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

[Voadam]

Couple options.

Psionic handbook and sorcerers, no preparation, I believe Oriental Adventures has sorcerer like divine casters, as do many shaman and witch supplements.

wheel of time RPG has weaves that reflect that fantasy novel's magic.

I don't have the sovereign stone book but it has an alternate magic system.

elements of magic I still haven't gone through.

Everquest RPG you get mana points per level and 8 slots of spells to prepare that can be cast as many times as you have the mana to pay for the prepared spells. Has a method for quickly changing prepared spells.

Arcana Unearthed has similar but uses spell slots instead of points.

Oathbound Plains of Penance and Wrack and Ruin have prestige classes that use point systems for magic.

Mystic Warriors by MEG has an alternative point and skill system for supernatural warrior techniques that are essentially spells.

I'm not familiar with d20 Call of Cthulhu's magic but it might be different.

The superhero d20 games have a few options as well, I just got Deeds Not Words and their mystic uses points to power D&D spells.

I don't know how the hex magic of deadlands d20 works.

Probably others as well.

 

[jrients]

BESM d20's Dynamic Sorcery rules uses "energy points".

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Couple options.

Psionic handbook and sorcerers, no preparation, I believe Oriental Adventures has sorcerer like divine casters, as do many shaman and witch supplements.

Shugenja's cast divine spells spontaneously (and also with Cha). They have an elemental focus in their magic, where they get spells from one element first, and spells from the opposite alignment not at all. The elements are not devided by the spell descriptors, but rather by effect. Fire spells are spells that destroy (like fireball and lightning bolt), water is for healing and curing. You should note that shugenja are the main spellcasters in Rokugan, the only thing that's remotely as frequent are sorcerers, and they're evil maho-tsukai (users of evil blood-magic).

IMO, the sorcerers are a good midway between D&D-like casting and a mana system. You can choose what spell you cast, but you can't cast so many of the most powerful spells, and if you want to cast many of the lower spells, you have to sacrifice the more powerful spells for it, for that day at least.

 

[Desdichado]

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

 

[Havoc]

Though not mana point based, Chaos Magic from Mongoose Publishing is a nice alternative magic system (basically spell casters spend hit points) that I use as a replacement system for sorcerers; however, chaos magic does not cover the whole spectrum of D&D spells. I believe a bigger book on the subject is due in december (The Quintessential Chaos Mage).

 

[isidorus]

here is one from www.guildcompanion.com/ that have quite a few articles in the archives but here is the one on a usuable mana system. http://24.77.197.13/GC/scrolls/2001/apr/d20spellpoints.html Hope it is useful, the one I am going to use in a new campaign myself.

 

[Synicism]

I think my favorite one thus far comes from Arcana Unearthed. Characters have daily "spells known" slots and a number of "casting" slots per day. So like a wizard, you decide what spells you want access to that day, and like a sorcerer, you can cast X number of spells of each level, per day.

The reason I call this a mana system is that you can trade in lower level spell slots to get higher level ones, thus simulating a mana point system.

 

[kommisar]

I'd say use BESM d20 or Mutants and Masterminds. Both use most of the DND rules you are familiar with but treat the mystical magical powers in a more general fashion so that non-vancian magic can be easily modeled.

 

[Kichwas]

Sovereign Stone d20 has a system where you cast spells with skill checks, you keep making the checks until you're cummulative score is enough to beat the DC, but every failed check can do damage to you.

AEG's Magic takes the core rules magic system and simply adds a point tracking sceme onto it instead of the memorization sceme. It does this without voiding out the sorcerer.

I would recommend one of those two, depending on how radical a change is acceptable to you. Both work into the balance of DnD fairly well -or at least seem to do so on paper.

 

[Chain Lightning]

Wow, a lot of responses in just one day!

Thankyou everyone for all the information. This helps me out greatly and saves me a lot of research time.

I have just recently picked up Mutants & Masterminds, but have not gotten a chance to read it yet. I'll be doing so soon in order to check how they handle magic. The entire Unearthed Arcana book seemed like an interesting purchase, I may be picking that up as well to add to my library.

I'll be checking the Psionics book, BESM, and all the others you have recommended as well. Isidorus gave me a link to a system he'll be using in his game that seems like a great quick plug in and play alternative. I'll be thinking about that one as well. Although, while the system may seem to keep the sorcerer balanced, it does take away that 'special' something something about the sorcerer. I may have to think about some tweaks to the conversion. Not sure how I would do it though.

Even though you guys gave me a lot of great sources to start checking out, it doesn't mean the thread has to die. Feel free to continue comparing notes, discuss advantages , balance issues, other sources, and so on. I'll be interested in hearing more of course.