Ritual meets perception meets reality; let’s talk magic. What’s your favorite original magic effect, and/or what’s one that you might want help with?
I’m making a magic system for an NSR/ OSR RPG. It has a few things on the ‘must have list’.
System Goals
- The system should have clear rules to make simple spells, so players can use simple spell lists, or make creative spells on-the-fly.
- Rules for making spells don’t have to be simple, because players will mostly just interact with the lists of spells.
- The system must have an underlying structure, and internal logic that makes sense in a Dark Ages setting.
- It has to produce a sizeable chunk of standard fantasy RPG magic tropes, like necromancy, clairvoyance, et c.
- The world should still ‘make sense’ - if spells impact trade and economics, then that’s okay, as long as the world remains coherent.
- You can’t make lots of gold with magic, if gold is used as coinage.
The System So Far
- Each sphere is one of the four classical elements.
- Mages buy Magic Spheres as skills (rated 1-3).
- E.g. Air 1, Fire 2.
- The mage can target that element with two effects:
- Detect/ Identify (e.g. ‘Detect water’)
- Alter (e.g. ‘alter fire’ and make a torch explode)
- Spend 1 additional mana point to ‘create’ something with magic (e.g. ‘Create rock’)
- Spend X additional mana to make the target ‘bigger’ (detect fire everywhere in a city, make all the air in the room noxious).
- Every sphere combination allows one additional target.
- Water + Earth lets you affect life, so you can ‘alter life’ (and give a cat wings) or ‘create life’ (and make thorny bushes grow).
- Every mechanic will have a standard effect, e.g.:
- If a spell can cripple someone, it will inflict a -1 penalty per Mana Point spent, to one Attribute.
- If a spell can grant the target Damage Resistance, it grants 1 per Mana Point spent.
The conceptual phase is taking a lot longer than I thought, and there’s a lot of work to be done.
I like some of the oddities (fire and light will have to lumped in together - I think this makes sense).
Some of the oddities I don’t like
- It has no teleportation magic.
- I don’t want healing magic, but the chart is just screaming ‘Water + Earth makes healing’.
And a lot of it needs to be conceptually tighter (the bottom left corner makes less sense than the top right corner).
I’ve tried climbing this mountain before, and I wish you luck. Here are a few of my notes, in case any of it is of use. This was meant to be a reproduction of the Mage:The Awakening spellcrafting system ported into the One Roll Engine by Greg Stolze:
Improvised Spellcasting
Creatively combine effects from your arcana and extra Spell Parameters for things like range, duration, and area of effect, until you’ve described exactly what your spell does. Each additional type of magic causes -1d to your dice pool.
Improvised castings are instantaneous, and involve a single roll. Combining Gnosis+Arcana (Use the highest Arcana that is part of this spell).
+1d for having a focus devoted to that arcana +1d for spending mana (up to 1) +1d for spending willpower (also 1 max) +1d if the spell coincides with your Vision, Belief, or Passion (These replaced Mission, Duty, and Craving in my homebrew)Extended castings are a higher investment, but higher payoff. It requires some kind of sacrifice - a significant object or a living creature. Each roll takes ten minutes*. To successfully cast the spell, a difficulty (1-10) and a needed number of successes (1-10) is set by the GM. I ran this as arbitrary, but feel free to have your own difficulty levels. For each interval of extended casting, you must spend willpower to continue attempting the spell.
+1d for a ritual with hour-long intervals +1d if your ritual involves several days prep time and/or significant materials costs +1d if the spell coincides with your Vision, Belief, or Passion (up to +3d)Improvised Spell Parameters
Long Distance Magic (Requires Space 2) For targets out of view. These spells require some object with a connection to the target. The penalty is based on the strength of its metaphorical connection, not the distance to the target.
Intimate -1d Familiar -2d Acquainted -3d Vague -4d Tenuous -5d
Multiple Targets Hits extra targets at full strength; The spell can now be Dodged, however.
Two -1d Four -2d Eight -3d… (Round up to nearest double)
Area The standard spell takes effect over a flat 1 yard radius. Double the penalty for the same cubic area. 2 yard radius -1d 4 yard radius -2d… (Et cetera, round up to nearest double)
Duration The effect maintains over Width or Height in the relevant time scale, per GM. Some effects might not be able to extend over time, or extend differently.
Minutes -1d Hours -2d Days -3d Years -4d Forever -5d
Misc Spell Modifiers Pick one per extra Mana spent, up to three.
Casts in Minutes +2d Casts in Hours +3d Causes 1S to caster’s entire body +1d
Repeats Effect Next Round -2d Must be cast after success with an other skill +1d
Difficult (-2d) to Counterspell -2d
Ignores X armor -2X Can be blocked by armor +1d
Spell effect covers a ~150 ft radius -3d
Summons one Threat 2 Creature -1d
Spell requires unusually complex ingredients and preparation +2d
Fantastic suggestions, cheers for the write-up.
General principles are good - with the right design the entire thing should reduce to a flowchart and some tables.
…and then we have magical items and areas, so plenty to conceptual work to do. It’s turned into a mammoth discussion on the board.
- The system should have clear rules to make simple spells, so players can use simple spell lists, or make creative spells on-the-fly.
