Will the Magic System be shown the door?

[Michael Silverbane]

You could also adapt this format to work with spell slots.

Have you read The Book of Nine Swords? I'll phrase my thoughts, sort of, in terms of BoNS.

(And I just have to throw this thought in since my brain is racing-- possibly the most important resource available to PCs, particularly in high level play, is the action. There is a lot you can do to balance combat encounters just with managing the resource of actions. The recent article about "The Big Six" magic items touches on this tangentially.)

To continue:

Simple spells are either always ready, or can be refreshed in a simple way, possibly not even requiring a significant action to do so.

Complex spells either cannot be refreshed until the end of the encounter, or must be refreshed using a significant action.

Exotic spells (to continue your format) cannot be refreshed more than once per day. If you ready an Exotic spell into one of your spell slots, you get to use it once per day.

So... Who do I send my money to in order to get this done?

Later
silver

 

[WhatGravitas]

Making this effect require a spell component really mitigates its apparent intent... An effect that you can do over and over again, unless YOU DECIDE to give it up becomes pretty meaningless if you have to eat a fig every time you do it.

I think he meant spell components in general (verbal and somatic components), not material components.

So... Who do I send my money to in order to get this done?

Later
silver

I thought similar, after reading it. One of the best ideas in this thread, honestly.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Oh. Right... But still, figs are a tasty treat.

later
silver

 

[Arkhandus]

Nonsense. You had your rant, now I'll have mine.

A Spellcaster shouldn't have to throw darts to be effective. Not when it's a simple matter to say:

Granted Power - Eldritch Dart: A spellcaster may throw a bolt of magic energy that does 1d4 damage on a successful hit.

*snippity snip*

So, worldwise, the prepared ability system is lame and silly. But dramatically (and funwise) speaking, it's a nice touch.

Name me one fantasy series, movie, or novel in common parliance that has magic-users hurling around magical power all the time as though it were an unlimited resource.

I don't recall ever watching or reading any story where Merlin hurled tons of enemies with magical force at will, or Gandalf loosed a multitude of fireballs, or Yoda wiped out entire armies with the Force by himself like it was an easy matter, or anything else of the sort. Maybe in some obscure fantasy books every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a bit of magical training can hurl fire and lightning all day long, but I haven't seen a single such book myself, and I know full well they aren't 'common' fantasy. Even CRPGs and CCGs and stuff generally have hard limits on magic-users in the game.

Gandalf had the Ring of Fire, Narya, but not once does he really use it in the movies or the LotR trilogy I think (he may've used it for his pyrotechnics trick in The Hobbit, but I dunno; that's the only time I can think of that he might've used it). He had wondrous magical powers, but didn't wield them very often. They obviously weren't the sort of thing you could just use willy-nilly every time it might be handy to do so. He fought with stave and sword as often, or more, than he cast spells. Just as one example of a common fantasy wizard, mind you.

If every apprentice wizard could hurl magical power around at will, why wouldn't it become common knowledge to where everyone would study magecraft for a bit just to have that handy power at their disposal all the time?

I don't mind things like the feat from Tome & Blood that allows a spellcaster to use one of their 0-level or 1st-level spells at will as a spell-like ability. That's something only a few mages are ever going to pick up, even fewer than the number that will ever even have the degree of magical prowess to do so (but choose not to).


I don't think even the Forgotten Realms is high-magic enough for you to reasonably expect every other NPC above 1st-level to have learned the ability to hurl nearly-Magic Missile-equivalent bolts of magic at will. And frankly I don't even see the appeal of such limitless minor magical power existing in a game world for everyone to use as readily as the air they breathe.

 

[WayneLigon]

Name me one fantasy series, movie, or novel in common parliance that has magic-users hurling around magical power all the time as though it were an unlimited resource.

Maybe in some obscure fantasy books every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a bit of magical training can hurl fire and lightning all day long, but I haven't seen a single such book myself, and I know full well they aren't 'common' fantasy.

I think you might need to get down to the bookstore more often. Instead of one, how about more than a half-dozen where mages are both common and they can tap a lot of magic over a long period of time?

The Deryni novels. Low level magic in most cases, but they use it all the time. Mind-speaking, warding, fire-making, etc; it's basically a psionics system. Every Deryni can do such magic from the time they are young.

The Jhereg books. Every person in the empire can use magic, if they have the cash or will to learn it. Continnental teleportation, fire blasting, familiars, raising the dead, etc. The Imperial Orb bears the brunt of the energy cost, so you can do it pretty much whenever.

The various Valdemar books. All the characters have some ability with magic; mostly mind speaking and truth saying, but some have fire and lightning calling which they can use for quite some time before tiring if they are not drawing power from the land itself. Telekinesis, forming gates between places, wind calling, making magic weapons, and basic attack/defense energy manipulation are very common. The books set in older times or in other places have mages that use destructive magic pretty much as they please; they're really only constrained by 'role playing constraints', since they can draw power from earth elemental taps.

The Dresden series. Harry tosses off spontaeous spells, makes potions, strikes down monsters with his blasting rod, blocks damage with his shielding charms, etc. He gets tired, but he bounces back damn quick and his repetoire is pretty much 'what I can think of at the time'.

The Harry Potter series. When was the last time any of the wizards there said 'well, that's it, no more magic for me today'. None. Flying, teleportation for going to the big city, magical healing, etc.

The Chronicles of Amber. ALL the Amberites have some facility with magic; the royal family much more so. Teleporting, summoning, mind speaking, pulling objects out of Shadow, etc.

Malazan Book of the Fallen; mages are common in the Empire, and they do some amazing levels of magic, their power source coming from the warrens they pull eneergy from. Only if they are cut off from this for some reason do they tire. Otherwise, they blast people, walk between countries, summon and bind spirits to their bidding, etc.

The Codex Alera. Everyone has some degree of elemental use, either in stone, water, fire, air, metal or wood. Someone with a strong Earth element, for example, is amazingly strong and durable in addition to being able to call on his or her earth elemental itself to come and do their bidding. There are degrees of power, but it's rare that even a decent practitioner is too weak to use at least some of their abilities. Most of the notable changes to a person are 'on' all the time without conscious thought.

Now, those are just some popular and recent or best-selling classic series right off the top of my head. If I had time, I could probably find another half-dozen at the very least that meets the criteria you set.

Movies in common parlance is harder, because you can count the number of actual 'fantasy' films ever made, even the obscure ones, on your fingers and toes with some left over. Now, we'll ignore a metric ton of the Chinese and Korean wuxia movies, with sorcerers that spout fire or heroes that manipulate water and air into weapons or use their command of metal to keep themselves from harm, all as abilities used as naturally as breathing - those would be too 'obscure' (even though they're only obscure in this country).

 

[WhatGravitas]

If every apprentice wizard could hurl magical power around at will, why wouldn't it become common knowledge to where everyone would study magecraft for a bit just to have that handy power at their disposal all the time?

Hmmm... I remember in the Earthsea cycle, every village had one or two village witches, hedge mages or similar spellcasters, who have fulfilled a villages need for magic stuff - they had some smaller spells, easing goat herding and similar things.

And the staff-wielding, educated wizards could also keep up the whole day with smaller magics, like illusions - in the first book, I think, Ged held together a ship with illusion magic (not completely illusionary, but not permanent, so he had to recast the spell regularly) to flee a lone island - there, wizards used such minor magics most of the time, because they had the potential to do big magic, but refrained from doing so to "keep the equilibrium".

But they had the potential to do so, as demonstrated in the short stories, where a mage fled from the school, randomly ending up in a swamp (sounds like teleportation, eh?).

And I don't think that Earthsea is "obscure".

 

[Michael Silverbane]

The Dresden series. Harry tosses off spontaeous spells, makes potions, strikes down monsters with his blasting rod, blocks damage with his shielding charms, etc. He gets tired, but he bounces back damn quick and his repetoire is pretty much 'what I can think of at the time'.

The Chronicles of Amber. ALL the Amberites have some facility with magic; the royal family much more so. Teleporting, summoning, mind speaking, pulling objects out of Shadow, etc.

To be fair, Harry Dresden is always always complaining about how the over-use of magic has tired him out.

And also, Merlin (in the second Amber series) used magic almost exactly like that in D&D. He prepared (hung) spells to be completed (cast) later. On the other hand... Once he was through with his prepared spells, he was able to pump out pure magical energy on top of that, he simply wasn't able to shape it into sophisticated spell effects.

I suppose I should shut up now, as I am a proponent of the warlock method of never running out of juice.

Oh... The magic slingers in the Anita Blake novels don't ever get low on magical juice... Nor do the witches in Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan books. The latter of which, again, have spell preparation similar to that found in D&D, but only for certain types of magic.

Later
silver

 

[Victim]

To be fair, Harry Dresden is always always complaining about how the over-use of magic has tired him out.

He's always bitching about it yeah, but it doesn't seem to be too much a problem. He just digs a bit deeper or comes up with some trick for extra juice.

 

[JohnSnow]

To be fair, Harry Dresden is always always complaining about how the over-use of magic has tired him out.

True. But he's always, always firing off more spells. There's a bit at the end of Storm Front where the only spell Harry's got "the juice" for is a laughable little cleaning spell he hasn't even really thought of in years.

If you can show me evidence he prepared that the morning of his big showdown, I'll eat the Blue Beetle.

Yes, Harry's got limited magical juice. But he doesn't "use up" his effects.

Other series where the main characters don't seem to truly run out of magic, bearing in mind that fatigue is a pretty common limiter:

The Black Company
The Dragoncrown War
The Wheel of Time
The Chronicles of Einarinn
The Witches of Eileanan
Dilvish the Damned & The Changing Land

To name a few...

Should I go on?

 

[Arkhandus]

Baka. Fine, so I haven't read that many non-D&D fantasy novels yet, but of the ones mentioned, only a few are really mainstream enough.

So you all win. Let's see 4th Edition become an Earthdawn clone, where every character class has the equivalent of a Warlock's abiliites tacked on to their normal mundane abilities. Then we can all be happy and enjoy watching Commoners compete at farting Magic Missiles and Acid Arrows outta their butts in a game of 'darts'. :\