Magic! (Part 2)

Alright, so in the earlier post, I mentioned that I have no idea how to handle magic in our game, at all.  But I am persevering and attempting to come up with some reasonable way to include magic without making it too overpowered and without completely gimping the magic users, which is honestly much more difficult than it sounds.

Here's what I'm thinking:

- Every magic user gets a set of spells to start with, let's say 5 that he can cast as many times a day as he wants (aka cantrips), 3 that he can cast 2-3 times a day (1st level), and 2 that he can cast 1 time a day (2nd level).  This gives them a grand total of 10 spells that they have on hand at any given time and can cast whenever (so long as they haven't used them to their limit for that day)

Now, that might not seem like a whole lot, but think about it, 5 of them you can use as many times as you want.  That's a lot of spells, we'll have to be careful with the selection  here as it could easily become abuseable.  You get 2-3 spells that work sort of like a SLA in D&D, and are relatively powerful, and you get 2 big bangs that are exceptionally powerful but you have to ration.

We can tinker with the specific numbers but at this point that's what I'm going to stick with.  Remember that they "level up" cards can help augment spells so they could potentially make them much more powerful over time, which would essentially be showing that through practice, one can get better at the specifics of casting and magic. (Within reason, we may have to limit this)

Now let's say that since the spell list is so small, someone wants to augment it.  Can they?

Why certainly, through various means actually.  Here's a few that I thought of that I think might be good:

- They can purchase a 1 time use scroll or tome to cast a bigger better spell, or one that they think might be handy but they don't have in their current spell list. (This costs money which forces the players to be careful in their spell selection, and they can't hulk up on spells)

- They can use a ritual to summon some sort of underworld nasty: like a djinn or a demon, or potentially an angel or god (for the faithful), or a forest/earth spirit (for the natural), and ask for a boon of a powerful spell. However, this will cost them something, and not something that's a normal cost.  It might be souls, it might be years of servitude, it might be the ability to see color, the ability to fall in love, etc.  Something interesting.  This would do two things: severely limit the use of powerful  magic, and it would add a lot to the roleplaying and flavor.

- They can cast their big "once a day" spell for a second time, or a spell they don't know, at severe cost to themselves, and with a chance of failure (say 25 - 50%).  For example, Johnny's party is almost dead and he's out of fireball, he knows that it's a last shot, so he reaches inside of himself and manages to cast it, however something terrible happens, say he loses some of his stats and won't recover for a week, or he blows his hand off, or he goes mentally insane for a time, etc.  That way it's a last chance gambit and it adds weight to it, it would also be beneficial to roleplaying.

I think that this way we can give mages the versatility that they deserve and give them some really solid power and interesting flavor, without making them too powerful, tell me what you think.