Heartbreaker Magic System

Still writing my fantasy heartbreaker and I'm trying to decide on a name.  Goblin Bones?  The Goblin Doctrine?

Today I'm spending a lot of time thinking about the magic system.  It's going to be 100% opinion.

I've already decided that the game will have a soft cap at 3rd level, with character advancement tapering off swiftly after that.

Since I'm going to be writing the magic system from the ground up, I might as well brainstorm on which aspects of the old one I don't like.

• How shitty level 1 wizards are.
• How some spells are way better than others, even within a spell level
• That only wizards can use wands and stuff, and everyone else is assumed incompetent.
• How incomparable effects are (arbitrarily) made comparable by sorting them into spell levels
• Rigid Vancian spellcasting
• Some spells bypass huge areas of the game, or make gameplay feel more like superheroes and less like Farfhd and the Grey Mouser (even Fly does this)

Flexible Vancian Spellcasting

I've already decided that wizards will use an MP-preparation system where they get a fixed amount of MP at each level and spend it during spell preparation.

Level 1 = 1 MP = one level 1 spell
Level 2 = 2 MP = two level 1 spells
Level 3 = 4 MP = two level 1 spells and one level 2 spell; four level 1 spells; or two level 2 spells

No Read Magic

Wizards can decipher a wand or a scroll with an Int check, or they can cast Detect Magic to do it automatically.

Magic items are the same: you can get a big clue about their powers + learn their activation by either (a) spend an hour making an Int check in a wizard-level laboratory, (b) cast Detect Magic on it, or (c) pay a sage.

You Cannot Make Your Own Scrolls

Each spell is a spirit/angel/demon that lives in a parallel and overlapping dimension to our own.  It lives in your spellbook.  You coax it into your brain with meditation and lies.  You cast it by opening a window in your head.  And then it flashes into the hostile world, burns like magnesium powder as it does (observable spell effect), then flees back into the safety of the spellbook.

Each spell, then, is a particular instantiation of a spell-species, and they have names, and some can be said to have minds.  One wizard's fireball might be named Oswald (a name the spell gave itself), and when cast, is slightly different than another wizard's fireball, who is named Magistrix Imperilla Sastane.

A wizard who scribes a scroll then, is giving up his private spell.  He's putting Oswald in a cage so that he can be bought and sold.  (Many wizards do this, when they need quick money.)  That is why scrolls are so precious: they're aren't instructions to be memorized; they're jail cells for a metasentient psycho-pelagic bioarcanum.

Wands are more like zoos, or animal collections.  They're also more stable.  (Spells are social and tend to go mad when confined to a single scroll for a century or two.  This is also why level 1 wizards begin play with 2 spells in their spellbook.)



You Don't Have To Be a Wizard to Use a Wand or Scroll

One thing I learned to like about roguelike games is that scrolls and wands aren't strictly the domain of the wizard.  Any class can learn to a particular wand or scroll once a sage or party wizard (who deciphered it earlier) mentors them through it.  They can use the wand/scroll with another Int check, failure just means that you spend a turn waving a wand around like a dope.

This doesn't add to a party's power, since they already had the scrolls and wands.  It just makes them more versatile, which I think is the fun of magic-spells-and-stuff.  Plus it gives the players more options, and therefore more tactical depth.  Should they give the scroll to the rogue or the wizard?  The wizard can cast it more reliably, but if the rogue has it, the party can potentially cast two fire spells in the first round.

This is also part of my "all adventurers are assumed to be competent at all adventurey stuff" philosophy.  I consider using wands basic adventurin' stuff.

Some Spells I Don't Like

Any spell that brings dead people back to life.  Teleportation.  Sending.  Detect Traps.  I even get grumpy about Fly.  (Sure, you might be able to bring someone back to life, but it'll be a dodgy quest, not a level 5 spell).

The reason I don't like these spells is because they make gameplay very different from an easily relatable set of tools.  Farfhd might bypass a moat of crocodiles by feeding them poisoned meat, but he'd never teleport over.  (Okay, He might fly, but it'd be a one-time thing.)  They also let magic solve too many problems that cleverness and hard work should overcome.

So those spells are out.

(A Rant: I Don't Understand Spell Levels)

I understand that you want to put the most awesome divination spells in the highest levels

Sure, a level 5 spell needs to be a lot more damaging than a level 1 spell because the monsters a level 9 wizard fights have a lot more HP.  Makes sense.  But pretty much everything else is equally useful no matter what level the wizard is.  Speak with Dead is fun and often useful at every level of play.  Same thing with being able to see through a door.  Invisibility is awesome against goblins and manticores, both.  Being able to ask a god a yes-or-no question is as useful at level 1 as it is at level 20.

It's like they made a list of all the illusion spells they could think of, and then spread them across nine spell levels.  Then they did the same for divination, conjuring objects, etc.  It's like they don't want you to have any fun with spells at level 1.  The idea of balancing these effects for a certain level is bullshit because they are essentially incomparable.  You can't compare a 9d6 fireball to invisibility, or polymorph to augury.  They are incomparables.

And I don't think these spells are unbalancing, because (a) is a minute of invisibility at level 1 really better than a sleep spell?, and (b) balance isn't a huge priority anyway.


No Spell Levels

Since I'm basically writing a game for levels 1-3ish, I first got rid of all the spells higher than 2nd level.

Then I decided that that was a bit too drastic, and wrote low-level versions of a lot of the spells that I just removed.

Then I decided to go for simplicity, and made everything a level 1 spell (that costs 1 MP).

But then I still wanted level 3 wizards to be more powerful than level 1 wizards, so I wrote up boosting.

Boosting Spells (i.e. Spells Don't Get More Powerful Just Because Your Caster Level Goes Up)

Basically, you can prepare a spell at a higher level to have it get more powerful.  (5e has pretty much the same thing).  Magic missile does 1d6+1 damage no matter what level the caster is.  But if you prepare it as a level 2 two spell, then it shoots out 3 missiles.

You can use the same concept to create a level 1 version of Fireball.  If you cast it as a level 3 spell, it does 5d6 damage, just like you remember.


I should also mention that fireball is a rare spell.  It's not something that characters will begin play with.  It's a legendary spell.  Rumors that a dungeon holds a scroll of fireball is enough to get adventurers knocking on the door.

All Spells Are Useful And/Or Interesting

I feel bad for some spells.  Detect poison, read magic (already addressed), floating disc, alarm, light.  A lot of spells just don't stack up to other spells like sleep or color spray, either because their usage is too niche or because there are too few ways to use them creatively.

So, a lot of spells have been rewritten to make them more powerful at level 1.  Ideally, everything should be as useful as sleep, which is sort of what I used as the benchmark.  (i.e. "Would I consider taking this spell instead of sleep?")

For starters, detect spells last all day.

Before you accuse me of power creep, remember that

Wizards Don't Suck at Level 1

The original idea for wizards was that they would suck for a few levels.  The rest of the party would have to help carry them, with the exchange that the wizard would be crazy powerful at higher levels.  Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as players are down for that sort of power-schism.

But if I've putting a soft cap on progression at level 3, wizards need to start being useful now, and for more things than just sleep spells.


No Stacking Spells

You can't prepare more than one copy of a spell.  No stacking fireballs.  They're like cichlids fighting in your brain.

Here are Some Sample Spells