Jonric: What kind of magic system have you created for Titan Quest? Does it incorporate various classes or schools, and is casting tied to mana, scrolls or anything else?

Arthur Bruno: Magic in Titan Quest comes in the form of "skills" and is relatively all encompassing. Skills range from impressive melee maneuvers found on the Warfare, Stealth, Defense and Hunting skill sets (mini-classes) to more traditional magic found on the Storm, Earth, Spirit, and Nature skill sets. Each skill set will have 16 or more base skills and modifiers. Base skills give the player different abilities that are never replaced by similar higher-level abilities. Each base skill will allow you to do something new, and many of them will have modifier skills that add special properties and increase the overall power of the skill.

As an example, you might have a Hunting skill, Call of the Hunt, where the character sounds a call on their horn (in the game, the character actually pulls out a hunting horn) and it increases their overall speed of those of their allies. You could then put points into one of its modifier skills that would give you and your allies bonus damage against beast-type creatures while Call of the Hunt was active. Each skill set is designed to feature several skills that interact with each other to create interesting tactical applications. Some of these combinations are obvious while others may take some experimentation by the player to discover. Likewise, many of the skill sets are designed to complement one another.

The cost of using skills is that the character expends "energy" and some particularly powerful skills require time before they can be cast again. This is similar to mana in other games, but is used by both physically and magically oriented skills, so we thought the term energy more fitting.