/tghp/ General

How can Veeky Forums make the magic in Harry Potter better? From the inconsistencies in verbal vs. non-verbal spellcasting, dumb names, seemingly endless amounts of highly-specific spells, etc.

Anyone tried to run HP campaigns? What system did you use? How did you do magic?

Doubles as Harry Potter traditional games General.

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DnD 5e. It was basically made for HP bc of its versatility.

>Sorcerer rules, wands are fluff conduits
>metamagicks
>existing spells are good enough
>maybe expand spell slots and spells known a bit

Boom, done. Easy. Next question?

>Hey Veeky Forums how do I make a Harr-

GURPS.

>No but like I wanted magic that was true to the origin-

GURPS.

>But Harry Potter is a nuanced universe and I don't want to use a generic roleplaying system on somethin-

G
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P
S

You could try to adapt Shadowrun. It's got the spell list, and it's not Vancian magic so you got that going for you.

Is there a list of alternatives to Vancian magic? I don't like the "fire and forget", but "spells make you tired" is also pretty dumb.

Harry Potter series seems to have neither of those. It makes me ask -- do we even really need to cap spells in a purely-magic game?

Hear me out -- it'd be like giving a Fighter "attack slots" and "sword attacks known", and he could only know a handful, and only use, say, a slash attack like four times a day.

That seems dumb in a traditional campaign, right? Well if Harry Potter is no martial, all caster, then why not just have it be like a sword? No spell slots, just spells known.

Though with constant magickery, you'd have to figure out ways to make counterspelling effective, otherwise fights are over in a jiffy with horrible, horrible consequences...

...actually, that sounds awesome.

...

Because then you will get 1st year characters minmaxed to get the killing curse and casting it on everything that moves. If you give an ultimate weapon to solve all issues, the players will use it.

>literally an in-book reason that prevents people from spamming killing curse

You aren't very bright, are you?

If you're playing a harry potter campaign, you'd think the players would be wise enough not to spam one thing for the fun of it. It makes the game boring. You might as well play dnd

Maybe something like D&D psionics then? Spells can be used at-will, but boosted by using a daily resource ("You become tired").

This sort of comes closer to damaging Harry Potter's stability by asking "why the fuck do people not just use the best spells all the time"? I guess the idea that straight up damaging spells are likely to miss, and magic is used more often for utilities to avoid full on combat/wizard duels. But in a 1v1 duel it'd be "use stupefy, or avada kedavra if you're playing legacy and be done with it. Basically, a Harry Potter themed campaign would have to involve very literal actual fighting, just as the books did.

*very little actual fighting, oops

I think they're saying they doesn't like "becoming tired".

What reason was given, other than "it's banned don't do it"?

Players like that are certainly useful in general, sure. But a system that loose will surely spring other leaks.

I think murder by magic breaks the soul. No problem for a half snake lich who wants portions of his soul everywhere, but for the common man, it can be pretty terrifying. Is this sufficient to deter players from doing it? No because players aren't people. They are psychotic murder hobos

>What reason was given, other than "it's banned don't do it"?

While Rowling's world building is spotty at best, this is one of the things I buy wholeheartedly. Only a sociopath would be able to just pop in somewhere and start literally hating random people to death. The ability to casually shoot off Avada Kedavra at people you don't know is a clear indication of mental illness and the person capable of this should be removed from society. So yeah, I buy the killing curse being an unforgivable. Not because using it turns you into a monster, but because only monsters can use it willy-nilly.

I'd like to have a system that makes wand wood and cores have a bigger effect on an individual's casting. There's a lot of literature on it, but in the end it seems like everyone just does magic like everyone else unless they're waving the Elder Wand around.

I don't remember her saying that you have to truly hate someone to successfully use avada kedavra, but you seem to be implying she did. Did I forget?

It's cause only Psychotic murder hobos could make casual use of it. The same for the cruciatus curse. There's very little to hide behind with this one. If you can shoot off that spell at anyone you meet, there's something wrong and/or broken inside of you and no amount of extenuating circumstances can make this look good or right. You have to want the target dead with everything in you. Not 'kinda' want them dead or just very, very hurt, you have to hate them with your soul and want them dead with everything in you.

...

Step 1) Erase everything
Step 2) Write anything else.
Here. You made it better.

>From the inconsistencies in verbal vs. non-verbal spellcasting
Can you explain what you meant by this?

>dumb names, seemingly endless amounts of highly-specific spells
Those are things I like. I like spells like "oculus reparo."

How about this:
Spell success is the result of a combination of dice rolls, overall skill, and more specific skills.
Each spell requires a certain number to cast successfully, if you reach a number above what is required then your spell is extra effective.
Your level is your overall skill. A level six wizard would receive a flat bonus of six to any spell cast attempt.
Specific skills are flat bonuses given to certain kinds of spells. e.g. A character is particularly good at casting a petronus, so they have four levels in petronus casting and receive a bonus of four to any attempt to cast one.
Finally you role a dice, which represents concentration, the number you get is added to your total.
For low level wizards the dice role is essential, most spells won't succeed if it doesn't go well. For higher level wizards it's mostly a bonus.
Non-verbal spell casting could just increase the cost of casting by a flat amount.

It is better in the books (believe it or not) but in the movies it's just

>MY STREAM OF COLOURED PLASMA IS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR STREAM OF COLOURED PLASMA
>NUH UH

>how we should we portray a wizard fight
>i know, star wars but with wands

>bright, colourful unique spells that have all sorts of crazy ways of incapacitating someone?
>nah, let's have bluish-white or whitish-green energy blobs that knock you over

youtube.com/watch?v=GKm7NloL8bA

>Dat Hazel Court

Hnnng, they don't make them like that any more.

Harry once hit Bellatrix with the torturing curse after she killed Sirius. She got a moment of pain, before laughing it off and lecturing him about how momentary anger doesn't do shit for Unforgivables, and you have to really hate somebody form the bottom of your heart to use them.

>How can Veeky Forums make the magic in Harry Potter better?
You don't.
Potterverse magic is only there to facilitate the story, it has no real rules other than arbitrary ones made only so the main characters don't Time Turner their way around every problem
The magic is children's book magic it works only because the author needs it to work and it stops working or making any sense when the author needs that to happen too

>"You need to mean them, Potter! You need to really want to cause pain... to enjoy it... righteous anger won't hurt me for long... I'll show you how it is done, shall I? I'll give you a lesson —"
>—Bellatrix Lestrange telling Harry Potter how to use an Unforgivable curse

Why the fuck aren't you reading The Dichotomy of Prophecy? It's an original fantasy story by the author of A Cadmean Victory, one of the best HP fanfics.

Also why was the head of MASUCA WoC? MACUSA is a racist anti-progressibe organizaiton, a WoC can't lead that.

What i do remember is that Aveda Kedavra is requires a lot of power according to Crouch!Moody
The part about "having to hate enough to kill" about Avada Kedavra specifically might be just from HPMOR

...

>we have functional time travel
>what should we do with it?
>i know, with it bright kids will be able to study more

The die is your wand.
You can cast without rolling (e.g. without your wand) if you're good enough with a spell, but the spell can't be extra-effective.

>MACUSA is a racist anti-progressibe organizaiton
I know this is bait, but are there really people who complained about that?
You really need nothing better to do to spend your time building a strawman out of thin air.

>I know this is bait, but are there really people who complained about that?

There are always idiots ready to complain about something, so far worst that I have seen was this one lunatic who bitched how faggots are misogynistic because they'ren't sexually attracted to women.

>doesn't allow fantastic beasts in USA
>doesn't allow wizards and witches to marry NoMajs
>full of white men

How is it not anti-progressive?

>full of white men

Exactly, thus >Also why was the head of MASUCA WoC? MACUSA is a racist anti-progressive organizaiton, a WoC can't lead that.

Because "anti-progressive" isn't the same as racist. You can be not racist and still be anti-progressive if you're, say, homophobic or misogynistic.

You can't.

you would need to use one of the old chaos magic systems where you free-form build spells on the fly and those systems are nearly incompatible with the idiots on Veeky Forums nowadays because "muh rules" and "muh scientific magicks".

Just make something like Laser & Feelings but magic.

Speaking a spell in HP isn't necessary - it's as crutch. The words are to help you focus, and that's all.

It's a skill level thing.

It really is though - if you believe and concentrate harder than your opponent, you win.

What's inconsistent about that? Only inconsistency is that, in the movies, they almost always say the spell they're using, but that's just so the audience knows what spell they're using.

>doesn't allow fantastic beasts in USA
Objectively a good thing
>doesn't allow wizards and witches to marry NoMajs
Nothing wrong with this either, we've seen what witch&muggle relationship is like and it wasn't pretty

Well, not always. Some spells are exclusively used verbally (usually the more powerful ones). And movies started using unspecified white blasty thing spell abundantly from 5th onward.

Imho Harry Potter magic works better as a plot device, normally for light-hearted adventures with the occasional bit of drama. The greatest conflicts the characters face cannot be resolved with magic (or at least not only with magic) since they involve a moral dilemma and/or require wits and discretion rather than raw power.

I would only play Harry Potter with trustworthy players, and it would be a rules-light game with focus on interpretation and story.

Basically what the books are and/or try to be, specially the first (good) ones.

"It takes real strength of character, and not everybody's got it. you lot could all point your wands at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed."
From what I remember of book 4.
It's generally inferred from that, and what Bellatrix said in 5, that it means you have to truly want them dead in your heart of hearts, not just in a fit of rage.
Though Snape proved that you can do it as a form of euthanasia if you truly believe it's the best thing for them, so hating them to death isn't necessarily right. Probably more like just willing them to death.

You have to wholeheartedly want to cast the curse.

In the 5th book Harry uses "crucio" on Lestrange, but since he did it so out of rage, the curse was severly dimished

TL;DR you have to be a sociopath to use them

If it really said "strength of character", then i obviously have to concede. Though i distincly remeber than i polish translation it did mention "magical power". Might be mistaken obviously.

Well, he did use Imperio without problem.
Though it's obviously not as -bad- as other two, you could probably do as much evil using Oblivate. And i guess intent to use it, not abuse it also counts. But curse is a curse, and Unfogrivable at that

I might be confusing it with his explanation on resisting the Inperius curse, but from what I recall, it implied that it was the mentality that mattered.
I don't think power levels were ever really mentioned outside what your skills reflected.

Found it
> "Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it — you could all get your wands out and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed."

>Anyone tried to run HP campaigns?
Yep.

>What system did you use?
Free-form forum role-play with judges, of which I was one.

>How did you do magic?
There was a list of spells by grade level and you could do spells in your current grade level but you might suck at them. Ones beneath your grade level could be done much more easily. Ones above your grade level were pretty hard to do and, even if you got them to work, might not work as well as you'd think. You'd also have a specialty (like charms or transfigurations) that'd help you do what you were trying to do.

>I think murder by magic breaks the soul.
I always thought it was why the Avada Kedavra was seen as particularly horrifying: it doesn't just kill you, it annihilate your soul or something. But I'm not sure if it works with Sirius weird post death thing.

Also you guys seem to forget that whatever the reason people think it's the blackest magic ever, that's what they think. Using it make you a dangerous black mage in their eyes. People don't like dangerous black mages. You become a criminal and aurors will be on you asses.

So potential reasons not to use the Avada Kedavra all the time:
> Shit's horrifying
> Killing people is bad, bro
> Straight up power requirement
> Maybe "truly willing to have people dead" idea
> Every one fears you, you're a criminal
I think that's enough reasons to justify against the use of the spell.

All the Avada Kedavra victims are summoned successfully by the Resurrection Stone and Dumbledore appears in the border between life and death. Also, Voldemort survives it through the use of Horcruxes, rather than getting annihilated by it. So yeah - it pretty clearly leaves their soul intact. You might be thinking of Dementors.

I really like Orders of Magnitude interpretation of Killing Curse - it is just a tool for reliably forcing a Death Burst, and the fact that it never fails to kill is just a prerequisite for its main function to work.

>Nothing wrong with this either, we've seen what witch&muggle relationship is like and it wasn't pretty
Only because Magical Britain treats muggles like they're some sort of mildly clever animal, the way we treat dogs. They'll get upset if you torment them for no reason, but if you suggest they might be capable of sapience you're just one of those crazy muggle people.

Are they? I'm not sure I get all those post death phenomenons and how they differs.
We have:
> Ghosts
> The Reverse Spell thing in the Goblet of Fire
They are said to be "echoes", so I guess they are not the real thing, but in the same time they interact with Harry as if they were conscious beings.
> The Resurrection Stone
They are described as "shades", but what does it means?
> Freaking Dumbledore
"I'm to busy dumping exposition to truly die."

Yeah, it kinda gets silly. Still, it's at least evidence that Avada Kedavra doesn't do anything worse than kill its victims, and there's no indication it does do something worse.

I thought that it was fairly established that wizards didn't bother discriminating in sexist or racist ways when they had non-magical people to hate on.

Like, in the HP books the ministers go Baginold, a woman, Fudge, a somehow-popular jackass, two dipthongs in a row, and Kingsley, a black guy who apparently ends up serving for decades.

I guess.
Oh, and I could have add paintings of people who somehow seemed to act like the actual people (like the previous directors paintings) despite not being them.
Or even inferi but those are just animated corpse.

It's hard to be prejudice about things like sex and race when there's a whole vast class of people that are quantifiably inferior to all of you.

I dunno, muggles and wizards seem pretty well balanced to me. Muggles can't magic, wizards have so little common sense they make drunk rednecks look like paragons of reason.

You don't really need common sense when you can just magic 99% of shit that offends you away.
>too stupid to figure out how to use a bathroom? just swing your wand and shout pantius cleanius and nobody will know

Well unless they heard you yell of course

The fact that they need to be told not to do the plethora of dumb shit they do on a regular basis makes it a good thing that they don't know anything about firearms or basic technology.

They'd glass the planet before lunchtime just to see what would happen.

Wizard government is probably the equivalent of the only smart guy at the table face palming at the other 4, who think pissing on the sleeping dragon would be a hilarious idea.

>Wizard government is probably the equivalent of the only smart guy at the table face palming at the other 4, who think pissing on the sleeping dragon would be a hilarious idea.

Wizards are governed by GMs?

>witch&muggle relationship is like and it wasn't pretty
what? When?
All I remember is that kid from the movies where he went "me mums a witch, dads a muggle. Bit o a shock when he found out"

Yeah, but "common sense" is something you can learn. Magic isn't. You either have it, or you don't.

>what? When?

Did you forget that everyone's favorite snakeface is an end result of muggle&witch (daterape drug assisted) crossbreeding.

Smart wizards of influence in the ministry = the face planing GM
Smart wizards in general = the despairing player looking dumbfounded at his compatriots
average wizard in the ministry = That Guy
Average wizard = the retarded players

So because of one bad example.. it means that everyone else is destined to fail?
"Hey guys.. remember Hitler? Yeah.. Don't have kids. It will only end badly"

Closest I was to ever being in a Harry Potter campaign was a forum game, probably back when I was first into forum RPs. (Maybe four years ago at this point.) All I can remember is that we used wikipedia a shit ton, and generally the rule was that you could do anything as long as no one bothered to question it. Not necessarily the best, but then again, Forums RPs generally aren't.

Also this. GURPs has an astounding magic system. My biggest complaint about GURPs magic is you really only need a shit ton of Fatigue Points, one high level spell, and altered time rate. Then you can kill just about anyone without trying. It's not pretty, let me tell you, having everyone running around trying to alter their time rate just so they can be the very best. Or failing that, everyone would run towards Fire Magic and shoot exploding fireballs at each-other.

Fucking. Exploding. Fireballs.

>Players
>Trusted to do anything beyond fuck shit up
Good one.

>Yeah, but "common sense" is something you can learn.
Not if you're a wizard. Kind of like how magic is something you can learn if you're a wizard but impossible if you're a muggle.

So, what, we have some kind of Sanity system and when it drops low enough you unlock the ability to use fucked up magic?

I never figured out if magic tired wizards out or not in HP. If it didn't, then they would use it basically every second of the day for several things right? But it also didn't seem that hard for most characters so it doesn't seem to make them tired.

They practice magic for hours in classes, and the only fatigue they suffer is the sort that you always suffer when you keep doing the same thing over for hours in class.

Didn't guys try doing this shit before?

Regardless, for areas outside of magic I'd recommend taking inspiration from Monsters & Other Childish Things for a strictly Hogwarts-focused game where you play as students. The system places a larger emphasis on relationships and emotional injury than most systems I've tried out that still retain a focus on physical challenges as well. Since a decent proportion of the books is Harry and co. dealing with growing up and general school life as well as magical duels and wizard shenanigans, I'd say this is necessary.

But once they know it, do they still get tired from doing it?

I dunno, I don't really think it needs to be made any more granular. There are a bunch of worded spells that do various bullshit, but all the unworded spells mostly come down to brute force telekinesis and lasers. I always figured it was like a skill level thing - Brute force is easy to do without conceptual pillars granted by verbal components, but the more powerful or finicky spells generally need those verbal components unless you're REALLY good.

That the magic isn't formalised and soullessly categorised is part of the appeal.

You probably need more focus to cast them, or they're physically draining. After a prolonged fire fight, you're probably just firing a Force push.

Military training probably offsets that.

As far as I remember, only in the same way that repeatedly performing a task over and over again will tire you out. If you've ever done data entry you know that sort of tired.

Why not use Mage: The Ascension? With a decent Storyteller and enough HP players I'm sure it could be modded to play well.

Mage society runs along side sleepers (muggles) spells work better with foci (wand and words with here)

Just a thought

Awakening would work better - it has better rules regarding Rotes, since magic in Harry Potter is seldom Freeform. You'd also have to limit it to 3 dots in spheres and cut out Paradox.

>How can Veeky Forums make the magic in Harry Potter better? From the inconsistencies in verbal vs. non-verbal spellcasting, dumb names, seemingly endless amounts of highly-specific spells, etc.

Why do you want to turn it into the Nasuverse?

Only the movies do nonverbal. And I always took that as re-firing weaker versions of the last spell cast.

Well, it most certainly would help it in certain areas.

Are there any spells that make them less tired? If so, why don't they cast that at themselves all the time?

GURPS is a meme game with shit mechanics.

Gurps general would disagree

Endless highly specific spells, dumb names and inconsistencies is part of what makes Harry Potter appealing to its major demographic. It's not a magic system, it's just magic. Harry's a wizard going to wizard school the way kids would think of a wizard going to wizard school.

GURPS is perfect for what you are looking for OP. There are a lot of different magic systems, each with options to customize them for whatever you are trying to do.

>GURPS is a well known game with great mechanics.
ftfy

The concept of a in-depth, borderline scientific or very specific magic system is also shit and a modern invention for fantasy, though. It's a gimmick that mostly appeals to the "fantasy fan" demographic. It becomes a pissing contest of who has the most "unique" or "complex" variation on a dusty cliche, same as people endlessly using Tolkien's races or thinly veiled versions of them

I've been turning this one over in my head for a while and I think a GUMSHOE System hack might be a great answer, 80% of the books are the kid dicking about the school trying to solve a mystery/string of horrible murders. The way you just tick off skills answers the issue of spells quite nicely as you having "Just the spell for the situation".

You have about 3-5 weeks of school per-session depending on how much is going on, your background is what shapes your skills during the 1st few years but as you pick electives and hobbies you start differentiating based on that. The similar structure works if you want to play as a cell of aurors investigating dark magic shit.

Might need to play with combat a little but it shouldn't have to happen that often.

The fight is at the end of Phoenix where Voldy and Dumbles take the gloves and wreck the ministry building is reasonably creative on screen and I believe even more so in the books, someone animates the fountain statues there.

youtube.com/watch?v=gICAyWCvXuQ

> Shit setting
> Written by a normie
> Beloved by normies
Op, are you just trying to make a game to get laid?

You forgot your REEEEs, /r9k/friend

Your dominion over the hobby has ended, old one. The new age is ours. The age of normality has begun.

If you really want to be able to do every single retarded piece of magefuckery Rowling ever thought of then it's probably going to have to be Ars Magicka, particularly if you want to do it in an academic setting.

The only caveat is that you have to be powerful and a murderous asshole, so basically a minmaxed PC.