D&D 4E 4e...take a note from Monte Cook's WoD

[Imaro]

I really hope the designers of 4e take a look at Monte Cook's magic system in his new World of Darkness game. All I can say is it ROCKS. A freeform magic system for d20 where you can both build spells on the fly or cast pre-made spells is, IMHO, the type of inovation I'm looking for in 4th edition. An actual spellcasting roll whose difficulty is dependant upon what type of spell you are casting is evolutionary, and the fact that it still has actual "spells" which are easier to cast keeps that old school flavor as well. All I can say is Monte continues to impress me.

 

[Lockridge]

I haven't read WOD but Monte's system in Arcana Evolved was heads and shoulders above the current system.

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

Monte has a RPG called World of Darkness? Won't White Wolf complain? (Sorry about going off on a tangent, but this surprised me)

 

[Imaro]

Monte has a RPG called World of Darkness? Won't White Wolf complain? (Sorry about going off on a tangent, but this surprised me)

Lol ...I think WW is ok with it since they publish it. It's Monte Cook's take on an alternate World of Darkness and supposedly his last rpg product. It's more action inspired and set in a semi-post apocalyptic setting.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

My understanding from reading the stuff at Monte's site and forum and the stuff over at White Wolf is that White Wolf asked him to do it.

I've seen the book in person at my FLGS. It's an impressive tome. I didn't get a chance to look at the spell system, but, knowing Monte's products, I'm sure it's impressive.

 

[HellHound]

A freeform magic system for d20 where you can both build spells on the fly or cast pre-made spells is, IMHO, the type of inovation I'm looking for in 4th edition

In other words, the magic system from Mage or Ars Magica converted to d20 is what you want in D&D?

 

[Imaro]

In other words, the magic system from Mage or Ars Magica converted to d20 is what you want in D&D?

Not exactly...paradox and other things that are WoD specific shouldn't be included...but a balanced and free-form magic system would be great. I mean it's not like Talislanta hasn't done it already for a d20 based system. And include pre-made spells for those who want it. Is there something inherently wrong with giving both fan bases what they want?

 

[RangerWickett]

Mythic Earth isn't quite the same as Ars Magica, but it's freeform. I wouldn't mind updating it to 4e, and giving it a bit of a thwacking with the balance stick. I'm curious what Monte's WoD does for free-form magic, though. Anyone care to summarize?

 

[JVisgaitis]

I really hope the designers of 4e take a look at Monte Cook's magic system in his new World of Darkness game. All I can say is it ROCKS. A freeform magic system for d20 where you can both build spells on the fly or cast pre-made spells is, IMHO, the type of innovation I'm looking for in 4th edition.

Care to elaborate at all? Sounds like something I've been messing around with for Violet Dawn for ages.

 

[Imaro]

This is all from memory, since I don't have the book at this moment but here's a very broad overview. It basically works like this...each mage has a certain amount of components per day that he uses to construct a spell. Things such as range, area, damage, targets, etc. are bought with the components and the difficulty of casting the spell(a spellcraft check) is derived through the total cost of the components and other modifiers. With each spell you also risk suffering a certain amount of fatigue(especially if it's a more powerful spell) from casting which can make each successive casting harder.

Rotes are prepared spells that are pased down from mage to mage and thus easier to cast than an on-the-fly spell. A rote is an already constructed spell that, when cast, gives the mage a +5 to his spellcraft check, if the rote also corresponds to your particular path(necromancer, enchanter, warlock,etc.) then youy recieve an additional casting bonus of +5. You can freely use metamagic feats(quicken,silent,etc.) on rotes, but changing anything else about the spell(increasing damage, number of targets, energy type, etc.) causes you to loose the rote bonuses and it is cast as a regular "constructed" spell. So Rotes can be used both as traditional "spells" or as templates, for quickly tweaking instead of building a spell from scratch, for quicker play.