Elemental magic + mana idea Options

[vvalkingman]

Taking a break from my current project(just for today lol) to throw around an idea. So, in games like pokemon you have elements that are decisively stronger than others and will most likely win or lose in certain situations. I am playing around with an idea about a witch that uses runes that focus on different elements. The more mana that she puts into the rune of a specific element, the more powerful the result. However, when dealing with elements I think the idea that one is better than the other should include the situation where a far more powerful element force regardless of elemental resistences overcomes. So here is what I'm thinking:

Fire scorches earth, makes the winds rise, and loses to water in the end.
Wind controls water, can blow out fire, and loses to earth in the end.
Water extinguishes fire, makes the earth soften, and loses to wind in the end.
Earth overcomes wind, pushes the water back, and loses to fire in the end.

Anyway, I was thinking that you would have resistences but not complete wins.

When attacking,
Fire gets +2 over earth, +1 over wind, -2 against water, and regenerates fire.
Wind gets +2 over water(due to controling tides), +1 over fire(can blow out a weak flame), -2 against earth, and regenerates wind,
Water gets +2 over fire, +1 over earth, -2 over wind, and regenerates water.
Earth gets +2 over wind, +1 over water, -2 over fire, and regenerates earth.

The idea of regenerating like-element is an older idea but I think it makes sense. If you are dealing with fire and you add fire....you get MORE fire.

As for the idea of a more powerful result, I was thinking something along the lines of the following:
Raw - Loose untamed & unfocused energy(has a chance to backfire on the user) *One star spell
Pierce - Sharp but fragile(If resistences are high enough it could break) *Two star spell
Burst - Pure concentrated force(An pretty good investment into an element) *Three star spell
Channel- Fluid and over time(This takes over an area for an element) *Four star spell
Law -The very element itself released(let's loose enormously powerful living magic) *Five star spell

This is all mana driven, so you would choose an element and wager up a certain amount of mana and viola....spell based on the chart above.

Problems:
1. I like the idea of putting more power into a spell and it evolving based on that, but this only works well in my opinion when you are attacking. What about regenerating your health through healing or putting up a defense? Should they be elementally based as well? Or should a witch even have healing abilities?

Thoughts on problem 1:
Defense could be done with a non-elemental mana shield, perhaps when they attack you can have a choice on whether to take the damage or defend yourself with your mana. This leads to, should the player make the defense elemental? Because if so they would always go with the obvious choice....but I guess that makes sense when you think about it. About healing, I could just take it out all together and just have mana. If you are out of mana and take a direct hit then game over...thoughts on that? If I did that then there must be a way to restore mana, either potions or evocation(wow reference ftw lol) but this would have to be limited usage as not to be too easy(evocation has a cooldown, can only use once every so many turns?) Edit: In retrospect, taking out health wouldn't work out because you would always have to defend with something otherwise gameover...that feels like it would get old.

2. In Witch Hunter Robin(an anime) and A Certain Magical Index(another anime), magic users have to change the field to their element in order for them to be able to use magic. The idea seems logical and I'd like to use it. Should I?

Thoughts on problem 2:
Chrono Cross did something like that with it's element use system. You could use an element to build up the field with that element's energy(and basically buff your spells based on how much of the element is in the field). The idea i was having was to look at the enemy and pick a field but who wants to take a turn to "setup" the field in order to attack? Unless you are fighting other magic users you just gave away a free hit. So maybe you choose a field in the beginning and THEN the battle starts. The more I talk about it the more I think it's a useless feature that just complicates things...Unless you build up the field(one spell at a time) before you can use higher tiers of spells, I don't see the use. Then it just comes down to "Should the player, if they have enough mana, be able to use max level spells right off the bat or should they have to build up into it?"

What do you all think? Comments, critiques, etc etc

This post has been edited by vvalkingman: Oct 28 2012, 06:54 PM

[Clord]

When Yu-Gi-Oh! series was still about constant new minigames, there was this interesting concept where by mixing elemental dragons, you can help them to counter the dragons who would be superior in one on one combat against the either one alone (due that dragon's element would beat their elements.)

Fire + Water = Steam to make Earth too moist and crumble. Which in the real world would not make that much sense.