Alternate S&S Spell System

[korgoth]

I was thinking about an alternate spell system for an S&S flavored game. The suppositions are that combat is infrequent (i.e. not necessarily a standard dungeoneering model) and that sorcerers are dangerous and unpredictable... but magic itself is rare. The game world would be have few characters of particularly high level (i.e. 4th level and above are rare). The mood would be dark... I've been reading Zothique again lately!

Going off of this, I thought that as a base the sorcerer would have the ability to read strange languages and identify magic items. This sets him apart initially... he is the guy who can read the ancient inscriptions and can understand and use magical objects. Of course, this makes him dangerous already, because how can you know that he is telling the truth about the inscription or the item, and how do you know that he won't use it against you?

A 1st level sorcerer would be treated as an "apprentice", and while having the above abilities would not have access to spells. Spell access would be granted at every even level. Selecting a spell gives the ability to cast it once per day... either that or just adds it to the spellbook and you can cast 1/2 of your level in spells per day (haven't decided yet). Subsequent selections would give multiple castings if I went with the former option.

Obviously, each sorcerer would have but few powers. However, the spell list would be unified... a spell is a spell. So at 2nd level, your spell could be Charm Person (very useful), or it could be Animate Dead or Cure Serious Wounds or Control Weather, etc. Some spells would be removed from the list either because they're redundant (Cure Light Wounds) or because they're inappropriate for the world (Raise Dead). Some spells might be modified (Sleep would grant a saving throw at least).

Anyway, that's the general idea. Thoughts?

[apeloverage]

Some ideas:

* magic items could be dangerous - perhaps only sorcerers can use them, or perhaps they require a save to use, with consequences for failing the save.

* magic could be illegal, and regarded with horror by all 'normal' folk.

* spells could require long preparation to cast, rather than the instant 'firing' of spells in standard D&D. On the other hand, spells might not require seeing or touching the target.

* spells could require a save to cast, with consequences for failure, such as being scarred (losing Charisma).

(edit: this could be both an advantage and a disadvantage, if the sorcerer is said to become more frightening as well as less likeable).

* Have you seen Barbarians of Lemuria? It has an interesting magic system (so loose as to be really a series of suggestions).

* I agree that there shouldn't be a distinction between priestly and wizardly magic. This seems to be an invention of D&D.

* In Zefrs (and presumably the original Conan RPG), wizards have an 'obsession' rating. They have to make a save, and if they fail, they'll do whatever it takes to get control of a given piece of magic.

* Based on the above, maybe wizards get XP only for magic items (for those that dislike thieves, you could carry this idea over and have a 'thief' and 'fighter' class who are identical, except that they get XP for treasure and fighting respectively).

[jcstephens]

If a first level sorcerer's main party function is to ID and use magic items, there'll have to be plenty of magic items for him to ID. It's the "Thief in a dungeon" problem all over again, either he tags along waiting for something useful to do, or else he'll look for something to do whether it's useful or not.

[Zulgyan]

The concept is very cool, but it may become a bit repetitive to cast the same spells over and over again.

To counter that, I would be very generous with scrolls.

I would require a spellbook, because innate magical abilities for humans is not very S&S. Or maybe you can make each spell tied to particular demon, or extra-planar beign that grants it (quite similar to Elric with regards to some of it's magic).

[apeloverage]

Nov 12, 2008 13:23:44 GMT -6 jcstephens said:

If a first level sorcerer's main party function is to ID and use magic items, there'll have to be plenty of magic items for him to ID. It's the "Thief in a dungeon" problem all over again, either he tags along waiting for something useful to do, or else he'll look for something to do whether it's useful or not.

Continuing on my idea above - maybe the sorcerer is just as good at fighting as anyone else; the difference is what they get XP for (thus they tend to behave differently eg they're the ones who try to use the magic sword).

[dwayanu]

Allowing characters as much (or more) variety in an item-focused game is IME not a big problem, if you're not limiting yourself to "standard" items meant to supplement the D&D spells.

From what Arneson has written, I gather that "spells" at an early stage of the Blackmoor campaign were preparations something like latter-day potions and scrolls. Acquiring formulas and ingredients/components was a major occupation for magicians, and learning spells was a prerequisite to gaining experience levels (rather than the familiar vice-versa).

I think it's pretty archetypically s&s for sorcerers always to be questing for some Ring, Book, etc., and spending time between adventures with alembics and essences of monster. Putting the focus there rather than on relatively "innate" spells also gives a motive for underworld expeditions.

[geoffrey]

Nov 12, 2008 14:58:31 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

I think it's pretty archetypically s&s for sorcerers always to be questing for some Ring, Book, etc., and spending time between adventures with alembics and essences of monster. Putting the focus there rather than on relatively "innate" spells also gives a motive for underworld expeditions.

I've just re-read all of REH's Conan stories. For the most part, sorcerers therein do not cast spells. Instead, they have bizarre magic items. When the sorcerers do cast spells it's often to summon a demon or a monster.

[dwayanu]

Not just bizarre, but I think typically unique (awkward phrase) -- the Stygian Ring, or the Scroll of Teth Adam*, rather than something from a sorcerous Sears Catalog.

And summonings, indeed! From a different perspective, many "spell effects" (even if not so explicitly described in the tales) might easily be seen as manifestations of otherworldly entities. The Stormbringer game delighted me on that account.

Carcosa, of course, offers much along those lines ...

*(not literal examples from Howard's works, just names off the top of my head)

[korgoth]

Good ideas, all. In this sort of game, items would definitely be important and powerful, but they also would be rare.

Magical books and scrolls would be important, but I haven't quite decided for what reason. Maybe you have to find the spell before you can learn it at the even levels. That would mean that even an apprentice is eager to find grimoire fragments, etc.

I'll have to do some more thinking about it. As I said, it wouldn't be designed to support the usual dungeoneering paradigm (though dungeons could be involved... but say a megadungeon requires more resources than would be initially given out).

[dwayanu]

Very few powers (e.g., 3 or 4) usable very often (e.g., daily) might be problematic from both game and genre perspectives, beyond the "apprentice" level. It's not unprecedented. The novel Frostflower and Thorn (IIRC) featured magicians with three somewhat flexible powers: weather manipulation; acceleration of chemical/biological processes; and one other I forget.

I would lean in the other direction, toward (at least potentially) a wide variety of effects with less frequency of use. The King Arthur Pendragon game is one example I have found quite suited to adaptations of other literary sources.

[dwayanu]

A daily allowance tends to make magic much more common than in the source literature, a big part of what gives D&D (and modern fantasy written under its influence) a different character.

A finite number of uses makes an enchantment less prone to casual employment. But thrice may one invoke the daemon of the ring; but one hippogriff can the bridle tame; but so many pinches of lich-dust remain in the vial; it takes a night's basking beneath the full moon to empower the glamour of one of the Thirteen Occulted Wands.

At the same time, such an approach need not arbitrarily limit the use of magics in a given day. One perilous hour might see unleashed such spells as not seen in years -- but then they are gone.

It makes the "resource management" aspect of the game a bit different.

[dwayanu]

Put another way: Consider the default magic system as (to use a phrase I often pull out) not prescriptive but descriptive. Creation and use of the traditional "spell book" is an example of one of the operations in which a magician might engage -- not necessarily the definitive one. The investment of time and treasure detailed at the end of Vol. 1 may be taken as indicative in an abstract fashion of the difficulties involved, leaving it to the Judge to define the more concrete details. In other words, the description does not exclude but may assume much more campaign-specific "flavor."

(See the rules concerning summoning of Elementals for an example of a spell that is in practice not bloody likely to be usable daily by any given caster.)

[Finarvyn]

The "Vancian" fire-and-forget system can be limiting. Allowing magic-users to cast without having to memorize at all can be too powerful. Maybe something in the middle...?

If you want to retain a system similar to that in OD&D but with more flexibility, you might try this: Allow magic-users to permenantly memorize a number of spell levels equal to their intelligence score. (Neat! Another use for INT!) Those spells would not be re-memorized each day but would always be in the brain of the mage. Magic-users might choose to memorize additonal spells for the day, and those would be treated like standard OD&D memorization.

Note that this plan does NOT change the number of spells that can be cast per day. My assumption is that casting spells is based on endurance or willpower of the mage and gets better with experience, but the actual spell knowledge could stay with the character even if the MU is too tired to cast.

For example, a first level MU with an INT of 14 decides to memorize forever all eight 1st level spells in Men & Magic. He can still only cast one spell per day, because that's the number he gets at first level, but he could pick any of the eight spells during that adventure.

That same MU finally reaches 3rd level. There are 10 new 2nd level spells he could add to his list, but his 14 INT would only allow him to memorize forever 6 more levels worth, or three 2nd level spells. If he does this, his memory would be "full" and he would never be able to memorize forever any more without increasing his INT somehow.

He could still memorize additional spells for a day (fire-and-forget) just like in the old rules, but gains the advantage of having more low-level spells handy when needed. (This gets rid of the "darn, but I forgot to memorize LIGHT today" problem. Some of the classics could be ready at all times. :-)

An interestijng aspect of this rule would be that a MU in captivity becomes more dangerous. Being seperated from his spellbooks is deadly to a MU in a traditional OD&D game, but with my variant that same MU might still be able to SLEEP the guards or some such.

Just me thinking out loud.....

[dwayanu]

Finarvyn, that reminds me a bit of RuneQuest battle/spirit magic (Intelligence limit on memorized spells, castable repeatedly with enough Power points).

So, (in your scheme) if someone is able to cast three spells of level x and he's got one as a fire-and-forget "extra," then he can cast only twice from his "permanent memory." If the extra is unused, so is the magic power.

If one wanted to introduce the possibility of casting more, then perhaps there could be a way to introduce something like the RQ factor of being more vulnerable when your Power is at a low ebb -- maybe revisit the "casting chance" concept from Chainmail?

Less directly related: IIRC, the first Arduin Grimoire presented "mana points" as a way to make memorization more flexible in a "fire and forget" system.

[Random]

Temporarily throwing Vance out the window, I had a random idea a while back.
Basically, a magic-user gets only a few spells to cast per day, but they can be anything he wants, literally anything!

I'm talking about a totally abstract spell system, the ultimate in flexibility and creativity.
The player dictates to the DM what he wants his spell to do. The DM mentally calculates the power of the effect versus the character's level and decides how successful it is.

Perhaps one spell use per day is gained whenever a magic-user would normally gain access to a higher level of spells.

An afterthought: Perhaps certain types of magic require certain levels to be obtained. Conjurers and above can more easily summon creatures, and necromancers and up would more easily be able to animate the dead, etc.

[dwayanu]

Random: I've done that in home-brewed games, in a couple of ways.

The first involved limits by character skill/power. The whole "rule-book" started out as one sheet of notebook paper ... but eventually the magic system bloated to something like the powers list in Champions.

The second was limited purely by "blow back"/Unintended Consequences and "Accidents happen." It was high-powered, high-risk fun -- for the (often short-lived) mages' players, anyway!

[Random]

Cool.
I didn't know if anyone had tried anything like that. I was just thinking aloud.

It sounds like something I should put a couple more thoughts into and then try out just for fun.

[thegreyelf]

Indeed. Magic in a S&S game should be alien and drain one's humanity, if not entirely evil. It should change a person, alter their morality and perceptions into a higher (or lower) state that appears amoral to others. Many systems use a "Corruption" or "Taint" system to represent this, but in an OD&D game it should likely be something that the player is willing to role play.

The system should be somewhat skill-based rather than Vancian; see Chainmail for an example...or (plug, plug) Spellcraft & Swordplay, for a more developed example. Failing to cast a spell should have consequences as the eldritch energies waste away at you; in S&S stories spellcasting is often exhausting.

Effects should rarely be flashy; fireballs are right out, though one might be able to make an argument for lightning bolts. Summoning spells are paramount. Direct damage spells should be mostly invisible; these attack the victim's heart, lungs, and/or muscles directly. Necromancy is obviously a good choice, as are withering spells like Cause Light Wounds. Hold Person or Monster is a spell we often see used in S&S tales.

Spells should be able to accomplish things like Mummy Rot and Energy Drain.