A truck full of inspiration struck this week, and I think that I might actually have a decent system for magic use in our game, which means I can really start hammering out the various classes that use magic, or are similar to magical classes. Hopefully, this works out and is balanced enough.
Anyway, my suggestion is that characters essentially have a mana pool based on their magical attribute score, for instance, a Wizard would use double his Ambition score, and a Priest would use double their Faith score, whereas a Shaman would ... well, they're a little bit different, but we'll get to them when I talk about their class.
Anyway, there are several "schools" of magic that have various "focuses", a magic user can select both schools and focuses, I don't know how many yet, maybe their casting score or half their casting score? We'll have to playtest to find the balance. Suffice to say, Schools are broad areas of expertise that give very broad amounts of power, whereas the focus is a smaller thing, but it gives an extra bit of power to the spell, but removes some versatility. Potential schools and focuses, and their effects are listed below:
Arcane User (a la Wizard):
- Destruction (School) - When cast, a generic Destruction spell deals 1d6 touch damage
- Electricity ( Destruction Focus) - When cast, a generic Electric spell deals 1d6 touch damage and stuns the opponent for the following turn
- Fire (Destruction Focus) - When cast, a generic Fire spell deals 2d6 touch damage
- Ice (Destruction Focus) - When cast, a generic Ice spell deals 1d6 touch damage and slows the opponent for 2 turns
- Acid (Destruction Focus) - When cast a generic Acid spell deals 1d6 touch damage and 2 armor damage
- Force/Wind (Destruction Focus) - When cast, a generic Force/Wind spell deals 1d6 damage (up to 10 feet away) and pushes the opponent back 20 feet.
- Divination (School) - When cast, allows a player to do one of two things: detect a magical presence within 20 feet, send a message to someone within 30 feet.
- Detection (Focus) - ???
- Communication (Focus) - ???
- Illusion (School) - When cast, a generic Illusion spell allows the caster to make an immobile silent image that occupies up to 10 feet of space, up to 10 feet away from him that lasts for 3 rounds.
- Summoning (School) - When cast, a generic Summoning spell allows the caster to summon 1 common monster within 10 feet of himself, he lasts for 3 rounds.
- Demonic (Focus) - When cast, a generic Demonic spell allows the caster to summon 1 common monster with the Demonic characteristic within 10 feet of himself. This also causes all opponents within 20 feet of the demon to feel fear. He lasts for 3 rounds.
- Fey (Focus) - When cast, a generic Fey spell allows the caster to summon 1 common with the Fey characteristic within 10 feet of himself. This also causes 2 opponents within 30 feet of the fey to be charmed. He lasts for 3 rounds.
- Enchantment (School) - Used to apply fear/charms/mind magic, etc. - ???
- Forbidden (School) - Anything extra that Divine users don't have?
Divine User (a la Priest)
- Destruction (school) - same as above
- Light - When a generic light spell is cast, 1d6 touch damage and creates a light that lasts for 5 rounds
- Darkness - When a generic darkness spell is cast 1d6 touch damage and creates a 10 foot cloud of darkness for 3 rounds.
- Creation (school) - works similarly to the Illusion school, except the item lasts for a day, and can only be up to 5x5'. They can use this to create whatever, be it food, water, items, etc, so long as they are common items. NO MAGICAL ITEMS. These items cannot be sold, because a store owner can tell that it's magical and it will eventually go away.
- Protection (school) - a generic protection spell grants touch 1d6 damage absorption
- Focuses???
- Alteration (school) - a generic alteration spell can either: fix a broken item (as long as all the pieces are there), make something 1 category larger or smaller on touch for 3 rounds.
- Focuses???
- Holy (school) - Anything extra that Arcane users don't have?
As you can see, there's a lot of questions as to what certain spells can do and whatnot, but I think it's a decent start for wizards and divine users. I know more what to do with damage spells because that concept is less loose around the edges, some of the other spells are a little kinky. But the good thing about the system is that it gives them a lot to play with, while at the same time not allowing them to become too powerful.
Now, as for the mana pool I was talking about. Essentially, you get double your casting stat points that you can spend to enhance spells in the following ways:
- 1 pt. - Add 1d6 damage
- 1 pt. - Double Duration of spell
- 1 pt. - Double Distance spell can be cast from magic user
- 1 pt. - Increase the chance "to hit" of spell by +1
- 1 pt. - Double Area of Effect (doubling touch makes it 5 feet)
- 1 pt. - Cast spell unnoticed
- 1 pt. - Add 10 feet of movement for 2 rounds
- 1 pt. - Add effect to spell, such as sound, noise, lights, etc.
- 2 pt. - Combine 2 spells together
- More as we think of them.
Notes on this: only up to 5 points can be spent on a spell, every point over 5 spent on a spell, causes 2 casting stat damage or 10 HP damage to the caster. Also, if mana pool is completely spent and user wants to still use points, they must take 2 casting stat damage or 10 HP damage for every point they spend. If their casting stat drops by half, they fall unconscious. At zero they are dead.
Example A: Wizard A wants to make a huge Fire spell, he uses 4 points to make it 6d6 damage, he then spends two more to double the distance to 20 feet (touch, 10, 20). So he just spend 6 points total. That is one over 5, so he takes 10 HP damage or 2 Ambition damage.
Example B: Priest A wants to make an awesome creation, so he spends 10 points to make a huge creation. (10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560, 5080) This creation is 5080' x 5080', so it's a skyscraper. However, he only had 5 he could use for the spell, so he's going to take damage. He can choose to either take 50 HP damage, which will kill him, or 10 Faith damage, which will also kill him. So even though he can potentially make crazy incredible things, he will most likely die in the process.
So there you have it: versatility, choice, and consequence, all bunched up into one kickass little system. Granted, it's still a bit wonky and we'll need to playtest it, but I think that we could almost certainly make this an incredibly elegant part of the system. Frankly, I want to play a caster, and I hate playing casters.
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