Building-Block Magic System

[Gib]

Hi all.

I've been tinkering with making a free-form magic system since I've looked at several but none quite do the trick for me. The major factors that can be chosen to scale are: Range, Volume, Duration, Intensity.

I thought of adding up the points in the category to get the final cost in mana of the spell but I soon realized something.  The true cost in energy to power a spell is Volume x Duration x Intensity.  IE: If I affect an area 40' in diametar for 1 minute for intensity 1 then thats 40 engery untils.  If I double the intensity then thats 80 units.  If I double intensity and double the duration then thats 160 units.Makes perfect sense right?

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

[Mike Sugarbaker]

It seems pretty good for fantasy-style magic that's mainly about physical effects.

The trick is going to be in sorting out what effect Intensity really has across domains.

[dindenver]

Gib,
  Well, I think you want to avoid multiplication on free-form systems. The added math will stifle creativity. Evern if your target audience is math saavy, the requirement to do a little math might give there left brain enough of a boost to overshadow some creative uses of magic, you know?
  Personally, if I wanted to make a free-form magic system using your design elements, then I would do two things:
1) Make mana scarce. Don't let players have 40 points of it. Make is so that 10-20 is a good range.
2) Make the value of each scale dramatically up. So that 2 points of volume is significantly more than double 1 point of volume.
  With these two design restrictions, you can use addition rather than multiplication and not run into mane major snags...

  Also, I want to back up Mike when he states that Intensity is going to have very different meanings in different contexts. Is 4 points of intensity in Illusion going to be equal in value to 4 points of Intensity in Fire? Or Food?
  I hope this helps you with your design.

[HeTeleports]

"Building-block magic system" sounds very intriguing. It also sounds additive (meaning: having to do with addition.)

By changing your formula to addition (rather than multiplication), a spell's effect could become 'perimeter'?
In essence, I'd suggest a cheat, a short-cut.

Mr. Sugarbaker's got a point about your system's value on physical effects spells. I like it.
No sense bogging it down with math that has to make literal sense (volume would be the scientifically accurate way to gauge a spell's effect, after all).

[Gib]

Thanks for the comments guys.

You're right, addition is better.  Ok so it will add up instead. I will work on a chart for each facet and its cost.  Since there are 4 facets to the power of a spell, and since I want spell levels to be 0-20(0 being cantrips). I am limiting mana to being caster IQ + skill level (stats are 2-10 normal range and skills 1-20) so there's up to 30 mana for a genius archmage barring buff type mods.  Mana recharges 1 point per hour(Talents/Edges/Abilities/Feats what ever you want to call it will increase this).

Please comment on these then, what do you think?

Range
0 Self
1 Touch
2 Nomal(300')
3 Long(1000')
4 Line of sight
5 Beyond line of sight(anywhere in the world)

Duration
0 instant
1 10 minutes
2 8 hours
3 1 week
4 1 year
5 permanent

How should permanent effects be dealt with?  Not possible, requires costly materials?  IE: Permanent +5 to  Strength should require a priceless Diamond of 100,000 gp value(depends on the economic scale of prices)? Should I make permanent buffs only possible by the Enchanting skill? Some effects are permanent by nature - banish demon.

Volume
0 Personal or intangeble effect
1 1 Thing
2 A 15' x  5' x 5' area arc emanating from the caster
3 40' x 40' x 10'
4 100' x 100' x 10'
5 1000' x 1000' x 10'

Intensity - I should probably define energy(damange), illusion, movement, mind control, alterations/transform, conjure/summon, knowlege, enchantments, etc. each individually so one will know what each domains powers and level of power is.  Should also take into account that its easier to transform/fabricate an item than to conjure/summon it.  IE: alterations take less power than illusions and illusions take less power than conjuring...

Intensity (damge example)
0 cause 1 point of pain but no damage/ (1 round of shock and ow!)
1 2d6 damage
2 5d6 damage
3 10d6 damage
4 15d6 damage
5 20d6 damage

[JoyWriter]

Personally I prefer multiplication for balance reasons: If every "axis" of the spell creation system is set up so doubling a constant really makes it twice as good, then multiplication means that those relationships are preserved. Now to maintain that linear relationship further is probably impossible, (putting a town to sleep is quite different from putting a guy to sleep, so many factors exponentially improve each other) but at least it is there at the start.

I like the idea that for no cost you can shock yourself with magic! Maybe a way for keeping awake on guard duty?

[Gib]

Personally I prefer multiplication for balance reasons: If every "axis" of the spell creation system is set up so doubling a constant really makes it twice as good, then multiplication means that those relationships are preserved. Now to maintain that linear relationship further is probably impossible, (putting a town to sleep is quite different from putting a guy to sleep, so many factors exponentially improve each other) but at least it is there at the start.

I like the idea that for no cost you can shock yourself with magic! Maybe a way for keeping awake on guard duty?

Not really what I had intended but funny!  interesting idea - you feel the vibration of magic...dont know what this means or if usefull but a thought inspired by your reply.

I'd like to stick with the addition but my original idea is making the best sense to me.  However multiplication would slow down play and fail to achieve my goal of wanting the sum of the facets of of a spell to fall into the range 0-20(spell level=power cost) unless I then had a final conversion coefficient to get that.  Hmmm, you know, if I had only 1/2 a brain, I'd develop an MMO use all sort of funky equations and ratings that don't mean the same value so I can keep people guessing and use coeficients!  Ya that's the ticket.....(grins). Opps, sorry, did my sarcasm for the lack of a good game sytem that is found in the programming of WOW come out again?  lol  Love the game, hate the formulas(they make it that way to make more $ but that's off topic)

However, I don't think my charts are quite right yet - it was my first attempt.  Casting a 1 point fireball over a 5 Volumne at 2 Range = 8th level Sorcerer is WAY overpowered in my mind so I will have to work on it.  Probably not going  have 4 x 5 like I have now.  I definitely see the benifit of having thins scale but maybe my cost should be different that 1,2,3,4,5.. in each category?

I did think about my Intensity dimension.  I just used damage in dice as one of the sub-dimensions in intensity.  What I need to do on that table is define things like this
Slow < Paralyze
Feather Fall < Levitate < Fly < Teleport
Minor  < Lesser < Moderate < Major < Greater < Superior < Grand

Follow me?

[JoyWriter]

You'll probably be mortified but my first response when looking coefficients up was "what a good idea, easy dynamic balancing"!

If you do go with that additive system, watch out for the "max one category and dump the others" effect. Like being able to do a year of pain or melt an object on the other side of the planet. When you give players choices, watch out for min-maxing, as this is exactly what a variable system encourages. If you get into the zone of making it interesting, but not too easy, then your future players are likely going to have a lot of fun doing exactly that.

Also, if you have a streight recharge rate of one per hour, then this means that the only advantage of being an arch-super mage is the ability to blow out a prepared battle. I other words it is in the interests of all mages to chuck out random spells on the hour every hour, or perhaps every three, but keep their basic level high enough to make their learning an advantage.

This also means that likely a battle will begin (and end?) with the most powerful mage chucking his most ridiculous spell at the opponent in the hope of decimating him.

These all seem strategic consequences of your rules. Does this fit how you imagine mages opperating? All holding nukes in their back pockets while using as minor magic as possible?

[Gib]

Did some more googling last night and found my anwer:  Ars Magica/Gramarye magic systems.  They have the factors of spells like I created(range, area of effect/volume, duration, intensity/effect level) and but don't limit it to a value of 5 in each category.  That is the big think I was missing, If it's going to be additive then spell level cap has to be SOMETHING(20 for my system anyway) or else you could cast a completely max'd out spell across the differnt factors.  Like you you said, affecting 1 target, intanstly(0) melting them (5) on the other side of the world(5) is only a level 11 spell.  on a 1-20 scale that Im based on, that spell description is a level 20!

So 2 things learned:
1. Cap the total of the factors to 20 or less
2. The 1-5 points for each of the 4 must be expanded:

Range
0 Self
1 Touch
2 Nomal(300')
4 Long(1000')
8 Line of sight
16 Beyond line of sight(anywhere in the world)

Duration
0 instant
1 10 minutes
2 8 hours
4 1 week
8 1 year
15 permanent

How should permanent effects be dealt with?  Not possible, requires costly materials?  IE: Permanent +5 to  Strength should require a priceless Diamond of 100,000 gp value(depends on the economic scale of prices)? Should I make permanent buffs only possible by the Enchanting skill? Some effects are permanent by nature - banish demon.

Volume
0 Personal or intangeble effect
1 1 createure or 1 man sized(6h x 2w x 1d) amount of "1 thing"(part of a wall for example")
2 A 15' x  5' x 5' area arc emanating from the caster
4 40' x 40' x 10'
8 100' x 100' x 10'
16 1000' x 1000' x 10'

[JoyWriter]

The system for permanence in my game is to tie all persistent spells to an object or person, with each object able to take one enchantment, and people able to take a number equal to their "spirit" rating. Apart from any built in time requirements, of which I currently have none, they run out when the object is destroyed or when it no longer "matches" the ritual, in other words if someone's youthly beauty is enchanted, then as they age the spell will fade.

Cleanly adjudicating poetic stuff like that could be interesting, I hope to tie it to in-game events, so the addition of such an enchantment adds a "trigger" for the GM to keep track of, and appropriately resonant events within a scene will remove the spell.

Fortunately most enchantments used bind to "life" for that very reason, as mages of various stripes became aware that poetic stuff (although making casting easier) was too unreliable! Only the fey lords and the Pashab lawyer-priests still use magic in this way.

Now how can this kind of mechanic work in your game? Well a lot of that stuff is probably too weird for how you want it to play, but the principle of "permanence is embodied in an actual object, and breaking the object breaks the spell" grounds magic in a nice way, so that the barbarian can smash the seal that banished the demon, and accordingly it must be guarded to prevent this from happening.

If in your system you want to make more enchantments than just one exist on the same object, you can have the system relate to patterns marked on the object, and have the patterns become more complex as you add more of them, making enchanting a crafting skill as well as a "mystical" one. In terms of the speed of the casting process, you could have it that mages have craftsmen make them the appropriate patterns and then imbue them with mana, or you could have it so casting and crafting are done at the same time.

There is a whole landscape of possibilities for magic systems that work off of "spell carriers" rather than "spell components", so I'll leave it there.

[dindenver]

Gib,
  The problem with making Permanence so expensive is that it is not re4ally that big of a deal for most uses. I mean, a Permanent light source is not earth shattering. Or permanently summoning a horse. If you summon food and it is not permanent, does it provide sustenance?
  Make the +5 to an attribute cost 16, and then making it permanent will solve itself, no?

[Tark]

Gib,
  The problem with making Permanence so expensive is that it is not re4ally that big of a deal for most uses. I mean, a Permanent light source is not earth shattering. Or permanently summoning a horse. If you summon food and it is not permanent, does it provide sustenance?
 

From a gameplay standpoint you are correct.  From a world setting point you are so very very wrong.

Consider this:  I invent a spell that allows me to create a handful of currency.  I then make it permanent.  For the cost of a bit of mana I can single handedly annihilate the economy. It may take time, but, if I teach others how to do the same and then they teach more people then those handfuls quickly turn into entire vaults worth of currency produced everyday. Making things permanent is arguably the most powerful magical effect one can imagine.

[dindenver]

Tark,
  Well... There are two wholes in your theory. One, that no one will do a detect magic on a big pile of money. Two, that no one will cast dispel magic on a big pile of money. Finally, you would have to do a large Volume and Effect in order to make enough money to mean anything, no? And at that point, the duration element is trivial compared to the level/mana cost of everything else.
  I do get what you are saying. But I used this technique (permanent is not that expensive) in my RPG that we playtested for over a year with two different groups. And honestly, no one was interested in that. The closest we got was someone made like 720 suits of chainmail and made a pretty penny for it. He admitted they were magic to the merchant and reminded them that it was also permanent. In the end, having a lot of money didn't break anything in the game. So, maybe trust the players not to be jerks and then GMs can use there heads if a player does get rambunctious (like having all banker cast dispel magic on money that comes in large deposits).
  I dunno. there is a logic to making permanent expensive. But I think it makes some trivial spells needlessly expensive...

[Tark]

Tark,
  Well... There are two wholes in your theory. One, that no one will do a detect magic on a big pile of money. Two, that no one will cast dispel magic on a big pile of money. Finally, you would have to do a large Volume and Effect in order to make enough money to mean anything, no? And at that point, the duration element is trivial compared to the level/mana cost of everything else.
  I do get what you are saying. But I used this technique (permanent is not that expensive) in my RPG that we playtested for over a year with two different groups. And honestly, no one was interested in that. The closest we got was someone made like 720 suits of chainmail and made a pretty penny for it. He admitted they were magic to the merchant and reminded them that it was also permanent. In the end, having a lot of money didn't break anything in the game. So, maybe trust the players not to be jerks and then GMs can use there heads if a player does get rambunctious (like having all banker cast dispel magic on money that comes in large deposits).
  I dunno. there is a logic to making permanent expensive. But I think it makes some trivial spells needlessly expensive...

It's a question of believability in ones setting.  The coins are just a single example.  A spell that makes a small campfire is trivial, because the fire is only there as long as the spell lasts.  It's not enough to do anything setting changing.  But, let's take that fire and make it permanent.  You now  have a permanent energy source.  Now, think about what you can do with a permanent unending energy source.  Sure, you could just dispel it, but that requires training, time, and investment where otherwise it could be undone with a bucket of water.

[dindenver]

Tark,
  Cool. I think we better agree to disagree.
  Honestly, I don't like systems that unnecessarily nerf magic because it can do "anything." When, in fact, in most systems its harder to do stuff with magic than without. But, I guess I like to have a magical world in my fantasy setting. I think an eternal flame would be awesome. And even if someone were to use it to warm their house or cook their food, that would make it all the more cool. Imagine a world, so magical, that you can use magic for mundane tasks. The wonder!
  But, that is just my leanings. Not the sign of a good or bad design.

Gib, I like where youa re going with this. It seems easy to dial around. You just have to make sure that the levels/mana happens at the milestones you want. But that is a chargen mechanics issue, not a magic building blocks issue now.

  Keep up the good work!