Resistance and resiliance magic.

[Asyme]

Anyone tried using a system in Legend for magic that doesn't use magic points? (which I've never much liked - it tends to leave casters dead in the water after a few spells and my game tends to have mages as a very distinct thing from the warrior types).

I was debating a simple toughness test instead. E.g. cast a common magic type spell and make a resistance roll or take damage - but before fumbling around trying to decide how difficulties could work at various ranks of magic, thought I'd ask if anyone does anything similar and how they might handle it.

 

[Dan True]

Mixster has worked a bit on a Warhammer-like system, where on can cast as many spells as one likes - but with a risk each time. Perhaps he can give some inspiration.

- Dan

 

[Asyme]

That would be great if he could.

At the minute in my game what amounts to common magic can have variable levels of magnitude, but at risk of physical damage (they're powered by the caster, so run a risk of burning them out - as a result it's seen as blunt, slightly inefficient magic by adepts).

Spirit magic is considered the 'higher' form of magic and doesn't damage the caster - but can exhaust them and cause will drain/fatigue.

Divine magic summons nameless angels (only the gods know their true names and are able to actually command them) capable of performing huge effects - while sorcery is a lost art.

I was playing around with some kind of 'rank of spell = a level of potency which acts similar to a poison' while commanding a spirit acts as a similar but mental one. Better suggestions always welcome though!

 

[Deleriad]

This is a variant of one of the many sorcery systems I tried back in the 90s which might be a start on what you want.

Say you have a magic skill, let's call it Magic% for now.
Every spell, summoning etc has a Potency, rated as a percentage. The stronger the spell, the higher the potency.
Casting a spell is an opposed roll of your skill vs the spell's Potency.
If you win (i.e. you succeed at your roll and do better than the spell) then you cast the spell.
If you lose (i.e. if you fail or the spell does better) then you don't cast the spell.

Where you can make it 'fun' is to think in terms analogous to combat manoeuvres.

You win but get no CMs. (e.g. you succeed and the spell succeeds but you roll better). You cast the spell but suffer a minor drawback. Maybe a level of fatigue or some minor problem.

You lose but get no CMs against you. (i.e. you fail and the spell fails). You fail to cast the spell and suffer a minor drawback.

However if you get (or suffer) CMs you can increase the power of the spell or suffer worse drawbacks.

E.g. Positive CMs might be that the spell's Magnitude or effect is increased somehow or it last s longer or has some other effect.

Negative CMs might be increased damage, increased fatigue, temporary characteristic loss and so on.

Of course, critical CMs (positive and negative) could be much stronger. Negative CMs (i.e. spell victories) could be tabulated on some sort of escalating chart with particular schools of magic having access to unique CMs.

So casting magic is going to hurt you eventually, you just never know when.

Difficulty is spells with the resist trait. There I suggest that you resist against the original spell roll.

Example. Marvo (Magic 73%) wants to cast Dart of Slight Pain (40%) at Thuggo the Barbarian. The Dart is a Resist (Resilence) spell. Marvo rolls 52 and the spell 31. Marvo wins but gets no CM as both he and spell made their roll. This means Marvo suffers the normal minor drawback associated with Dart (a stabbing pain in the forehead causing 1 HP of damage to the head ignoring all protection.) Thuggo, Resilience 81% must now overcome Marvo's roll of 52 with his Resilience. He rolls 90 and fails anyway you look at it.

 

[Asyme]

Aye - that sounds roughly what I was thinking of but I think I'd probably shift the emphasis on the magic skill being what helps resist damage/fatigue rather than whether the spell actually fires or not.

I noticed from speaking to my players the one problem they had with certain skills in the system is the belief that a roll was effectively 'useless'. I think they'd rather go something like:

Crit success: Your spell succeeds at maximum efficency
Success: it fires and you take no damage
Fumble: It fires but you take damage
Critical failure: It fails and something very bad happens.

As an aside on this one I always liked warhammers approach (which is hard to mirror with percentile dice). Roll a d10 for each level of magic. if you get doubles its bad. The more of the same number you get the worse the effect is. So a total risk/reward mechanism which suited that bleak vicious world.

 

[Titus]

Anyone tried using a system in Legend for magic that doesn't use magic points? (which I've never much liked - it tends to leave casters dead in the water after a few spells and my game tends to have mages as a very distinct thing from the warrior types).

Just so you know where I am coming from, I do like magic point systems. I GMed RQ for many years and a D&D/Pathfinder game I am currently playing in is using a magic point variant for spellcasting.

If you feel the problem is that the mages run out of MPs too quickly, you can make MP storage devices or MP sources more common in your game. Possibly introduce familiars to the setting. Age of Treason has a relatively common enchantment for creating a familiar. The sorcerer is in mindlink with the familiar and so can use its MPs.

Another possibility is to consider the MPs to be the mage's ready magical power. When that runs low, they dig deeper and suffer for their art. The mage can burn hit points or characteristic points or fatigue levels or whatever you want to allow to power their spells. You could have them used directly when the spell is cast, or you could require that the mage perform some ritual that replemishes the MP pool from the sacrifice. I would treat all of these sacrifices as temporary and recoverable. It would not be necessary to do this on a one-for-one basis. The mage might get 2 MPs for each HP lost, 2 MPs for a one level drop in fatigue, 6 MPs for a two level drop in fatigue, 12 MPs for a three level drop in fatigue, or something like that. The arithmetic progression looks good here, so maybe 1 MP for a 1 point wound to a location, 3 MP for a 2 point wound, 6 MP for a 3 point wound, 10 MP for a 4 point wound, etc.

I would probably require that any sacrifices have to be recovered naturally, but that is up to you. This has just been a brainstorming session, so there are bound to be lots of holes in it. You might end up with lots of heavily scarred mages running around.

 

[Asyme]

Cheers for that suggestion on MP - some definitely cool brainstormed ideas!

On this one I'm bowing to the players. The mages in the group expressed a particular hatred of magic points early on, back when we were using pathfinder (very briefly). As one put it 'I hate feeling like a player with the points and just a dagger carrier without them'. He can obviously do more than that but it's a fair point that our warrior never feels limited until his sword breaks.

I ran a test session for legend a few months ago and after a few rebellious looks thought 'no... this just won't fly with them'.

I tend to think as long as they're happy and not overpowered it's all good.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

There needs to be some sort of "limit" on the use of magic, whether it is in terms of Vancian/D&D "Fire & Forget" , or RQ/BRP/Legend Magic Points, otherwise Magic Users become too powerful. They might try and argue there is no limit to how often a warrior can swing his sword, but there is (even if you ignore the fatigue rules...) - A warrior who runs out of HP is out of the fight, and they have much less control of when and how many they lose than the Magic User...

The advantage of using Magic Points as a basis for spellcasting is that you can (more) easily tweak the availability of magic by changing the cost of spells, or making it easier/harder to regain Magic Points, or making "external" sources of magic points rare or common.

to balance spell casting with combat, how about rating spells rather than a set cost in Magic Points as a cost range (1d3, 1d4, 1d6 etc) and a resistance (as suggested earlier). Roll "magic skill" vs "resistance". If the "Magic Skill" is successful or wins the contest*, the spell is cast. The exact cost is based on the cost range modified by the level of success. A good enough result and the spell is free, a poor result can take you out of the fight. You'd need to play about with numbers to make this work the way you/your players want.


* so a successful "magic skill" vs a better / critical "resistance" still works but at a higher cost, as would a failed magic skill vs fumbled resistance

 

[Asyme]

Oddly I'm not entirely sure I agree.

I think on this one thing the (really not my thing) D+D4e picked up on - players need to be able to constantly DO things, and probably do 'your thing' rather than having to switch to a back up like a mage pulling out a throwing knife. As a warrior type I want to swing my axe. As a martial artist I want to kung fu my way to glory. As a mage I want to unleash a spell.

And while yes a warrior is going to be more front-line and likely to take a hit, any sensible enemy with a missile attack will ignore the meat shield and aim all their attacks on the healers/casters. We've all charged into a room with an evil caster and goons in games and tried to take him down first - it's the smart thing to do.

Magic points are definitely an approach, like mental fatigue, but I don't like the idea of that well running dry leaving the player with nothing to do. I did like two suggestions though - one that they start to burn health and that only failures cost points. Both nice ideas! I'd still like a system which is built off risk reward. At the moment in my game (which used a d6 before conversion) I had them roll the rank of the spell vs their toughness. If the spell 'won', they took damage based on the number of successes it achieved. E.g. if the spell beat toughness by 3 successes, they took 6 damage. Spirits did the same but against will. And there were a few ways to effectively muffle the damage (talismans and blood sacrifice). I quite liked that as a simple approach. You push the spell, you start to do big things, but your eyes start bleeding. Likewise summon a big spirit, there's a chance you get possessed and ridden around like a pony.

 

[Prime_Evil]

This may not be directly relevant, but I've been toying with a house rule where spellcasters who run out of magic points can elect to spend hit points instead. This means that they are using their own life force to power the spells, inflicting physical harm upon themselves each time they cast. Obviously this is a very painful way to cast spells and and not something that should be done lightly. Most spellcasters only use it as an absolute last resort because it can also be extremely dangerous. Any fumble on the casting roll is potentiallycatastrophic - for example, a mistake while casting the spell in this way might snuff out the caster's life force like a candle, inflicting 1d4 damage for each point of magnitude invested in the spell.

 

[RangerDan]

This is a just a random aside, but unlike D&D, there's no real in-built reason in RQ/Legend for a spellcaster low on MP to have nothing to do. In D&D wizards and their like have low attack bonuses and bad armour, and always will. No such restriction in RQ/Legend.

Admittedly the economics of a limited pool of Improvement Rolls mean that PCs who focus on spellcasting skills will likely have lower combat skills. On the other hand, that same Improvement Roll system means that even a modest investment of IRs can increase any caster to a moderate level of competence in combat... far more so than players used to D&D or Pathfinder might expect. In RQ there's nothing stopping a spellcaster from putting on plate armour and swinging a halberd when the magic points go low.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

This is a just a random aside, but unlike D&D, there's no real in-built reason in RQ/Legend for a spellcaster low on MP to have nothing to do.

There is this as well. RQ traditionally doesn't have "Magic Users" in the D&D sense. Magic is one of the tools available to the character and the clever player chooses wisely when to use it..

 

[Asyme]

Sure - but my games tend to be a bit more specialized. Just personal preference but I don't have common magic, and my group tends to slot into roles - be it the social monster, the warrior, the expert marksman etc.

I often have players arguing with me why they think a skill is too high 'and can I lower it? possibly?' or offering to take old wounds. Strange but true.

 

[Titus]

How about this option for an MP-less system?

Using the core rules, determine what the MP cost would have been. Then use that times 20% as the difficulty of casting the spell using an opposed test. This could work for both common magic and sorcery.

Things to consider:
- penalty for failure to cast (none, injury, fatigue, some temporary poison/disease condition, random from these, etc.)
- for sorcery, reduce the effect/potency (or whatever we call 10% or 20% of grimoire skill) to reduce the difficulty of casting
- this might skew the ability to resist spells somewhat, since to cast the spell successfully the caster has generally had to roll reasonably well
- allow additional time to cast to increase chances of success
- allow additional time to cast to reduce difficulty
- should there be a penalty for having already cast extended duration spells
- LOTS of other things which are eluding me at the moment

 

[Titus]

Asyme,

What kind of magic system are your players used to?

I am curious because the systems I am familiar with limit how much mages can do in some fashion.

Pathfinder/D&D3rd and earlier restrict the number of spells cast per day. 4th Ed does include At Will spells/powers, so a mage always has those available. But their main spells are still limited to once an encounter or once a day.

 

[Asyme]

A homebrew.

We have been using a variant of Song of Ice and Fire (essentially a d6 based game with specializations providing bonus dice - one of those 4d6 + 2 bonus d6 things. Roll 6 dice and subtract the worst 2).

When I started it I said higher magic was firmly in the hands of the temples, and the most common form was spirit magic. Mages summoned and bound spirits (usually related to their gods) which they could command to do all manner of things as long as I thought it was 'reasonable'. So a fire elemental would be useless at healing, but could draw the heat from the air to freeze things. All spirits had names, forms and so on. Controlling them drained the players will, with 1s rolled burning it away until they collapsed or were possessed.

The problem with this was freeform magic suits some players - less so others. One of our mages in particular was always at a loss of what to do. They liked the idea of magic being flexible and being able to describe what it does, but in practice were often a bit confused.

I'd been reading runequest 2 for it's spirit magic (which I began borrowing) and rolled in what I called temple spells - effectively a halfway house between divine and common magic. Temple Spells which were all predefined and were very fire and forget. Players didn't get many of them and spirit users considered them crude and awkward as they ran off the players health. A fumble or failure effectively burnt the players own soul, making them effective but dangerous (and in the eyes of proper magi inefficient).

Basically I liked the mages being able to cast when and well they wanted, but with a risk/reward factor tied in. The will and toughness rolls they had to make were affected by the strength of the spells. Cast a weak damage spell (say 1dice) and your toughness could almost certainly suck it up - but it did sod all damage. Cast something impressive like a 5d6 one and it was VERY impressive but most magi had awful toughness, so they were likely to hurt themselves badly as well.

 

[RangerDan]

Asyme, you mention D&D 4e at-will powers. You could create something similar in Legend.
NOTE: This is just an idea popped into my head... it's not necessarily balanced or even a good idea .

Let's create a stat/value for all characters called Channeling Score.
Channeling Score is always equal to current Magic Points / 5 (rounded down). Most spellcasters with full magic points will have a score of 2 or 3.

Any spell succesfully cast that uses MP equal to or under the Channeling Score is free. Zero cost.
Failures consume one MP and fumbles full MP as usual.

So casters can generally toss around lower-powered spells at no cost as long as they are conservative. Longer battles will still erode their reserves due to casting failures. Bigger spells will also quickly erode their reserves. What I like is that as magic reserves go down you are encouraged to blow your remaining power on big magic as there is no advantage to casting small anymore. MP regeneration may have to be tweaked for this to make sense.

Again, just an idea for creating D&D-style "at-will" spellcasting in Legend.

EDIT: Just read your post on your setting... doesn't sound like this would fit at all .

 

[Prime_Evil]

Here's a quick idea for an alternative system that uses magic points in a slightly different way

Under this system,spellcasters do not expend any magic points to power their spells. Instead, a spellcaster draws upon the ambient magical energy of their immediate surroundings. Some areas are rich in ambient magical energy while others are poor in energy. However, all locations have a maximum safe limit on the amount of magical power that a caster can safely draw. For this reason, it is necessary keep track of magic point expenditure as per the standard rules. When a spellcaster reaches the limit on the amount of energy that can be drawn from a location, there is a risk of a backlash as the very fabric of reality resists further manipulation.

In game terms, characters can cast spells normally until the running total of expended magic points exceeds the amount of free magical energy in their immediate vicinity. Once they exhaust the available ambient magical energy, they suffer a cumulative -10% penalty to all skill rolls to cast additional spells. On a failed roll, it is necessary to roll on a backlash table of some kind.

Under this system, it is presumed that the ambient magical energy of an area replenishes itself gradually over time. I'm not sure how the rate of regeneration should be calculated, but it should prevent spellcasters from being able to instantly recharge their powers.

What do people think of the concept so far?

 

[Asyme]

Mmm - that's a very cool one as well. Means a character could effectively move to a new location dramatically without having to say 'I lie down for ages' while his or her friends do heroic stuff.

 

[DamonJynx]

The fun thing with fantasy RPG's is swinging a sword and casting magic. The hard thing is to balance out the difference in power levels between the two. Magic IMO, is generally far more potent and 'disruptive' to the GM's plans than a capable melee or ranged combatant. Which is why I like the Legend idea that when you run out of MP's you have to rest to recover them. Gandalf didn't blow his MP wracking a half dozen Orcs, he saved them for the big stuff, Balrogs and chasing away whole flaming armies!

I would suggest having your players muck around with different character builds that encourage them to hone other abilities so that they have a fall back. Missile specialists for example, if the idea of a mage in scale mail with a spear and shield is too much of a departure for them. But as always YLMV.