Tell me about Grim Tales' Magic

[DwelleroftheDeep]

As the thread title says, I'm curious as to how magic works in this game, as I'm looking for a better alternative to my questionably balanced D20 modern homebrew magic systems and have the game in the mail right now. I've heard it's good but that's about it so far.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm not exactly an objective observer, so I'll give other folks a chance to chime in.

Suffice to say I've seen this thread and if you don't get the answers you need from others, I'll be back to help out.

 

[GlassJaw]

The ability to use magic is based on talents. Take the appropriate talent, gain the ability to use magic. Additional talents increase your casting ability and caster level.

Even without the magic talents, anyone can cast a spell. Learning a spell requires a Spellcraft. Casting a spell requires a caster check. Casting also results in Spell Burn. If you do not have the magic talent, Spell Burn is Con damage. With the magic talent it's Str damage.

There are no spell slots or spells per day. Essentially, you can cast as many spells as your body can withstand. And depending on how difficult you want casting to be, certain variables of the system can be changed.

It's a simple and highly effective system.

 

[Kirin'Tor]

GlassJaw nailed it on the head - I'm going to expand a little on the Spell Burn, which is both the mechanical and flavor balancing agent:

One burn die per spell level is rolled (d6 is standard, options are presented)
A practiced caster (IE one with a spellcasting talent), subtracts his primary ability from each die. 1's Are auto-burn, no resistance,

Casters without the talent or casting above their caster level suffer the burn as CON Damage, all others suffer it as STR damage.

If you reach 0 STR, you are immobile & most probably unconscious from the exhaustion of spellweaving.

If you reach 0 CON via damage, your corpse busts into flames as the dark forces with which you have been bargaining consume the mortal toll.


well, I added the favor to that last bit, but the core is the same, 0 CON = death.

 

[Henry]

BTW, KirinTor, I noticed yesterday that the Grim Tales SRD is experiencing problems; like when I check out the Strong/Fast/etc. Hero, I get:

error unspecified
notice unspecified
not busy
status=bad
GT-SRD: The Hero

Any info on this?

 

[takyris]

Other folks have described it in fair detail. Here's what I like:

- It provides something better than Vancian memorization and more flexible than the sorcerer model,.
- It's a better model for the "warrior-magician" archtype found in a lot of modern fiction. (Or not so modern.) David Eddings' Belgarion? He's a Strong/Dedicated (or Strong/Charismatic, perhaps). Robin Hobb's Fitzchivalry Farseer is a Fast/Smart. Modessit's Alucius (from his Corean Chronicles) is almost certainly a Strong/Smart (with some Tough levels in there, too).

Now, to be fair, here's what I don't like:

- I'm not in love with the idea of spending your action and then FAILING to do something. I'd rather that blowing your spellcasting check cause you to take extra spell burn or something. (However, this is in keeping with the d20 Modern talents, which have this mechanic of special abilities that you have to ATTEMPT to activate -- this isn't a bad idea that started fresh with Wulf.)
- Strength damage effects enough things that it can be a pain to track and recalculate your attacks, damage, Climb check, and carrying capacity every time you cast a spell. It's not a killer, but it does slow things down a bit, especially with a novice player. (I've been quite happy turning the spell burn into hit point damage -- d6/spell-level, nonlethal if it'd be Strength, lethal if it'd be Con, and your burn resistance applies to the total, not to each d6. This keeps a lot of the same flavor but is easier to track.)

The dislikes are minor, and have really easy tweaks -- and are very much attached to what kind of game I want to run, not the strength of the rules themselves. The likes are big. Unless I get a group that really wants to run by-the-book D&D, any game I run that uses magic or psionics is gonna be using some variation of this system.

 

[JoeBlank]

I like the Grim Tales rules for a low magic game, but I am tempted to adopt them for a traditional D&D level of magic game.

Maybe spell burn only for failed caster level checks. Seems like that would properly duplicate a spellcaster's ability to cast a large number of spells per day in D&D. Anyone do anything like this?

Taky, I like the hit points damage too. Might use that as well.

 

[GlassJaw]

- I'm not in love with the idea of spending your action and then FAILING to do something. I'd rather that blowing your spellcasting check cause you to take extra spell burn or something. (However, this is in keeping with the d20 Modern talents, which have this mechanic of special abilities that you have to ATTEMPT to activate -- this isn't a bad idea that started fresh with Wulf.)

I don't really have much of a problem with this. I don't really think it's a flaw of the system but does depend on the style of game and spell system you want. As written, magic is difficult to use and can be quite dangerous. This is essentially the baseline of the Grim Tales magic system.

- Strength damage effects enough things that it can be a pain to track and recalculate your attacks, damage, Climb check, and carrying capacity every time you cast a spell. It's not a killer, but it does slow things down a bit, especially with a novice player. (I've been quite happy turning the spell burn into hit point damage -- d6/spell-level, nonlethal if it'd be Strength, lethal if it'd be Con, and your burn resistance applies to the total, not to each d6. This keeps a lot of the same flavor but is easier to track.)

Again, I don't really look at this as a flaw of the system but I do agree. Spell burn is not fun, especially if you keep rolling poorly or rolling a lot of 1's.

The cool thing about Grim Tales is that it truely is a toolset. The framework is strong but still allows for a lot of tweaking and customization. Tailoring it to what you need is fairly easy as well and there are already some variants in the book.

I know Wulf was working on some more variants for the spell system, one of which was a hit point burn system.

 

[ValhallaGH]

The thing you must remember about Grim Tales magic is that it simply uses spells from other systems. D&D is the most common but any pre-generated spell can be used.

Interestingly, there is some terrible math implied regarding the example spell in the book. The guy is a first level caster, yet his fireball spell is described as a powerful blast of highly damaging magic rather than the d6 per caster level (or 1d6 for this caster) that the spell description actually says.
So, if you don't want your casters to feel completely cheated then you'll need to tweak the spells you choose to allow into the game.

Irregardless, if your issue is with the spells themselves and not their frequency or side effects upon the caster then Grim Tales will do almost nothing for you. If your issues are with spell slots, spell levels, spells per day and the side effects of magic upon the caster then Grim Tales will be an excellent solution.

 

[Geoff]

- I'm not in love with the idea of spending your action and then FAILING to do something.

How is this different from spending your action to attack someone with a sword, gun, whatever and failing to hit?