Inexhaustible Magic

[clehrich]

What exactly would limit the rampant destruction of mountains, for instance? Common sense! :-)

No seriously, this is really my point, I was envisioning a tactical, thoughtful approach to magic - particularily battle magic. So that play wasn't just a case of "use your most powerful spell until your mana runs out" type o' thang. I was thinking of the right type of spell for the right type of situation/enemy.

In this case: the rampant destruction of mountains, I would say why not? if it has a purpose for a wise, intelligent sorcerer.

It's funny, I didn't think you were going that way at all.  Suddenly, it seems to me that the question for this game isn't "what system doesn't have these limits" as "what is the limitation on magic?"

Let me clarify.  There's got to be some limitation on magic, or you're playing characters who are omnipotent gods.  Presumably you don't want that.  So what is the limitation?

From your post here, it sounds like it's some sort of moral limitation, or something of that sort, and that what you object to is a mechanical limitation.

So in that case, what you want is sorcerers who are actually damn close to gods but have some other reason, totally non-mechanical, why they don't use their power.

If I have that right, you're talking pure Narrativism here.  You're talking about a game where the Premise is a version of "What Are The Limits?"

As someone mentioned, Sorcerer would fit this mold, but then again so would The Pool since it doesn't really have restrictions on anything much.

Can you define the limits you imagine a bit -- what you call "common sense"?  It might be that some Nar game with a relatively specific (unlike the Pool) structure would support it particularly well.

Chris Lehrich

[Bluve Oak]

O.K. My fault, perhaps I havn't been too clear.

I don't mind my characters having levels so to speak, like having to spend hard earned points for more powerful spells, as this is realistic. If you want to become an expert at anything you have to study and practice it. I'm not talking about the PC's being always godlike.

I just want to avoid - whether the spell be creating a little drop of water to a godlike power of destroying a planet - there being no repurcussions, especially drainage of some sort of magic pool, which in the fantasy/myths/legends that I have read doesn't seem to exist.

[Ben O'Neal]

i, too, longed for a system that gave magicians real power, and didn't "dumb them down" to make them equal with a mere fighter, which is what many systems attempt to achieve. the purpose is simple in gaming terms: "why play any class other than spellcaster if they are all so much weaker?". and the answer is simple in my mind: "because it makes for a fun and interesting game, and even a spellcaster is only human and can still die from an arrow to the head."

how about a system where you can use any spell within your talent any time so long as you have the potential power to do so...without the need to learn it? and where you can literrally cast magic all day if you have the constitution to handle that much effort? where the only limitations to using magic are your own power with magic and the fact that manipulating the energy of the gods can be exhausting? i'm not a huge fantasy novel reader, but this is generally how magic is portrayed in Feist's Magician and Jordan's Wheel of Time, my two favourite series.

if these concepts seem plausible to you, you may want to check out Eclipse when i release it within the next week or so.

if you're interested, i can give you a run down via pm or in my thread here in this forum.

[M. J. Young]

Multiverser obviously is not a fantasy game per se; it covers fantasy as part of covering everything, and in much the same way.

From one perspective, there are no limits on magic. You can design any spell you want, use it any time you want, invent new spells at need, cast the same spell repeatedly or switch spells as often as you want, know as many as you care to learn or invent, and essentially be that kind of wizard. Further, there's nothing in the rules to prevent you from being a powerful wizard and an expert swordsman, if you want to do that.

Now, there are limits on magic. You have to roll for success--just as you do for operating a weapon or driving a vehicle or riding a horse or leaping over a wall. The chance of success is tied to several factors, including your skill with this spell, your overall level of magical ability, the inherent power of the spell, and the amount of investment required to cast it. (A spell that leaves you tired after casting it is more likely to work than one which doesn't, for example. One that requires the use of both hands, loudly shouted words, and the destruction of some material object has a better chance of working than one that is done with a wave of a finger or a wink of an eye.) There is also a chance to botch, which grows as the chance of performing the skill successfully decreases. This is the same chance to botch that appears in all skills, but because you're talking about the chance of fouling up the release of supernatural energy, the potential outcomes are considerably more dangerous. So there are limits, even apart from the bias limitations that control how much magic is possible in any given universe. These limitations, though, feel more natural (at least to me, and it sounds like they fit better with your expectations): they're about whether you will succeed when you try to cast it this time, how much time you'll waste if you fail, and what will happen if it goes horribly wrong.

Not free, I'm afraid; well worth the money, though, if I do say so myself.

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

The reason that Gandalf doesn't use more magic is that he knows it attracts the attention of Sauron and his minions.

No, in most literature there aren't spell points and such, but there are almost always limits of some sort. Usually because the magic itself is a metaphor for something. So, while Shreyas is right in that we should respect your desires, the problem is that your stated desires seem to be based on erroneous assumptions.

First, you say:

There aren't too many systems that include penalizing a fighter character every time he wields his axe.

This is untrue. There are actually quite a lot of systems that do this. Yes, magic also tires Gandalf. You'll find that most "Spell Point" systems mean that drainage from the system causes physical drain. The point is that they're mostly simulating the idea that magic does fatigue the caster. And I think that this is usually quite appropriate.

In the Shanara series, Allanon is always blasting things with his blue fire. And he does it over, and over again. But eventually he tires.

Over and over again, you'll find the idea that magic "takes something out of you". Because magic is not something for nothing, that's not it's trick. It's more often changing will into some sort of effect that you can't get normally. In any case, that ought to be tiring. Or it should have some cost. Because without cost, magic doesn't make any statement. I'm not talking about needing to balance play or something (though that's a nice side effect). I'm talking about the fact that magic without limits is bland. The limits themselves make it interesting.

Now fatigue is just one sort of cost. In Eddings work, he often talks about the repercussions of magic. This you see in a lot of works. The idea that rampant use of magic is a bad idea, sorta "just because." The impression that you get is that there's a sort of Karmic backlash to the use of magic. Much like the "lessons" that are always taught in time travel allegory - change things to make them better, and they'll end up worse anyhow. That sort of thing. This is one of Gandalf's limits, too, essentially, as using magic brings evil to you. The point is that having such a limit means that each use is a statement of some sort. What that statement is depends on the particular form of the cost.

People often comment how unlike the source material the D&D memorization limit is - and it's true that it'd unique. It just happens to be lifted from Jack Vance's work.

The "what if" question is important. That is, if we had a character who could cast "continual light" as many times as he wanted, couldn't he light up the entire world as he went? The problem with unlimited use of even small magic is that the ramifications are hard to predict - the one thing we can say is that they would make the world very unlike any fantasy world from the literature.

No, you need some sort of limit on total use, even if it's just threat of accident. If you make magic dangerous to use, it means that one can use it unlimitedly in desperation, but one won't use it except in the important cases.

That's what you find in all the literature - magic only used when it's important. So have a cost to it.

You'll note that many of the games here actually do have costs to using magic. In Ars, it's somewhat dangerous in terms of people potentially hunting you down. That is, don't get seen doing magic in the village square, or you may end up on a stick in the middle of a bonfire (there are other ramifications, too, IIRC). In Hero System, yes you can buy your magic with no endurance cost, but it'll be more expensive. The default, that it makes you exhausted, is much more fun. Hero Quest has very important limits in the form of relationships - that is, you have a relationship with the philosphy (or being that represents it) that produces your magic. Go against that relationship, and you'll at least get your ass kicked, and you may at least temporarily lose your magic.

Umanna is called "unlimited" only because you can use as much as you like in theory. At some point the danger becomes so large that you'll literally kill your character if you push it. So it's really not all that unlimited.

You're completely correct that "spell points" as a game mechanic are bland. If they don't represent anything metaphorical, if they're just a power limiter, they're awful. But that's actually very few systems. Most at least pay lip service to some concept of what the cost represents, and others actually have very interesting concepts built into them.

So, I'd ask you again. Are you sure you want no cost whatsoever? Or are you just against really bland costs that don't seem to represent anything in the literature?

Do you want magic to be tiring?
Do you want magic to be dangerous?
Are there karmic problems with using too much magic?
Do you want there to be cultural limitations on the use of magic?
Are there other uses that would be cool?

In some games you pay for your magic with your life's blood itself. Making it's cost dear indeed. Even if you haven't read anything that matches it, isn't it a neat idea? In Sorcerer, the "limit" is that supernatural abilities all come from demons...and that's so much of a limit that the entire game is centered around it (not to mention that ability scores are also limiters).

Sorry, this kinda rambles, but I think it's important. Magic should always have a cost.

Mike

[Valamir]

Probably the best example of the cost of magic is the Rune Lord series.  Unfortuneately the series turned into some wierd bug hunt, but the magic system is so all freaking cool, that I'd love to do an RPG in it.

For those who haven't read it, the magic is basically what a MMORPG would call "buffing".  You can increase your strength, stamina, speed, memory, charisma, etc, to truly superheroic levels.  At one point in the series the main hero and main antagonist (in a buff up cold war against each other) have basically become the equivalent of the Hulk and the Flash combined.  

In a sense the magic is unlimited, its "always on".  But there are costs.  The more mundane and less interesting cost is that the most powerful buff "metabolism" (the equivelent of casting a bunch of haste spells on yourself) ages you rapidly.  More interesting is the need for balance to avoid becoming a man of "unfortuneate proportions".  Too much haste and not enough strength and you simply can't breathe while running at 200 miles an hour, not enough stamina and you'll snap your legs off.

But the real cost, the super cool cost, is the Dedicates.  Where does the added power come from?  From other people.  Want more strength, someone has to give you theirs.  Want better vision?  You'll leave someone blind.  Etc.  The Dedicate has to be willing, but that willingness can be coerced...there's a cost right there...of the "what would you do" nature.

But even better, is that the Dedicates don't die.  See blood sacrifices of Virgins are pretty easy...there's the ick factor, but heck its a game, and the virgin is imaginary...so whatever.  But the Dedicates live.  When they die, your power disappears, so you have to keep them alive and safe.

This means dozens, hundreds, even thousands (at the ridiculous power levels) of largely helpless "disabled" types who need to be fed, cared for, and, most of all, protected from assassins.

That's probably the coolest price for magic I've ever seen.

[frog]

Basically what people are trying to explain - as I see it - is that unlimited magic would be boring. There is no challenge.
The only thing making life interesting in such a world would be the need for (as you call it) reasonable use of magic. This need comes from consequences casting brings with itself. In any game it is up to the gamemaster to make these consequences (maybe threats) transparent to the players.

I guess you are just looking for a subtle way to do so, something which feels more natural than just waving with a table of casting cost (or the like).

But you will not find that in a system! It's the trick that makes a good gamemaster.

On the other hand - even with the most stupid system, providing a collection of spells with constant cost - a good gamemaster can tell the story in a way, that magic aquires a mythical air (although I agree, that an interesting system makes life easier).

In short:
Your problem is not to find an RPGSystem which employs completely free magic (take any, just drop the restrictions), but to find a way to keep magic interesting still when you do so - which is the job of the story/setting.
There are a couple of good suggestions on that in the previous posts!

[John Burdick]

I have played and enjoyed a game where magic had no incremental cost. My mage has 40 effect points to spend within certain domains (light, life, water, truth). The allocated effects are always available without paying per use. To change the allocation, I pay a small time penalty. Other than taking a little time, rebuilding my effect list is free. Silver Age Sentinels supports handling magic in similar ways: Dynamic Power and Power Flux.

Surely no one will say I don't have fun because I don't pay per use.

John

[Bluve Oak]

This thread has become about the various methods of restrictions on magic usage, e.g. it's dangerous, it's immoral , it attracts the attention of evil, uses mana, suffers karma, etc.. etc.. Which I was trying to avoid at first but sure it is interesting and some people seem to find the idea of "always on" magic difficult to understand.

John Burdick likens magic to superhero powers - they are inherint to the character - just like someone who is born pretty, they don't have to make an effort to look good. Though some who are pedantic may contest that Supermans x-ray vision isn't really "magic". No it may not be but can't magic work this way? Can't someone be born a magician? This is how I was thinking.

First, you say:Quote:
There aren't too many systems that include penalizing a fighter character every time he wields his axe.  
This is untrue. There are actually quite a lot of systems that do this. Yes, magic also tires Gandalf. You'll find that most "Spell Point" systems mean that drainage from the system causes physical drain. The point is that they're mostly simulating the idea that magic does fatigue the caster. And I think that this is usually quite appropriate.

I conceed in a physics or karmic sense that every action has a (equal and opposite) reaction. So sure you can't even take a piss without something being effected. But do we really want to roll everytime we want to take a piss? So using magic may cause fatigue, but no more than wielding an axe, and quite frankly I wouldn't like to play an RPG where I had to roll for fatigue every time a swung my axe.

So, I'd ask you again. Are you sure you want no cost whatsoever? Or are you just against really bland costs that don't seem to represent anything in the literature?

Do you want magic to be tiring?
Do you want magic to be dangerous?
Are there karmic problems with using too much magic?
Do you want there to be cultural limitations on the use of magic?
Are there other uses that would be cool?

Well, I still don't have a problem with "magic without repurcussions" and don't believe "Magic should always have a cost" as you have said Mike but I surely would accept a limitation for flavour and so I think your right in assuming that my gripe is really with bland magic depletion.

Valamir:

But the real cost, the super cool cost, is the Dedicates. Where does the added power come from? From other people. Want more strength, someone has to give you theirs. Want better vision? You'll leave someone blind. Etc. The Dedicate has to be willing, but that willingness can be coerced...there's a cost right there...of the "what would you do" nature.

But even better, is that the Dedicates don't die. See blood sacrifices of Virgins are pretty easy...there's the ick factor, but heck its a game, and the virgin is imaginary...so whatever. But the Dedicates live. When they die, your power disappears, so you have to keep them alive and safe.

This means dozens, hundreds, even thousands (at the ridiculous power levels) of largely helpless "disabled" types who need to be fed, cared for, and, most of all, protected from assassins.

That's probably the coolest price for magic I've ever seen.

I've got to say this sounds very familiar (even though cool). It instantly reminds me of spirit or god worship where the devotee is reliant on the gods empowerment and the god is reliant on the devotees worship. Or more closer to the example is religious non-magical classes giving charity and maintaining priests for continued blessings (which is even historically accurate - actually people still do it today!). The more priests you support (via money ususally) the more power you gets.

I am currently investigating Heroquest, fate and whatever else I can find that fits my bill.

So as far as I stand, I believe:

1) There is a place for "magic without repurcussions".
2) "magic WITH repurcussions" is O.K. as long as it is not bland.

Kewl...

[Ian Charvill]

Earthdawn lets you cast spells without depleting effects and is otherwise fairly trad fantasy (although in Earthdawn. the fighter's attack and the thieves lockpicking and so on are all also explicitly magical).

[clehrich]

If you want magic without repercussions that is in some sense "just who you are," I would think that a really strong Supers system would fit the bill nicely.  You just don't allow (or require) the weakness or limitation that magic costs something to use.

You could do this admirably with Champions.  Everybody gets powers in the usual way, and you just demand that the "special effects" (which don't cost anything anyway) be in tune with your world's notion of magic.  You block the "causes Fatigue" or whatever limitations, and everyone just builds from there.  You'll end up with spells/magic powers that have limits in the sense that they aren't infinite -- you can't simply destroy the universe -- but where the limits are simply limits.  Sort of like a glass of water: it's not that it costs extra, or is tiring, or whatever to put an extra couple of ounces in the glass, but that the glass is only so large.  The limit is intrinsic, not something you pay for.

Myself, I would think this could readily slide into rather colorless magic, because all the color and so forth has nothing to do with the powers themselves; they're tacked on as special effects.  But that problem is something you can solve with a good game-world explanation of what magic is and how it works.

Chris Lehrich

[andy]

I too have searched for a system that would allow a magic-using character to sling spells all day long without running out of gas. One of the biggest roadblocks to such a system has been the shibboleth of game balance-- in the typical FRPG, the magic using characters power level increases geometrically (did I spell that right?) while the power level of fighters/thieves increases arithmetically. Thus, magic using characters needed to be limited.

The key to breaking this mold would be to decrease the ultimate power of magic available to PCs in order to keep the spellslingers at a level of parity with the grunts. I'm not suggesting that magic shouldn't be able to do some way cool stuff, just that there is a difference between way cool and out-of-kilter. For example, in the DnD3E context, I would draw the line at spells of fourth level and below.

I like to play mages, but for me, the best part of magic is the variety, not necessarily the power. I think that a system that kept magic using characters comparable in power to everyone else could permit spellcasters to cast all day without disrupting the game balance.

'Nuff said

Andy

[komradebob]

A little off track, but...

Were you looking for a system that truly meant unlimited use of magic, sort of superheroish in effects, or were you looking for a system that allowed unlimited flexibilty? Basically, magicusers can attempt all sorts of things, as long as they can conceptualize the effect? The second possibilty does all sorts of bad things to game balance, but that might not be such a big deal if wizards were compared to wizards, and not to fighters, thieves, etc.

Another side thing: I thought Gandalf used very little magic because he had been a rebel firespirit (Balrog?) during the wars of the Silmarils, and now was getting back in good with Manwe by doing his pennance in the form of an old man of reduced power watching Middle Earth for the spirit lords of the Undying Lands. Actually, I thought this was the general background of all the Istari.

[John Burdick]

I like to play mages, but for me, the best part of magic is the variety, not necessarily the power. I think that a system that kept magic using characters comparable in power to everyone else could permit spellcasters to cast all day without disrupting the game balance.

I played an unpublished game based on the cliche concept of Risus using die steps instead of pools. I had a d20 in dragon and something like a d10 in transformation magic. To fly or use my freeze breath, I rolled dragon. To transform into a human, I rolled transformation magic. My best die, dragon, was restricted while in human form. The game was a rules lite farce. Since all cliches are handled the same way, the magic question wasn't that big a deal.

In addition to Tri-Stat, another effects based game that allows versatile, unmetered spells is Cartoon Action Hour.

John

[M. J. Young]

John Burdick likens magic to superhero powers - they are inherint to the character - just like someone who is born pretty, they don't have to make an effort to look good. Though some who are pedantic may contest that Supermans x-ray vision isn't really "magic". No it may not be but can't magic work this way? Can't someone be born a magician? This is how I was thinking.

If I understand correctly, in Xanth everyone is born with a unique magic power, something they can do all day long if they like, whatever it is.

I guess the communications failure is somewhere close to this statement.

If you create a game in which any magic-using character can do anything he wants, any time he wants, without fail, without cost, without consequence, without risk, without any limitation on his ability to act whatsoever, then it's hardly going to be a game. I'll turn the enemy fortress into a gingerbread house and create an army of giant mice to devour it. I'll create a cage around the enemy that will fly him to another planet where he will be kept prisoner in perpetuity. Along the way, I'll cure all the sick, feed all the hungry, end poverty and bring world peace.

Now, maybe my opponent can use magic in ways which limit my ability to use magic--but if that's so, then there are limits in the system, and they have to be coded somehow so we can figure out whether or not he has prevented me from doing all these things.

As I said, Multiverser will allow a character to attempt to do anything he wants anytime he wants any way he wants; it provides a means of determining chance of success. If he's successful, it happens; if he fails, it doesn't, and he's wasted time he could have used for something else; if it botches, he's released magic power into the world that is loose in an undefined or ill-defined form, and it might do anything.

You could take away that chance of failure/chance to botch, but then you'd essentially have the above problem that whatever the player says happens is what happens, no matter how extreme or absurd.

You might say that in play people will limit what they can do to that which is reasonable. However, without a limits system there is no way to codify what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. Even if players (including the referee) begin with what is reasonable, you've got inherent escalation--since there's no cost for raising the stakes, every time the villain does something more potent, the hero tops it, and then the villain tops that, until someone does something catastrophic in scope. The winning strategy in this situation is to leap to the catastrophic move immediately, before your opponent can do so.

As a system, what you seem to be suggesting incentivizes the extreme use of magic. You have nothing that will encourage the players to limit what they can do, because there is no inherent system reason for them to do so.

See the problem?

--M. J. Young