"Welcome, students, to your first day of formal instructions. Let's start with the basics: What do you need to produce magic, Miss Quinn?"

"A wand or a staff, Professor."

"Good answer. Mr. Hirano, you have another one?"

"You don't need a wand. That's just superstition. But everyone knows you can't perform magic without a mirror." The class then degenerates into general shouting, until the professor cracks a gavel to break up the arguments, and the class settles down.

"All of you are right. And wrong. Magic is made with faith and will. All else is set dressing, no matter how important it may be to a particular magician. That being said, the various tools we use are at the least very useful, and in many cases, essential." More hubbub ensues.

The concept here is that magic is a recent discovery, and that, as shown above, there is no "one true way" to make magic. There has been no time for serious, extensive study into the "laws of magic," so nobody's yet been able to determine either which way the "true" way or that there isn't one.

The system is a basic stat+skill+die roll simply because I like them. Stats range 2-12, skills 0-12 (plus "untrained," which is either impossible or a big penalty), plus a d12. Difficulties go from 3 to 36, modifiers applied to rolls rather than difficulties, so a +1 means you get stat+skill+1d12+1. +3 is a big deal in a system like this. Average difficulty is 9: stat 7 + skill 1 + time modifier 1. A competent person simple cannot fail at the routine work of their profession.

Now, a magician attempting a spell with no tools ("tools" here means objects, actions, basically anything other than pure concentration) takes a huge penalty, enough to push the spell into "fat chance" territory. Let's suppose a simple spell to light a candle is normally difficulty 9, and the GM agrees that this is a sufficiently minor spell that tools aren't needed if you have at least Fire 1. So barring complications, it just works. But getting a fire going in a fireplace is a bit harder, enough to pretty well require tools. But it's still difficulty 9. So our firestarter has to roll at -6 if he doesn't have any. As long as he has some  tool appropriate to his style, he doesn't take that penalty. The tool might not give bonuses, but it removes that nasty penalty. Maybe he invokes Loki, who was the Norse god of fire, or traces the Egyptian hieroglyph for "fire drill" on the floor of the firebox (if it's his own place, maybe he's got that symbol stamped into a brick over the firebox).

The real distinction between two magicians is their personal style, which in turn reflect their philosophy and outlook. Flamboyant, subtle, up to the minute, downright primitive, eclectic, tightly focussed. And yes, it's totally fine to use pop culture based styles. John Dee's elaborate rituals and rites are entirely appropriate, as are the various approaches found in serious, scholarly works, but so are the Jedi, the witches of Dathomir, the Nightsisters, Doctor Strange and John Constantine. Real, authentic voodoo rites are perfectly appropriate, and Hollywood style voodoo rituals work just as well (but making a contagious zombification spell would be Difficulty 36 for certain). So the player and the GM work together to agree on a style, outlook and set of tools for each magician. Ritual magic should give a big bonus, not because it's a ritual per se but because rituals allow the bringing in of lots of tools, including the "taking your time" tool. And of course, incompatible styles are incompatible. You can't combine a cabalistic ritual with tantric sex magic, for a simple example. Even if the practitioners can accept them both as valid, the outlooks and actions just don't mesh.

Ground Rules
The GM starts by decided on the ground rules for characters and their styles. These rules are simple, such as "all magical objects must be clearly non-ordinary," "all spell casting must take at least ten minutes," "expenditures have to be ritually prepared ahead of time," or "all castings must include audible speech or song."

Designing a style

First, summarize your character's general magical style, two or three words should be enough. "Faith healer," "Taoist alchemist," or "Marvel style sorceror" are all valid examples.

Second, choose at least one of each class of tool: Objects, time, expenditures, and actions. Objects are just what they sound like: specific objects, such as a cross, an amulet, a ring or a staff. Objects can also be fixed: a meditation chamber, a brick stamped with a mystic sign, or a stone circle. Time is similarly straightforward: How much time you need to take if you don't have anything else to work with. This should not be less than a minute, and should be more. Some styles will requires hour or even days. Actions are actions beyond the simple act of concentrating. Extended meditations are not considered actions; they fall under times. Valid actions include, but are not limited to, incantations, song, dance, music and the drawing of magic circles. Expenditures are the use of materials such as incense, wine, coloured sand in a mandala, or paints and pigments.

Third, describe how your character casts a spell under good conditions, and under time pressure.

Fourth, decide on practices and bans, if any. Observances are things a character must do to retain magical abilities; bans are thing a character must not do. A character can have both, as with a Catholic nun who must say daily prayers and refrain from worldly pleasures, especially carnal.

Fifth, answer a few last question: does your character draw a clear distinction between magical activities and mundane life, or try to synthesize the two? Is your character low-profile, or ostentatious? How do the character's magical beliefs and style relate to their other beliefs? Perhaps most important, how does your character regard those who utilize other styles?

The player and the GM will likely need to discuss these questions fairly extensively with each other, and should also work with the other players to ensure a reasonably degree of parity of effectiveness, and at least marginal compatibility of styles. Two players running, for an extreme example, a Catholic nun and a lesbian sex magician will likely lead to strained relations within the group (which is only fun if everyone's willing to buy in).

What does that all mean?
First, for any but the most minor of spells, such as lighting a single candle or healing a small cut, all magicians must use at least one tool, or take at least a -6 penalty. Using multiple tools gives a bonus: +1 for two, +2 for using four, +3 if you can bring in seven, and so on: each additional +1 requires one more extra tool than the previous bonus.

An object must be specifically meaningful to the magician, a process which usually takes a while: -1 when first obtained, 0 after a month, +1 after three months, +2 after a year, +3 after a decade, and an additional +1 for each additional power of ten (yes, it is theoretically possible for a magician to live that long). If the object is especially significant, such as a rosary blessed by the Pope, or an heirloom ring, add +1.

Time can also give bonuses: +1 each time the minimum casting time is multiplied by ten.

Particularly elaborate or appropriate actions can give a +1 or -1, at the sole discretion of the GM. A quick set of scales might give a penalty to a spell, a particular set of notes would give neither bonus nor penalty, and an appropriate song could give a +1, such as using the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts for a healing.

Expenditures are a special case, requiring extensive GM adjudication. Normally, expenditures only give a +1. Particularly meaningful expenditures, such as a burning a candle the magician made himself, might raise this to +2. Exceptionally meaningful expenditures could give +3, but these are hard to justify. Blood sacrifice is strongly not recommended, and human sacrifice should be off limits to all PCs.

Practices and bans can also give bonuses and penalties. Each month of faithful observation of each can give a +1 to spell casting rolls, to a maximum of +2 total. However, each violation can give a -1 to all such rolls, with no limit. This penalty will become 1 point less severe per month of renewed observance.

Group work can also give bonuses so long as the relevant rituals are compatible; +1 for two participants, +2 for four, +3 for seven, and so on as for tools.

The combined effect of these rules is to favour lengthy, intricate rituals taking place in dedicated areas, and moderately circumscribed lifestyles for magicians; this is entirely intentional.

Opinions, comments and feedback sought.

I'm critiquing the presentation a lot, as it was the biggest factor in this.

I never made it past the narration. I tried. It didn't happen.
I don't like mixing narration/fiction with rules. Set it off in its own very easy to spot section, that way, if I don't like it or don't want to read it, it is easier to skip. (See also, my comment about titles.)

The mechanic looks OK, but seems to favor NPCs doing casting off-stage rather than the adventurers. A lot is going to depend on the setting--difficult to say without details.

This is a lot of rules for describing how to cast magic and nothing for describing the results. The latter are usually more interesting and useful to me, especially if they give more structure than GM-fiat/agreement. Otherwise, it is variations of "ceremonies take longer and are more complex but are more successful".

I didn't check the statistics--I presume the failure/success rates this gives is what you want? (Adventurers, presumably lacking time and props for ceremonies, are pretty bad at magic and established NPCs are pretty good.)

Set off the titles in bold and change "what does it mean" to something more meaningful like "bonuses and penalties to casting". This will help the reading, by making it easier to track where I'm at.

A lot of the data might work better in a table. What we have is a lot of text with plus and minus numbers in it, which is difficult to parse/retain. It might also be easier to read: "-6 for no items. Number of items divided by 2 rounded down gives the bonus from items" than (on my screen) 3-4 lines of text.

Out of your examples (John Dee, Jedi, the witches of Dathomir, the Nightsisters, Doctor Strange, and John Constantine), I recognize the Jedi and Doctor Strange. YMMV.

Finally, this has way too much paperwork in terms of tracking stuff FOR ME (YMMV). (As an example, in my games, I ask my players if they care about tracking arrow/bullet expenditure and instead use a mechanism of a critical failure means you're out of ammo or something similar.)  An introduction, at least for this posting, might help to establish how many moving parts your system has and some setting background would help too.

If these rules are for a GURPS type game, this is probably OK. If this is for a rules-lite OSR, I think it is too fiddly.

I was going to say there is far too much narrative, but Tod13 beat me to it.

If you put the wordy stuff into a nice little table then it would be easy enough to use.

A second try:

Setting
The here and now... mostly. Real magic, true magic, has very, very recently become a meaningful thing. Magic is made with faith and will; all else is set dressing, no matter how important that set dressing may be to the magician in question. The "true" or "real" rules of magic, if any, are not known.

The system is a basic stat+skill+die roll simply because I like them. Stats range 2-12, skills 0-12 (plus "untrained," which is either impossible or a big penalty), plus a d12. Difficulties go from 3 to 36, and modifiers apply to rolls rather than difficulties, so a +1 means you get stat+skill+1d12+1. +3 is a big deal in a system like this. Average difficulty is 9: stat 7 + skill 1 + time modifier 1. A competent person simple cannot fail at the routine work of their profession.

Magicians need tools to help focus their concentration: objects, actions, basically anything other than pure concentration. Attempting any but the most minor spell with no tools takes a -6 penalty, enough to push the spell into "fat chance" territory. Let's suppose a simple spell to light a candle is normally difficulty 9, and the GM agrees that this is a sufficiently minor spell that tools aren't needed if you have at least Fire 1. So barring complications, it just works. But, though still difficulty 9. getting a fire going in a fireplace takes a little more work, enough to pretty well require tools. So our firestarter has to roll at -6 if he doesn't have any. As long as he has some  tool appropriate to his style, he doesn't take that penalty. The tool might not give bonuses, but it removes that nasty penalty. Maybe he invokes Loki, who was the Norse god of fire, or traces the Egyptian hieroglyph for "fire drill" on the floor of the firebox (if it's his own place, maybe he's got that symbol stamped into a brick over the firebox).

The real distinction between two magicians is their personal styles, which in turn reflect their philosophies and outlooks. Flamboyant, subtle, up to the minute, downright primitive, eclectic, tightly focussed. And yes, it's totally fine to use pop culture based styles. John Dee's elaborate rituals and rites are entirely appropriate, as are the various approaches found in serious, scholarly works, such as the Lesser Key of Solomon, but so are earthbenders, the Jedi, the Nightsisters, Doctor Strange and John Constantine. Real, authentic voodoo rites are perfectly appropriate, and Hollywood style voodoo rituals work just as well (but making a contagious zombification spell would be Difficulty 36 for certain). So the player and the GM work together to agree on a style, outlook and set of tools for each magician. Ritual magic will normally give a large bonus, not because it's a ritual per se but because rituals allow the bringing in of lots of tools, including the "taking your time" tool. And of course, incompatible styles are incompatible. You can't combine a cabalistic ritual with tantric sex magic, for a simple example. Even if the practitioners can accept them both as valid, the outlooks and actions just don't mesh.

Ground RulesThe GM starts by decided on the ground rules for characters and their styles. These rules are simple, such as "all magical objects must be clearly non-ordinary," "all spell casting must take at least ten minutes," "expenditures have to be ritually prepared ahead of time," or "all castings must include audible speech or song."

Designing a style

First, summarize your character's general magical style, two or three words should be enough. "Faith healer," "Taoist alchemist," or "Marvel style sorceror" are all valid examples.

Second, choose at least one of each class of tool: Objects, time, expenditures, and actions. Objects are just what they sound like: specific objects, such as a cross, an amulet, a ring or a staff. Objects can also be fixed: a meditation chamber, a brick stamped with a mystic sign, or a stone circle. Time is similarly straightforward: How much time you need to take if you don't have anything else to work with. This should not be less than a minute, and should be more. Some styles will requires hour or even days. Actions are actions beyond the simple act of concentrating. Extended meditations are not considered actions; they fall under times. Valid actions include, but are not limited to, incantations, song, dance, music and the drawing of magic circles. Expenditures are the use of materials such as incense, wine, coloured sand in a mandala, or paints and pigments.

Third, describe how your character casts a spell under good conditions, and under time pressure.

Fourth, decide on observances and bans, if any. Observances are things a character must do to retain magical abilities; bans are thing a character must not do. A character can have both, as with a Catholic nun who must say daily prayers and refrain from worldly pleasures, especially carnal.

Fifth, answer a few last question: does your character draw a clear distinction between magical activities and mundane life, or try to synthesize the two? Is your character low-profile, or ostentatious? How do the character's magical beliefs and style relate to their other beliefs? Perhaps most important, how does your character regard those who utilize other styles?

The player and the GM will likely need to discuss these questions fairly extensively with each other, and should also work with the other players to ensure a reasonably degree of parity of effectiveness, and at least marginal compatibility of styles. Two players running, for an extreme example, a Catholic nun and a lesbian sex magician will likely lead to strained relations within the group (which is only fun if everyone's willing to buy in).

What does that all mean?
First, for any but the most minor of spells, such as lighting a single candle or healing a small cut, all magicians must use at least one tool, or take at least a -6 penalty. Using multiple tools gives a bonus, as shown in the table below.

An object must be specifically meaningful to the magician, a process which usually takes a while: -1 when first obtained, 0 after a month, +1 after three months, +2 after a year, +3 after a decade, and an additional +1 for each additional power of ten (yes, it is theoretically possible for a magician to live that long). If the object is especially significant, such as a rosary blessed by the Pope, or an heirloom ring, add +1.

Time can also give bonuses: +1 each time the minimum casting time is multiplied by ten.

Particularly elaborate or appropriate actions can give a +1 or -1, at the sole discretion of the GM. A quick set of scales might give a penalty to a spell, a particular set of notes would give neither bonus nor penalty, and an appropriate song could give a +1, such as using the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts for a healing.

Expenditures are a special case, requiring extensive GM adjudication. Normally, expenditures only give a +1. Particularly meaningful expenditures, such as a burning a candle the magician made himself, might raise this to +2. Exceptionally meaningful expenditures could give +3, but these are hard to justify. Blood sacrifice is strongly not recommended, and human sacrifice should be off limits to all PCs.

Practices and bans can also give bonuses and penalties. Each month of faithful observation of each can give a +1 to spell casting rolls, to a maximum of +2 total. However, each violation can give a -1 to all such rolls, with no limit. This penalty will become 1 point less severe per month of renewed observance.

Group work can also give bonuses so long as the relevant rituals are compatible; see the table below for details.

Bonus desired   Extra tools/participants needed
+1                                     1
+2               3
+3                                   6
+4                                  10

Generally, to get a given bonus, add tools and participants equal to the sum of the integers between one and the bonus sought.

The combined effect of these rules is to favour lengthy, intricate rituals taking place in dedicated areas, and moderately circumscribed lifestyles for magicians; this is entirely intentional.

I can't get the table to format properly.

Do you own Eldritch Ass Kicking? If not, check it out.

http://mysticages.com/games/eak/

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12335.phtml

Never even heard of it.

You don't have to cut the narrative. A lot of people like that. But like we suggested, make the narration trivial to skip, and write the explanation assuming we did skip the narration.

I'm still wanted less text and more table the current version or at least more table. There are just too many variables to casting for me to remember them, so I need a table, or maybe a worksheet?

One of the things I'm doing in the game I'm writing is to have the text say something like "X increases your chances, while Y decreases your chances, as show in the X and Y Chances Table below".

The idea is the information that X is good and Y is detrimental is communicated in the text. Unless you want the exact numbers, the table can even be skipped.