About the name "arcane magic."

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jaimeastorga2000
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About the name "arcane magic."

Post by jaimeastorga2000 »

I'm not sure if this belongs on this forum, but it seemed like the best place to put it. I understand that due to NRIW, "holy" magic was changed to "arcane" magic. But on looking at the arcane magic spells, I perceive two rather distinct kinds of attacks. The undead use things like touch and shadow wave, which I think are appropriately described by the term "arcane." However, non-undead magicians use attacks like lightbeam and faerie fire from which I get a different feeling. I was thinking maybe they would be better termed something like "white magic" or "light magic;" some name which avoided a religious mention but still maintained the connotations of being bright spells that are specially damaging to the undead. Does anybody agree?

I thought maybe this would affect gameplay, which is obviously not wanted for something that would just be a name change, but if some spells currently grouped under arcane magic were split into a new type of magic and the unit resistances to the new type of magic were the same as resistances to arcane magic, wouldn't the gameplay remain the same?
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Turuk »

Moved to the appropriate forum.
jaimeastorga2000 wrote:I thought maybe this would affect gameplay, which is obviously not wanted for something that would just be a name change, but if some spells currently grouped under arcane magic were split into a new type of magic and the unit resistances to the new type of magic were the same as resistances to arcane magic, wouldn't the gameplay remain the same?
If you are only changing the name of the type of magic solely for aesthetics and now offer two different resistances that are identical, what does that do but potentially confuse people while the current system works perfectly? It makes little sense to complicate this.

Arcane covers all types of magic, allowing them to be under one heading.
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jaimeastorga2000
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by jaimeastorga2000 »

Turuk wrote:Moved to the appropriate forum.
Thank you. I apologize for having posted on the wrong forum.
Turuk wrote:If you are only changing the name of the type of magic solely for aesthetics and now offer two different resistances that are identical, what does that do but potentially confuse people while the current system works perfectly? It makes little sense to complicate this.

Arcane covers all types of magic, allowing them to be under one heading.
I was personally confused at first that the seemingly opposite "holy" spells of white mages and elves and the "dark" spells of necromancers and undead creatures were grouped under the same kind of magic. I realize now that the arcane type is used as a miscellaneous category, but I thought it would make it more thematically appropriate to have different categories for those spells.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Turuk »

jaimeastorga2000 wrote:I was personally confused at first that the seemingly opposite "holy" spells of white mages and elves and the "dark" spells of necromancers and undead creatures were grouped under the same kind of magic. I realize now that the arcane type is used as a miscellaneous category, but I thought it would make it more thematically appropriate to have different categories for those spells.
Right, well that would be the days of cold and holy, but that has since been switched to arcane, so there's little point in debating a switch back. It's not a miscellaneous category, but rather a broad category.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Rya »

Maybe "Neutral" would be a better word?
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Cloud »

Arcane is not exactly 'Holy' or 'White' Magic, it's more Null Magic than anything (the more magical a race is, the less resistant to Arcane it is). Yes it appears in different forms, a touch in the case of Undead, A lightbeam in the case of Humans, and Faerie Fire in the case of Elves, but they all have their similarities.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Ken_Oh »

The arcane damage type isn't something invented by White Magi and that just happens to be used by Elves and the undead. It's something used by the Elves and undead, as part of their nature, and also just so happens to be used by White Magi many ages later.

It doesn't get much more arcane than Elves and the undead.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Gambit »

The thing about having two different words is having another resistance to memorize. A resistance that is == to one that is already there.
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As for the word choice. The word "Magic" was already taken as a weapon special, and arcane is a good, broad synonym because it simply means "not commonly known", "secret", "strange", and "mystic".
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Turuk »

Cloud, Ken_Oh, and Gambit have all made valid points on why this is the way it is currently. It will not be changing.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by Zachron »

Gambit wrote:...As for the word choice. The word "Magic" was already taken as a weapon special, and arcane is a good, broad synonym because it simply means "not commonly known", "secret", "strange", and "mystic".
You know, that being said, I like what it has done to the flavor of the story, giving shadow magic and holy magic a common attribute provides an interesting flavor to the story in that both magic types have in common that they manipulate (and thus disrupt) the prime forces, which is, independently of NRIW, better suited to Wesnoth's overall mythos. If there was any change to be made in the naming of the damage type, I would suggest something along the lines of Prime or Primal, but I see no reason to make such a change.

As it is, my understanding is that NRIW had nothing to do with the change from Holy to Arcane in the name of the damage type (rebalancing the game to give the the damage type to less than holy things and avoid creating new damage types did); instead, NRIW was a secondary justification used when people starting complaining about the change. Indeed, NRIW helped justify the change but was by no means appeased by the change, as several of the attacks which dealt Arcane damage retained the word "holy" in the name of the attack.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by catwhowalksbyhimself »

The way I think of it, arcane attacks are any form a pure magic that has a disruptive effect on other magics. A kind of magical interference, if you will. Beings dependent upon magic for their existence are especially vulnerable to it, but I figure that magic is an inherent part of all life in the world to some extent, so the attacks do hurt other creatures as well.
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Re: About the name "arcane magic."

Post by thespaceinvader »

catwhowalksbyhimself wrote:The way I think of it, arcane attacks are any form a pure magic that has a disruptive effect on other magics. A kind of magical interference, if you will. Beings dependent upon magic for their existence are especially vulnerable to it, but I figure that magic is an inherent part of all life in the world to some extent, so the attacks do hurt other creatures as well.
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