What d20 product/supplement/add-on/article has best mana base magic system?

[isidorus]

Glad you enjoyed Chain Lightning. I have to check but there is more d20 stuff there not sure about magic. Humm! one of these days I have to gather all the d20 and generic articles and put into a link html or php page somewhere, that way I would not have to wade through 5 years of stuff to find what I want. Lol!

 

[kommisar]

Re Mutants and Masterminds magic-

Its just normal powers with the flaw "requires hand movements, incantations"

e.g. Fireball = energy blast with area extra

Magic items are just powers with the item flaw

 

[Voadam]

I'll be checking the Psionics book, BESM,

You can check out the rules for these two for free (legally) through their srds:

http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=srd35 (look near the bottom of the page)

and http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/animesrd.html for BESMd20

 

[Psion]

Just one more note:

My group loves D&D. Except for one thing. The memorizing of spells.

If it's the concept of memorization, and not spell slots themself, that bug you, you should be aware that in third edition, using the idea that spells are "memorized" has been ditched. Spells are now prepared; if you look in the description in the PHB, essentially spells are cast in advance with the casting time representing an activating invocation, much as in Amber.

 

[SpuneDagr]

You should look at The Elements of Magic by EN World Publications.

 

[Estlor]

Midnight's magic system is great and fits my taste quite well. I wouldn't call it anything resembling a "mana system" though.

I think they're referring to the fact that you have set spell energy derived from your casting ability score and levels of Channeller. Not exactly what I'd call a "mana system" though.

My reccomendation is to get the part of the SRD on psionics and use the point cost setup there for spells. Keep the costs the same and convert the spellcasting characters over by turning their spells per day into spell points per day. F'rinstance, a 9th level sorcerer would have 98 spell points to cast spells with. Then just convert the metamagic feats so that they cost more spell points, not more spell levels.

The downside to that is you basically destroy either the sorcerer or the wizard. They both become spontaneous casters that can apply metamagic to spells on the fly. I guess you'd have to enforce the wizard's prepared spell restriction by adopting a spell slot system like AU as well, making it so a wizard has to pick X number of spells from his spellbook for each level and can only cast those spells that day. Then make metamagic feats only work on spells "prepared" in this fashion on the fly - you designate a metamagiced, say, fireball at the beginning of the day. Otherwise appling a metamagic to a spell (for either the wizard or sorcerer) will take a full round.

 

[KarinsDad]

I've thought about this issue for a long time and came to the conclusion that point based spell systems do not work for DND without also overhauling the spell system.

If a 6th level Sorcerer has 1 first level spell remaining and 1 third level spell, he currently can cast either 2 Magic Missiles or 1 Magic Missile and 1 Fireball (assuming for this example that these are his only offensive spells).

If you created a direct spell level to spell points point based system, this same 2 spells remaining Sorcerer could cast 4 Magic Missile spells (4 spell points = 4 1st level spells).

This gives spell casters (not just sorcerers) a big edge over non-spell casters at a much earlier level. This to me is a game balance mistake.


So, overhauling the entire spell system (making some very useful spells higher level, etc.) seemed like too much work. Instead, I added a simple house rule that does not remove the issue of studying for spells, but it does give spell casters a little more flexibility if they are willing to take a risk.

Any spell caster (not needed for Bards or Sorcerers) can replace a same or higher level spell with another spell, just like a Cleric can swap out a spell for a Cure spell. However, in order to accomplish this, they must make a DC 15 + level of the spell being swapped out Concentration check. If they fail the check, they lose the spell they were trying to swap out and this takes a partial action, just like if they were successful in casting the spell.

This gives spell casters more flexibility, but it does not lose the original spell flavor of DND of studying and praying for spells. It still feels like DND spell casting.

Granted, this makes others spell casters slightly more capable when compared to Sorcerers or Bards, but the difference is not near as great as converting their spells to spell points where all spell casters become a lot more capable than non-spell casters.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Any spell caster (not needed for Bards or Sorcerers) can replace a same or higher level spell with another spell, just like a Cleric can swap out a spell for a Cure spell. However, in order to accomplish this, they must make a DC 15 + level of the spell being swapped out Concentration check. If they fail the check, they lose the spell they were trying to swap out and this takes a partial action, just like if they were successful in casting the spell.

The DC is too low, IMO. With Concentration maxed out (no-brainer) and Skill Focus (something that becomes a must under these circumstances) Even a 1st-level caster will have more than 50% success chance - and it only gets higher later on. This will make sorcerers all but obsolete.

This could work with one or more of these changes:

• Raise the DC to 20+ spell level
• Make it require a feat (or even more feats - one per school)
• make it cost an additional standard action to switch the spell
• Require that a spell of a higher level will be sacrificed

 

[RangerWickett]

If you swing by *this thread*, you'll see that E.N. Publishing will soon be releasing a revised version of Elements of Magic, which indeed is a bit of an overhaul of the magic system to fit point-based, flexible, build-your-own-spells rules.

At the link above, you will find a sampler of the upcoming revision.

 

[kenjib]

I think they're referring to the fact that you have set spell energy derived from your casting ability score and levels of Channeller. Not exactly what I'd call a "mana system" though.

My reccomendation is to get the part of the SRD on psionics and use the point cost setup there for spells. Keep the costs the same and convert the spellcasting characters over by turning their spells per day into spell points per day. F'rinstance, a 9th level sorcerer would have 98 spell points to cast spells with. Then just convert the metamagic feats so that they cost more spell points, not more spell levels.

The downside to that is you basically destroy either the sorcerer or the wizard. They both become spontaneous casters that can apply metamagic to spells on the fly. I guess you'd have to enforce the wizard's prepared spell restriction by adopting a spell slot system like AU as well, making it so a wizard has to pick X number of spells from his spellbook for each level and can only cast those spells that day. Then make metamagic feats only work on spells "prepared" in this fashion on the fly - you designate a metamagiced, say, fireball at the beginning of the day. Otherwise appling a metamagic to a spell (for either the wizard or sorcerer) will take a full round.

If you use psionics rules for PHB spells you need to do one more thing, which is to tie scaling damage in with increased power point cost.

So fireball is a 3rd level spell and costs 5 points, however it will always do 5d6 damage. If you want more damage, you need to expend an additional power point per extra die of damage, to a maximum of your level in dice (or the maximum listed in the spell description - whichever is lower).

So, an 8th level caster can cast any of the following fireballs:

5d6: 5 power points
6d6: 6 power points
7d6: 7 power points
8d6: 8 power points

Magic missile would be slightly different in that you need 2 power points per extra missile since you only get an extra missile every other level.

If you don't do this, the system will work pretty poorly.

If you use the psionic powers instead of the PHB spells, you can consider adding something like this for the powers too. As it is, powers don't scale damage at all. I suspect a rule like this will appear in the revised PsiHB.