Does anybody know any RPG systems with well developed, and more importantly, well designed free form magic systems...

Does anybody know any RPG systems with well developed, and more importantly, well designed free form magic systems? So far I've looked at...
>GURPS, Extensive, but requires GURPS to use.
>Ars Magica, Highly technical, too technical...
>Mage the Ascension and Awakening, Too poorly designed.
>FATE, Too system light.
>Tales of a Dying Earth, Pretty good but very system specific, need more options.

Try Amber Diceless. It's freeform, but not overpowered - mind that you actually look at the MAGIC system and not the powers.

That's like asking for a game with a freeform combat system. You might as well just play a completely freeform GAME at that point.

Besides, magic in most TTRPGs is broken as fuck even when there ARE rules governing what it can do.

Veeky Forums complaint department, have you tried not playing DnD?

I thought anti magic cheese pretty much nipped those problems in the bud.

I would, if I could find players for anything else.

Anti-magic zones everywhere is the worst way to deal with magic users, as it makes their entire characters feel useless whenever the DM arbitrarily decides it.

Just downloaded it! Thanks for the suggestion, this looks fucking awesome.

>Anti-magic zones everywhere is the worst way to deal with magic users, as it makes their entire characters feel useless whenever the DM arbitrarily decides it.

Then what's the best way to deal with them?

Glad to help.

Limit what magic is capable of. What magic CAN'T do is infinitely more interesting than what it CAN do.

Unfortunately, if you try this with the usual DnD spergs they'll fly into rage fits about how you don't like fun or shouldn't be playing DnD.

It might be better to use a tweaked magic system.

That's one of the things I'm a bit bitter about MtAw magic system. I like it a fucking lot, but yeah, there's no balance.
Okay, I can amend that by choosing a right group of people to play with.
Then there's this feeling when you can do everything, and it's not liberating at all, rather the opposite—it usually only leaves other mages and inexorable shit like SCP to battle against. Or the DM introducing restricting in-world aspects like politicking etc., which I honestly can't stand in a game about mages. I want to do magic, not spend 4 sessions on a dumb intrigue.

I wish I had a magic system which would be about as open-ended as MtAw's, but with power-level tuned very low. Like, only letting me push around little pen-size objects or heat up a millilitre of matter to 2000 degrees. Diminish Paradox effects, remove all that Wisdom/Hubris bullshit, keep challenges hard. Suddenly it's a game about thinking your way out rather than choosing which inappropriately huge morningstar you are going to use today.

Granted, Mage is all about being absurdly powerful in the first place, but fuck that, low power level is what makes games interesting.

Some of the GURPS systems are fairly system agnostic. For instance the reworked Ritual Path Magic system for Dungeon Fantasy, and its cousin Discworld magic (from the 4th ed Discworld book) actually work on basics that can be adapted into any other system that has skill rolls.

Talislanta should be your next stop to finding a good free form magic system.

>Discworld 4th
Anybody have a link to that PDF?

Check the OP of the GURPS thread.

>low power level is what makes games interesting

kys or git gud at Mage

Are you one of those magefags from the WoD thread? Does it hurt to have a small penis?

There's a lot of things I don't like about mage. The primary being that it's a White Wolf product. Their writing style turns the most interesting subject matter in the world into tedious slogs. What's that? You want to play as a magic slinging cyborg! Well hold on there little fella I've got to lambast you with the same boring shit rephrased in eight hundred different ways for the next hundred pages! Also, don't let me leave out the ten different leashing mechanics that don't work but do fuck up the gamplay!

The writing is abstruse, yeah. But I kind of give it slack because it's not the most straightforward system.
What grinds my gears is the fucking pretentiousness. But that's White Wolf, yeah, no surprise.

Barbarians of Lemuria. Spells themselves are freeform. What's codified is their price.

I can take pretentiousness. In fact, one system I read was so damn pretentious that it was almost captivating. Like listening to an excellently delivered critique of something that completely missed point of the product, but was so in love with itself that it ascended to a higher medium. No, White Wolf products are actually lacking in physical quality. Like they should have hired a better editor and writer, or... An actual editor and writer. Because it doesn't read like a professional work at all.

Oh yeah, forgot that one. Also Whitehack. But be reminded that both are OSR and you will have to make your system yourself, basically.

Read it. It falls under the FATE problem, it's a little too simple. Like I want an actual system. Not something I could homebrew in a couple of days.

Remember the completely unreadable subchapter title font in VtR.
I suppose they don't have money and don't care enough to hire a decent professional.

>I suppose they don't have money and don't care enough to hire a decent professional.

Well, they certainly had money back in the day. They don't exist anymore and it's really easy to see why. Their writing is so bizzare that it's actually difficult to describe why it sucks. Formatting issues aside, their fiction pieces are overly verbose and filled with awful metaphors. The authoritative voice that makes up the body of the work can't settle on a neutral gender pronoun. It's either she or he. Which, is confusing as hell. It also makes use of terrible metaphors. And, they repeat information constantly. I can't tell you how many times they explain what "reality consensus" is in the second edition of "Mage: The Ascension." It's a really easy concept to grasp, yet they keep talking about it instead of elaborating on actual magic, rules, or explaining the more interesting elements of the fluff.

White Wolf art is generally of incredibly poor taste, but Mage20 is probably the worst offender. Do my mages all have to look like fucking high school drop-out, retail job worker, subculture-wanker freaks?

But funnily enough, it's most likely done to cater to the target audience.

>antimagic zones where they need to be is breaking muh mage
sorry, there is a pouint where it just makes sense.

>whitewash the castle walls with lead paint to prevent scrying
>thin layers of lead or gold to prevent detection spells from locating the gewgaw in it's chest
>antimagic field located around the object itself so it can't be mage handed or telekinesed or teleported away from it's location
There is a point at which antimagic fields are appropriate defenses against adventurers as well as non adventurers. Or do you really think ancient dragons wouldn't be scrying, mind controlling, and fucking with anything and everyone nearby?

They don't even do sub culture wanker freaks right. Revenge of the Nerds, Hackers, Ghost in the Shell, Lost Boys. There is a huge amount of counter culture shit that "does it right." Even other RPG systems that do it justice. White Wolf shit is like the soulless corporate teen mascot. Desperate to be part of but couldn't be further removed than it if tried from the subject material it's portraying.

I see these complaints about Mage a lot. I didn't believe them when I read Dave's APs or the corebook, and I definitely don't believe them now that I'm in an Awakening 2e game. Your character CAN'T do everything. Magic CAN'T solve every problem for you just by slinging spells right at the problem. Awakening's open ended magic system has actually allowed me to pursue creative workarounds just as well, if not better, than I would be able to in some extremely low powered game where magic doesn't even sound worth the time to learn.

You can kill a person if you apply very small current to their heart muscle. Don't have to be a fucking lightning god.
You can apply a tiny amount of heat to their kidneys and they will die horribly in a few days. Don't have to know how to cast fireballs.
That's only talking murderhobo stuff.

But it's extremely dependent on the DM, I guess. I had a good DM, but not good enough to be incentivised to think hard, although the story was great. You had to think. Our experiences do not necessarily invalidate each other, you know?

>You can kill a person if you apply very small current to their heart muscle. Don't have to be a fucking lightning god.
Electricity only deals bashing damage. You'd have to hold that current there for a long time with the deliberate intent of killing the person. Enjoy your Killing Blow and Sin against Falling Wisdom with a dice pool of 1.
>You can apply a tiny amount of heat to their kidneys and they will die horribly in a few days. Don't have to know how to cast fireballs.
See above.

You do shit like that on the regular, and you will start to feel the balance in Mage's system as you gradually lose your chances to contain Paradoxes, get Conditions that replace one of your Obsessions (thereby cutting off one of your sources of EXP) and force you to suffer a Paradox, and get hit with Paradox Conditions that can, just for example, take away your ability to even attempt to contain Paradoxes. Not to mention the narrative consequences of being a psycho and throwing magic at every little thing.

If your experience in Mage was great and you had to think, why are you claiming that the magic system means you don't have to think?