Spell components?

[mako-heart]

i have been tossing around the idea of making quest spesific spells and useing spell components to be gathered for the "brash" wizard to collect through the course of 3-4 quests and on the final quest combine these components to allow some awsome spell/ summon. do you think this could translate or be a weak story element please let me know all feed back is good feed back. mako

[Goblin-King]

A couple of thoughts...

Be sure to give a good explanation as to why the wiz needs to go through all that trouble to learn a spell.

About the spell being quest specific... I would consider either
1) Skipping the "component collecting quests". or
2) Letting the player keep the spell afterwards.

The player might feel kinda cheated by going through 3-4 quests to learn a spell, only to have it work in only 1 quest.
If you need to, consider making the spells usebale in all quests afterwards, but perhaps adding some quest notes that makes them extra powerful in that specific quest. Like, the end boss is extra vulnerable to xxx-magic?

If you choose to keep the gathering quests, be sure to give each quest a very unique flavor. Entering 4 dungeons, fighting some monsters and finding the chest at the end gets boring after THE FIRST quest!!! Collecting the items should not feel like a chore, but be exciting adventures in their own rights.

Having a greenskin, undead and chaos theme is not enough. Make a maze with moving doors and rotating rooms! An ice castle! How about having to steal one of the artifacts from a noble mansion without alarming the guards? Make them as different as possible since their objective is the same.

[mako-heart]

what do you think about the concept of a summoning spell then the summoned monster turns on the party? is that lame or predidctable in conjunction with the spell components to gather. like everyone thinks its going to be this 3 quest we find and grind = big awsome spell and it turns in to a dark demon summon that mentor had no idea about... i do like the idea of the mansion and try to sneak in we could us the mercs as guards.

[Goblin-King]

That idea could work well... But remember that the players might be somewhat dissapointed if the summoning ritual they have spent 3 quests on completing is a failure. Maybe make the pre-quests very short (or just have 2 quests - find the two halves of the scroll) and relatively easy. Focus more on the story than the actual action? If the story is exciting the players don't care if the quest is a little easy.

in my opinion 3 long or 4 short quests is the most a group generally can manage in one sitting. This would allow them to actually complete the entire story in one sitting.
You COULD also just make one long quest... Have them find the components within the same dungeon, take them to the summoning room and finally having to fight the spell-gone-wrong.

And again why do they need/want to summon something? Give them a good reason. Why does it fail, and what happens? How do they fight the demon?

[mako-heart]

Goblin king , I really apprectiate your feed back your right about 3 quests being way to long I think i will do the component aspect in one dueongon. From there go to a differnt location and do the spell. then the sommon becomes the boss fight. this summon, is magic that mentor says is the most ancient and practiced magic the realm knows. but it turns out his vision has been decived by high chaos magic the spell/summon to save the realm is now the very spell that could have the black banner raised permanently. and if the heros winn they get a spell scroll to do what?

[Goblin-King]

How about this. Mentors info is pretty accurate. The magic ritual DOES indeed produce a <spell scroll> but what he did not know/tell you is that part of the ritual is summoning and defeating the demon.

Perhaps defeating the demon binds it to an item and the players can now summon/unsummon the deamon. Either it could be in the form of a custom spell deck that can be chosen instead of a regular deck, or it could be more like a merc. But perhaps that the players must roll a die for each quest they use the demon to see if it is freed from the spell.