Any D20 games in which magic has bad side effects?

[corndemon]

One mroe option I just thought of:

You could use a role playing road block that the spellcasters have to avoid instead of a rules thing.

Arcane casters could be harassed by local wizardry guilds or the churches of the gods of magic if they don't play by whatever rules those organizations make up. For example, in my campaign the church of Wee Jas likes to mess with PC spellcasters, expecting them to live by all the same laws they do, which range from 'do not attack a mage of greater experience than yourself without challenging them to a formal duel' to 'you must wear your hair braided in a number of braids that denote your magical knowledge (one braid for each level of spells you know, with 0 level spells counting as a level in this case)' to 'you must offer one arcane enchanted item to the church before you ascend the pyramid of arcane power once more (in other words, to level up, they want you to donate a magic item)'. PCs who resist these laws become the victims of slander, angry mobs, curses, and even outright attacks.

Divine spellcasters would likewise be expected to live up to the canon laws of their church (or coven/circle/grotto in the case of druids, rangers and shamans).

 

[nsruf]

CoC seems to be what you are looking for.

But the Umbragia magic system has some bad consequences - at least for excessive spellcasting. Try

http://www.d20reviews.com/jagged/umbragia/

 

[Plane Sailing]

Masters of the Wild has a prestige class for ex-druids (Blighter?) which acts somewhat like the dark sun defilers - they destroy vegetation to power their spells.

Definitely recomment Call of Cthulhu though.

Cheers

 

[Dave Blewer]

My last second edition game had some stuff like this:

I had weapon warded clothes and armour instead of standard magical armour... This armour was warded against all attacks from certain weapons. the enchantment caused some sort of retributive effect that caused another weapon to gain a +4 to hit and damage. This "bane" weapon had to be discovered by trial and error.

There were very few +1 - +5 magical weapons. Most weapons allowed you to cast a spell upon yourself one or more times per day. They usually had detrimental effects as well. I seem to remember an Axe of the Bear that increased the users Con but also gave him a chance of going berserk in combat.

Healing Potions only had a limited effect. If you drank to many of them in a 24 hour period they started having a lesser effect

Many other magical items also had evil reputations; such as it was rumpoured that some people who used invisibility rings or cloaks, dissapeared never to be seen again...

Then there was the whole Alien Dimension invasion thing that used magical Bioware....

 

[Gospog]

Just to round out your list of games with "magic at a cost", in Wierd Wars, casting costs you hit points every time you cast.

Still, CoC seems a good fit for you.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Our group has developed a - not yet finished, but a first playtest was made - D20 Shadowrun system.

Forget the old D&D Magics with 9 (10) levels of spells, instead we use 20.
A level 5 Manabolt causes 5d6 points of damage at the target, and causes you drain.
If you are of caster level 5 or higher, you suffer 5 points of subdual damage. If you have less than 5 levels, you suffer 1d6 or more points of real damage.
Addionally, we allowed spellcasters to have some power points (so that they don`t need better hit dice), but they gain only a few power points (1 at first level).

The first playtest showed as, that a mage was like in the Shadowrunbooks: After the fight, he is wery fatigued - My shaman had 9 hitpoints, and 8 points of subdual damage.
So, it was far better than the original system, in which no mage worth his salt would ever suffer Drain. (Because, if you suffer drain in D20, you gain damage penalties to all rolls, and that makes someone extremely fast extremely useles.. )

 

[Tsyr]

Several of the Mongoose Publishing magic encylopedias have nasty side effects of prolonged use... three that I can think of, Chaos Magic, Demonology, and Necromancy...

Chaos Magic slowly infuses your body with chaos, making you less and less human, going down one of many paths of decay, until eventualy you succumb to pure chaos, either turning into something inhuman, or being sucked into a pocket of demi-reality and left in agonizing pain for all eternity, or something equaly nasty...

Demonology has such lovely things as possession, stat loss, demonic features...

Necromancy you can slowly gain aspects of the undead, most of them Not Good Things... such as having to eat flesh of the sentient to survive, things like that.

Lets see... outside mongoose... Elemental Magic in Sov Stone does... but not normaly permanent effects, it more just does damage when you try to cast things that are difficult for you.

Call of Cthullu, as mentioned...

In Wheel of Time, if your a male caster (And it could be easily adapted to females if you wanted to use the system outside WoT), you slowly go insane...

 

[Mystic Eye]

In most D&D games, magic is just a neutral force. What I'm wondering is this: Is there a D20 system in which there are CONSEQUENCES for using magic? For instance, I was watching Buffy, and it's been mentioned that the use of magic always has consequences. So is there a D20 game out there with just such a magic system? In which the use of magic can do harm as well as good? Bring unintentional harm? Corrupt the user? Etc? Thanks for the help.

HI Green Knight,

We have just released our title called Blight Magic. This magic form can be applied to all 3e spell casters (arcan or Divine) and has terrible consequences for using it. It is actually adictive to sorcerer types and it corrputs both physically and mentally ,eventually driving the caster to total madness if they are not careful.

You will find the additional rules simple and extremely easy to meld into the current 3e magic methods.

It can be ordered now from our site our will be in stores in a couple of weeks.

 

[Green Knight]

*bookmarks thread for future use*

Thanks for the suggestions, folks! I'll make sure to check out as many of these books as I can.

 

[Psion]

Many

d20 CoC and Mongoose's Chaos Magic and Necromancy has already been mentioned.

Umbragia uses a variant of the S. John Ross' infinite mana system for GURPS (which is also starkly similar to the spell point system we used in some old 1e and 2e AD&D games.) Essentially, you had a pool of power; so long as you stayed withing those limits, you had no problems. Once you exceeded those limits, you could cast forever, but every time you did, you would put yourself at significant risk.

(And trust me, from my experience with our 1e/2e spell point system and the 2e Spells & Magic channeling system, a typical PC will eventually do something foolish and pay for it...)


In the Shadowforce Archer mysticism system, you have a chance to acquire a quality called thirst as you use mystical rites & rituals. Basically, you become drunk on the power you are wielding and become less and less a part of the mortal world, until finally you lose it altogether.