What system of magic do you use?

[steeldragons]

Inspired by MadLordofMilk's thread on use of religion ( http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/292043-what-religious-pantheon-do-you-use.html ) I have a similar question for you all about magic.

Is everyone basically by the book? Do you prefer heavy or low magic? And why?

Do you have any discrepancies or issues with memorized vs. spontaneous casting...and/or classes that do either? How much do you or your players engage in crafting magic items (unique or otherwise) or creating new spells?
Do you tweak of spell effects, durations, area of effect?

What things, if any, within existing spell casting systems do/don't you like or would you change? (of any edition, but keep in mind I don't really have knowledge of how 4e works so please elaborate with those. thanks. )

I have detailed the ways/working of magic in my own campaign setting (basically "by the book" with a few modifications). Just curious what else is out there.
Thanks.
--Steel Dragons

 

[Umbran]

I don't play just D&D - I've played lots of different systems over the years.

As a broad generalization, I use whatever magic system is native to the game I'm playing. I'm a "right tool for the job" sort of person. When I want to run a game, I decide what kind of feel I want the thing to have, and I pick a system to suit - and how magic operates is a major part of that. If the native magic system doesn't do pretty close to what I want, I just choose a different system.

So, maybe minor tweaks - when I run 3.x D&D, I tend to hand out slightly less money and magic than the rulebooks suggest, and spelllcasters are a little more rare than would be seen workign by the DMG demographics. But the system runs pretty much as-is.

When running 2e, I allowed Clerics to be spontaneous casters - in my games they spent most of their spells on healing, and needed the flexibility to have any fun with the rest of their spells.

And so on - mostly small tweaks, not major rewrites.

 

[jefgorbach]

high magic with just about (ok all?) variants/spells allowed with relatively high-level casters generally clustered to scattered megacities like waterdeep, sharn, glantri which accordingly are the only real markets for mass-market enchantments/items, consequently PCs tend to self-craft when away and/or at higher levels (esp for custom items)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

For Spycraft I use E. N. Publishing's Elements of Magic: Mythic Earth.

The Pathfinder children's game I use the book rules.

The Auld Grump

 

[MortonStromgal]

As a broad generalization, I use whatever magic system is native to the game I'm playing. I'm a "right tool for the job" sort of person. When I want to run a game, I decide what kind of feel I want the thing to have, and I pick a system to suit

/This

Right now I'm running Shadowrun so we have drain style magic. If I was running D&D I sometimes will use spontaneous spell points instead of fire and forget.

 

[Stormonu]

I too tend to go by the book, though I often make magic items and NPC spellcasters more rare than is standard. Purchase of magic items tends to be limited to scrolls and potions (certainly no wands). If players need to get rid of a magic item, they might trade it for another item (a rare occurrence), use a special ritual or magic location that can transform/combine certain items* or just hang on to it as a back-up.

* For ex., if you find four +1 swords, with the right ritual/magic you could transform it into one +2 sword (same GP value)

 

[Smoss]

I ended up creating my own magic system for my world/RPG system.

There is a freeform style of casting (Build spells on the fly) and a formula style of spells (Pre-build spells - put in a spellbook). The first is for experienced players only (Unless you want to slow combat down while PCs piece together their spells until they get the hang of it).

Mostly it is at will (Point based) with people casting 1 to 10 point spells at will. Bigger spells are per day (6 hour rest recover). But you can gain a lot of the middle sized ones (11 - 25 point) if you spend your build that way.

There is raw detail (Minus some context) here:
Magic - Doulairen
--------
Smoss

 

[steeldragons]

Seems like the "by the books with some tweaking" have it.

Stormonu: I like the melding of items idea. I might be borrowing that.

SMoss: Your alternative is intriguing.

Thanks everyone for sharing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I run 3e with a lot of UA variants (spontaneous divine, spell points) and some houserules. I also use a lot of psionics, currently in Psychic's Handbook form.

 

[Lanefan]

Spells:
For the longest time I used a homebrew system based on spell points. Clerics were fully wild-card. Arcane types were wild card except for their highest two spell levels, which they had to pre-memorize. Works great at low-mid levels, really breaks badly at high levels.

For my current campaign, I switched to a fully wild-card slot-by-level system based on how 3e Sorcerers work. So far, I'm happy with the results at low levels; the PCs haven't got to the sort of level yet that could really give it a good run out but it seems to work fine for their higher-level opponents.

Items:
I give out lots of magic, as I know they'll just end up breaking most of it anyway. I'm not a fan of PCs building their own items - if they want to, they can commission an item from a MU/artificers' guild but they usually have to wait quite a while (often half a year or more) before it's ready.

Potions and Scrolls:
In my previous campaigns PCs certainly got to level enough to make these but they never really bothered - took too much time away from adventuring.

Spell research:
No-one really ever bothered with this either; in part because there's not many things a spell could do that someone else hasn't already invented a spell for.

Lanefan