"Mundane magic"

[clownboss]

If we were to start our campaign as sternly as possible, and give our Magic Users just one or two(perhaps even NONE) known spells at the beginning of his career, there arises a question of justifying their invitation into a party. What band of fighters would ever want a dork who not only can barely fight, but also has nearly no palette of magic at his disposal, despite being a learned and dedicated apprentice of wizardry for presumably many years? Surely even he must've picked up a thing or two over the years.

That's why I was thinking of giving lv1 Magic Users a slightly wider range of magical abilities, that almost count as spells, but really are not, as they do not meet practical use(that are needed in dungeon expeditions, at least). You can think of these as 0-level magic.

Imagine having a Magic-User that can:
- Light a feint spark that can catch fire
- Make inoffensive fireworks that flash for just a second
- Make a rope or thread coil, untangle, or tie a knot over itself instead of doing it by hand
- Influence a coin or dice to turn a certain way(you can see some Jedi parallels here)
- Dry up his clothes if he gets soaked with a gust of wind, or use instantaneous dry-cleaning
- Blow off dust from a desk or a room floor
- If he is feeling like a prankster/traitor, blow a gust of wind on a companion's torch then run off
- Roast a chicken with no oven or fire required(needs a minute of concentration)
- Substitute an unpleasant odor with a finer smell
- Turn a fruit piece sweet instead of sour
- Create a magical invisible ink, or make invisible ink visible on a parchment
- Create fine artistic renderings with ink of an animal sketch or a map, after one seemingly clumsy swipe with a feather

And other such ideas. What do you think? I think it will give a lot more to a mage's credibility, and a level 1 spell-caster's enjoyment, if he were capable of doing just a slight bit more than being able to stick to just one underutilised level 1 spell. Of course, how many of these 0 level spells he may cast in a day will also be left up to a referee's discretion.

[talysman]

Why can't the magic-user fight?

[Stormcrow]

Play GURPS. You can do all this in the standard magic system. In fact, the simpler spells like Ignite Fire are required for the bigger spells like Explosive Fireball.

[hamurai]

Oct 23, 2017 8:38:58 GMT -6 clownboss said:

- Light a feint spark that can catch fire
- If he is feeling like a prankster/traitor, blow a gust of wind on a companion's torch then run off

Aren't these pretty practical for adventures, too?
Oil Flask + "Spark" = Boom!
Blowing out a torch can mean darkness for the enemy, too.

As talysman pointed out, the MU can fight, too. Especially at low levels there's not so much difference between a MU and a FM.

Anyway, if you give MU's such magical "tricks" or cantrips or whatever you call them, I wouldn't over-regulate the effects. Give the player an idea of the magnitude of these effects and let them get creative. Maybe require the player to come up with a gesture to cast it.
You could allow these effects to be cast spontaneously, maybe requiring and INT check to make them a little less spam-able, or give them a casting time of a full round or two.

[tetramorph]

clownboss, I understand your worry. But if you play a gritty, low-fantasy game, then having one dude with your party who can lay down a handful of goblins with a single sleep spell is some pretty good stuff to take with you into a dungeon! After that he can throw daggers from a distance and, if push comes to shove, he can hit things with his big old magic-user staff. Finally, and best of all, he isn't wearing any armor or carrying any heavy weaponry, so, guess what? He gets to carry all the treasure out for us! So I say: level one magic-user? Right on!

I like your list of "cantrips." I've found that magical solutions to or additions to the basic equipment supply lists is sometimes a nice bonus.

Fight on!

[owlorbs]

Being a long time MU lover/sympathizer, I've allowed cantrip effects to be cast at will by my players and they've used it to good effect (using UA as a stylistic guide).

[Scott Anderson]

I wrote cantrips into Treasure Hunters because they're cool and a wizard should always be able to bust out some magic spell. That's cool. Just don't make them very powerful. I think you have the right idea.

How would the fighters even know if he knew any magic spells? If the MU player says to the other players, "I am playing the magic-user," then that should be sufficient.

Go through the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and see how many spells Gandalf actually casts. It's minimal!

Having a few cantrips should be magic enough - not only to convince the several fighters, but to actually help out in the dungeon.

Here's a link to Treasure Hunters players book. Take a look at Chapter Five for cantrips. It starts on page 41 of the text/page 48 of the PDF:

drive.google.com/open?id=0B_0ONkhGdLg8VDJZS0VDT3lSNzQ

[clownboss]

Oct 23, 2017 20:38:22 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

Go through the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and see how many spells Gandalf actually casts. It's minimal!

Yes, but that's not what really matters, is it? The important thing is Gandalf can make ships out of weed smoke! Whoa!

That's a perfect list of cantrips btw, and I thank you muchly for the heads up.

[Stormcrow]

Oct 23, 2017 20:38:22 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

Go through the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and see how many spells Gandalf actually casts. It's minimal! 

Go through The Lord of the Rings book with more than a cursory reading and you'll see people, including Gandalf, doing magic far, far more subtle than crass D&D spells.

[geoffrey]

I prefer D&D magic-users to be like the magicians in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. I do not remember them doing anything "magical" outside of casting their memorized spells (which were quite limited in number).

I know that I would hire someone who could "merely" cast a single, honest-to-goodness 1st-level spell.

[talysman]

To be clear, I don't object to cantrips per se. After all, I wrote a cantrip article for Fight On! #13 ("Cantrips Gone Wild", updated version here.) The cantrips are pretty similar to those in clownboss's first post in the thread.

But I feel that why someone would want a cantrip system is more important than how the system works. I'm interested in cantrips to make magic-users seem more magical. But a lot of people ask for cantrips to keep magic-users from seeming useless. This often leads to "attack cantrips" that cause damage, sometimes a significant amount of damage, which just seems wrong. Similarly, a cantrip to open locks seems too powerful: why have the Knock spell, if there's a cantrip that will do it? A cantrip that allows a mage that already has the key to a lock to open it from a distance, or one that allows a mage who knows lockpicking to make a lockpick out of thin air, seems much more reasonable.

M-Us aren't useless when they aren't casting spells, or when they have expended all their spells. It's important not to lose sight of that, or to add house rules that encourage that sort of thinking.

[coffee]

The magic-user should be literate, so he could be the map maker. You want to get back out of the dungeon, right? Also, he can carry treasure, not being weighed down by all that heavy armor.

And when the time comes for him to cast his one spell, you can bet he's saved it up for a good occasion. (At least I hope he would.)

Lots of things a magic-user can do besides fight. A "useless" magic-user indicates a "useless" player.


That being said, I do like your list of cantrips. Wouldn't see harm in including them in a game. They're simple enough and don't bog the game down with tons of extra mechanics, and I like that.