What's your favorite magic system?

I do not like the "anyone can learn magic" school of thought, it raises too many questions about why magic is not widely used by everyone.
I prefer the "you have to actively obtain the power" approach, pacts with dark beings, divine blessings, weird experiments that infuse a person with magic power.

Classic Vancian.

Either all your magic comes from a few magical baubles you can carry or your magic comes from storing the mathematical formulae used to twist space in your brain and you'd better know what you're going up against.

And then you die because the Dying Earth is shit and everything is shit.

Barbarians of Lemuria. Magic is hard to learn and harder to use.

Big fan of Maze Rats randomized but interpretive spells.
For a more thought out system, Dungeon Crawl Classics and GURPS are pretty cool systems

The homebrew one.

This means nothing. My homebrew? Your homebrew? Homebrew could mean literally anything.

As long as its homebrew, guaranteed better than the average(D&D).

>What's your favorite magic system?
AEUD, which you can then abstract in the fluff into any myriad of different magic systems, then the magic of the world itself can feel weird, organic, and... you know... magic, rather than just measurable science with a fifth fundamental force, but the PC's have a set of semi-controlled outcomes that they've learned to repeat.

>magic is math
Well, that's my most hated magic system.

For now, my favorite is the one is Sorcery in Burning Wheel. Magic is occult, difficult, and can have dire or fortunate consquences on a failure.
Try to burn one bandit, burn them all instead. Well, maybe with the forest.

I like mana points. It's just nice, simple, and intuitive.

I don't think the actual mechanics of the system (spell slots) is that bad, and gets undue hate. The problem with it is the balancing and wide range of boring as well as too powerful effects at higher levels.

How do you stop magic users from using up all their mana on one big spell each day? Or do you not care about that and think it's fine? It might also be annoying to deal with Wizard players who perfectly divide their magic points among the best 'build' 4 fireballs and a ice blast or something like that, every single combat encounter, because that's the most efficient use of points.

What about spell slots AND mana points? Keep the regular way of how spell works, but also add mana points

Not Vancian.

Unsurprisingly, games that focus on magic tend to have have the best magic systems. Ars Magica and WoD Mage stand out in particular for me

Exalted also does magic pretty well, since it lets you use Sorcery do almost anything you can imagine as crafting-like action.

>especially when coupled with madness/corruption.
where is that? In PF or GURPS?

How's that even supposed to work?

Everyone seems to hate Vancian magic but it really helps explain why Wizards are bookish. Why else would Wizards carry around spellbooks? What other systems supports that?

>Why else would Wizards carry around spellbooks?
What if Wizard just carries around books? Not spellbooks, just tomes on arcane, magic theory, spirits, demons, ancient language and history. You know the stuff he may need to consult regularly. Or maybe he just acquired taste for reading.

Because it doesn't make any sense. If you habitually memorize something then you eventually won't need the book at all.

Not him, but I make it so that MP has diminishing returns. A 1-point spell is pretty decent, about as useful as a swordsman swinging his blade. To get something better you need to spend 3 points, or 7 for something really impressive, or 15 for a truly awesome spell.

Spellcasters also have a limit on how much MP they can gather during a single turn, based on their level / proficiency with that kind of magic. A beginner mage needs 3 turns to throw a fireball that'll roast a half-dozen goblins, but a master can do that in a single turn. In addition, the most powerful spells temporarily burn out a mage's ability to draw magic; a beginner who throws a fireball can't cast anything for a few minutes; a master who summons a rain of fire on a city will be weaker at casting until he gets several hours of rest.

Mages can go above and beyond their normal limits but at significant risk to themselves and those around them. It's taxing on their bodies, minds, and even their souls in the case of black magic. A mage who is 'burned out' but tries to throw a fireball anyway risks lighting himself on fire or worse.

Essentially, magic works like a muscle in the body. Those with proper strength and endurance have better performance and suffer fewer sprains and less soreness than novices. Still, anyone who pushes themselves too hard risks long-lasting damage.

Pact Magic

Making deals with extra dimensional entities for power. They usually just want to experience events in your particular space-time continuum and are willing to give you a snippet of their power for the chance. Of course if you fuck up the contract they might just influence your actions like some social reject in his mother's basement wishing he could tell his favorite asian cartoon character how to act at pivotal moments, but that's the price of dealing with things man was not meant to know.

I especially loved the Secrets of Pact Magic third party books released back in D&D 3.5.

I like it when magic is more modular and going beyond your limits is possible, but only if you're willing to accept the risks for doing so.

Like in ShadowRun, there's nothing stopping you from going "I'm going to throw a Force 12 Fireball at that guardian spirit" if you want, but if you do it, you'll be eating a shitload of damage that may very well kill you if you don't get enough successes.

I also like how spell slots work in 5e. You gain more powerful slots, which not only opens up more powerful spells but also gives you the option of powering up your lower leveled spells so that the bulk of your spells never really lose effectiveness later on.

I also like how Changeling handles its magic, in that each path offers a successive line of new abilities but you can cast them for free if you satisfy the catch, such as whooping and hollering for the Stone 1 ability or breaking a barrier for the Stone 2 ability.

The Runed Age's runic system. I'm always too picky with spells so with this I can at least make my own spells.

In GURPS Horror, "Stress & Derangement". They also have a different system that covers even more in Pyramid issue 3-103; article is called "Mad as Bones", and it's more streamlined too.

>the gods are just NEETs who make waifus out of humanity
>the gods make "top 10 anime deaths" videos

Nigga anyone can learn to be a nuclear engineer and not everyone is working in a reactor.
Magic is hard and people are stupid and lazy is a perfectly valid explanation.

There was a universal skirmish system, once upon a time, with a 'magic-casting' difficulty rating system I really liked.

Basically, it's kitchen sink of various effects and modifiers you get to choose.

So, for example, casting Sleep starts at difficulty 4.
Then you add the range to target (from 0 for yourself, to 10 for 100" away) Area of effect (from 0 for a single point, to 10 for 100" radius) and how long the spell will be effective (from 0 for instant, to 10 for 100 turns).
To mitigate the difficulty, you can also make it easier to cast by: 'powering up' (-1 per turn), sacrificing appropriate stuff (-0 to -10 depending on sacrifice), shit like that.
The final number is the difficulty number you have to beat in order to cast.

King Killer Chronicles

I think my perfect magic system would be a mix of Shadowrun and Mage: The Ascension. I like the spheres and balacing Force and Paradox would be great.

Ars Magicka

While I'm nearly as enamored with Fate now as I was when it came out, the Dresden Files RPG's magic system was pretty good. You had three spellcasting stats, Conviction, Discipline, and Lore. Lore determined what you know how to do, Conviction was how much power you could put into your spells, and Discipline represented your control.

So if you have high Conviction you can put a lot of power in your spells, but may not be able to control it or know what to do with it.

If you have high Discipline you can do a lot of finely tuned spells and weave complicated enchantments, but may not have the *umf* needed to get the job done or know the pattern to weave the magic into.

High Lore gives you a lot of theoretical knowledge and gives you the blueprints to do a lot with your magic, but you may not have the wood or carpentry skills to put those ideas into practice.

people keep saying this but never post the pdf

It's Mage the Ascension at a lower overall power tier.

This is the 4th edition book.

Enjoy

The user we need, but not the one we deserve.

Sounds interesting, please elaborate

White Wolf-Lion Rampart style magic, basically the magic you can found in Ars Magica-Mage the Awakening.
-It has a really nice creative system of magic
-The focus of the game is magic, magic is the main character not one of the many side kicks of the game.

Those are the only games where you also get to feel like a `mage` and not a dps/nuker/whatever.

Tie spell point refresh to something that's not within the player's power to manipulate (at least not entirely).

Fantasy Craft, for instance, has spell points refresh with each new scene, and it's up to the GM to decide when the scene changes. Players have some agency to force scene changes, insofar as they decide what their characters do and a major shift in one's goal is something that should indicate a new scene. But that's not something you can just invoke willy-nilly. Finding a safe place to rest isn't a major change in direction, it's just a pit stop on the way to the same short-term goal (eg, clearing this dungeon). If you were to pull out entirely to retreat back to town and put in some concerted effort to regrouping and preparing for another push, that might qualify for a new scene, but not holing up in a shelter you spent a few spell points making.

An added bonus to this narrative-based spell refresh is that it adds an element of mystery and weirdness to magic. The flow of magical power is unpredictable, and follows no in-universe mechanisms that can really be exploited reliably.

sounds neat desu

Malazan, but I have no clue how you get "walking the hallways the blood of a primordial god carved into teality" imto a working system. Ironic, since the series is based off of games. I'd kill for some recordings of Esslemont and Erikson's sessions.

>teality
>imto

Fuck this phone.

How exactly does Malazan even works? Shit was crazy and over the top

>please elaborate

That'll be a bit harder:
Last I've seen of those rules was 15 years ago - and I haven't been able to find them ever since.

There were (much) more modifiers than this (naturally) but I can't remember them all right now.

Elements and magic types (scrying by divination vs invocation),
wands and staves - and their types - vs what you wanna do (holding a bone vs holding a stick when casting death magick),

Tons of shit like that.
Most of it intuitive.

^
What he said.
Like it can be excused with a multitude of things, everyone can learn magic but it's dangerous as hell, or everyone knows a bit of magic for everyday life but only those who go into research or battle fit the stereotypical 'fling fireball and teleport' image.

I've never read malazan, can i get a rundown of what they did? besides it being dbz type shit.

>Nigga anyone can learn to be a nuclear engineer and not everyone is working in a reactor.
What the fuck are you memeing about?

Everyone working in a nuclear reactor is not helpful at all
>Magic is hard and people are stupid and lazy is a perfectly valid explanation
What sort of shit setting are you playing were the king has NEETs among the peasantry?

If you are fucking lazy, and you are a peasant, you fucking die. The king needs its bread. You know what would produce lots of bread? Fucking magic.

So if the king wants his magic, the king will get his fucking magic.

>the King promoted colleges to train mages
>so that the mages can make bread for the populace

EXCUSE ME THAT IS SOCIALISM AND WE'LL HAVE NONE OF THAT AT MY TABLE THANK YOU

My good sir, this would not be a difficulty for you if you didn't keep placing yourself in a situation where you needed to avoid Chun the Unavoidable.

Donald Pleasance's terrible wig will haunt me to the end of my days.

I'm way too tired to provide anything other than a basic synopsis that is simplified to the point of total inaccuracy, but basically magic users sort of draw power from aspect-oriented realms usually called "warrens." So an absurd hypersimplification is that Mockra is the Warren of mind, so a mage skilled in Mockra could use that power to make illusions.

But there's also the Warren of Shadow, Meanas, which also has some power over illusions.

And then there's Kurald Emurlahn, which is the Elder Warren of shadow. Which some nonhumans use.

And the Warrens are associated with various gods. Or vice versa. And there are older ones called Holds.

Also they're quasi-sentient.

Also, there's a not!Tarot called the Deck of Dragons which is used to tell the future, shape the future, look at the current state of the pantheon, and yank around gods and demigods as needed.

TL;DR there are weird metaphysical entities which are at once both physical places existing as a separate realm and a source for magic users to draw their power. They're aspected with certain concepts and associated with divine figures, who shape the warrens as the warrens shape them. There are other Warren-like metaphysical entities that used to be used but generally aren't anymore, and there are also Elder Warrens which are associated with non-human races.

Yeah I kinda know bout the warrens but I meant like feats, I know there like the veins of a dead god.

Oh, he's not dead. I don't know what you mean about fears. The warrens themselves are the veins of a god. But he's also walking around doing things a lot of the time. Malazan has weird metaphysics.

he meant feats like in pathfinder. Where characters have special abilities and bonuses depending on the feat

kinda hard to describe now that I'm trying

mana points

easy to use, intuitive, granular, and is a concept most people are familiar with

it is generic for sure, but i actually like that about it

>You know what would produce lots of bread? Fucking magic.

And then you get magical technology and industry, and end up with a level of prosperity that enables (and one could argue necessitates) the existence of NEETs.

I'd really like to see constructive use of magic explored more in fiction.

Not everyone an dipshit. If you have a lower IQ, you are most certainly not becoming a nuclear engineer. Amd if you are below 85 IQ points, you'd be lucky working at McDonalds.

So yes, there can be a "biological basis" of exclusion for wizards. I'd argue thats how it should alwayd be.

>Rumors circulate that the King has a plan to force his entire population to become wizards
>Doesn't think to check how magic actually fucking works in his world first
>Local order of wizards meets to discuss the matter
>Come to the conclusion that this would massively fuck up the realm, since 'bread-making magic' isn't actually a thing, and magic runs on a limited resource
>Decide to take drastic measures
>One week before his plan would be put into motion, sentient shadows murder the entire royal family
>High Priest has a dream in which a saint tells him that the nearby vampire lord caused the trouble
Don't fuck with the magic mafia, dudes. Especially if you have no idea how magic actually works.

Armello is very fun, but the art/setting evokes so much I'm left wanting more.

>can create shadows that are solid and can harm people
>but cannot even figure out a single way to help the bread making process.

Psyker powers. You can have a character that shoots out massive damage one round, and the next they have the chance to die.

Magic in DnD is has no downside. The reasons wizards aren't taking over everything (depends on the setting) is because they are glass cannons/rare/lazy/etc.

>Toss up between GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic or GURPS Sorcery. Path/Book magic isn't bad either, especially when coupled with madness/corruption.

I like Ritual Path Magic but not sold on Sorcery. I kind of like my magic being hard and requiring substantial investment.

I enjoy looking at "real life" magic systems from history and kind of like the Divine Favor style. A lot of historical magic is all about petitioning the spirits and/or gods (and/or God) for help in a variety of shapes and forms, from impromptu, drug-induced shamanic rituals to elaborate, scholarly prayers. Then the form of "help" you receive is rarely quite what you want.

Outside of GURPS, as I said, I like magic that takes effort, also generally prefer more subtle effects. So I think I prefer more free form magic styles, which is often a bit of an issue.

I remember reading that Malazan was originally a AD&D campaign that they converted to GURPS?

You know we have a pdf share thread, right?

(you)

He is right, you know. The neighboring kingdom that actually puts effort into making his population mages would also have the advantage in wars, so the neet kingdom would quickly die against better managed kingdoms

who is going to teach that magic? the mage mafia doesn't want pesky rogue mages giving away their secrets

Who exactly IS the mage mafia, user? If the setting always allowed people to learn magic, then the nobility would be mages. Your so called "mage mafia" wouldn't be possibly occur if everyone can defend themselves and the elite is part of the nobility.

5th is pretty much a straight improvement, though

>mediafire.com/folder/b380y2tubx302/Core_and_splat

War College in the 'A Practical Guide to Evil' trains both Officer Cadets and Battlefield Mages.
At start, all students are screened, and those with high magic rating go into 'Mage' part of the curriculum, and are basically taught two spells: Fireball and Healing. (better ones learn Scrying, too)
Any one of them that can't learn BOTH of these spells in the 5 years in College, get to go through it again - only this time as Officers.

It provides for a quick and easy recruitment of Battlefield Mages into the Dread Empire's Legions of Terror.

I wish to save this post for future setting making but I feel like I would just lose it. Good background, user

don't know user, I did not write the rules of the mages mafia, this other user did

Hey, not my Idea - blame erraticerrata (the author) for anything here. ;-)

Oh, and don't forget: ANY 'possible students' can also get into the War College - as long as they have a high magic rating.

I like the use of spell slots, but redact the feature of forgetting spells you used the slot of; slots representing the actual slot in which you've stored the spell, and the charges you use to cast them separately. In junction, I adjust the number of spell slots the magic user gets so that they get fewer high level spell slots at the latter levels, resulting in them having a handful of low-level slots they can throw away on utility spells if need be, and a handful of higher-level slots they can hold on to for emergency situations. If they go around blasting off mid-level spells they can expend their higher level spells to make up for it if need be, but will inevitably run out of slots if they go flicking their wands around every corner, but in turn they've got enough level 1 slots that they really shouldn't need to unless they're alone.

I believe in games that scale more laterally than they do vertically.

>what if got was one of us
>just a slob like one of us

captcha: select all busses

Honestly, I really like the magical burst system, especially some of the fan versions where it's fleshed out a bit more. You have an element and a power, and you can do pretty much anything related to them. If it's not closely related, the roll is harder. If it's related to both, it's easier. If you're trying to do something super significant, the roll gets real hard, but you have a resource that you can spend if you want more dice.

Maybe they carry books because wizards need to read a lot for their profession? And, you know, study the research that others have done in order to better their own knowledge?

I mean, it made sense specifically in Dying Earth. It's just when you take it to standard fantasy settings that it breaks down.

I mean, working in a reactor isn't that awesome though.

It's better to say that not everyone is a computer programmer, or an artist.

I don't think you understand how feudal-manorial societies worked.

Probably doesn't help that you're apparently retarded. Malazan is a book series, not a D&D knock-off.

>computer programmer
>awesome

>one of the least paid jobs in modern day
>one the most tiresome jobs and less rewarding jobs in modern day to the point Japanese workers are killing themselves in droves
>back issues, tendinitis, lose of eye-sight, work is so complicated you can't talk about it with anyone because they just don't understand what the fuck you do
>you are extremely replaceable and if you aren't constantly studying you WILL be replaced by the newer generation at some point in your career
>no chances of actually getting higher in the hierarchy without extra studying after work and getting a new degree that doesn't suck as much dick as the one you thought was a nice idea

>this is a better comparison to being a mage

Computer programmers can do awesome shit, mages can do awesome shit. So that's good so far.

>one of the least paid jobs in modern day.
>you are extremely replaceable
This isn't inherent to the actual skill, it's how society interacts with it and thus depends on the setting.

>one the most tiresome jobs
>work so hard it impacts your health
>no chances of actually getting higher in the hierarchy without extra studying
Yep, this all seems like an appropriate comparison to me.

If your setting is about anime wizards who just do everything perfectly without trying, then of course everyone would be a wizard unless it's somehow limited to a specific class of people like Harry Potter.

>The core foundations for the Malazan novels of Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont were born in the role-playing game sessions they began at Canada's University of Victoria in the 1980s.
> They started with Dungeons & Dragons, but soon found the game system "too mechanical and on occasion nonsensical" so they moved on to GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System), which offered the spontaneous narrative flexibility they were looking for.
The only one retarded here is you user. Malazan is D&D in book form.

GURPS isn't D&D either you mongoloid.

GURPS is literally just D&D without rules

Without some of the rules, and with others. Rules it doesn't have: Fucking pathfinder feats.

???????

Have you ever read GURPS?

Do you even play RPGs?

>Computer programmers can do awesome shit,
They can do barely anything by themselves.

1) Microsoft is an extremely closed system that doesn't allow programmers to create whatever they want
2) If you want to create "awesome shit" you will require an artist. Without the artist all you get is a box with letters. The programmer cannot do anything by himself (because programming is extremely time consuming, and programming doesn't touch things like how things look, only how they work from the inside)
>This isn't inherent to the actual skill, it's how society interacts with it and thus depends on the setting.
Funny, because in the USA, India, Korea, Brazil, and Chile. It works exactly like that too. Programmer is like being a janitor in a school. System analyst is like being a teacher in a school. Computer Engineer is like being the director of a school. In any place across the world, the programmer will always be paid shit, because in software, the easiest thing you could do is become a programmer (even though its also the hardest thing to master).

All you have to do to be a D&D mage is get some ingredients and memorize some spells, user. It does not compare at all to being a programmer.

Yeah, and a wizard by himself gets stabbed before he can get a spell off. And can't do anything without all kinds of spell components and shit anyway.

>a D&D mage
Well there's your fucking problem. This is a favorite system thread, not a terrible system thread. We're talking about shit that isn't fucking retarded here. There are plenty of D&D threads for you to take your autism to.

a level 1 wizard sure

>le D&D is bad meme
found the memers

>D&D wizards are the most pure and logical possible portrayal of magic
Yes, clearly people who disagree with you are just meming for the sake of it, instead of repeating something that's said often simply because it is so broadly evident and also situationally relevant.

Regardless of the overall quality of D&D, forcing D&D mechanics onto a discussion of systems in general – obviously a discussion that is meant to cross the boundaries of individual systems – is absolutely fucking retarded.