Making magic feel "Dangerous"

[Garthanos]

A recent thread brought me back to thinking about a custom magic system I designed back in 1e land where mages had similar hit points to other battle capable characters but in their role as ranged back line combatant they spent hit points as an aspect of using their power.

In 4e we come from a fare different starting point but I would still like to see if I could leverage that feel where there is a price to pay for power.

4e already has certain powers with after maths like the Malediction Invokers and bloodclaw weapons that let you spend hit points towards gaining beneficial boost on attacks and even the Blood mage paragon path (Bolstering Blood only affects Wizard Encounter Powers).
I seem to recall a theme which lets you spend a healing surge for a magical power effect not remembering which one.

But these feel I don't know sprinkled around I am considering making it feel more ubiquitous for a particular campaign and not sure about how best to do it.

 

[darkbard]

The first idea that comes to mind is modeling it on psionic boosts, where AW powers can be boosted to encounter/daily effects/damage via spending surges (instead of power points).

 

[Garthanos]

The first idea that comes to mind is modeling it on psionic boosts, where AW powers can be boosted to encounter/daily effects/damage via spending surges (instead of power points).

And maybe to keep encounter powers feeling encounterish? Do we need something like allowing one to recover hs with an endurance check during a short rest (insert additional limit to prevent string along rests or not)

 

[Celebrim]

Making magic feel dangerous involves making it mysterious and unpredictable. Conceptually, I've wanted to do that for nearly thirty years, and I've experimented with a wide variety of mechanics.

What I've discovered is that mysterious and unpredictable magic is not really suitable for table top play unless you also are going to make magic super rare, because it imposes too many burdens on the DM.

Magic in D&D is the province of the player. The spells have always been a part of the PH, even back in the day when DMG's had warnings on them that they shouldn't be read by players. The spells are thus inherently known and not mysterious, and to a large extent selected and controlled by the players. The players may occasionally run into magic in a dungeon which is dangerous and mysterious, and Gygax was very much a believer in magical weirdness in dungeons, but their own magic is not numinous to them.

This has an incredibly positive benefit on play. Whenever a player wants to cast a spell, it's up to the player to bring the mechanics of the spell into play and resolve them. The DM basically has no mental or mechanical burden when spells are used. If spells are to be numinous and dangerous, the mental and mechanical burden falls to the DM.

The same is largely true of magic items in the possession of the players.

Because of this, if you want to make spells or magic items "dangerous", you also have to greatly limit their availability and ubiquity in the game because dangerous magic imposes such a high mental burden on the DM that you won't be able to keep track of it all otherwise, and such a high mechanical burden on play that whenever magic is used it will slow resolution down to a crawl. Casting a spell becomes an event which draws all the focus of play onto the spell-caster. Thus, you can't have all that spotlight being accrued to the one player all the time, and so you can't have him casting spells all the time.

If you want magic to be super rare, all this is fine. But don't expect it to feel very much like D&D. Likewise, if you had some sort of computer program that was keeping track of the hidden information and the mechanical resolution for you, this would work, but you can't easily do it on a table top.

 

[GMMichael]

Spellcasting rolls. Caster rolls d20 + (DC - 10) against DC 10 + target's saving throw bonus. The fun starts when you roll a 1.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Make use of magic risk fatiguing the caster. Attempt too much, and your party has to drag you along in a litter.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I think the real question to ask is, how do I want magic to feel?

Do you want casting spells to be a potentially suicidal activity? Do you want to see less magic in combat? Do you want people to fear being the recipient of any magic? Any of these will have various effects on how the spellcaster can be incented to behave along those themes.

For example, let's say that every spell you cast drains you and requires you to rest afterward to regain your energies. However, you don't want spellcasting to be fatal per se. So, every time you cast a spell, you get a penalty to all rolls until you have a short rest. This will reduce combat casting greatly; opening with a fireball will expose the caster to damage while he's weakened, for example, but ending the combat with a fireball will still be welcome. Furthermore, ritual casting or non-combat casting will be relatively unaffected by this, as you just add the rest to the casting prep time and you're good. Also, you haven't made magic more mysterious, just changed the optimal methods of deployment.

 

[Garthanos]

Making magic feel dangerous involves making it mysterious and unpredictable.

Depletion of hit points make everything else around them feel more dangerous AND yet they also take something which is incredibly erratic in real life human response to injury and make it valuably predictable for game play. You may be right about DM workload when you are trying for mysterious. However In effect spell casting which damages the caster even if its 1, d2, d4,d6,d8 hp is Dangerous in D&D land. That was actually my first incarnation of the idea in 1e land... I gave wizards the same hit points as cleric but depleted them when they channelled arcane power. Is it thrice fold returns adding up a tally which eventually snaps back, or is actually taking internal psychic or even physical mana burn. (Tend to be much the same). Its also reasonable to declare the damage temporary or non-deadly damage and allow casters to ahem knock themselves out.

I don't think it takes a bunch of DM adjudication for D&D danger although yes at some level it is still somewhat predictable and less mysterious than it might be with a lot of DM management (there are games which center around wizards like Ars Magica and a few others and they can afford more DM hand work in my opinion than D&D) .

 

[Garthanos]

I think the real question to ask is, how do I want magic to feel?

Do you want casting spells to be a potentially suicidal activity?

Even just knocking the mage out is flavorful.

Spell Called Enter sandman after casting you get dust on your hands and have to make an easy ish saving throw or be affected by your casting and fall asleep

Spelll Fireball you get minor fire damage when casting

Hypnotic Whirl may make you dizzy and if you are hit in the round following you are automatically prone.

These can be spell specific implications and after effects. They do not take a bunch of extra adjudication .... are they more mysterious? shrug they do feel flavorful and dangerous, and yup they might alter the method for deciding optimal play.

 

[Garthanos]

Make use of magic risk fatiguing the caster. Attempt too much, and your party has to drag you along in a litter.

Certainly a possibility but everything about adventuring kind of risks stretchers for the whole gang in one form or another.