Theurgy

I've been experimenting with alternative casting systems in one of my campaigns, and I wanted to try something completely different from Vancian magic or mana pools. I'm curious about Veeky Forums's thoughts on how to balance this.

- Mortals cannot use magic directly.
- Characters don't have the choice of magical classes such as wizards or clerics.
- Any character wishing to utilize magic must set out on a quest to make contact with some sort of djinni or other supernatural entity.
- In exchange for some act of self-mortification, the entity will permit the character to call upon them to weave magical effects. (in other words, magic by proxy)
- The character proceeds to pay some initial cost, such as a permanent loss in ability scores.
- Voila! The character can now "use" magic.
- There's no limit on the number of spells per day the character can call upon.
- There is a limit on which spell effects can be called upon, based on the character's level. This relates to the trust / relationship between the character and the entity they've made a pact with.
- Every time the character calls upon a spell, there's a chance it will backfire. Each spell is placed in a tier, with each tier having its own probability for backfire. As the character's level rises, lower spell tiers become much less likely to backfire, if at all.

I think character alignment would play a role in which entities they can make pacts with, and what nature of spells they would be able to utilize. For example, characters who go out of their way to benefit the greater good probably can't make pacts with evil-aligned entities and become weavers of fire and brimstone. They'd likely be able to make contact with good beings only and be granted something akin to clerical spells.

I think you might be slightly better off tweaking that explanation to be a bit more like how Planeswalkers in Magic The Gathering get their mana/summons.

I think the general progression scheme of backfire-tiers is a good one, but tying the magic to sentient beings opens up the door for players to screw themselves out of a mechanical ability due to roleplaying. Aka: if you make the genie mad, you lose your magic because he doesn't like you enough to help you anymore

If you go with the planeswalker route, seeking out places or artifacts of great power or purity of mana gives you the opportunity to forge a bond with it and call on its power, even over great distance.

The advantage here is that while you still have the option to deal with demons and djinn for power, most of the time you are performing the same interaction/function with something that the players are less beholden to.

This also creates tiers of theurgy. Magical founds of power (aka, 'Thundertip Mountain' or 'the Sacred Glade of Istar') provide access to supernatural power if you can find them and make a connection with them, which requires some kind of investment. The more exotic and hard to reach the place, the more powerful the magic.

On top of that, you get communing with sentient forces like demons, that in return for greater power require an investment as well as a restriction. This could be a one time favor (bring me the eyes of the Questing Beast) or a permanent taboo ("If you wish to keep my favor, you will never again eat the flesh of creatures of the sea").

That should give you enough design space to balance spells of different power levels without just stacking penalties on the initial investment.

Underrated thread

Yeah, I know how this is gonna sound, but you should most definitely check out GURPS Thaumatology. It will help you to refine this concept.
Because it's pretty great one

This is a very nice concept

Dude, I don't know you, but thank you for recommending a specific book along with that.

Each bond with a supernatural entity should impose a derangement on the caster, with deeper bonds creating more and more obvious warping. Similar to the shadowrun mentor spirit tics rather than psyker mutations. For example, making a pact with a fire djiin bestows an aversion to water. At deeper bonding levels the derangement becomes so entrenched that the character mis avoid all contact with water except absolutely necessary to drink. Rain would cause the pc to seek any shelter to the point of paranoia, either becoming so frazzled he's unable to throw fireballs or starts slinging them anywhere, burning himself in an attempt to evaporate the rain drops touching him

Remind me of an anime series call Magi.

In the series a character can complete a "dungeon" (may be a literal dungeon or simply a test of some kind though generally hard regardless) to see a Djinn who may or may not even give the character his power/ability depending on the character personalty. The power generally go into a metal item or treasure to be used at anytime. The power is pretty much within the item itself but more or less only the person who earned the power can actually use it due to how much stamina it takes. The dungeon is more of a test to see if you could even use such power in the first place more than just an empty requirement. Though if the wielder of the power choose to do so they can give someone else a lesser power (still a huge fucking drain to even above average people) assuming the person have something to contain the power in. Of course being an anime there are transformations and such as well.

I don't think watching it will help with the mechanics of what you are looking for but if you need a premade setting it may be worth watching. Pretty entertaining regardless.

Some ideas I had thought up for a setting is magic involves binding "spirits" to your own mind, these spirits are in general not sapient and largely created by the wizard. However these spirits will alter your personality and having too many spirits active at once might make you a little bit crazy, and a miscreated spirit might make you more crazy

Requiring the character to go out of their way to visit exotic locations seems like it would just detract from whatever the focal point of the adventure is at that time. What if the rest of the party has other plans?

It might make more sense if the genie required the respective character to follow a certain ethos and act as a kind of emissary to whatever domain the genie represents. As the character performs certain deeds or misdeeds, their karma level changes. If they accumulate a lot of karma, maybe they gain access to more potent spells. If they slip up, maybe they lose certain spells, but don't necessarily lose the ability to channel the genie at all. If they make a monumental screw up, then yeah...

you mean how magic actually worked before it became scifi laser spam powered by magic electricity?

cool bean, it doesn't actually need to involve self-sacrifice or anything, it can just be some sort of gift or ancient promise that the spirit made and is now bound to keeping

you can have the spirit grant special powers to the caster that work more reliably but have some sort of cost, like having to eat burning coal or consume some other limited resource in order to use to get the benefits of vancian at higher levels

Visiting the entities could be the macguffin that the characters need to complete their quets

Pretty close to an idea I've had for a magic system for a while, very low powered and shamanic rather than wizardry. Think ‘Stand Still, Stay Silent’ with comfy mages and rare trolls to fight or escape instead of your classic D&D fireballs and innervate wizards. Instead of a straight sacrifices however you perform rituals at the behest of a spirit.
Spirits exist everywhere, from grand river spirits to simple sprites that go unnoticed by many. Many of which can be tempted, tricked or bargained with by a mage to gain favors. Most commonly with rituals performed for a future act of magic.
A cruel or powerful spirit might demand a sacrifice of the self or another, but they are rarely communed with, though few would doubt their ability. Most common rituals of significance are ones such as performing seemingly meaningless tasks that nevertheless require effort. Gathering a white stone from the base of a hill before dawn, taking it up to the spring at its peak and throwing it in with the first days of daybreak on three consecutive days for instance would be a ritual performed for the water spirit to perform an act of magic later.
Favors are usually symbolised by some token, in the above case the water spirit might present one of the white stones back as a symbol of the favor owed. You want safe passage on the trip to the next town? Your mage may throw a feather token to the wind to call in a favor so a wind spirit will give them favor as they travel.

Thus 'more powerful’ mages are ones with more favors owed to them and may well wear their tokens as a symbol to others. So, they can look like magpies who have hoarded all kinds of weird junk. But to other mages who might see 'foresight’, 'pass unseen’, 'invoke fear’ and 'sight in darkness’, that man who's wearing old leaves like medals will appear as a respectable mage.
Mages naturally gain power as they learn more rituals associated with spirits in the area and perform them. A travelling mage will only be able to call on very minor spirits they actually bump into rather than ones they have sensed over time. Though even minor spirits can have some power, house spirits have some awareness of what occurred in their walls and limited power. A cunning mage could unlock a door by performing a minor ritual to a minor spirit of a house for instance, which could be anything from cleaning somewhere that hasn't been cleaned in ages or reorganizing a bookshelf.
Of course by then you could have probably just broken in. Mundane methods are often more useful, and have more obvious results. The safe passage charm might have done something, or maybe it would have been safe anyway? Pass unseen? You have to be sneaking anyway so who's to say it really helped?
Magic is subtle, and a little bizarre to obtain, but when needed it can can be an extremely useful tool.

I had a similar idea for my setting. Namely that to gain magic, you would either make a pact with one large and powerful entity (closer to a cleric), or lots and lots of small entities (closer to a wizard)

While the single pact one would have fractions of power with stronger but more specialized effects, those with many would basically get smaller spells but with more versatility.

The only balance issue I have with this system is that there's no point-based casting, so what's stopping a character from spamming healing spells after every encounter? I was thinking some domains of magic could require the caster to sacrifice HP. For instance, instead of outright healing another character, they can merely confer that character's wounds to themselves.

Or simply make healing spells with specific uses, like disinfecting a wound, closing cuts and such. That way, characters can be saved from the brink of death, but still require rest to fully recuperate.

That could work to a degree, but how about scenarios where the entire party is poisoned? You could easily reverse the effects in everybody at once, which makes the whole notion of getting poisoned a lot less intimidating.

So I would think some kind of opposite reaction would have to be involved with healing spells, or certain healing spells.

I did this in a homebrew. I had a duelist(used a saber mainly), and he contracted with Pan. Bouts of madness were a side effect, especially in moments of excitement. He was able to draw his opponents into madness and hysteria. He was buffed by his own insanity, while others were debuffed, among other things. His madness buffs/debuffs were his combat bread and butter, though.

He did "suffer" some physical changes, Multiple limbal rings, pupils becoming rectangular, ear grew to a slight point. Other beings of power(just using a very general term here) immediately recognized what he was, some blatantly refused to interact with him. Worshiping Pan was easy, though. Hedonistic acts deepened the bond, as did perversions(not necessarily sexual) and the like. But once again, you became compulsive and deranged as a result. Failed a willpower roll and killed a Guard Captain because he disrespected me without even wanting to. My character did enjoy it, though.

Basically, make contracting beings/objects of power have actual consequences and be more than additional skills for the player. Like I said, my character was so impulsive that I has to make willpower rolls rather often.

Could make it so that if a character uses to much of a certain spell to quickly, their patron could inform them that they're running low on that type or energy, or that they're in violation of some contract clause and force them to do a task for them to make up for it.

Can still let you cast a bunch of heals in an emergency, but using them for every scrape or bruise will cost you.

This.

The idea plus stuff from Thaumatology about pacts, deals and magic-by-proxy

Bump for more of the good stuff

>Thaumatology
It should be obligatory for every single player even considering playing as magic user to read this and stop thinking in terms of fireballs per slot.