Sympathetic Magic System

[GMMichael]

You know there was a reason they got rid of it. And yes in some ways it is worse, at least in pre-4th D&D it happened on one occasion, in this system the caster could be holding up the party several times a day. Also there is the introduction of "DM may I?" In that an encounter occurs and it is really up to the DM how much MP points you've gained back so what spells you can cast, the player doesn't know what they can and can't do, and make decisions around that.

Let me clarify real quick, in case it helps: most spells do 1d8 Metaphysical damage to the caster. This is transforming his MP power into a spell, so "damage" is a little misleading. A caster is most likely to dedicate his ability points to Metaphysical first, then Mental, last Physical. So he'll have lots (maybe 16 at first level) of MP points for casting spells, but relatively diddly (8 or less) in Physical. Also note that spells with physical results do Physical damage. So even if this caster is heavily armored, a spell that deals 2d8 Physical damage will, bare minimum, put him at 3/4 Physical health. Which is bad news if he has arrows and ogres to dodge as well.

Let's say he survived the last fight, and he did it by casting two spells in one round. He took an average of 9 MP damage (2d8 / 2). He doesn't need to DMmayI yet, because he still has 7 MP health, which is probably 1 or 2 spells. The party is welcome to say, "we wait for 9 hours." The GM just has to snap his fingers and that goes by. Or they say, "let's keep exploring," and the caster might get 1 point back before something interesting happens.

If this is disrupting to the game, I'm seeing it as a GM problem, not a system problem. Maybe I'm wrong.

Well apart from the fat most swords didn't go all the way through, a pierced lung from a dagger is just as lethal as pierced lung from a sword. Also you don't see many illustrations of armoured mages but your system seems to want to encourage that.

Crazy, isn't it? I feel like there are lots of armored mages in video games, maybe it's time that RPGs caught up. Modos has plenty of room for adding Spell Failure rules.

True, but it is the a flawed action economy. If the mage can offset most of that damage through protection, then he is doing 5 times more "stuff" every action than the fighter. And in most fights that will be what it important, it doesn't matter if the caster takes a bit of MP damage, since once the enemy is dead, he can just make everyone wait for him to regain them over several hours.

You could be right. I'm hoping some playtesting will suss that out.
But consider:
- the "fighter" can just as easily take the Cast Spell skill as the "mage" can.
- What the mage offsets with protection, his targets are offsetting as well.
- If a mage wants a spell to last longer than a round, he must use a Mental action to maintain it. And if he wants to defend against Physical attacks, he needs actions for that too. So the choice to go whole-hog on a spell is a tricky one, since it could mean ending previous spells, not having defense ready (although protection still applies), or taking just as much damage as he's dealing.