Um…dude. Rerolling is something you do after you spend the minimal amount of time neccessary to find out IF your character can be a mage.

The “solution above” is a quest that changes frequently to keep ahead of the wikis so that you have to discover it and complete it with little or no help from anyone else, and every character that becomes a mage is above as awe-inspiring as the dude who got the stupid Super Sword.

Only instead of raw power, its diverse abilities none of the hundreds of other sword-fighters in this low-magic setting can use. When you cast that Water-Walking spell now, people are actually wide eyed and going “Wow! He can walk on water!” Instead of it just being anothe buff they could’ve easily gotten if they practiced Alchemy or “rolled up a mage” at the start in that OTHER MMO.

The point is, they are a LITTLE different.

I think magic is impossible to implement in a CRPG and MMORPG and hope to maintain both the “magical” aspect of magic and any semblance of game balance. There are two components in something being “magical”. One, it has to be inordinately useful. Resurrecting someone from death is obviously useful. No wonder a lot of CRPG/MMORPG has it as part of their respective magic systems. Two, it has to be rare and usable by very few people. CPR and other medical treatments used to resuscitating patients are indistinguishable from resurrection in their final outcomes and objectives. But the technology is commonplace, so there is nothing magical about them.

In a CRPG/MMORPG, there is nothing preventing game designers from giving some players potentially unique and powerful abilities. But since people signing up for these games to be, well, special. It’s not feasible to then restrict such power to a few people. So you can pick unique or powerful, just not both. Hence no real magic. Ironically, doing magic in CRPG/MMORPG right is not possible, if the resulting game is to be commercially successful.

Hand waving, gestures, rituals, etc. these are just delivery mechanic. Just as a warrior swings his sword, a mage has to wave his hands. The end result is a 1d8+1 for a warrior with the sword and 1d8+1 for a mage throwing magic missile. It makes the game richer to have a decent back story around how the mage’s magic missile comes about, but the ability to throw magic missiles is itself not magical if hundreds of other fellows can do the same thing.

One partial solution about uniqueness and magic is to have different mages capable of producing different magical effects, hence the preservation of the uniqueness (or rarity) part of magic. Two problems arise here. One, with weird effects comes the complexity of game balance. Two, game engines themselves must be capable of doing different effects. There can only be so many meaningful varieties that can be added to a game. In a way, the old 2E D&D magic school specialization is a mechanic in a similar vein. AC had an interesting take on this initially with the use-based spell effectiveness. I didn’t play that one so I can’t really say how successful it has been.