In Minecraft have you always wanted to cast powerful spells to disintegrate the earth, fly through the sky, or summon fireballs to hurl at your foes? Did you want to gain mastery of the elements and bend them to your will? If you are willing to put in the dedication and sacrifice necessary to master and cast such spells then welcome, apprentice.
SpellMaster is a plugin for the Minecraft CanaryMod server (http://canarymod.net/). Players gain spellcasting abilities through performing ceremonies to acquire tomes of magic that contain spells.
Once you have a magic tome in your inventory you may cast the spells it contains. Each spell has a focus: an item you must hold and use in order to cast the spell. Many spells have components: additional items that you must possess in your inventory, which are often consumed by the spell. Casting spells is a tiring activity that often costs you a little bit of your health.
Each spell has a minimum level to cast, and the power of a spell (its range, damage, duration, etc.) increases as your level grows. Each tome of magic provides a boost to one or more aspects of a spell's power.
Some tomes of magic contain ceremonies for acquiring more advanced tomes that contain more powerful spells. Each ceremony has its own requirements and costs to perform, like spells. Ceremonies, however, are far more difficult to perform. Ceremonies have a minimum level to perform and cost one or more levels to perform.
- Do not significantly affect the initial start of the game. Ceremonies and spells have sufficient costs to require players to be somewhat established before they are available.
- Spells are balanced to preserve tradeoffs and meaningful choices.
- Spells should be flavorful. Different spells should feel different. E.g. spells of different elements have different characteristics; damage-dealing spells are not just clones of each other.
- Spell foci and components should be related to the nature of the spell. When possible spells make use of items that are less commonly used.
- Low level spells are primarily designed to reduce some of the tedium in the game and do not allow you to do anything you couldn't without spells.
- Medium level spells start to alter gameplay (e.g. flight, teleport), but not too dramatically.
- High level spells significantly alter gameplay but require significant in-game achievements in order to use (e.g. find Nether fortress)