Mechanics (Magic System)

[DeathNote]

All suggestions and thoughts on the current spell system go here. Please be constructive and thoughtful to others opinions and I will attempt to keep the OP updated with current ideas.

[T-Bone]

SPACE SAVED

[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.

[T-Bone]

DN, is there a particular reason you guys chose to limit Magic to Elementalism?

[DeathNote]

I had nothing to do with the creation of the magic system. So I dont know.

[inspiratieloos]

It isn't.

[inspiratieloos]

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

[DeathNote]

The Gold discussion is still open if people want to tweak it more but for now, Magic is our next target to finish.

Please look over the current rules and lets fix them to work for Amstaad!!! Thanks guys!

[DeathNote]

I just realized that the Magic system has so much that goes into it that I should probably narrow it down a bit to help us tackle this sucker one step at a time.

Here is what I suggest we work on first:

The relation of Skill/Phases vs Magic. Currently we have it so that you must pick Magic as an Aspect of one phase in order to gain a skill in Magic. Your relative skill in magic determines to power level and amount of magic that can be used each day. We should work out how Magic will be gained. Should players have to pick Magic as an aspect? Is there an alternative? What should be determined as "Mana" for the caster to limit their usage of magic?

Just some food for thought....

[CooLDoG]

You could have limits as to how long apart spells can be cast. For example Once per day for the really really powerful magic, and at any time for weak "magic missiles". Mana seems dumb, and it would force the mods to play the numbers game again.

[Bub Bidderskins]

In terms of skills, I think to get magic you need some sort of magical attribute that will determine how you focus your magic. What specific attribute you choose is mainly for RP purposes, but you have to choose something like "Wizard" or "Sorcerer" or "Warlock".

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.

For limits on spell use, we could use something like a very simplified mana system. When you advance a spell, you add little boxes next to it just like attributes. 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. Once all the boxes are checked off, you may no longer cast the spell until after a period of rest. You can also use your magic attribute to "forgive" a failed check. This could also allow for potions and items that can restore spell usage, if you wish to put those in the game, but we're not going to get into that now.

[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.

[Bub Bidderskins]

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.

Good point.

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

This is different. Gold is a fixed amount. You will never spend less gold by chance. However, whether or not you can cast a spell is based on your personal endurance. It isn't a set resource like mana.

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?

True, I was just restating it.

[CooLDoG]

I think the more that you gain in one branch of magic the better spells you can cast in that branch. It shouldn't be that you have to learn specific spells for years to actually use them.

Just say, "Hay you got level five in necromancy, that's pretty high. You can rase all sorts of corpses from the dead, but you can't raise mythological creatures until level 7"

I would say that we should define all the branches of magic. Then for each branch make rough approximations as to what you can cast at each level. You must have at least ONE skill point in a branch to cast a spell. Meaning that every person does not have magic.

[DeathNote]

I think we use both the add one and the change but one is for combat and the other is for actions. I need to look up which its which.

[Yaw]

Don't we have "magic theory" already? I know it was in the defunct Amstaad, and I remember a post with an updated version when this started up again. If that was lost in the crash, can it be recreated? Would at least give a starting point here.

[T-Bone]

Okay, first thing for any magic system, we have to decide how powerful magic is. If magic is a game changer, it needs to be limited in some way IE Magic Points. If it isn't a big deal, than Magic can be rolled for like any other skill.

Now assuming we want Magic to be big an awesome, it needs to be limited in some way. I'd suggest adding a 'Magic Point' attribute. So that each spell will cost a certain amount of magic points, and once you're out of magic points, you can't cast anymore magic till it recharges. This is the standard in most RPG systems.

Aspects do indeed need to specify magic, perhaps in the way Bud described it. Now some games define the type of magic you can do. Black, White, Purple, Thamuturgy, Elemental, etc. And we can do that to limit the variety. The advantage of this, no one tries to push the limits and breaks the game. I can come up with about 20-30 spells per tree, and for every Aspect a person can pick a few spells to be adept in (as in can cast them without fail), and then the rest of the spells can be attempted, but have a chance of failing. The level of a spell determines it's magic point cost, and how hard it is to cast it if someone is not adept at it. So for example...

Max is a Novice Mage who uses Purple magic. Purple Magic is magic 'From within'. Meaning the Mage uses his own spirit to call forth the magic. He wants to cast Sleep 1. A Level 3 novice spell. He's not adept at it. When he took the spell, he put a single rank into it. So he needs to make a roll at 1, and he must meet the spell difficulty. So he makes the appropriate roll under the Fate system, and only gets a 2. The spell fails. Next turn, he tries casting Paralyze 1, a spell he is adept at. The spell goes off automatically, and his target needs to make a save.

I hope that makes sense. This is a balanced system I'm taking from another game and tweaking it for FATE rules. So if this is the direction we want to go, a few of us can come up with spell lists and such. This system also lends well to being able to level skills often. Maxing out a spell list means devoting all your time to magic. That means that your non-magic skills will take a hit, but that's how it should be anyway. A skilled swordsman wouldn't have time to be a Master Wizard, and a Mage wouldn't have time to be a fighting Champion.

Of course we can also make magic free form and have people invent their own magic. If that's how we want to do it, we'll all have to take a look at it case by case. It'll be a little more difficult that way, but it can be done. It's much easier to define magic before hand.

Of course, magic could not be a game changer and just be mundane. if that's the case, one of the other systems would be better. My proposition works only if we want magic to be a game changer in terms of what can and cannot be done.

[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.

[Yaw]

There we go.

The way this used to work, the different styles of magic worked completely differently. So if you do conjuration, your mind and actions would know how to do conjuration, and it'd be hard to transfer the skill to alchemy. Of course, someone could do both, but they'd have to have skills or aspects in both (however we choose to do this). The advantage was that everyone would know exactly how magic works, and rules could be built to support that (also, mods and players would have flavour to refer to in-game, and a reasonable background to decide if and how things happened).

Of what we had, I think sorcery (what is now fire/water/air/earth) needed the most work. The basic idea there was that the sorcerer would gather up materials through some means, and combine the elements to produce some effect. Effects would then be limited by how much of each element the sorcerer could get, with the side effect that the elements would be lacking elsewhere. For example, gathering fire could make the surrounding area colder. While this is nice to think of (with a lot of parallels to conservation of mass and energy), there are problems. One is that the sorcerer can suddenly do two things at once -- both making a fireball and freezing someone at the same time! The other issue is that sorcery is so free-form that players can come up with ways to kill anything just by being creative (nothing's really going to stand up to having their kidneys on fire). I don't believe the "magical code of ethics" proposal from before is sufficient to stop this kind of nonsense, so something needs to be tweaked pretty severely here.

The other three (nature didn't exist before) were fairly well mapped out. Alchemy can be based off actual alchemy pretty easily, with a bit of elaboration for fantasy (so alchemists mixing up various substances with the intention of achieving some kind of enlightenment). There were different divination methods for each race, from crystal balls to throwing bones. The only thing here is to try to go more on the cryptic end of things, the point is not to tell players the future. Conjuration was the interesting one. The original idea was to be able to just create stuff. Amended, the conjurer takes a mental journey to the astral realm, chooses something there to bring to the real world, and it will manifest. Except it's a deferred payment plan -- the longer that item is around, the more tired the conjurer gets, until they finally give it back (or go unconscious). The nice part here is that all the mod has to do for conjuring is figure out how long the item can stay. Something small might stay for until the conjurer sleeps. Try to bring a demon into the world, it might last a millisecond before the conjurer blacks out.

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.

[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.

[Bub Bidderskins]

I agree that we shouldn't have a "spell list". We should just give guidelines to what the players can do. I think we should encourage creativity by the players. Even if they come up with something totally ridiculous, the mods could compensate by setting the difficulty level ridiculously high. So yeah, you can

try

to throw your tiny fireball down the enemy's throat, through his esophagus, and explode in his stomach, just don't expect it to hit.

[quadz08]

"Cale'banon, you've turned off your targeting spellputer"

[Kcdaspot]

"YEEE HAAA KID NOW BLAST THAT THING AND LET'S GO HOME"

[T-Bone]

You don't draw the magic from material components. Some system require components to focus the magic. You draw the magic from within yourself, or from external spirits or something like that. So worrying about material components is a meh prospect.

I love Nature magic. Druids can do some pretty cool things in DnD that Mages can't and vise-versa.

Inspir's list also lacks White magic, Black magic, and Thamathurgy. Three important staples.

When I say each discipline needs a spell list, that doesn't mean it has to have set-spells that everyone can use and only use. I mean defining the magic each list does. It'd be silly for example if everyone had a "Healing" spell in their list. But you define spells and what their effects are, then the characters can describe how their presented. So two characters throwing 'Fireballs' might describe how the magic is done differently. We set limits as to what magic can do, and give the players creative license in their RPs to decide how their magic works.

So if I want to throw my fireball, perhaps Quadz has them rain from the sky. Maybe KCD will wind up and toss one like he's throwing a baseball from his hand. My I throw a poker chip and it explodes in a burst of flames. Everyone has creative license to make them look as cool or as ridiculous as they want.

[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.