Will my house rules for magic work?

[grendelkin]

I'm new to Legend and am looking to get back into gaming after a 10 year hiatus. So far I really like what I see from this system . . . it seems to fix nearly everything I had come to despise about D and D. Anyway, I'm resurrecting and rethinking and retooling my old campaign world to fit Legend and have some thoughts about how I want to handle magic. I'm looking to create a gritty setting where magic is relatively rare but powerful and is integral to the story, a world where

magic was once commonplace and powerful but has been forever touched by the "Taint." In most cultures magic is now a dangerous and reviled and often illegal art, and much past lore has been lost and is better left forgotten. There are those, of course, for whom the lure of power is irresistible regardless of the consequences, and there are also those who believe that magic can and must be mastered to combat the very darkness that would overwhelm it.

So here's the house rule that I'm toying with to accomplish these ends. I don't really want to limit the power of magic so much as I want to add some risk and flavor and potential cultural baggage in a way that fits the history and cosmology of my setting. In a nutshell, a fumble in a spellcasting attempt puts the caster at risk for a spiritual illness (I'm more-or-less treating this as a disease per game rules):

Dark Plague
When a character fumbles while casting a spell, a brief tear in the fabric of magic is created, exposing the caster to the corrupting horrors of the Void. The more powerful the magic attempted, the more severe the threat that this Taint poses to the caster. Failure to resist this mental and spiritual assault can results in Dark Plague, a spiritual illness of fever, nightmare, and madness that can have permanent effects.

Trigger:
Spell failure--fumble

Onset time:
Immediate

Potency:
10 + 5 per Magic Point involved in the casting attempt.

Resistance:
Opposed skill roll, Taint Potency vs character’s Persistence. The initial roll is made in the Combat Round following spell failure, and the character is considered debilitated (as per fatigue rules) while trying to resist. Failure on this persistence roll means the caster is overwhelmed and will suffer from the conditions below.

Daily Conditions:
Fever, muscled ache, shivering, nightmare, and paranoia. The character continues to be debilitated (as per fatigue rules) and has all skills halved until the Taint is finally resisted.

Duration:
Indefinite, until the character makes a successful persistence roll.

Recovery Attempts:
Characters suffering from Dark Plague make a daily roll to resist the Taint (requiring opposed roll of Taint Potency vs persistence as before). Success means the character pushes back the Taint, recovers his or her full faculties, and stops suffering from the symptoms. Failure, on the other hand, means the debilitating symptoms continue.

Permanent Effects:
While any character who experiences a struggle with the Taint is unlikely to ever forget the experience and recover fully in a psychological sense, a character who succumbs to Dark Plague runs the risk of suffering more severe permanent effects.

First, if a character fails an opposed check by two levels of success (Persistence fumble vs. Potency success or Persistence failure vs Potency critical success), he or she permanently loses the ability to generate his or her own Magic Points. Magic simply no longer works for the character as before. However, the character can gain Magic Points through blood sacrifice as per the Blood Magic sourcebook.

Moreover, if a character fails an opposed check by three levels of success (Persistence fumble vs Potency critical success), he or she permanently succumbs to Taint. The debilitating symptoms of Dark Plague cease (the character is no longer struggling against the Taint), and pure darkness, depravity, and evil takes over the character’s soul.

So I'm wondering what Legend veterans think. Would this house rule add the right amount of flavor to the setting and to playing a spell caster, or would it make magic use too risky to be a viable PC option?

Also, I'm curious about game balance, particularly among the different types of magic. At present, I'm planning on Taint's affecting common magic and sorcery but not divine magic, since the divine caster is channeling a god's power, not wielding his own. (Presumably, the typical god doesn't have to worry about spell failure . . . though I like the possibility of having a few Tainted Gods requiring blood sacrifices from their followers to maintain their power.) But if I apply this house rule to common magic and sorcery, would divine magic likewise need limiting for setting and game balance?

Any likes or dislikes? Clarifications needed? Suggested modifications?

 

[Simulacrum]

If you apply this to Common Magic and Sorcery, the Potency of 10+5 per MP used will make Sorcery less dangerous than common magic. In RAW, sorcery, in which effect scales with skill, is cheap in MPs for the level of effect you can achieve compared to Common Magic, where effect scales with magic point expenditure on progressive spells.

Other than that, it's hard to judge without a feel for how often you expect characters to be attempting to use magic. If every session rather than a scenario climax, you can bet there's be a fair few fumbles - it's sod's law at the table. Fumbles generally should be fun, create an instant awkward moment or danger. If the effect of fumbling a particular thing (that's an intrinsic part of the game) is always the same, and has ongoing effects, I suspect it could drag.

You could limit the incidence in many ways - by changing the rules application - remove the risk from Common Magic, use Magnitude as the scale etc. Or a caster is 'safe' if he goes through some kind of purifying process before the onset time or before attempting to cast, that won't always be convenient or possible.

 

[grendelkin]

n RAW, sorcery, in which effect scales with skill, is cheap in MPs for the level of effect you can achieve compared to Common Magic, where effect scales with magic point expenditure on progressive spells.

Thanks, Simulacrum. That's exactly the kind of perspective I just don't have yet . . . on my first pass through the rules, common magic seems pretty powerful, so I appreciate your thoughts on the relative strength of sorcery. I agree that Magnitude, not Magic Point cost, should be the scaling factor for Potency.

Or a caster is 'safe' if he goes through some kind of purifying process before the onset time or before attempting to cast, that won't always be convenient or possible.

I've been thinking about this, too. For the purposes of realism, it occurs to me that improvement rolls must represent a lot of PC "practice casting" going on between game sessions and that there needs to be some sort of "safe" way to accomplish this. Perhaps in game terms a caster could be "safe" by expending 50% more Magic Points on any given spell? Would make for some hard/interesting decisions on how much risk to take in the course of a game session.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I would suggest only using the Taint and Dark Plague on Sorcery. Don't allow Common Magic at all (or make it VERY rare) and severely limit Divine Magic (maybe).

That makes Sorcery even more scary and dark and dangerous than the rules imply.

 

[grendelkin]

Thanks for the replies. I guess I'm trying to walk a difficult dividing line between putting a gentle break on magic use (and giving some definition to the history and flavor of my campaign setting) and yet keeping magic use accessible enough to still be an attractive choice for players.