Hi y'all (sorry this post might be little long),

In the fantasy game world I'm trying to develop I want to have different types of magic. I was thinking that I wanted to develop different mechanics for these different types to reinforce the stylistic idea in the player's minds.

Here's the basic idea, I want 3 types of magic: Arcane, Natural, and Divine. Natural magic will be that kind found in nature (duh), and among the typical magical creatures like elves. While some creatures will have flashy supernatural abilities, I was thinking that I also wanted magic to also be a vague, unseen force, that influences events rather than outright controlling them. I was thinking that for the creatures that use it, magic would be some inborn and subconscious talent. For lack of a better description, I was thinking it would be similiar to the Force in Star Wars.

Arcane magic would be the typical flashy-wizard magic. It would represent some kind of artificial (and almost scientific) manipulation of natural magical forces.

Divine Magic would be similiar to the idea of a prayer (my game world will be largely monotheistic with a theological feel). I want the power behind divine magic to be from a higher being, not the "caster" themselves.

Alright, so the question is how do I represent these differernt types without needlessly complicating the system? Arcane magic would be fairly easy, I was thinking making it skill-based depending on the desired effect (task resolution would be d20 + skill bonus vs a target number, ala DnD). I may or may not add some limiting factor like fatigue/magic points.

Natural Magic: I had two ideas. First, I was thinking I could have players roll two d20's, one for their mundane skill and another for their magical influence. If either roll succeeds the player succeeds. The other idea is that the player could simply add like 1d6 or 1d8 (or whatever) to the d20. I like the first idea better, but the second idea would let me scale ceatures' magical ability. I was thinking this would happen all the time, but I could add some limiting factor.

Divine: I don't like the idea of making divine skill-based, as it would make it seem dependent on the PC and not some higher being. I thought about making it some sort of automatic ability, possibly adding some fatigue/magic-point idea to limit its use. Or maybe I don't need to limit its use? Should there be a chance of failure? I also thought about giving control to the GM to decide if it would work or not, but I don't think my players would like that idea (we tend to be pretty Sim/Gamist).

What do you all think and do you have any suggestions? Do you think this all might be too much complication? Sorry the post was so long, let me quickly summarize:

Natural: An influencing force. Roll 2d20 or add 1d6/whatever? Limit its use or all the time?
Arcane: Skill-based, but should I limit its use?
Divine: Prayer-like. Should it be automatic? Should GM have control? Limit its use?

Hi timfire,

Can you give a little more detail here? I think I get the Divine magic thing: this is essentially miracle, i.e. the hand of God working through some actual person, usually as a result of prayer.

I'm not clear on the distinction between Natural and Arcane magic, however. You say that Arcane magic is flashy, but manipulates naturally-occurring occult forces. Natural magic seems also to use those forces. Is there a difference apart from "flash"?

I don't know what your setting is, but it might be worth knowing that in the early modern period in Europe, Natural Magic meant manipulating naturally-occurring occult forces, such as magnetism, static electricity, resonant vibration, and so on (not that they knew these things under quite those terms). These are occult forces simply because cause and effect are not visibly linked: gravity, for example, is an occult force. When you manipulate such a force, you're doing natural magic.

A famous example of natural magic that might clarify:
You have two harps, tuned exactly the same, and you put them near each other. You strum a string on one, and the corresponding string on the other starts to vibrate without any visible contact being made.

Other major classes of magic included Demonic (requiring intelligent entities to cause effects) and Celestial (drawing on the forces of the stars and planets to cause effects).

A brief example of celestial magic:
The patient is melancholic, in essence inclined toward depression, because Saturn is very strong and unopposed in his astrological birth-chart. The most powerful way to oppose Saturn is with the Sun. So you have the patient wear yellow clothes and gold, which are under the influence of the Sun, and maybe you make a golden Sun-talisman (inscribed with solary images, figures, characters, and words) for the patient to wear. This draws the influence of the Sun into his life, and makes him less inclined to melancholia.

Not that you have to write an early modern game, or stick to these classes if you do so, but the distinctions might be useful.

Chris Lehrich

If I was unclear its probably because my ideas are still evolving, but I'll try my best to clarrify.

Natural magic: I want this to be vague and invisible. As far as PC's are concerned, it will be some sort of supernatural influencing factor. I tried to describe this as the Force in Star Wars, or possibly the way elves use magic in Tolkien. Magical creatures like elves can somehow manipulate it, but normally it's outside the realm of normal humans. Though its a supernatural force, most people still accept it as a normal function of the world.

Arcane magic: I want this to be loud and flashy, typical fireballs and teleportation type stuff. It will be practiced by people (humans) who shouldn't have the ability to use magic, but somehow they do. Because of this, some people think arcane magic is un-natural, or at the least artifical.

If you can't tell, I'm trying to instill some sort of inherent conflict into my game world. Is it right to practice magic? And what's magic's connection to the Divine?

For your Divine magic mechanic - Piety score. This term is used in Ars Magica and/or HarnMaster. But it's really just a stat. Use it like magic points. Characters earn points by ACTIONs. Doing things that the deity approves of earn points (kinda like force points in WEG's Star Wars). Characters spend these piety points to petition for miracles. Each pantheon has their typical actions, and the character can alway ask for something specific.

It's really simple, but I think Divine magic should be. Simple mechanically, but is based on a complex relationship between character and deity. And it forces the cleric/priest to ACT like their deity wants them to. If they act in contrast, they lose piety.

Perhaps use this on top of a prayer skill. Define a list of actions (spells) that each deity would respond to, and the difficulty number that they demand for that service. Roll + Prayer + Piety points that they want to spend on this call. If they meet the number, they've convinced the deity that they're worthy, and the effect happens. That feels more Game-y to me.

Let me know if this inspires anything...

timfire wrote: Divine: I don't like the idea of making divine skill-based, as it would make it seem dependent on the PC and not some higher being. I thought about making it some sort of automatic ability, possibly adding some fatigue/magic-point idea to limit its use. Or maybe I don't need to limit its use? Should there be a chance of failure? I also thought about giving control to the GM to decide if it would work or not, but I don't think my players would like that idea (we tend to be pretty Sim/Gamist).

Timfire,

I like your concepts so far. Here's a few things that sprang to mind as I read through everyone's posts.

Natural Magic
I'm not sure exactly what you intend to reperesent with the two d20s or the d20 & another die mechanic... but this is what I'd do...
Natural Magic should be limited by what's... well, natural. Making a plant grow healthy and strong is Natural Magic. Making a plant grow into a 40' tall monster to fight your enemies is not. I'd imagine the difficulty of the task would depend on how far your character intends to... stretch things. For instance, if you want to bless a single stalk of corn so that, when harvest time comes, it will produce a great yeild, then that would be somewhat easy. Manipulating an entire field to be free from vermin would be more difficult. Making the fruit ripen in half the usual time would be very difficult.

Arcane, Limits
There's lots of limiting systems out there already, so I thought I'd begin by covering my opinion (as a player) on three of the major categories.
1) Failure Brings a Kick in the Pants. These systems are the ones where, if you try to extend yourself too far, something really bad happens. Unfortunately some systems make it too easy for this to happen. I'm not happy when my character might accidentally summon a mad & dangerous water spirit when all I wanted to do was to summon a handfull of water to drink. Just no fun in my opinion.
2) X Number of Spells Per Timeframe. Spell Slots, Mana Points, etc. A useful and easy system. Generally keeps the players content. Somewhat of a big yawn tho' I think.
3) I Can Only Keep this Up for So Long. Kinda similar to the previous. Each spell -may- cause harm/sleepyness to the caster. This is my favorite when it's scaled nicely. The more powerful the caster, the more one should get away with without penalty. An apprentice caster might get a bit sleepy over lighting a candle, but a Master should be able to light the campfire every night without any real drain at all.

Oh yea... I nearly forgot...

4) Components / Foci. Every mechanic I've played or run seems to have these to some degree. While these can be used as a limiter, like ammunition for your spell-guns, I think it steals from the flavor. Maybe you can put the option to take a Component/Foci for reduced skill roll target number?

Divine
I like the idea of no skills attached to this. It makes it contrast with the other two magic bits nicely.
I think this is what I'd do...
Points. 'Piety' Points? Earn points for doing things the diety likes. Loose points for doing things the diety does not like. Spend points to petition the diety for intervention. Ya' spends yer points, ya' begs yer favor, then ya' waits for the diety to respond... and hope that the diety likes the favor you asked for.
Now, as a GM, I'd be creative with this. For my examples, the diety will be named... Dude.
PC: "Dude, I beseach thee... save us from this flood..."
GM: "In the distance you see someone waving at you from a raft..."
PC: "Begone vile minions of darkeness! Begone! In the name of Dude!"
GM: "The vampires all run away like little girls confronted with a booger on a stick"
Or more stuff like that. =) I intended more creative examples when I started... but I seem to have lost my train of thought.

Anyway... I know I tend to ramble alot, so I hope I managed to get some good thoughts in there with the ramble.

timfire wrote: If you can't tell, I'm trying to instill some sort of inherent conflict into my game world. Is it right to practice magic? And what's magic's connection to the Divine?

Hey Timfire, hey crew,

Are we working on a sim game or a narative game? Primarily speaking.

Technocrat13 wrote: Natural Magic
I'm not sure exactly what you intend to reperesent with the two d20s or the d20 & another die mechanic... but this is what I'd do...
Natural Magic should be limited by what's... well, natural. Making a plant grow healthy and strong is Natural Magic. Making a plant grow into a 40' tall monster to fight your enemies is not. I'd imagine the difficulty of the task would depend on how far your character intends to... stretch things. For instance, if you want to bless a single stalk of corn so that, when harvest time comes, it will produce a great yeild, then that would be somewhat easy. Manipulating an entire field to be free from vermin would be more difficult. Making the fruit ripen in half the usual time would be very difficult.

Does it have to be different mechanics?

Just asking, as I'm in a similar situation... trying to make a universal approach, and cover as many options as possible... fine until you come to magic.
I can break it down into three broad groups....
Arcane / Conjuring / Faith

Arcane is the Wizardly, sorcerously, spectacular flinging of spells.
Conjuration is the dark Warlocky, risky, shaddy art of summoning things to cast spells or perform tasks for you!
Faith is the religious, belief, personal view of magic, things happening without your power, but at your request, (if you've been good!)


Great, fantastic... yet now you have to cover the varieties of each.

Arcane = Wizard...therefore, wands, staves, spell ingredients, strange words, flashy affects... raw power from strange places.

Conjuration = Warlock... therefore witchcraft, (not wyca! don't go there!), summoning of spirits, elementals, demons, entities, strange candles, symbols on the floor, protective circles, bartering of blood/soul, perform task to earn spells/powers etc.

Faith = priest/shaman, worship, prayers, fasting, holidays, sacrifice, healing, passive magics, subtle magics, miracles.... requesting aid, tenets of faith, gods, entities, spirit/totem/animalism etc.


then there are the tings of energy sources and acquisition, casting methods, components, complexity, knowledge, rememberance, items, requisites etc. etc. etc.

then you can think of the mechancis.

Mine generally run the same way... Stat + Skill = TN, less difficulty, (hmmm?), <= is success.
Yet for the different types I have different stats & skills, different spell access, and most importantly of all, different descriptions.
There's litle real mechanical differences, or between PSionics, Mutant powers, Secret Combat Moves of the MAsters etc.

Not to muddy the waters, but I love talking about this sort of thing.

From my own thoughts for my own system I keep designing but never finish, I've come up with the following ideas:

Divine magic: similar to what has already been discussed. I think that perhaps "piety" might be an "earned skill" in that a priest acquires more of it as he proves his faith (i.e. adventuring to support his god). Perhaps there is a list of effects and difficulties with the chance of success based on the piety and difficulty of the effect(s) desired...

Thaumaturgy: Ritualistic prepared magic, whereby all of the effects are carefully planned ahead of time. Thus the, "casting" of a spell would happen in downtime, so a thaumaturge planning on casting a "fireball" (sorry to grab such a cliche example) would perform a ritual while resting. Using it in battle would be merely released the prepared energy. This is somewhat similar to the "spells" cast by Corwin's son in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber series. In effect, it would work in a way similar to the spell casting mechanic in AD&D.

Wizardry: Scientific magic, with effects created on-the-fly by the wizard due to his "quasi-scientific" understanding of magic. As a game mechanic, this would be similar to the magic system in Ars Magica or The Riddle of Steel.

Psionics: Okay, now I hate using the terms "psionics," "mentalism," or "psychic" powers" in a fantasy RPG--they just seem wrong for the flavor of the game. I'd probably call a psionic-type magic system "Sorcery" instead. This would be a set of powers based on the internal reserves of the sorceror. He would have a discreet set of trained powers, probably with the ability to create more extreme effect in a power as he increased his skill in it. The cost of using powers would probably involve some sort of exhaustion (as I hate "spell points")--so I guess the host system would have to have decent (and non-optional) exhaustion rules.

Demonology: I know I'd try to include it, but I just don't have enough developed to figure out how. Demonology should really be included in a general system of magic that involves gaining power through summoned creatures, with many different flavors, depending on the types of summoned creatures the caster utilizes. Demons for a Demonologist, with demons providing great powers, but at great risks. Elementals for elementalists--providing less power, but at less risk to the elementalist.

I don't really know how I'd handle "Nature magic"--probably a type of Divine magic (as to do it justice, Divine magic really should be different for every diety or mythos (i.e. different rituals, powers, restrictions, etc) rather than a generic "host of spells" a-la AD&D.

Of course not all of these magic systems would be exclusive. A particularly potent spell-caster might have proficiency in two or even (very rarely) three of the systems. An archmage would almost certainly be highly proficient in at least two systems (but having spent so much time pursuing the study of magic, would probably have few other skills). The priests of certain religions might also be wizards, understanding the "science" of magic, as well as the nature of the divine...

Of course all of this needs to be mated to a solid combat and skill system...

Hope I didn't ramble too much (believe me, I could go on a lot longer on this)...

tauman

As I read this thread, I had a number of thoughts -- only to find my thoughts
eloquently expressed by the next poster. <grin> I will probably be using some of
the insights your topic has evoked in my own FRPG construction efforts.

Here's an additional consideration: the role or niche of the different types of magic
(as you've defined them).

Divine magic has the role of promoting faith in the deity conferring the miracle.
It's a vertical force (handed down from a transcendent Authority standing outside the
natural order). Too often, the mechanics for divine magic treat it as nothing more than
a type of magic with a god as its spell component. I would suggest that mechanics
for divine magic should restrict divine magic to miracles which promote faith (which
may be based in love, fear, and/or metaphysical resignation). A divine fireball? Only
to prove the deity's power and authority (and affection for His/Her people?) and never
as a reliable weapon -- thus, the unsubtle parting of the Red Sea, which proved
power and authority but did not bestow Water Control spells on anyone. Therefore,
divine magic must be based on the ~relationship~ between the PC striving for it
and the deity.

As suggested earlier, relationship counters would work better than basing magic on a
specific trait unaltered by the relationship.

Also, keep in mind that, in dividing divine magic from natural magic as you have, you're
implying an Abrahamic divine power (Judaism-Christianity-Islam), since the priests of
pagan and other pre-Christian faiths did not differentiate divine and natural magic (in
most but not all cases). (For this reason, you might consider having ANYONE capable
of divine magic rather than a divine spell-casting class such as priests. A priest might
be more attuned to his/her deity and thus better able to call upon that relationship for
a miracle, but only as a side effect of being a priest -- no one becomes a priest to gain
access to divine spells within the Abrahamic faith traditions.)

Natural magic in your system is a horizontal force -- it exists among us and within us,
rather than a trans-natural force such as divine magic or an unnatural force such as
arcane magic. Natural magic fills the niche of interaction with this world not the next
world (hence its relationship to certain sciences), and its role is determined by the
caster in choosing to interact with nature rather than by a divinity reaching out to
humans. Thus, natural magic would be based on the hidden secrets and rules -- the
heuristics -- of the metaphysical side of the natural world. (Second sight would be
useful in perceiving the links between metaphysical phenomena in nature.) It would
require both intelligence (to perceive) and wisdom (to read/comprehend). To keep the
sense of mystery you want, the links would probably be links of meaning and similarity,
what Carl Jung called synchronicity and what James Frasier identified as Sympathetic
Magic (sprinkle water to encourage rain) and Contagious Magic (use a deer antler to
summon deer into your hunting area).

It would make sense for natural magic to be based upon awareness talents, perhaps a
perception trait and a wisdom or understanding trait modified by a lore skill. Also, I would
suggest that all nature magic involve spontaneous invocations based upon the connections
which exist at that moment. No spells, simply awareness of what is and then efforts
to use that knowledge to influence what is -- sort of like recognizing a single thread and
then tugging on it to kill off a tree or reweaving it to heal said tree.

Arcane magic in your system is more of an imposition -- unnatural rather than transcendent
like divine magic or spiritually natural like nature magic. It comes from the ability of humans
to exploit loopholes and impose mechanistic and quantifiable rules upon their reality (less
the ancestor of pure science and more the ancestor of engineering?). Arcane magic fits
the role of human will over natural and metaphysical world, and thus it would be utterly
indifferent to the caster's relationship with the divine and to the caster's ability to
perceive and read the natural world.

To represent this, I suggest that arcane magic should be the only form of magic with
spell-casting skills and that each skill should represent a single spell or single type of
spell, perhaps even as mechanistic as GURPS Magic. Arcane magic might be linked
to a specific trait, but that trait should be the same one used for understanding any
applications skill, such as farming or city planning. Or it might be the trait used for
mathematics.

To sum up, without all my reasoning:

Divine magic = relationship counter based
Natural magic = awareness traits based
Arcane magic = applications skills based

Does this fit what you are looking for?

Doctor Xero

I just wanted to thank everyone and say that I'm still out there. Some of the posts have really gotten my brain going, and it'll take a little time for me to process everything. I think Doctor Xero expressed many of the ideas I had trouble communicating.

To describe my game a bit more, I think it will be primarily Sim. I haven't work out the Premise totally. It'll probably explore the relationship between the Divine, the human, and morality. I was a theology student, and me and my friends always played with a concept of the Divine, so those ideas have always interested me.

I also wanted to clarify, though the ideas concerning natural magic that people brought up are great (and I'll probably use some of them), they weren't exactly what I was originally thinking. I'll tell my story and maybe that'll help explain what I was thinking.

I stole the idea for natural magic from SteveD's Matrix game over at RPG.net. In his game, characters are defined by one stat, their ability to manipulate the Matrix. In his system, task resolution is determined by rolling two dice, one for a mundane skill attempt, and one for attempting to manpulate the Matrix. Thus there are 3 ways to succeed: you can succeed by mundane skill, by the manipulation of reality/Matrix, or both (which results in spectacular effects). I thought this would make a good magic concept. Characters wouldn't cast spells, per se, they could simply be magical. They could do extrodinary (sp?) things without spells.

But the ideas about natural magic that other people brought up are great, and they're not mutaully exclusive with my original idea. I don't know, I'll think about things some more and see where it all takes me.

So in a matrix-like realm,
a nature magus would be a programmer, a divine magus would be intimate friends
with the administrator/wizard, and an arcane magus would be a hacker?

Doctor Xero