D&D General Alternatives to spell slots and spell points

[dave2008]

Have you looked at shadowdark's spell system? You roll every time you cast. When you fail a roll you can no longer cast that spell until you rest, IIRC.

 

[darjr]

Mörk Borg you roll to cast. You get a random number of invitations a day. But if you fail the roll you take damage and can’t cast that spell for a while, plus a crit fail can earn you a roll in the crit fail table.

I think I like Shadowdarks the most, but I might add mercurial magic from DCC.

One thing I thought of recently when everyone lost the ability to sleep in one of our Miörk Borg campaigns was to provide a ritual to get back a spell.

Which led me to consider that for Shadowdark and DCC.

If you fail a spell you can’t cast it again unless you commit some ritual. That would remove the “daily” recharge thing.

The rituals would be a little risky and cost something. Maybe riches, those expensive components that usually get ignored, or maybe they’d have to “spellburn” or roll for crit failure every cast. Not sure yet.

 

[bedir than]

A way to lean into some D&D mechanics would be to use exhaustion once you get past a certain number of spells or spell failures.

I could also see that for each failure you roll on the wild magic table, cumulative. So if I failed in my third attempt at flaming sphere that day I would suffer 3 wild effects

 

[Stormonu]

Chronicles of Ramlar had a roll-to-cast system, with each spell having a set difficulty based on the amount of damage, number effected, range, duration, components and the like. On top of that, it had a momentum system where the better the group did, the better things they could do (think of it like a +1 to +3 bonus to rolls per success). Some spells couldn't be cast without some bit of momentum, so it might take a few rounds before a big spell (like death spell) could be unleashed.

To keep folks from willy-nilly trying to get a lucky roll to cast a difficult spell they had a failure clause - if you failed the roll, you couldn't cast the spell again until the spell's duration had passed. Fail to cast a 1-action spell? Can't try to cast it again for 1 action. Fail the charm person spell that would have lasted for a day if it succeeded? Can't cast charm person for a day then. Fail casting a permanent spell? Well, then you'd never be able to try and cast that spell ever again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

These are helpful suggestions. I might let the magician cast each spell once, and then cast it subsequent times at a cost of damage to themselves.

Another simple alternative is Dungeon World's approach.

When you cast a spell, you make a check to retain that spell. If you fail it, you can't cast that spell again until after a long rest.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Love Shadowdark's spell casting. You still have "slots" but you can cast the memorized spell over and over and over until you fail your casting roll then you're done with that spell for the day.

 

[M.T. Black]

Have you looked at shadowdark's spell system? You roll every time you cast. When you fail a roll you can no longer cast that spell until you rest, IIRC.

Yeah, this is similar to Black Hack 2. I'm thinking about using this mechanic

 

[M.T. Black]

Mörk Borg you roll to cast. You get a random number of invitations a day. But if you fail the roll you take damage and can’t cast that spell for a while, plus a crit fail can earn you a roll in the crit fail table.

I think I like Shadowdarks the most, but I might add mercurial magic from DCC.

One thing I thought of recently when everyone lost the ability to sleep in one of our Miörk Borg campaigns was to provide a ritual to get back a spell.

Which led me to consider that for Shadowdark and DCC.

If you fail a spell you can’t cast it again unless you commit some ritual. That would remove the “daily” recharge thing.

The rituals would be a little risky and cost something. Maybe riches, those expensive components that usually get ignored, or maybe they’d have to “spellburn” or roll for crit failure every cast. Not sure yet.

recharge on a ritual - I like it! I could see how you could tie that into a hermetic magic system

 

[bedir than]

Another idea. You can cast a spell at no check, using 1 HD per spell level.

 

[darjr]

I do like the magic in The One Ring. It's subtle and not spells, per-se, though Dwarves can know bits of ancient spells. Many grant a "magical success" on tests which auto succeed if there is hope (that is the character can spend a point of hope).

which is super on theme during play. There are boons and artifacts and such but mostly magic is just a feature of the world. Not like a technology really.

But also is sort of like with the Rings of Power.