Why is it impossible to make magic systems that feel good?

People have been throwing themselves at this problem since the 70s, user.
Every magic system ends up either fiddly, complicated, and tedious, or ludicrously broken, or just about useless. (Already in this thread you have folks touting Shadowrun's bog-slow system, which doesn't seem so bad because it's lodged in the gaming molasses that is Shadowrun; and GURPS Ritual Path magic, which actually advises you to work out your spells before the session because trying to do it on the fly involves a lot of work to calculate various numerical costs and things. Much like with Shadowrun, I guess that's okay if you're already playing GURPS -- but hey, nothing feels more magical than busting out a calculator to do some energy cost accounting)

Most fictional magic systems only work because the author has power over what all the characters do and so can duct tape over the bad spots with authorial control.
In games you really want a system that's fast and simple to use at the table, but has readily defined limits that can be tested and balanced. Vancian survives largely as the default for tabletop games because well, it's the worst magic system there is, except for all the other ones that have been tried.

Symbaroum has corruption. Kind of like reverse mana-casting.

Characters typically have a Toughness threshold of 10-12, which also sets their limit for temporary and permanent corruption. A typical spell or ritual will generate 1d4 temporary corruption, with more powerful spells generating 1d6. This corruption racks up during the course of a scene (a fight or situation), and goes away after the scene is finished, but should it go over your Toughness threshold it rolls into permanent corruption.

Permanent corruption is very hard to mitigate, almost impossible to get rid of without great cost, and is much easier to simply hide if a character gets enough of it. Get enough permanent corruption, and you start getting stigmas which are visible signs of corruption, and mark you as a target for witchhunters. Get half your Toughness value in permanent corruption, and your character dies, becoming an immediately hostile NPC abomination. Remember, that's a threshold of only 5-6 permanent corruption, and three or four unlucky spell castings can net you one.

Basically, you trade power for corruption, or reign in that power and use it sparingly so you don't taint your soul. You can also go out of your way to mitigate what corruption you gain, but that's not feasible in many situations, or just accept that corruption is something you trade for power, and plunge your characters forward into nihilism that will eventually claim their very beings.

If you don't like any of the magic systems out there because they don't meet your retarded standards make your own you autistic sperg

I have magic users work just the same as martials. Generally unlimited, except for an overall stamina cap and case by case limits for certain spells.

For d&d specifically, I developed a somewhat barebones system based around 'seeds' corresponding to zodiac signs that characters attune themselves to, then invoke effects depending on what seeds they have attuned, the way they relate to each other and the 'alignments' of the local environment, which have to be determined through meditation. It was nice, but I can't see it working smoothly outside of a very narrativistically-minded group, or at least one you can trust not to rules-lawyer at every step.

>Toughness
Wizards have to lift?

Same in Warhammer fantasy roleplay, my fav game.

That's what I'm trying to do dummy.

Going with my general opinion of 'Kung-fu wizards are vastly superior to any other form of wizard' I'm going to enter Legend of the Wulin's chi magic system.

Characters have a certain amount of chi, this recharges at the end of each round, it can be spent to activate internal arts (in which there are several school each with a progression tree, you can only go down one branch), spent to reduce damage taken, to improve your movement, or to get bonuses on rolls

Well "d6 Fantasy" has an okay system. Even though spell creation needs some DM supervision.

Spells that are cast with in-combat actions are somewhere on par with ranged weapons or maybe a little stronger if you add some cost to them. And if you make a ritual spell you can go nuts with hour long rituals, dozens of participants and rare ingredients getting yourself some powerful spell.

seconding this

although generally, I would only let a player create his own spell during a battle scene if the rest of the party is protecting him while he's concentrating

anyone who wants to be a wizard has to know his craft i.e. system
if hes not able to cobble together a utility spell in a few moments his character shouldnt either

And it is quite of experience intensive to start doing big things.

I prefer to leave spell creation for time skips and rest stops. Unless new spell is absolutely needed. But it is a rare occasion. People who like to create spells normally know how to cover most bases with a few.

Because magic is an infantile plot device for hacks.

D&D 3.5 had warlocks. All their invocations are at-will, but the invocations themselves are weak(well, compared to what a full-caster can do, anyway... still fairly potent compared to many other systems) and they get a very low number of them.

The Mistborn series of books has something called allomancy: instead of mana, you use different metals to fuel different abilities. Additionally, there's also feruchemistry: You can store various attributes(speed and strength are the most obvious, but you can also store things like mass, memory, eyesight, age...) into metals(generally ones you wear on your body) and then access them later, so if you spend a few hours storing speed into a bracelet, you can't do much else during those hours, but later you can move ten times faster than usual for a short period of time.

Exhaustion is common: Shadowrun was already mentioned, but many other settings have magic-using be physically(and/or mentally) tiring: It's not that magic(mana) is something you run out of, it's that it's as exhausting as any physical activity, so even at low intensity, after a few hours you'll feel like you just ran a marathon.

Yes, yes, yes. WHFRP has my favorite wizards.

It's a matter of taste, but that's really my favorite way to balance magic:

>a magic-user has a small handful of things they can do
>the things they can do are truly amazing, no one else can do them
>they can call upon their powers whenever they choose, but every time is a terrible risk.

This basically solves all the problems people complain about in other magic systems. Magic feels powerful, because it is. Magic doesn't feel predictable, because it's always risky. Magic doesn't feel overpowered, because casters only know a few spells (and therefore aren't packing a solution to every situation) and because dangerous magic means you have to try to solve problems with as little magic-use as possible.

Less "I solve this encounter with spell #277, expending 3 power points" and more "Is the situation DIRE enough for me to call upon the POWER OF MAGIC???"

Yes, i love it too.
I only have one houserule: castes add the grades of success they make in their channeling roll to the casting roll, just a little higher chances of success for spells that doesn't change their danger at all.

Because what a thing "feels" like is meaningless

The problem is that no magic or combat system, no matter how detailed, are better than the players using it.

You can write the coolest, tightest magic system, and someone will still be able to make it feel lame and boring in play.

Just like someone can make a bare bones and (on paper) lame system feel cool in play.

The best way to go about magic is to give very generic and basic effects, at a set cost, and then give the players creative control of how to use it or flavour it.

You don't need ultradarkblast or mega fireball and lighting be different if they are functionally similar, just call it magic attack and ask the player to describe what it looks like and what he calls it.

Or even better, make a physics and resource system instead of a spell list.

THAT SAID
the problem is mainly that magic is better as a plot device and something cool controlled and described by the DM, when you just turn it into "method 3 of killing things" and give it to a videogame character who lives for killing monsters it's always going to be very underwhelming fiction wise.

The coolest thing that happens in a book is very rarely someone being killed in a very specific way after all.