Magic Systems

Thank you.

>In a perfect world, how should a magic system work in a game?

1. Magic Is Specialized But Not As Much As You don't just have N levels of mage and get to cherry-pick the best spells at each level, you have to learn spells as prerequisites for other spells. A typical mage will only invest heavily into one or two spell trees and dabble in a couple more.

2. Magic Does Not Simply Point And Shoot
If you want to do that, you play an archer. Anything above cantrips takes a minimum of two standard actions to cast, and it's impossible to conceal the fact that you're casting a spell, so there's a real risk of being interrupted. But if you pull it off, there's guaranteed to be *some* effect and it's usually worth the wait.

3. Magic Works With What You Have
The effectiveness of a spell at solving a problem greatly increases when it's backed up by relevant skills (not necessarily the mage's own skills) and/or resources. You can be the greatest mage who ever lived, but if you use magic to conjure a house out of thin air, it's going to look like shit and have tons of defects. If you already have all the materials and a construction crew, your spell allows them to do much better work and faster than they normally could.

Not sure if this is related, but did some worldbuilding for a magic system I created pastebin.com/Zi60XNNF. Not sure how exactly I would implement it in a game system though.

On the note of the OP though, my favorite magic system is the one used in GURPS. In my perfect world, magic would be powerful but could only be used in short bursts and wold cause accumulating damage to the caster over repeated usage. Higher level magic would be more and more dangerous to cast so mages would have to balance between the safer but weaker low-tier magic spells or the stronger but more dangerous high-tier spells.

As a concept - Ars Magica and Unknown Armies. I usually end up just using a modified version of BRP or Shadowrun though. World of Darkness is fine for what it is except for Mage which is just plain bad.

My favorite Kind of magic does not really work in RPG's since i prefer it to be very free form and creative with an emphasis on symbolism , not just "hurr durr, i say the magic words and throw a fireball."

I also prefer magic that can be done with "mundane" materials, for instance one might go about fighting a demon of rot with a super soaker full of bleach and bleach would be far more effective than any gun because it is a powerful symbol or purity and cleanliness,

So basically just Unknown Armies?

Iv never heard of unknown armies, will look into it.

I hate people who preface things they don't like with "hurr durr" more than anything. If I was told the earth only had room for one other person on it and the options were you and Hitler I would vote you off the planet in an instant. That shit's childish.

I've been toying with the idea of magic which alters the caster in some way.

Basically the core system would be something along the lines of spells which are balanced against effect, time to cast (a biggy), and just general difficulty in casting. Most spells would be non-combative instead being used as non-standard utility, though that isn't a hard rule.

Mages would have a fairly small spell pool, selected from their school of specialty.

But each spell would have some extra minor effect you'd get upon learning the spell. Each would have either some minor benefit or a decent benefit with some downside. These effects would be passive.

So say a mage takes a detect spell, they might always passively see the arcane energies around them (which they use when casting the spell to do something specific over a wider range), but they sacrifice a bit of their material vision to do so (or all the magic and shit constantly in their face is distracting).

Maybe a spell of enviromental protection that allows the mage to breath and move underwater as if they were a merfolk might also just result in a bit of webbing on their hands and feet, and gills. The gills themselves need to stay moist (increased water consumption if we're being anal about it) and aren't efficient enough to supply a human with anything more than a few rounds of breath, and the webbing aids in swimming, but ewww.

>Hurr durr I hate people who say hurr durr

I am discarding point 1 entirely, but stealing the rest. Good shit, user.

this is for 5e and it's based on K6BD, pic unrelated

At the beginning of the universe, there was only DERU-ADVESH. That was not its full name, for its full name contained all other things within it. This was a being that encompassed all, and was everything and everyone, even from you in the now, to the soaring bird at the farthest snow-capped peak.
Seeing that it was all alone in its infinity, DERU-ADVESH split itself, and from it split two beings- DERU, of the white fire, and ADVESH, of the black fire.
DERU was of cold, logic, order, rigidness, and most importantly, TRUTH.
ADVESH was of burning passion, life, emotion, and most importantly, BEAUTY.

They produced divine children, who forged the entire universe, and all its realms. And each had a name which described a feature of DERU-ADVESH, and each of these divine children assigned names to different aspects of magic, as it is magic that holds up the universe. To discover a spell, one must first discover its name, assigned forty times forty generations ago, when the worlds were young. Each name described a minuscule part of all of magic, and it is whispered that there is a name for a master spell that governs reality- DERU-ADVESH's true, full name.

These children begat more children, shaping them from clay mixed with blood and water. For it is said that within every being, there is a spark of the divine. And this is why each of us has a name as well. And some preferred their children to have strange features and statures, and thus were the races born of elves, orcs and dwarves, halflings, gnomes and humans, etc.
And as new beings and animals and plants proliferated across the whole world, each of them was assigned a name. So it was to be, until the end of time.

My players are probably bad enough dudes to discover the full name, but my question to you guys is, how do I give it to them as a puzzle to figure out? How do I present all the clues necessary to reconstruct the Full Name?

i came up with a magic system based off of The Wheel of Time years ago. as a mage gained experience, they gained the ability to gain "threads" that they can use per day. They basically had a table with different "weaves" and each had a cost of "threads" of one of the 5 basic types in the books. you could make a weave more powerful by essentially doubling the number of threads if you chose. further, there were the angreal and sangreal items that allowed you to multiply the number of threads you could use per day into the hundereds of times for the largest sangreal. then the terangreal could do many different things. some as simple as having premade weaves built into them that only needed a single thread of, say, spirit to use. I haven't used this system in a few years, but the group i was with loved it.
to be honest, this system works best in large scale battles. most weaves were powerful enough to one-hit most enemies.

5e works fine

Homebrewed
Spells are generic like "Spell(Fire)"
You character has a daily amount of magic points based on their physical stats
Spell(Fire) with a single point might create fire at your fingertips or maybe a big spark
Two points might create a something similar to the combination of a lighter and deodorant. Maybe also heat metal to the point it creates serious burns
Three pointscan make a short ranged flamethrower that can hold the stream of fire for quite a while
Four points might allow you to manipulate the flames you create in case you need to impress the natives by "conjuring" a fire dragon
As long as the effect you deescribe stays within each category and power level, it goes. Within reason. So no "I use 2 points to create a massive fireball" nor "I use a single point to create fire in his throat and kill him"
And so on until you reach a max of ten magic points allocated. Max number of points you can spend in each Magic(Element) depend on your character level.
Non elemental things like healing or illusion also work by the same principle but are more rigid in what they do with each point.

>How should magic work in a game?
Let's break it down, by looking at how magic can aid a game and then what sort of system best fits that.
>Part I: In Service to the GM
To the GM, magic (aside from it's combat applications) largely serves as a means to create unexpected circumstances, present higher levels of power, and garner understanding of the setting.
>Unexpected circumstances
This can be elements of mystery and wonder in the story or simply a way to create plot devices that do not adhere to the laws of reality. To create mystery, magic must not be entirely understood. However, any good mystery has an answer; even if your players are not meant to ever discover how magic works, it must have an absolute internal consistency (this is important for wonder too) so that players react to something they've never seen with "Hmm, that's weird" instead of "Hey, that's bullshit!" >Wonder
A related but different thing: it is the period when you know something seemingly inexplicable has happened, and you don't yet know if it is understandable or miraculous. To achieve this, magic must again be to a degree unknown, but also in it's internal logic be very encompassing to allow for strange things. Alternatively, one can have a well-understood magic system, and have a wondrous event occur that would be impossible even with magic.
>Plot Devices
If magic is to be used as a plot device (or to create them), it should be either rare, stratified (in that there are escalating power levels), or unstoppable (the demon god summoning cannot be stopped by means of counterspell). Now, this is very vague as plot devices can be made out of any system, but certain types of magic can be conducive to it. Rarity and unstoppability serve the same purpose- if your players know that a magic weapon of that power must be liked to exactly 5 crystals attached to its base or that placing a ring of dispel magic on the end of it will destroy it, the item no longer caries weight.

>Part II: In Service of the Players
To players, magic can really only serve two purposes (beyond battle mechanics, which can be abstracted enough to be setting independent in almost all cases): to build character, and to increase agency.
>Building character
This is a bit tricky, because no matter how you make your magic you are going to be cutting players off from certain types of characters. If magic is something one is born with, the studious mage archetype no longer makes much sense. If it is learned, the wise shaman family is no longer humble spirit guides for their village but conmen monopolizing their position by restricting information. Each way has its strengths, but one thing is very important- each mage must be differentiated. If magic cannot be different, it obviously cannot be used to build character (or, it can, but only by being the sole mage in the party).
>Increasing Agency
If magic can be used for anything other that killing things, it increases player agency. Aside from horror campaigns, increased agency (different from increased power) is almost universally good. By giving a player more tools with which he/she may interact with the world, you enhance their ability to experience it and allow yourself room to present them with more difficult challenges. A magic system allowing for this would have options for utility, but not to the degree of abusability.

>Part III: My Solution
First of all, if the name "Melantre" means anything to you, you are one of my players and should stop reading. Anyway, To fit all these criteria I created a system with 4 types of magic: Low Magic, High Magic, Deep Magic, and Phosenklesis. Low Magic is, essentially, the normal wizard spell lists etc in Pathfinder (which I use because I don't like to steal games and also don't like to pay for them). This allows for a mechanically consistent system with utility spells and a great degree of characterization. High Magic is similar to a system I've heard was made somewhere on Veeky Forums where you have runes that interact similarly to computer code. High Magic is very rare, very powerful, and very poorly understood, but has the potential to be understood. Deep Magic is the force that runs the universe, and is the cause behind why one can't, for example, just conjure up a bunch of gold to instantly become rich, but can conjure up a bunch of dirt or something. Phosenklesis, alongside Deep Magic, is the prime source of wonder. PK is essentially the exploitation of "glitches" in Deep Magic that allow for things utterly inconsistent with all other things to occur. All of these combined (I think) have served me pretty well in terms of creating an engaging setting. Now it should be said that this is imperfect- High Magic is impossible to balance while still keeping to point of it intact, Deep Magic literally cannot be systemized, etc. but with the goals I laid out it suffices.

>Low magic setting
Specifically defined spells that have specifically designed effects. See Burning Wheel or d&d.

>High magic setting
Resource management based system revolving around vague keywords. Use GM rulings with a certain level of resources to decide what you can and can't do. See Godbound or Legends of the Wulin.

I really need to try Burning Wheel sometime. The setting and character gen and really everything seems so fucking cool.

Without the elemental aspect I think this would be perfect; it is elegant, balanced, and encourages creativity. And even then the element thing is just personal preference.

D&Ds. All of them. Pact, truenaming, vancian, psionics, incarnum, Words of Power, akashic, runic, sutra, and few others i'm forgetting or can't find right now.

How would you do away with the elemental component?
Not mad, just curious about possible alternatives

how would you balance damage? Would all of them do the same per point cost? Or would it vary? What about aoes?

wheel of time is my favorite in fiction. I like 3.5 psionics system best out of table top mechanics.

I like to have "anyone can learn magic, but without a broad education in the basics and theory the experience cost is much higher, endurance for casting has a hard cap, and it they can only learn spells related to affecting what they already know." Whereas a dedicated caster would be able to apply magic for various basic effects, and control larger amounts for bigger or more complex effect. Sort of "You have to know both how magic works as well as what you're changing works, so you can cause the desired result."

It also let's people try to cast above their skill/understanding with increased amounts of risk for fucking it up.

Finally I like to have personal capacity be low, so people have to use magic batteries. The good is they can buy more batteries for longer or more difficult fights (at the expense of carrying gear, also money) if they want, or less and rely on other skills, or loot batteries from enemies. But no short rests to replenish spells.

Second is Shadowrun, third is Dark Heresy.

All have the same "potential" per point. The final effect varies depending on the circumstances
As an example, if you have water at room temperature and you apply a single point of both Spell(Cold) and Spell(Fire) at the same time, the effect that wins (Whether the water boils or freezes) depends solely on the enviroment and other outside factors
You are casting both in the north pole? The water freezes
You are casting both inside a volcano? The water explodes
You are casting both on a temperate area? The waters warms slighly

AOEs that aren't pitiful start being a thing from 4 point onwards. Lower than that? You have to get creative
>I spill the whale oil on the floor under the guards' feet and the spend 1 point to set it on fire
>I spend three points to make the water in the bathhouse cold enough to kill the guards with hypothermia
That kind of stuff
There is no "Fireball" or "Wall of fire" spell, but you can spend 3 or 5 points to emulate them
Truth to be told, it is a work in progress and a very rules-light system meant for quick games. As such, it requires heavy moderation from the GM.
I might do a table of examples later so it becomes more obvious how much power you are wieldieng with each point you spend.
There aren't even that many "elements" to bloat the game anyway just: Fire, Water, Lightning, Cold, Earth, Illusion, Enhancing, Harming, Summoning and Rituals (Those don't follow the same rules)

Theoretical but unrealized, Mongoose Games' "Chaos Magic: Wild Sorcery."

Actually playable: no bullshit, but 5e. One unified casting mechanic that is slightly, but appreciably, different for each class coupled with a mechanic that isn't quite spell points but isn't quite Vancian either. Looks a bit clunky at first but actually plays really smoothly.

5e meets Pathfinder's Elementalist? Sounds like a lot of fun, actually.

>hurr durr recursion

>hurr durr help I can't escape hurr durr

Would you mind posting your spell lists and homebrew more thoroughly user. Wouldn't mind using this myself with a bit more info.

I am the only living person who likes the whfrp 2e magic system.
Chance of failure, Chance of Tzeentch curse and moderate effects. Lots of utility spells.
Wizards don't throw around magic like a machine gun but if you have to you can't run out of ammo. The chance of getting butt fucked by tzeentch makes you think before you cast. No matter how good you are your spell can always fail.
It feels like the dark and gritty fantasy it's supposed to be

I dislike magic systems like this.

It seems like an interesting concept, to balance power with risk, but in the end it actually comes up feeling weak and more like a way to just punish caster players without anything interesting in return.

The truth is that fighters, thieves and so forth get to use their abilities as much as they want, but Wizards get punished for using them? Unless the fighter has a chance to mutate a Khorne crab arm if he rolls something weird on his attack rolls it's not really a equal situation.

Let the Wizard be a wizard. If you are so concerned with balance, find another method.

youtube.com/watch?v=BAkqJT_sMKQ

best magic system ever

I don't like it because of balancing but because it fits the setting.
Magic in the old world is a dangerous and risky thing, you only use it if you have to and don't fiddle around with it without a plan.
The magic system is not really balanced at all.
The different winds of magic are better at different things, some can't really fight well at all, others have spells with the same effect as a different school but they are harder to cast.
If you want to cast something big and really useful you'll have to have at least a bit of luck.

I like this "unbalanced mess" because it fits the setting, in which magic is perilous and scary and it feels just like that. It's exciting if you roll 4 dice and hope to destroy your enemies without exploding

I see how people may like it but I'm not really a fan of diceless systems

>High Magic is similar to a system I've heard was made somewhere on Veeky Forums where you have runes that interact similarly to computer code.

You talking about the Runed Age?

>Ritual path magic with two modifications.
>you need to actually learn a spell or have a grimoire for it to cast it - no easy improv magic.
>the fast mana channeling portion of adept advantage is baked into magery 1.
Similar to shadowrun magic but slightly better, and you can create custom spells.

Would require some tweaking to make it work in a leveled system like d&d.

Borrowed a copy from a friend. I taught myself 3rd edition when I was 13, so I could probably make myself learn burning wheel, but I found the book itself to be just horrendous and was disappointed given how cool many of its ideas are.

>>you need to actually learn a spell or have a grimoire for it to cast it - no easy improv magic.

Congratulations! You missed the whole fucking point.

I saw the point, didn't care for it as is, and realized with a couple of tweaks it would easily be what I'd see as the ideal magic system.

>research your own spells. (invention rules), or learn them from a book/scroll/grimoire.
>have to channel mana to cast.
>flexible system let's you have whatever spells you might want in your campaign.
>spellcasting roll, and spells strain the caster.

Only thing that i could see adding to it is built in negative miscasting results, so for instance, if you just barely fail to summon and bind a demon, you might summon it uncontrolled. But that isn't something is always want to use, that would depend on the setting.

Id let people improv spells on the spot, but not as the default, and it would be much more difficult.

Tweaking a spell you know, on the fly (like meta magic) would be easier, and a much smaller penalty.

That's kind of the point of gurps, user. The pieces are there to build whatever you want to do. In my case i realized i could get there by making a few simple but not far reaching modifications to rpm.

user asked what our favorite magic system is, so i described mine.

Is it stock rpm/does it match the design goals of tpm? No/most of them. Sure its a change that plays out significantly, but it's fairly easy to implement, and results in a different but still interesting magic system.

*simple but far reaching
That's an editing error. Whoops.

Oh, and one more tweak.

Mana from human sacrifice would be cumulative, so you can totally sacrifice 100 virgins to power really strong spells.

This sounds incredibly fucking stupid and actually ENCOURAGES the most OP style of Wizard play, while also forcing EVERY caster to play a wizard even when igt isn't thematically appropriate. Play a different goddamn system.

I liked Alpha Omega.

You had six power sources. Arcane wielders could pull any of the 'big four', innate wielders had access to one of four, spiritual wielders had access to 2. Then you fed the chosen power source through one of intentions, of which there were sixteen, to produce a specific effect. Yo had ranks in source and intention, and it had a fairly robust 'on the fly' spell system along with suggestions so you could cook up a 'quick' wielding effect in about a minute, assuming it wasn't one you used regularly already.

>This sounds incredibly fucking stupid and actually ENCOURAGES the most OP style of Wizard play,

Look at this baby getting triggered by foreign ideas polluting his favorite shitshow of a system... which wasn't even named. But from the reaction, I think we can deduce it's 3.PF.

>In my house-ruled D&D 3.5 game
Are you retarded.

DCC

im honestly surprised at how many systems just don't use a resource pool like mana to cast magic because it makes it really easy to manage big spells/small spells using a resource pool without making casters broken

Alternate Magic System for Burning Wheel System

I populate the game world with recipes/spells in books or scrolls or whatever that resemble actual cookbook instructions (mix this with this, say this, draw this shape). The players test whether or not they work, or to what degree, experimenting to see if the effects change. There's no spell slots nor is there a huge section of the rulebook taking up 50% of the space dedicated to spell lists. Players just do magic by doing magic. And anyone can try it. Wizardly dudes just have an easier time and cast more powerful spells due to innate magic.

Cantrip+ritual has always seemed like the best system for me.
Cantrips for using magic flexibly and always being able to do wizard stuff while rituals are limited more by casting time and special materials than they are mana costs or spell slots.

I like a magic system that makes direct damage a viable playstyle. I greatly dislike Vancian magic and systems where magic requires material components or lengthy rituals. I want to be able to quickly and spontaneously throw lightning bolts around. I also like it when magic can be an innate thing instead of something you get from studying books and formulae and it's treated kind of like a science.

Needless to say, I'm a big fan of the D&D Sorcerer, even if it was still dragged down by remnants of Vancian casting in earlier editions.

>ENCOURAGES the most OP style of Wizard play
Which is? How does it do so?

Gurps: Ritual path magic
So well made it hurts

Das it mayne.

This and sorcery. Absolutely marvellous.

Choosing one specific school( see probably: divination) and doing nothing but that section of magic which can be op as fuck, especially if you do divination.

Not that any of this really matters, all that shit talk was over a system that's probably not actually in use and the guy was just wanking over his great home brew system that totally fixes pathfinder#643 instead of just going to a system that does magic better.

Your retarded

>The only thing people here ever seem to come up with ITT:

>Make magic take reaaaaalllly long to cast

>make it pointlessly dangerous to cast, yes we get it, 40k psykers are cool, but not every magic system needs to kill the caster for doing their job

>making casting incredibly complicated to the point where no one would want to bother with it, which is probably the point, but makes you wonder why they didn't just ban wizards

>Lots of posters going on about physical changes and other abnormalities for casters, not sure, probably fetishes

>The few that bring up other actual magic systems that work, such as Grups, or RIFTS

>That guy with his special homebrew that makes casting so different than raw for the system it makes you wonder why he bothers using it in the first place.

That everything?

Mechanically identical, flavor differs, shitty d6 homebrew and classic fantasy setting.

Barbarian can cast Haste/Bull's STR and other buffs on himself, but there's no arcane circles in the air or chanting, just enthusiastic yelling and muscle flexing. Same effect mechanically, different flavor.

Wizards slap spells through arcane circles and chanting, Clerics hold their cross really tight and utter a prayer, Rogues throw Fireball grenades or Flashbangs, Bards reroll dice and sing enemies to sleep and such shit, everyone uses Mana.

Sys is classless, so this helps a lot.

You are aware there's a K6BD tabletop rpg right?

The more logical and rational the magic system, the better it is. I don't care much for this wishy-washy free form bullshit.