Looking for an alternate magic system...

[SSquirrel]

Mana system

Looked at the SRD and didn't notice anything that showed the basis for the mana system. Unless you just meant the spell charts for how many spells per level and such.

Easiest mana system I've come up with is for spells to cost 1 mana/spell level. You start with mana equal to the total of your spells/day. Let's say you have a 5th level wizard who has 4/3/2/1 for 0/1/2/3rd lvl spells. Make the minimum points earned as 1 so you have 4*0=4, 3*1=3, 2*2=4, 1*3=3+4+3+4=14. Add in any bonus earned from high Int in the same fashion and it's done. Of course I would also say cast as many damn 0 level spells per day as ya want. Only restriction I've seen taht would be needed is that 0 lvl healing spells cannot be cast more than 3 times by the caster on any one individual. This mana system works fine for wizards or clerics too.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Mana system

Looked at the SRD and didn't notice anything that showed the basis for the mana system. Unless you just meant the spell charts for how many spells per level and such.

I expect he's referring to the psionic stuff down at the bottom fo the SRD. Psionics are basically a mana-point magic system.

 

[kenjib]

Re: Re: Mana system

I expect he's referring to the psionic stuff down at the bottom fo the SRD. Psionics are basically a mana-point magic system.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. If Thoughts Could Kill has conversions for all of the PHB spells. If you just apply a mana system to the spells as-is you encounter serious problems with regards to the scaling damage of spells. Magic missile, for example, becomes ridiculously overpowered since without any changes at high level you could shoot one off every round all day long since it would only be 1 mana point per casting. If Thoughts Could Kill updates the spells to fix problems like this. It also smooths out the damage and scaling of various spells to make it work better in a system where you are counting point costs. You can get it in PDF pretty darned cheap.

Of course, this is all assuming that that's the kind of flavor you're looking for...

 

[Crothian]

Magic by AEG has some alternate system. Slaine has one, but it will rewuire a little more work to make it fit.

 

[mmadsen]

Mana System and Scaling

If you just apply a mana system to the spells as-is you encounter serious problems with regards to the scaling damage of spells.

What if you just don't scale spells up (and require the Heighten Feat for that)?

 

[Desdichado]

Is there some flavor distinction you want to emphasise? It's hard to recommend what you want in a magic system without some more parameters. I've been working up a system that would use (potentially) all the normal spells, but it's a "dangerous magic" alternative, similar to CoC in many ways. I suppose I could take out the risk of going mad (essentially borrowed from WoT anyway), but then there isn't really much to the modification. You should be able to cobble something up out of the WoT system easily enough.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

This is the magic system I use IMC.

No Sorcerors, reason becomes obvious below.

All spellcasters learn spells in a similar way to wizards (all level 0 and 4 spells at level 1, 2 spells per level thereafter, any others you learn are a seperate issue)

Clerics automatically learn their domain spells as follows; cleric level 1 -> learn level 1 spells, Cleric Level 3 -> learn level 2 spells. These are in addition to those detailed above.

All characters gain base Mana equal to the total of their Int Wis and Cha bonuses at level 1.

Clerics, Druids and Wizards gain 2d4 Mana per level.
Rangers, Bards and Paladins gain 1d4 Mana per level.

Casting a spell requires components as per the description, plus;
Casting Check, DC = 10 + (3 x Spell Level) to cast successfully.
Channelling Check, DC 10 + Mana Used

The casting check is the base spellcasting stat, plus caster level, plus appropriate skill, plus 1d20. (Clerics and Paladins use Knowledge; Religion, Wizards use Spellcraft, Rangers and Druids use Wilderness Lore, Bards use Perform)

The channelling check is a Fort save, using Caster Level as a bonus. Failing the Channelling Check inflicts 1 point of temporary Con damage per point of failure.

The Mana cost for a spell is 1 + (3 x Spell Level), hence meta magic feats can be used unchanged (they raise both checks and mana use appropriately.

All spellcasters choose spells to cast on the fly, also it is notable that the level of the character does not limit spells that they can attempt to cast, its just that the Mana may be hard to aquire, the casting check may be hard to pass and the channelling might kill you...

Its also plausible for a character from another class to learn to spellcast with crossclass skills, but low mana would restrict them to low level spells...

This system is giving me the slightly less predicatable, slightly dangerous but more flexible feel I wanted for my current game

Obviously such concepts as magic items which store Mana, or aid in spellcasting or channelling checks, or which lower mana costs for spells take the place of things like rings of spellstoring or pearls of power. Interestingly scribing scrolls becomes very popular, since that requires no casting or channelling checks, just lots of time...

 

[kenjib]

Re: Mana System and Scaling

What if you just don't scale spells up (and require the Heighten Feat for that)?

Yeah, that's basically it, and then you can spend more mana to cast it at a higher level - i.e. scale up the damage dice.

btw - the main reason I suggested this alternate was that it can still use spells from the PHB and other standard d20 books, which is something almost no other published variant magic systems do (although house ruled suggestions in this thread do). This was one of the criteria in the first post. My personal preference would be to do something more drastic though. I'm kind of tired of the 30 year old PHB spells.

 

[Bryan Vining]

The choices are endless. There's a lot of people who dislike the Vancian magic system.

Bear in mind that virtually any change you make here will shift the balance of power between character classes at least a little bit, and those shifts can surprise you if you're not careful. The 3E dictum has been to establish a balance between how many spells you can know, how many you can cast, and how much freedom you have in selecting those spells on-the-fly.

You really need to evaluate what you're looking for. For a Tolkienesque flavor, for instance, spell point systems are very appropriate, but, even then, you don't really capture the feel, as the true wizards were immortal semi-angelic beings.

If you want a more classic feel, you'd go to an even worse extreme than Vance, wherein magic is done by ritual. Spellcasting then is not at all a fast procedure.

It's really just a question of what feel you're trying to capture. Something doesn't suit you about the Vancian system, and it behooves you to determine what that something is before you change up the rules.

Cheers!

 

[ced1106]

Well, EQ RPG has its mana pool system. I understand the spells don't scale like they do in D&D. The bard singing is quite different from spellcasting.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^