Mechanics (Magic System)

[inspiratieloos]

Main problem with the current system is that you need to give up a skill point for every individual spell you want to learn. Also, the way mage aspects work it promotes characters that start as mages and then change to something else.

From general discussion:

Btw, have you considered just adopting either the 'Brass Compass', 'Great Lighthouse' or 'Sorcery on a Budget' systems form the FATE guidebook (pdf pages 51, 56 and 58)? All of these avoid the 'have to spend a skill point for every spell I might want to cast' problem.

Great Lighthouse seems to be the most flexible, you have 1 aspect in the preferred type of magic, giving you unlimited 'cantrips'. You can spend a skill point to purchase a 'stunt' which comes down to 'one bigger/instant effect per day per stunt'.

Spoiler: Great Lighthouse

So the character would have
Aspect: Pyromancy
Skill: Pyromancy x2 (good)
[2 other skills]

This allows him to create and control relatively small flames, have some protection from fire, etc. (after a check) all day long.
On a later aspect he turns in 2 skills for 2 stunts
Aspect: Pyromancy
Skill Pyromancy (good, 2 stunts)
[4 other skills]

He can now, twice during a day, use a larger effect (throwing a fireball, setting something on fire during combat, etc.), he still rolls with a good skill.
You could exchange stunts for a 'magical endurance' skill, allowing someone to use it for all his spells instead of just a single type, but it would be inside the skill pyramid requiring you to also have multiple other skills.

Brass Compass is closest to the current system. You have aspects in your preferred discipline then skills in the type of expression, you can cast any spell within your limits.

Spoiler: Brass Compass

You need an aspect in the magic skill equal to the scope of what you want to do, then you roll for the skill you have in the type of effect you want (Evocation, Summoning, Mastery, Dispelling). You can do pretty much anything within this range.
A possible disadvantage is that a full mage character could conceivably annihilate any form of opposition.

Character:
Aspect: Pyromancer (officially: Initiate of Fire)
Skill: Evocation x2 (good)
Skill: Mastery (fair)
Skill: Summoning (fair)
Could consistently throw embers (finger sized) in combat, could control finger sized flames (can consistently control sparks) or make a permanent finger sized flame.

Character:
Aspect: Pyromancer x6 (Legendary)
Skill: Evocation x4 (Superb)
Skill: Mastery x3 (Great)
Skill: Summoning x3 (Great)
Skill: Dispelling x2 (Good)
[maxed skill pyramid]

Can consistently throw human sized fireballs in combat (every turn, pass on roll >= -1) could technically throw (+2), create (+3), control (+3), dispel (+4, +3 on magical flames) castle sized fireballs.

Aspects:
Pyromancer x2
Hydromancer x2
Aeromnacer x2
Lithomancer x2
Skills:
Skill: Evocation x3 (Great)
Skill: Mastery x4 (Superb)
Skill: Summoning x4 (Great)
Skill: Dispelling x3 (Good)
[Maxed skill pyramid]

Can continuously (every round, almost guaranteed pass) control opponents body parts (open hand to drop weapon, fall down when moving, etc. in addition to the normal fireball, gust, water whip and earth wall spells.

Removed Sorcery on Budget, because on second thought it doesn't really work with with what (I think) the mods had in mind for Amstaad.

[inspiratieloos]

It isn't.

[inspiratieloos]

So, T-Bone, are you going to post your suggestion? You did save the second post for it.

[inspiratieloos]

As far as skills themselves, I think magic should be in another skill pyramid. You'll have your "mundane" skills and your "magical" skills. You can spend points in either one. This is to somewhat balance mages, since otherwise learning magic would help your other skills because of the way the Fate system works. Essentially, learning magic penalizes your mundane skill advancement.

I don't like the idea of having to use a skillpoint for any single spell: (under assumption lightning falls under pyromancy) "Woo, I can throw a massive bolt of lightning after years of studying pyromancy! Now, where did I put the matches?"
Also keep in mind that in Fate learning combat skills also helps your pickpocketing/artistry/investigation/knowledge of languages/etc., so that is kind of the point.

Whenever you cast a spell, you have to make some sort of "magical tenacity" check, possibly based off a non-spell skill that is also in the magical pyramid. If you fail the check, then you check off one of the boxes for the spell.

I thought that you said in the gold thread that you didn't like having to roll to determine the use of resources?

You can also use your magic attribute to "forgive" a failed check.

This is also already built into Fate, you can use an aspect to re-roll or change the value of your roll.
@DN are we using the 'add 1' or the 'change one die' system?

I'd suggest using the first system in post 2, either as is or by changing stunts with a magical endurance skill, stunts if you prefer specialized mages, skill if you prefer generalists. The second system allows for massively powerful magic if you have a mage dedicated to a single art and also doesn't work very well with non-combat magic.

I'd also like to finally have T-Bone's mysterious magic system revealed.

[inspiratieloos]

Huh, I thought I posted here already.

Current magic styles are Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Divination, Conjuration, Alchemy and Nature. All races have certain inclinations towards certain types of magic. This can of course be completely turned around.

I don't think magic should be a game changer, all styles of combat should be roughly equal in strength, this is because in Fate a big part of building your character is having to choose skills unrelated to your main speciality to support your pyramid. If you could be an effective (game changing) caster with just a few skills it would be overpowered and if you had to spend all your skills in magic related areas to be one you'd be ignoring one of the pillars of Fate character creation. Something I'd suggest for all combat styles is that one skill allows for surviving in combat, two required for effectively fighting and a third only giving a small bonus for the dedicated fighter a fourth/fifth skill could only possibly add versatility.

I really like T-Bone's adeptness idea, if we link it to Aspects (1 area of adeptness/Aspect) it also gives a good incentive to spend more than one aspect on a type of magic. We could say that any roll of <0 is automatically treated as 0, meaning that any spell within your abilities that you're adept at you can cast without fail.
Besides the actual casting skill a 'magical endurance' skill is a logical secondary, you can cast low level spells (relative to your casting level) without endurance if you take some time, making it not

strictly

necessary (although, good luck getting more than a single spell off in a fight).
A tertiary skill could be magical theory/arcane knowledge allowing you to more easily cast hard spells through study.
Obviously versatility comes from learning multiple branches of magic.

Any character can only really excel two skills due to the way the pyramid is built. If all disciplines require at least two skills to combine two styles you need to either be a hybrid, being weaker in both, or clearly have one main style and one secondary.

[inspiratieloos]

Ftr, Nature magic is referred to as Druidism/Shamanism or something like that in the original Amstaad rules.

The big thing here is figuring out the aspects/skills for magic, and figuring out a balanced way to make Fire/Water/Air/Earth/Nature work. I personally prefer not having lists of spells, but instead a solid framework of how they work that mods can refer to, and a good understanding of the power level involved in sample effects.

Definitely this.

Gathering materials for normal casting will probably get dull fast and makes magic much harder to balance with other types of combat (non-combat magic like Alchemy/most sorts of Nature excepted of course). If all your spells require time to prepare then they have to be more powerful to be balanced, but then won't a mage one-shot all his enemies? etc.

We're playing with elves and dwarves in a medieval setting, I say we screw physics.
Just create that fireball or earth wall from nothing, who's going to stop you? The universe? We make the universe.

On the types of magic:

Fire, Water, Air, Earth

obviously (should decide whether lightning is fire, air or it's own element).

Divination

, I love the flavour, we should definitely try to get this working. My suggestion: You can look for something specific (the more absolute/detailed the harder it is) you either pass or fail, or you can look in general and you see something depending on your MoS, different methods/races are better for finding different types of things. Yeah you can look up the exact wwwwwh of a PCs death but it's going to be Legendary+++ difficulty.

Conjuration

, meh, too much trouble and how does it even work, most other types of magic you can just say use mana get effect, for conjuration you are drawing out an item from an astral realm (what is it? does everything exist there?), if I can summon a small pellet, can I also summon a small pellet filled with the most deadly poison known to man?

Alchemy

, possibly combine this with enchanting, anything that (semi-)permanently alters the properties of an object.

Nature

, prossibly divide this into healing and earth/water magic. I don't really like the whole Druidism/animal companion thing it's hard to scale, some mages having a familiar or something is possible but doesn't have to be related to one specific type of magic.

There are of course a load of more possibilities, I'm not so good at thinking those up... Lets make that T-Bone's job.

[inspiratieloos]

On the risk of sounding stupid, thamathurgy?

Also, I just listed the types of magic from the original Amstaad.

Yeah, describing the types of effects possible with every style of magic is necessary.

[inspiratieloos]

Divination, I'd imagine that if you see something absolute it is 'this would happen if you hadn't had this vision'. Trying to find something specific through this method is of course very hard.

Conjuring, why is summoning a few drops of a deadly poison harder than summoning a few drops of water? How does

everything

exist in some sort of astral plane? Conjuration is just so much different/so much more complicated than other kinds of magic. Not to mention exploitable.

Like I said, I don't think you can get around making magic equal in power to other skills without negatively impacting other aspects of the game.

[inspiratieloos]

If conjuration is so hard, how does a water/fire/earth mage work? What is preventing me from summoning bars of gold? (almost) any substance can be a solid/liquid/gas at the right temperature/pressure, as a solid you even usually summon more.

[inspiratieloos]

Something that occurred to me when making my character for the test quest.
Can we make it so that you can have an Average skill in a single magic discipline without an Aspect? For example it would make some sense for my test character to know a bit about magical healing without ever really being trained in it enough to be an Aspect.

In any case, recap:
- There are an amount of yet to be determined disciplines within magic, each discipline has a certain amount of domains you can focus on.
- To use a discipline of magic you need to have at least one Aspect in it, for every Aspect you also choose a domain to be adept in.
- You can cast any spell within any of your domains, difficulty is determined by the mod, then roll to determine success.
- If you are adept in the domain of the spell you are trying to cast and it's difficulty is equal or lower to your skill in the discipline you succeed without a roll.
- Magical stamina is to be determined (personal suggestion: a separate skill for stamina that works for all types of magic. Any spell below a certain level in relation to your skill is free, the rest costs a point. Points regenerate at a yet to be determined rate)
- The place in the skill pyramid is yet to be determined (personal suggestion: Place it in the pyramid just like other skills)

[inspiratieloos]

Fire: Balls, walls, shaping, dispelling, heating, ...
Water: Spears, walls, shaping, dispelling, cooling, ...
Earth: Boulders, walls, shaping, dispelling, ...
Wind: Blades, gusts, push, dispel, ...
Divination: Seeing, reading, dowsing, ...
Conjuring: Animals spirits, demons spirits, afterlife communing, ...
Alchemy: Potions, enchantments, creation, transformation, ...
Nature: Healing, growing, life shaping, communing, ...

[inspiratieloos]

Anyone else?

[inspiratieloos]

Ball/boulder/spear: Making a [shape] of [element] in your hand (conjured, movable).
Wall: Making a wall of [element] spring up near you from the ground (conjured, static after casting).
Shaping: Manipulating the form of a [element] some distance away from you. (works better on non-magical [element])
Dispelling: Removing (others') magical [element].
Heating/cooling(/hardening/sharpening?): Changing the properties of an object using [element]. (obviously)
, ...: Suggestions welcome.

Conjuration and manipulation are different domains of the same discipline, any fire mage can conjure a flame, but some are better at it, while others are adept at other things (of course if you have 5+ aspects in fire magic you can be good at all of them).

[inspiratieloos]

I was just being fancy with a standard projectile spell for each element. Dynamic conjuring or something works for all of them.

The difference with shaping is that you need the element already there, while the throwable objects and walls can be made at any time (mana permitting) and in almost any environment.

[inspiratieloos]

The difference is that if you want the element in a different shape than you conjured it in you'd need to cast a second spell. You can control the size/shape in which the conjured element comes into existence. Only if you want to conjure something highly complex or change the shape after firing it you'd use a second spell.

[inspiratieloos]

I was just being fancy with a standard projectile spell for each element. Dynamic conjuring or something works for all of them.

[inspiratieloos]

Executive decision:
1. Each school of magic consists of an overarching type and has 3-5 domains within that.
2. To use a school of magic you need to have at least one Aspect in it, for every Aspect you also choose a domain to be adept in.
3. Your skill in magic relates to the school, the same skill is used for all domains within the school.
4. You can think up and cast any spell (within one of your schools) on the spot, difficulty is determined by the mod, then roll to determine success.
5. If you are adept in the domain of the spell you are trying to cast and it's difficulty is equal or lower to your skill in the discipline you succeed without a roll.
6. The Mana reserves skill governs how many spells you can cast in a time period, your usable mana grows according to the triangular numbers sequence
(1, 3, 6, 10, ...), it regenerates at the same rate as aspects.
7. Casting a spell that is two levels or more below your skill level is free, a higher level spell costs 1 mana, a failed spell may cost mana depending on the situation (mod discretion)
8. When using a magic aspect to influence a roll only the school matters, you can use an aspect for a different domain to increase your roll or re-roll.
9. You may create a new school of magic for a character as long as you include 3-5 domains (even if you only use one, try to have at least 4), pending mod approval it will be added to the list of magic schools and be usable by any character. You may also create a fifth domain for any school that has 4.

The current magic schools are:
School: domain 1, ... , domain 4-5
Fire: Projectile, conjuring, shaping, dispelling, imbuing
Water: Projectile, conjuring, shaping, dispelling, imbuing
Earth: Projectile, conjuring, shaping, dispelling, imbuing
Wind: Projectile, conjuring, shaping, dispelling, imbuing
Nature: Healing, growing, communing, life shaping.
Someone should really use rule 9 to create alchemy/divination/conjuring etc.

/attempt to resurrect

[inspiratieloos]

Ice would be a combination of projectile/conjure/shape + imbue.