Building-Block Magic System

[Gib]

Thanks for the great discussion on permancy guys.  That did help me see something(I think your both right).  That is, Permancy for non-important type effects like continual light(2nd level d&d) or conjured food and water being permanent.  Some things, are inherently permanent like the food and water you conjured.  One could say then well, this million gp's I conjured up in my vault is permanent like food or water.  I would rule no because its million times more valuable than the cost of food or water(starving man/ soul in hell thirsting for just a drop would reverse the value probably!).  So what we have are examples of extreme conditional modifiers to the determination of the power of "permanency". 

The way I am now leaning is that magic is fickle and control only temporary and only true Enchanting and making magic items is permanent.  Personally I always felt 2nd level Continual Light was riduculous because now you don't need mundane items like torches and lanterns.  Sure, this is great from a player perspective but then you get into magic being mundane.  IE: Ok, I have continual light, now Im making my "unseen servant" permanent and now I have a private permanent slave/butler and oh,now I invent continual fire or warmth and no longer have to cut down trees to burn logs in my fireplace.  I also invent....  Would that be wonderful in real llfe!  hah.  But since a game is meant to be a game that seems like defeating the idea of having to have resources and management thereof. 

Like one of you said though, it's preference of world setting.  Guess I still need to think about what I want yet.  I know I want the ability of mages to make potions, magic items...etc. IE: I want magic +5 weapons but I don't know if I want a mage to cast +5 Str, +5 con, +5dex, +5int, +5wis and +5chr to every member of the party permanently....that would not be in the interest of game balance.  So to me if one would want perment "buffs" possible then it must have a cost = the level of power it gives.  Borrowing from TROS, I might go with an aging effect for permancy.  That makes sense as you are personally giving up your life force/essence and changing it into a +5 buff...square the "+" rating and that's the aging months.  It would contribute to game balance and support the design goal that powerful magic/magic magic items are going to be rarer and therefore more wonderous!  No more, "Yawn, another +1 sword"  That gives me another idea, borrowing from WOW blantantly here but disenchanting items gives you "shards of magic essence" for use in contributing to more powerful enchants or even  can give the mage back life force..hmmm.  To me that seems to complete the circle.

So in a nutshell I think I will have a magic type;Enchanting - like wow but more. 

[Gib]

Another area I'd like to discuss is the "intensity" of a spell.  What I mean here is really the true power of the spell(vol, rng, dur are then secondary).  Since Im building this system with logic in mind, it makes sense does it not do make the following assumption? Ceteris Paribus: For this sub-topic, I'd like to limit it to conjure vs transform and where the target material is iron.

Conjure iron sword cost more power/mana than Transforming this iron ore in front of me into an iron sword because of the law of conservation of energy/effort.  IE: Conjuration is doing 2 things - teleporting all atoms of iron to you from around the area/world and then forming it into a sword vs just having to form the sword from the iron in front of you.

Agree or disagree with this assumption and why?

Thanks,
Gib

[dindenver]

Gib,
  With a system like this, I would just give a discount for existing materials.

[Skull]

Seems to me(just a feeling), that Range is not a direct multiplier like the others.  Maybe personal/ touch range spells cost 1/2 of the above cost, short range(30') costs 1x, long range(300') costs 1.5x, and Line of Sight range cost 3x and beyond LOS costs 10x. Intensity "levels" need ot be defined yet but what do you think?

What are the drawbacks of this in your opinion and why? Thanks in advance for your time and reply.

- Gib

I don't mean to step on anyones toes, so if I do then I am sorry.
You should take a look at The chronicles of Ramlar. the magic system that they use is not free form, but they have this nifty section on augmenting spells on the fly that sounds like what you would do for things like range. Basically, why would it cost you more to hit a person that you can see clearly from 5ft to 100 ft. Is it not all the same. However, what if you wanted to make the spell cost cheaper? Well, make the spell relie on touch could be one way.. How much does that lower the cost by. What are other ways to reduce cost? what if you had some of the target's hair in you hand at the time- would this make it easier?

[Skull]

oh, and another thing. What if no matter what the spell was being cast it always cost the same amount of mana. That the only the difficulty of casting the spell correctly went up or down depending on what was in the spell.

[JoyWriter]

One could say then well, this million gp's I conjured up in my vault is permanent like food or water.  I would rule no because its million times more valuable than the cost of food or water(starving man/ soul in hell thirsting for just a drop would reverse the value probably!).  So what we have are examples of extreme conditional modifiers to the determination of the power of "permanency". 

I'd be careful with this: Why are you making the system freeform? Isn't it so players can do unexpected things with it? If you put in conditional modifiers to reduce the effect of the magic, then you are basically undermining the main thing people will be doing with the system; mangling and manipulating it to get exactly the thing they want. A more subtle approach is to use rules that hit the heart of your problem, maybe something like this:

Gold is important because it is rare, or because it holds the mark of legal coinage. If you vary a summoning's difficulty by volume and rarity, then automatically gold is hard to summon, whereas water is easy, except in a world without it.

How would this work in your system? Just add two extra difficulty elements to the roll for conjuring, volume and rarity.

If you keep uping the requirements for either, then maybe you just don't want any summoning of that kind! Maybe you'd rather that mages need someone to make them food, even though they can create walls of force. But I suggest you try out letting mages do whatever until you decide that's a bad idea, and just keep adjusting the various magnitudes.

[YEAH]

i like the magic system of ars magica.
they have types of magic as building blocks.
like mental,animal,tempreture.etc.