So I want to make a spell system where the players can cast any spell they want, as long as they can describe it, but if it deals any damage or de/buffs or such, it is balanced, scalable with experience, and/or has a lower chance of effect the more mechanically strong your spell is.
Has anyone had any experience with any free-form spell systems?
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Yes, back during the days Scholomance, when we tried to make a diceless game about schoolkids in a grimdark Hogwarts.
We tried to make a build-a-spell system for that but it ended up being massively clunky, with too many variables and piles of balance issues.
Ars Magica, check it out. The concept of the system is great, the mechanics of it are not so great. Also the whole troupe idea is pretty neat as well, take a look see for yourself.
bumping to see if anyone will post some homebrew magic systems like this
>freeform
Red alert. Establish rules.
When you say "freeform" what you mean is not "just let everyone do as they please," but instead "basic rules that can be used to create extremely complex and diverse spells".
Think of basic magic like chemistry. You start out with hydrogen - one proton and one electron - and with the same set of rules you get the rest of the periodic table and all kind of compounds and chemicals and inventions.
Establish basic rules and very basic ways of spellcrafting, then let people be creative with said rules.
Yes, that's spot on what i mean, I just didn't know the word for it so I called it "near-freeform" as a patchwork nomenclature.
However, I don't want it to be like chemistry, because I hate the whole "combine 2 blue and 1 red to produce steam" etc. But yes, definitely mechanical rules on how it can be used against NPCs and in encounters to balance things.
Chemistry was just an example.
Another example would be the "computer logic-esque" system of runes that Veeky Forums sometimes posts.
What you want to do is establish a system of connections between various things. It doesn't matter what those connections are, or what those atomic things are, but it matters that they exist.
Read up on early writings of alchemy and hermetic magic. Don't steal the systems, just try to be inspired by them.
My own magic system is based on the basic principle that the world is made of ideas and not matter. So things like justice and decay are quantifiable and interact in various ways.
GURPS Thaumatology has a chapter dedicated to syntactic magic, which matches what you want pretty well. Since the book is all about customizing and tweaking it probably won't be too hard to adapt it to your system of choice.
This isn't half-bad maybe. Just make a cost/damage modifier for each word and then allow some set number of combinations based on level perhaps
1) Find a copy of Mongoose Games' "Chaos Magic: Wild Sorcery"
2) Fix it
3) Bring it back here and share it with everyone else because we desperately need it.
I think the most successful and fun settings I've put together or seen have all dealt with a minimum of differences with our own world's physics, yet have had a wealth of possibilities and considerations you can extrapolate from the simple differences.
As an example, think of the Death series of Discworld, as well as Small Gods and the like. The simple allowance that belief is a force that actually creates the anthropomorphic personifications which populate the disc's "pantheon," Pratchett explores the implications of that metaphysical system. A lot of crazy stuff happens just because the most common human beliefs become true.
Or how about Sympathy from Kingkiller Chronicles! There's the Alar, and there's the sympathetic link between two things. There's a little more to it than that, but at the base is a simple fantastical allowance which opens up a wealth of possibilities to be explored.
I guess then a set of simple, basic rules with emergent uses is what you want. Off the top of my head, I can imagine a dice pool, physical stresses to the mind and body which limit their use, and feats of some kind to allow players to specialize. Iunno, just spitballing.
This also looks really cool, but if the mechanics are broken that is a warning sign. I like the idea of just having generic DC stacking of whatever you intend to do. Easier to balane damage and effects this way.
The discworld magic is actually very cool, and if I had the skill to do so, I would definitely want to do a campaign in that setting based around the magic academy in ankh morpork. And I mean that guy who rules it, lord vetinari, holy shit what a cool NPC that would be. The problem is of course that most mages don't really cast spells there, so I feel being a mage would sort of be... Well, not what my players would expect, maybe too far from it.
Based on my past attempts, it's best to play a Discworld game with players who know at least a little about the setting, if only to start with the right expectations. And yeah, wizards are around to basically make sure magic isn't used, so it doesn't work too well for that.
What aspect of the discworld did you focus on? I've always wanted to RP this snarky Death character.
I actually distanced the story from any of the usual characters, just so it doesn't have that "oh look at that more main characters" feeling. It was set in Anhk-Morpork, though, and the story was about this magic dwarven axe that was causing immense magical disturbances across the city and the players got caught up in a farce of sorts. Although it didn't go beyond two sessions so not much happened.
Adding onto this: there's also Ritual Path Magic, which has its own supplement. It's ver WoD: Mage in tone but it's easy enough to make setting-neutral and the mechanics itself are pretty damn flexible. If you sped up the gathering time for energy and did away with the Lesser/Greater Effects divide it could work for a standard or even high fantasy game.
I ran a successful Scholomance game using Ghosts of Albion.
spheres from mage ascension
...Magical burst?
Check out established games with freeform magic systems.
>Ghosts of Albion/ Buffy
>Desolation
>Mage
>Barbarians of Lemuria
>Hawkmoon
>Elric: Unknown East
>So I want to make a spell system where the players can cast any spell they want, as long as they can describe it, but if it deals any damage or de/buffs or such, it is balanced, scalable with experience, and/or has a lower chance of effect the more mechanically strong your spell is.
What kind of dice system were you looking at using? Or what is your preferred system?
I can't give a full system, but I can share the basis for the magic system in my homebrew. It follows the guidelines like in .
You cast a spell using Magic Points (MP) which recharge to full after every round.
You decide what "shape" the spell takes (projectile, wall, burst, etc)
Each effect you use in your spell costs a flat amount of MP.
As long as you have MP, you can add more effects.
In addition, you can augment spells (metamagic) by adding to a MP multiplier.
Again, you can augment as much as you want if you have the MP.
For example: If you want to cast a Fireball, you choose the projectile shape (1MP), and add fire damage (1MP) for 2MP total. You can then add an explosion at the end (1MP effect). Now you might want to augment it with additional range (x1MP) and blast size (x1MP). That means its 3x2MP, or 6MP to cast.
With that base, all I need to do is create individual effects and augments and appropriately price them in terms of MP. Depending on how you want a game to run, it might be worth restricting players to only casting spells in their spellbook. That gives players the opportunity to create their spells during downtime (in game or out) so that they have all the math done during gametime.
The advantage to a system like this, and how it fits in with my homebrew system, is the amount of "controlled freedom" players have with their character. MP is generated by the Magic stat, and you can cast any kind of spell as long as you have the MP to cast it. If all you need are some cheap self-buffs, then they'll cost little, making them cheap for fighters who might not want to dabble in much magic.It allows characters who want to invest in Magic create more complicated and particular spells, reflecting the versatility magic can offer. It also encourages experimentation and fluffing your own creations to create the precise experience you want. The mechanical effects are already known, but you still get to take some aesthetic ownership.