Freeze - 1 mana - 1d4 damage and slows target for 1 round

> I would rather have a system with general guidelines that allows you to [...do what...] you want for whatever reason you want.
Yeah, sure, that's a valid approach.

>You can do things with your frost magic that are not usually combat applicable.
Except sometimes they are, like exploiting the environment (e.g. freezing the puddle an enemy is standing in to root him in place).

There are two extremes of the bullshit scale of magic.
One is what I call "card magic" - clearly defined effects that are described and are ultimately hardcoded into the rules and aren't subject to change. I call it "card magic", because all the necessary information can be easily written on a flashcard - and such information will COMPLETELY describe said spell.

The other is "ritual magic"- bullshit similarly-themed magic (it's usually called "schools of magic") that doesn't have clear OOC rules and can do anything your GM allows it to, but GM also can define the limitations of such magic case-by-case "cause I say so".

Anything that is in between of those two extremes will always be a somewhat iffy subject, because there will always be space for argument with the GM about what said magic can or can't do.

>Except sometimes they are, like exploiting the environment (e.g. freezing the puddle an enemy is standing in to root him in place).

Sounds like an improvised action using your freeze skill instead of your freeze powers. This is why I said "usually not combat applicable".

And why should you separate your "freeze skill" from your "freeze powers"?

Yeah, I get it, "powers" are a convenient shorthand for using shit in combat when you are more concerned with tactics than actual application of a spell, but purely from logical standpoint, such separation makes no sense.

Any PbtA games with good spellcasting systems?

Well, not sure how separate they would be. Not even sure how the system would work. It could be one where when you get the freeze skill you just get those combat actions as short hands for the most common uses it has in combat, along with the list of other things it can reasonably do.

>just making damage bigger
Boring. My approach: spells have magnitude, duration, AoE, and a thematic effect. Basic spells have one aspect raised and the others at minimum. The next tier has two improved, then three, and so forth.

As an example: a basic spell of Light could produce a blinding flash (magnitude), create a persistent glowing point (duration), provide flat illumination over an area for a few moments (AoE), or something more esoteric like creating a flash of light that only illuminates doorways (effect).

The next tier could create a powerful spotlight (magnitude + duration), an exceedingly powerful flash that surrounds the target in light (magnitude + AoE), a persistent area of flat, shadowless lighting (duration + AoE), put an aura around living things visible only to the caster (duration + effect), creates a similar aura around all living things in a zone (effect + AoE), or blinds a specific target (magnitude + effect).

Under this system tier 2 and 3 spells are actually more versatile than the overwhelming tier 4,which simply maxes out every category and as a result does just one thing (create what amounts to a nova), but does it extremely well, while tier 1 spells remain useful for utility and cheapness (the effect example is an easy way to ping for hidden doors, for instance). This all means that you don't run into the problem of higher-level characters simply ignoring all but the highest-tier spell available once they get it.

I'd cast Freeze twice instead of High Freeze once

Unless you decide to do something cool like , I don't think those should be considered different spells. I like the way 5e handles it where you can choose how much of your resources you want to expend on a single casting of a spell. It has much the same effect without feeling too video-gamey.

I feel it's a little boring. I always liked the FF games that had more expansive spell/skill lists, like Tactics.

>I like the way 5e handles it where you can choose how much of your resources you want to expend on a single casting of a spell. It has much the same effect without feeling too video-gamey.

How and why people find things 'videogamey', and how it became a pejorative perplexes me to no end.

>How do you feel about this sort of design?

If you're designing a JRPG that panders to the most retarded of masses, then it's fine.

There's no need to have tiers of offensive magic when you can just make the effect / damage scale with character level, wisdom or intelligence points. I would probably avoid using names like "Faerie Fire" to describe magic that could scale to immolate an entire village, though. Something like "Combustion" would be more fitting in that case.

>If you're designing a JRPG that panders to the most retarded of masses, then it's fine.

>D&D literally has the same progression just calls it burning hands->fireball->meteor shower

Because I defended D&D in every breath of my post, user. Strawman harder.

Something is "videogamey" if it exhibits characteristics more commonly associated with video RPGs rather than tabletop RPGs. This may be considered a bad thing because it may hurt immersion. After all, does it really make sense, setting-wise, for spells to neatly line up like that, ascending in power and cost with no categorical difference between the levels of that spell?

The incentive to using the higher tiers would be that you could deal more damage per round spent casting I assume.

That's a lot of spells possibly, have you listed all the options you've thought of or is it something you deal with on a caster by caster basis?

So D&D is a JRPG that panders to the most retarded of masses?

...

I'm okay with that, it just makes your point kinda have less of an impact.

>Something is "videogamey" if it exhibits characteristics more commonly associated with video RPGs rather than tabletop RPGs.

Yes. I know this. What I meant is that I'm baffled by the mechanics that evoke this in people.

> After all, does it really make sense, setting-wise, for spells to neatly line up like that, ascending in power and cost with no categorical difference between the levels of that spell?

Yes? You pour in more power/skill/etc. and you get a bigger version of the spell. It's consistent. If anything, improved versions of spells not existing and instead the advancement being like for some reason is weird and inconsistent.

This user again. Here's what I do with my campaigns:

First, I limit spells with redundant effects as much as possible. e.g. There are maybe two HP restorative spells - let's say "Mending Touch" and "Restoration." Mending Touch is your go-to spell for curing simple wounds, and the amount healed scales with your character's experience level. (rounded down in the case of classes who have weaker access to clerical spells, such as paladins) Restoration does one of two things, depending on the situation: 1.) Totally restores all lost HP to a target, or 2.) Regenerates lost limbs or other types of deformities.

Secondly, I used a more ubiquitous spells-per-day pool rather than a bunch of spells-per-level values. For all intents and purposes, this is similar to an MP system. The difference is that all spells expend only ONE charge, or 1 MP. The number of spells a character can use per day is equal to their experience level. (and again, rounded down for characters who have weaker spell access, such as rangers or paladins) Some spells may have an additional cost associated with them, such as inducing fatigue in the caster. This largely depends on how powerful the spell effect is on its own, regardless of whether or not it has a scaling effect. I apply these additional costs to spells like Restoration or Resurrection.

All in all, the number of total spells available to characters is much fewer than what you'd see in a system like D&D. None of these spells get split up into levels / tiers. If you feel that certain spells are simply too powerful to be handed out to initial-level characters, then you can assign some other prerequisite to them, such as character level or wisdom / intelligence score. You could also restrict certain classes from accessing specific spells. (e.g. paladins would probably never learn how to resurrect)

Possibly good if there are more interesting changes at higher spell levels, or higher spell levels clearly have utilities. The example listed makes it clear that basic Freeze is the most efficient spell to use in all cases, so it's not great.

>So D&D is a JRPG that panders to the most retarded of masses?

>tieflings
>dragonborn
>unrestricted multi-classing

D&D is cutting it pretty close, yeah. Older editions weren't so bad, except for the highly excrescent spell tiers. But the original D&D didn't get nearly as carried away as 1E and everything that followed.

I vastly prefer fire that gets more fire the more mana you put into it.

I kind of like it for a more simple type of system. If it's just going to be a generic hack & slash thing then having spells essentially be archers with some extra utility is fine.

For more complex games, it's usually better to have spells with more variety in terms of side effects or area. A basic ice spell throwing ice daggers is going to be a lot different than a high level blizzard in terms of what it can do.

I do also like it when any given element has enough spells to specialize in it though. It's annoying to try and make a pyromancer and not have enough fire spells to work with.

Sometimes it makes sense. But exclusively it's not hugely interesting. For some games I think it should do both; some skills just straight improve upon something very simple that's useful in many ways, while other skills actively change, adding onto the previous skill in expanded effects or even new activated abilities or passive effects.

Symbaroum has some like this. Some abilities are passive but gain active abilities with successive skill upgrades (and vice versa), while some are just straight upgrades like skills that improve attributes. I'm only using it as an example because I recently read through the Core book because I backed the kickstarter.

Still, ideally the right skill improvement philosophy should be used for the right skill in a way that makes sense and works towards the goal of the game system.

Those were just examples off the top of my head. I have notes around here somewhere but I haven't run in months so I'd have to dig for them.

Generally I'll limit a single character to advancement in two or three of schools/elements (Light, Fire, that sort of thing). You can pick up as many tier one spells in any number of schools as you like, but past that requires a degree of specialization. This is mostly to cut back on paperwork and prevent anybody having too big a personal toolbox.
Then I establish the broad strokes of what qualifies as an "effect" for each school. My group was pretty good about not nitpicking so I didn't go into a lot of exhaustive detail. For the spells themselves, I define the first and fourth tiers most strongly, since they're the building blocks and penultimate exemplar of a given school, respectively, so they set the scope and expectations for what that school does. The middle tiers I fluff out in broad strokes and mechanically define a few of them (typically the ones most useful in combat, for balance purposes), but the rest is a bit on the fly when somebody decides to cast a particular combination.

Freeform magic requires more specialized magic to prevent this kind of tom foolery. No mages that can shoot lasers here, read your mind there, and teleport or turn gravity upside down everywhere.

May want to look at Spheres of Power. It's a 3.PF supplement, but it feels familiar to what you are trying to do to me.

>Older editions weren't so bad, except for the highly excrescent spell tiers. But the original D&D didn't get nearly as carried away as 1E and everything that followed.

Original FF was pretty much D&D.

If annything, D&D has gotten less FF, as your typical FF settig is far more human-centric and generally features fewer playable races than any give D&D setting.

It's other western fantasy settings like Warhammer and Warcraft, that have played a much larger part in being influenced by D&D and influencing it.