Weird magic

...

>Casting spends Mana
Not a fan of an extra resource to manage, feels artificial and a bit cheaty to non-casters. Okay if everyone's got mana and a use for it / an alternate resource I guess.

>Casting spends Spell Slots
Return to the darkest parts of the abyss from which you came! Forget what I said about mana, this is 10x worse!

>Components
Not a bad idea in a setting who is urban enough to allow most components to be purchased in the background / in a campaign that have enough downtime for this not to be a bother. Then unique spells can require unique components which become quest hooks.

I actually worked on a system which used these, stamina AND a table of consequences for failure, with more complex spells being more taxing.

>Casting drains Stamina/Life
I like that from Shadowrun. I could see other systems modded to go back to this. Of course, the system must also make a lone house cat a non-mortal threat to our wizards.

>Magic has daily uses
GO BACK TO THE PITS OF HELL FROM WHICH YOU CAME!

In a world where nature is chaotic and mountains and oceans are constantly moving on the map, sometimes forces of nature and reality become infatuated with people and react to their needs and desires gravity shifting or forests bending to appease their chosen paramours, occasionally two individuals equally loved by the world will come into conflict at which point they can right by arguing their case or attempting to seduce the planet to gain an edge over the competition.

In another setting there exists the magic of mimemetomancy or meme magic which by convincing people of lies or half truths can result in the altered perception of reality producing any numbers of effects, such as rendering an object "invisible" because the population at large has been led to believe the object can't exist or defeating an otherwise unstoppable foe by convincing them that they possess a weakness that you have exploited therefore making them think they are dead.
Occasionally memes are contradictory and can be simultaneously believed by a single individual resulting in new effects.

That's amazing. I fucking love weird Al.

I did a similar thing, except it's only various relics. Naturally this means the church hoards every knucklebone and walking stick for the traces of the divine they hold, and wizards desperately want them since they're keys (or perhaps gateways) to the Supernal realms of Magic

>various comments
some interesting points, user, I agree that yo-

>Magic has daily uses
>GO BACK TO THE PITS OF HELL FROM WHICH YOU CAME!
user does not like Jack Vance.
Opinion discarded.

I have a conartist/stage magician (who is a wizard class wise) who stay in character while in public and has cast animate object on his deck of playing cards that fight for him in a death by paper cuts style.

Vancian magic works real poorly for tabletop games. Particularly if it's strong. That's why 3.pf has a two hour wizard workday

Only interesting parts about my setting's magic are that necromancy's divided into three schools, and the divine spark of creation. There's plenty other magical things around but they're pretty traditional.
White necromancy deals with bodies, both living and dead. It's a well known and widely welcomed art as most healers are white necromancers.
Black necromancy deals with souls. Soothsayers and mediums go here. Far less popular than its white cousin, often rightly viewed with suspicion.
Red necromancy is the domain of blood. It covers both things that live in blood (diseases, infections) and the traditional blood sacrifice stuff. All of this tends to go out of control very fast, leading to red necromancers often being killed on sight.
Then we come to the spark of creation. There's plenty of lesser divine beings running around. Pretty much any archmage or revered artifact or overly long lived animal will gain some measure of divinity. What separates these lesser divines from true deities is that the latter have the spark of creation, being capable of creating new life to serve them. You're not considered a real divine until you create your own race of angels or demons or what have you. Where does this capability come from? Why, you comprehend and combine the three paths of necromancy into the original divine art of creation, the root of all three paths.

I like mana better, the other systems for limiting casting have their problems

spell slots: too limited, the only thing I really like about them is that they simplify the ability to enhance spells
components: IMO components work better as requirements for certain rituals rather than something needed for every other spell, unless thats the character you want to play of course
stamina/life drain: I mean some spells make sense but theres a point in which it becomes silly, it makes all casters feel like berserkers
daily uses: utter garbage

>Okay if everyone's got mana and a use for it / an alternate resource I guess.

This is easy, just give martials ki

Yeah he's a national treasure

In my setting magic hasn't been explored fully, and so it's still wild, messy and difficult to control.

I did this so one of my PC's playing a Wizard could come to discover method's of taming it and write the early magical texts herself.

Mana, components and fatigue.

Mana gives you flexibility and versatility and lets you scale up spells or somewhat alter their effects.

Components mean you can't spam one thing a million times and Mages spend some of their time collecting herbs, monster parts, and various mundane and weird things.

Casting causes shortterm fatigue after casting. A short term vulnerability balances magic out so they don't trump everything else and don't dominate the setting. Helps to create risk/reward scenarios so casting a spell isn't always the right solution at any given moment.

Vance's books were cool and unique and the casting style made perfect sense in the context of their world. It also made magic seem weird and mysterious.

But the system without the context and setting is just shit, especially when you discard 80% of it that made it weird and mysterious in the first place.

There is a special brand of mage in my setting, the spellweavers, they are the ones that are born with extra affinity towards magic, so after tattoing a bunch of incantations onto their skin, they are able to do energy conversion, so like, if they manage to catch a fireball mid-air, they can turn it into electricity, or transform it into kinetic energy which they can imbue into an object (think x-men's Gambit).

What about cooldowns?
Weak spells could be cast fairly continuously, while strong ones would leave you somewhat defenseless for a short while.
it's a bit of a combo of mana and stamina, just more simplified, it would take time to regain what you used up.

This sounds like a good system.

All wizards in my setting cast spells exclusively through bargaining with spirits. One of the two wizards in my current game has a strong bond with q single very powerful (and jelous) storm spirit. While another is the opposite, he collects gaggles of low level spirits for all sorts of uses.

>Unknown Armies
Came here to say this. No game does weird magic better.

dff

Some of the guys at my group love cryptocurrencies and created a magical criptocurrency coin

>How it was discovered.
At january 1st 2017 a thread was posted at an altcoin forum, with a java miner and wallet for a coin called Imagecoin.

>Initial Coin Distribution method.
If you had more than 0 satochi at january first 2016 at 00:00, and you send more than one satochi (0.00000001 bitcoins to those who don't know) to a specific bitcoin walled detailed at the thread. You will receive 1 billion imagecoin. Sending more coins wont get you more imagecoins.
After the bitcoin wallet receive the bitcoins it will send all your bitcoins back to you, using 1 satochi as transaction fee.

After july 1st 2017, sending bitcoins to the imagecoin bitcoin wallet wouldnt give you coins. This was detailed at the original thread.

>how mining is done.
The coin is premined by the previous method and people mine transaction fees.
At the first 6 months the coin were mined using proof of work.
The coin wallet have two variables, coin and stake. When users got their initial 1 billion imagecoins, half of this amount gone to variable stake.
After 6 months, mining is made based at the amount of coins at variable stake.
You can't trade coins at the variable stake, but 6 months after the coin start, you will be able to bring those coins back to variable coins, being able to be used.
When you tell you want to get your coins at variable stake back, you do it, and at the start of the next day UCT 00:00, NOT 24 hours after you asked to get your coins back but at the start of the next day, if you ask at 23:59:59 of some day, this will take one second as some example.
The smallest coin amount is 1 microimage a 0 followed by 99 zeroes and than the number 1.

>magical system.
There are some imagecoin wallets (that will never be generated to users) that are magical, if there are more than X imagecoins at this wallet, after Y days/months/years something will magically appear at the world or something will magically happen.
All magical wallets can just be used once, this means if a spell is cast, sending more money to the wallet does nothing.
If you send more money than the wallet need to cast some spell, it will send the remaining money back to you using 1 microimage.
If you send at least one microimage to a magical wallet, it will tell what the spell will do.

Fuck off

I like Shouts and Singing from The Elder Scrolls. Because the universe is a song in the dream of the Godhead, using the Voice or Sword Singing is basically you either disrupting the performance to insert your own will, or you harmonizing with the performance in a way that gives you some new freedom to change it (respectively).

wur

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/06/osr-most-famous-spell.html

One thing that I find intriguing is how Force powers are handled by SWRPG. You unlock a basic version of a discipline & various upgrades by spending experience, and have to roll checks with force dice to generate light & dark side points - higher force rating means more force dice rolled. You only use light side points to activate your abilities, but you can suffer strain and take a hit to your morality to add the dark side points you generate into the total.

I'd like to put together a homebrew system that works off of similar principles, minus the morality aspect, where you start with the most basic form of a spell like, say, telekinesis. You would start out with something like Mage Hand, and you can upgrade your knowledge of this school with experience points until you can throw up force fields and crush your opponents like cardboard boxes in a trash compactor.

That's pretty much how school was for me.

I have a magic system built up in my mind with a bunch of weird rules. I used it in a short story but would love to try and find a way to build it into a homebrew system because I think it has some fun roleplaying potential.

For starters, magic is divided into elements, and each element is a living entity with its own personality, values and preferences. You need to get an element to like you and what you're doing with it to get it to lend you its power. For example, Water is a murderous psychopath that loves torturing and tormenting people, while Lightning insists that you basically kiss everyone's ass and play the white knight. Water might only agree to help you in a fight if you promise to mangle the bodies after and waterboard the survivors, while lightning would only fight if you agreed to give your foes a proper funeral and write formal apologies to their families.

What each element will allow is also dependent on their mood and what other elements you've been working with. Some of them hate each other and won't let you cast spells if you've been casting from an element they dislike. Some of them might also just not like your face and tell you to fuck off for no reason. That or they'll just pretend to help you and then do their own thing with the spell once you've started channeling their power.

So basically everyone is a charisma caster and magic is actually a bunch of weird fickle assholes.

He's not wrong. It's really a poor fit for tabletop and kind of boring once you lay it out mechanically.

Some Veeky Forums setting.

The Universe makes/is made by The Infinite Choir. They are the eternal watchers of All, above anything/everything. From them, flows The Word. The Word spawns gods, who influence the empty Universes by creating stars, planets, life, and everything else EXCEPT magic. Slowly, all stars fade, planets become dust, mortals escape the dying universe via magic or tech, and most of the Gods will die with the now empty Universe. Powerful or lucky Gods can venture through the void, between the ranks of the indifferent Choir, and find a new Universe to play with.

Magic is an invention solely of the Mortals, and is different in every Universe. In the one we explored, the power of magic always comes from the soul, with two exceptions.
Clerics shave off slivers of their soul, and either destroy it for massive power to accomplish almost anything. They mimic the main Goddess of the setting, who eats Gods and turns them into stars. They need pilgrimages and solitary meditation to renew their soul.
Mages can manipulate energy of their environment, working with fire and ice. This uses very little of their soul, but they lack a lot of the versatility of clerics. Nobody better to blow something up though, especially in deserts or tundras.
Summoners twist their soul so much it affects their body, but in return can listen to faint whispers of The Word. The rarest of all, they rule mini-realms where they control even the laws of reality. Still nothing to a God.
The two exceptions are God influenced magics. One is from the Dreamer God, and paradoxical in almost everything. Fate decrees something will happen, so these Weavers will come together and draw power from the stars to make it happen. Did they cause it, or would it happen anyway? No one knows.
The last one is just corrupted versions of the others. Shards of a Void God (the consume-everything kind) corrupt magical users to make them create/defend more shards. Maybe enough shards can remake the broken God?

I did have an idea for a witch who used a giant pair of scissors to cut off kidnapped peoples arms and legs, which turns them into humanoid snake thralls that would sneak into towns at night, swallow children whole, and bring them back to the witch so she could use them in her magic.