty of people can get greater or exceptional armor protection on a piece of armor that already starts with upper-greater runes, bringing it up to a 10-12 runes total. This is assuming that detect magic examines existing runes and not the original base of course. If you put exceptional armor protection on the Dream Ward, will it still only look powerful? Or would there be an upper echelon for uber-awesome items.
Like -



Well that's my contribution to the idea. For those of you who might point out how this would further the capacity to quantify runes (which has been semi-discouraged by the staff); I don't think this would make that big of an impact in that area. Anyone smart enough can do it now without the help from this sort of mechanic and will only have a few loose ends based on minimum and maximum possible runes.

This is a fantastic idea that doesn't affect any balance, would add some flavor, and would give a useless spell some small function.

+1

ETA : Mostly referring to Baranov's post.

Pretty much what I had in mind. Just better explained.

Bump.

Also, races which get detect magic (elf, sprite, deep-elf) should get it on the same terms that races which get detect buried (dwarf, gnome). That is, they should not have to cast it and spend energy on it. It should be always on and always free.

Since this is pretty much just a flavor spell, I think that this would just add more flavor to the game without unbalancing these races. If detect magic is made useful, this should be reevaluated, but I highly doubt that coding time will ever be spent on the complex task of making detect magic useful. Making it innate, like other innate detects, should be a pretty simple task.

The only thing detect magic is useful for is determining whether someone has sanctuary.

I personally prefer it as a spell. There are too many things that are magical for it not to be turned off. But it would be awesome if those races didn't have to hold the spell or have the spell not have a upkeep.

Toss in a toggle under auto that will take parenthetical affects like aura and magical/spirit detection and condense them down to a one or two letters.

(White Aura) (W)
(Dark Aura) (D)
(Gray Aura) (G)
(Magic) (M)
(Sanctuary) (S)
(Spirit Aura) (SA) or (A)