aramis erak
Legend
WFRP 2E & Dark Heresy both use that mode.
Both are percentile driven.
Which game has your favorite magic system?
Both are percentile driven.
Laurefindel
Legend
Mon Zo Kath Ra!
Mage: The Ascension's magic system is simultaneously the worst, and best. The campaigns of Mage I have played have been the most fun and interesting magic use I have had in my entire gaming career. But, I doubt I could recapture that experience unless the GM decided to move back from California.
I liked the 3.5 variant Recharge Magic from Unearthed Arcana.
It kept the pacing closer to my preferences and stopped the "5 minute workday" feel we had in 3.x.
It kept the pacing closer to my preferences and stopped the "5 minute workday" feel we had in 3.x.
BookTenTiger
He / Him
Oh I love this! I was big into d20 and never saw this variable.
I wonder, if ported into 5e, how it would react with cantrips.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
A lot of good suggestions in here.
Personally I'd second Earthdawn.
It was beautifully worked into the world and was something you could discuss in-game without going meta. Even things like levels were in-game magical terms.
I don't know why, but relatively few RPGs bother to do this in any real way. It's mystifying, really. Any RPG could match their world and their magic system, could make their system use terminology and concepts that the characters could use. It's not even hard to do. But the vast majority of magic systems are almost extrinsic to their settings - that very much includes D&D and most variants. Some settings make varying levels of effort to try and make D&D magic not extrinsic, but partly because D&D has been through so many editions, and the settings persist, this isn't very effective. And it's kind of sad, because when the fiction and mechanics align really well, you get something incredibly special. Something many generally-good RPGs don't have!
It's something that still happens to - the magic system seems bolted on to a game, rather than truly being part of the game and setting. Some others are in a middle-ground, where it's partially worked-in, but not really.
Importantly with Earthdawn too, all the adventurers used the magic, which lifted the idiotic burden of "martial vs magic" which D&D and many others have chosen to nigh-eternally torture themselves with, usually achieving nothing but damaging their suspension of disbelief and playability.
And by making it part of the world, you think of stuff, or easy uses for magic, of obvious human things, that most games just neglect because their magic is all about combat or summoning or violence - even though in human history and the imagination magic tends not to be about those things.
Personally I'd second Earthdawn.
It was beautifully worked into the world and was something you could discuss in-game without going meta. Even things like levels were in-game magical terms.
I don't know why, but relatively few RPGs bother to do this in any real way. It's mystifying, really. Any RPG could match their world and their magic system, could make their system use terminology and concepts that the characters could use. It's not even hard to do. But the vast majority of magic systems are almost extrinsic to their settings - that very much includes D&D and most variants. Some settings make varying levels of effort to try and make D&D magic not extrinsic, but partly because D&D has been through so many editions, and the settings persist, this isn't very effective. And it's kind of sad, because when the fiction and mechanics align really well, you get something incredibly special. Something many generally-good RPGs don't have!
It's something that still happens to - the magic system seems bolted on to a game, rather than truly being part of the game and setting. Some others are in a middle-ground, where it's partially worked-in, but not really.
Importantly with Earthdawn too, all the adventurers used the magic, which lifted the idiotic burden of "martial vs magic" which D&D and many others have chosen to nigh-eternally torture themselves with, usually achieving nothing but damaging their suspension of disbelief and playability.
And by making it part of the world, you think of stuff, or easy uses for magic, of obvious human things, that most games just neglect because their magic is all about combat or summoning or violence - even though in human history and the imagination magic tends not to be about those things.
Starfox
Hero
FASA was very good at integrating magic and setting - Shadowrun also does this beautifully. All their settings are lovely!
Oddly for a company that started off publishing Traveler adventures, they were never good at math. Shadowrun, Battletech, Crimson Skies - all had lousy math. I think Earthdawn was slightly better at math, but it was fiddly to the point of being unplayable. All IMHO of course!
Earthdawn was very very swingy; the Step progressions were logical, but strange things happened as your dice got larger. Rolling small dice, you could expect them to explode and get some crazy numbers, but once you were rolling, say, d20+d6, there were lots of moments where you felt decidedly less superheroic, lol.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Shadowdark (and, to a lesser extent, Five Torches Deep)
You don't choose spells on a daily basis; you know all the spells you know. But you have to make an ability check to cast, and if you fail you lose that spell for the day. (In FTD you lose all spells of that level for the day.). Roll a nat 1 and roll on a Mishap table (in addition to normal failure).
You don't choose spells on a daily basis; you know all the spells you know. But you have to make an ability check to cast, and if you fail you lose that spell for the day. (In FTD you lose all spells of that level for the day.). Roll a nat 1 and roll on a Mishap table (in addition to normal failure).
Aldarc
Legend
That was one design choice where Shadowdark lost me.
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