If we are going to get witchcraft...

[martinuzz]

... name 3 witchy things that you would like to see.
I'll start

1) Posion of Balance
- requires a criminal scent to craft
- can only affect the perpetrator that left said scent
- when used, the first hit to land on your opponent will cause his max biles to equal (or approach, if there's multipliers for poisons) yours, for the duration of the aggro.
- careful use of 5/5/5/5 rights of englishman front line support troopers could prove a killer

2) Curse: Prickly Thorns
- can be cast on an area. Affects trees, berry bushes and acorn bushes in the area.
- when an action is performed on the tree/bush, be it getting branches, picking berries, or chopping, it causes (a bit of) permanent damage to a random bile's max
- gives carebears new purpose: keep boston area free of curses to save the noobs

3) Hex: Flatulence
- can be cast on any character in range
- can be used in boston
- makes the target fart noisily, and often for 12h or somesuch
- hear your enemies coming

[JohnCarver]

1 sounds dangerous, but interesting. 2 and 3 sound fun . Keep in mind that we are trying to keep poison system and witchcraft system as two independent systems at the moment.

[Binks]

permanent damage to a random bile's max

No. Permanent damage to biles has always been stupid.

[DarkNacht]

A curse that slows all plant growth in an area would be interesting.

[Cheena]

When I think about witchcraft, I think about snake eggs in the turkey coop... Like hmm... If an area with a coop (or the coop itself) is cursed, there's a % of chance for the new eggs to be snake's and when it hatches, a random turkey dies, and a snake is released from the coop. Which would work if you curse a mine having a coop inside...

[Feone]

My image of witchcraft also includes the ability to annoy or tease players without murdering and destroying everything they know.

Some amusing (mostly for those not affected) effects would greatly add to a witchy feel of the land. Some not neccesarily harmful or dangerous effects would be nice.

- Turning all graphics for water (and names, EG bucket of water) into blood on the view of the affected.
- Rotting the food someone is carrying.
- Locusts, harvesting a field causing a swarm of them to appear & charge the target dealing 1's of damage (not increasing with reel etc.) to constantly strike the afflicted untill they can find shelter in any building.
- Creepy laughter randomly playing.
- A glimpse of ruin, when hit for say.. 10-30 seconds all graphics of buildings etc turning into a ruined, decayed version.

[JohnCarver]

We love the ideas. Keep them flowing. I will say that we are currently aiming for ten hexes/curses/spells upon initial WitchCraft patch. We have ten selected, but we are not so proud to say they are the best 10 ideas ever so there is plenty of opportunity for your ideas here to either replace a spot in the top 10 or be in some content patch post-WitchCraft where we add more hexes/curses.

[Suffragium]

I think some sort of polymorph would be cool. For example, you can turn a bear into a "possessed" bear with increased speed, increased damage, increased health and so on. You can send this possessed animal to a player - they will visit that player sometime in the coming 24 hours. They will get some sort of warning that someone has sent a possessed animal after them, and when there are minutes left until its arrival, a sound effect will play. For a bear, you will hear a loud roar.

Additionally, the possessed animal will obviously visually change too. For example - red eyes, darker fur, etc.

[nonsonogiucas]

You guessed, I'm going to argue some high level design concept while apologizing for not having grasped the obvious allready..

I find this article interesting.

It says people like games cause they satisfy psychological needs such as:
need for competence
need for autonomy
need for relatedness

What kind of need should playing a witch character staisfy and how?

I feel pretty dumb atm because everyone seems to grasp the thing naturally and automatically but... how is this going to work? How many witches there will be around? Around where? What kind of progression will they have to make in order to be witches and with which purpose?

Are we trying to replicate the Town of Salem game?

[JohnCarver]

You guessed, I'm going to argue some high level design concept while apologizing for not having grasped the obvious allready..

I find this article interesting.

It says people like games cause they satisfy psychological needs such as:
need for competence
need for autonomy
need for relatedness

I'm hesitant to take any articles written about appeasing the masses as Salem has not and will not be developed to do so. It will be a nice, and not for everybody. To be fair. It won't be for most just hopefully for more people than it has been.

What kind of need should playing a witch character staisfy and how?

The player who likes to be different. Likes to be hunted. Likes to be chased. Likes to be special.

I feel pretty dumb atm because everyone seems to grasp the thing naturally and automatically but... how is this going to work? How many witches there will be around? Around where? What kind of progression will they have to make in order to be witches and with which purpose?

Few Witches, around the world. Progression based on their willingness to do witchy things. Witchy things serving the purpose to anger non-witches.

Are we trying to replicate the Town of Salem game?

Not really. Although we have played with mechanics where you can burn a witch for added benefit over just killing her, and had a fun side-conversation of what happens to a group of players burned a non-witch. This reminded me of the jester mechanic of your link a little bit.