How to name skills? Patterns or unique?

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

This was already said above so just adding my two cents, but indeed naming can help create a way to convey the lore of your world indirectly.

Regarding spells, prayers and the like.

If you learned magic in a school of sorts, and magic is not channeling the raw energies of the world out of sheer willpower but a structured study of the Arcane, then your spells should reflect it.

Spells created by previous wizards would probably be named after these wizards (a la Mordenkainen in D&D).

That can help settle also some legends. If you want to refer to the existence of a group of legendary wizards, maybe many of the spellbook entries will be named after them.

At the same time, if you want to show a world where magic is well known and studied, highly codified and seen in a practical way, using a tiered name convention can be good.

If only few people study magic and can cast a fireball, it's good to have it know as the mystical Fiery wrath of Azanacius

If many people are able to easily study magic and cast a fireball, it make sense that they all just know it as the level 2 of the fire discipline (A.K.A Fire 2)

Regarding Physical and special abilities, Unique names should be used for special techniques, but by reusing the same name/skills for similar typed characters (E.G tank and paladin both have provoke and cover) you can make it resonate as if those were "basic training" common to these classes.

It's really a matter of flavor:

In the same game, you could have the school trained alchemist using the 3 level of an elemental discipline (fire 1/2/3, or even Fire apprentice/Fire expert/Fire master) and the swordsman using convolutedly named skills (EG, Winter's 1000 cuts, or Gentle rise of the morning Dragonfly)

In Wheel of time books, they used cool sounding name for the sword forms, that can be an inspiration

 

[Mysticphoenix]

Unique name is fine. Harry Potter does have unique spell name too, and I can remember many of them. Wingardium Leviosa!!

People tend to remember skills that they often use or skills that they impress, no matter what its name.

 

[Redeye]

My honest question is how the hell the Persona games even came up with their spell names. Nobody has been able to find the etymology of the spell names, so right now they look like nonsense.

If I were to make Persona-like spell names, I would instead use words that are sort of associated with the element of the sort.

Example:

Template:

Base Word = Kion (Ice Spell) {Etymology: Sounds relatively close to the name "Khione", the Greek Goddess of Ice)

Prefixes:

Su = Super. Mid Tier

Me = Mega. High Tier

Wi = Wide. Indicates it hits multiple targets

Example Spells:

Kion (Ice, Single Target, Low Tier)

Sukion (Ice, Single Target, Mid Tier)

Mekion (Ice, Single Target, High Tier)

Wikion (Ice, Multiple, Low Tier)

Wisukion (Ice, Multiple, Mid Tier)

Wimekion (Ice, Multiple, High Tier)

You can even make "Wi" a suffix, and make something like "Mekionwi" or something.

And then you could put in some really cool names for the Ultimate Abilities.

Ice Age

Fimbulventr

Sub Zero

Wrath of Celsius

etc. etc.

Sure, the format is sort of messy and confusing for newbies, but at least it makes more sense than wherever the word "Bufu" came from.

 

[Chaos Avian]

@Redeye: I don't know about the "Ma", "Dyne", etc. But for the most part they are heavily influenced by Hindu/ Sanskrit. Agi for example comes from Agni, the Vedic God of Fire. Bufu is Sanskrit for ice, etc :3