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Designing a Divine Magic System - Help wanted

Started by jibbajibba, March 18, 2013, 05:39:14 AM

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jibbajibba

Looking to build a divine magical system to sit along side my other 3.

It must have the following features in order to fit with the other 3.

i) Powered by Mana. The entire magic system is based on spending mana to power spells
ii) Each spell or spell like effect requires a roll to suceed. This is the base game mechanic (2d10 + Skill + stat) vs (13 + difficulty). In the case of Magic the 'Skill' part is the casters level. The Stat varies with Wizardly magic being Intelligence, Sorcerous magic being WillPower and Alchemical magic being Dexterity.

My current plan is to have a pool which I may call Karma/Divinity/Purity/Baraka which will be the "stat" for divine types.
The PCs can gain and lose points from this pool, which varies from -5 -> +5

You gain points for prayer, religious observance, etc and you loose it for breaking taboos or doctrine.

It's a small number so should be easy to track and I hope it gives religious types an in game reason to follow the tennets of a certain faith (there will be rules for faith creaton as well as Random tables do GMs that have a mental block or want to just start playing fast). Also means anyone can be holy they just well need to act holy ...

So first question is does this seems doable?

The next more important question, because the first one is largely rhetorical, is how to then provide the spells?

I want each magic type to feel very different.
Wizardly magic has a spell list and a mechanism for creating new spells from building blocks.
Sorcerous magic has rules about binding creatures to places, objects or tasks and ways of creating said creatures.
Alchemical magic has lists of objects and their properties pinched from 'new age' stuff but also myth. You combine them to make magical items.

So I don't want divine magic to be just the same as wizardly with a list of spells.
I would like the effects linked to the faith as I am making these up anyway as part of the archetype so the 2eAD&D Spheres approach should work.
However, I know from experience that without guidance and examples magic systems feel a bit crap. So I don't want to roll 3 random Spheres, "Air, Fire and Bovines" with no specific effects. I want a list of quite tight effects so that using divine magic isn't a burden on the player who is already tracking a couple of extra resource pools and trying to remember their 'faith'

So any ideas?
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Bloody Stupid Johnson

#1
I do really like the idea of a more free-form type of magic for priests, in D&D say it never made sense to me that your god demanded you choose what miracles you were receiving in advance, so you could cure blindness today but not heal wounds. So the priest is just a channel for divine energy (although with their own limits determining how much they can draw on).

First idea to come to mind is that each 'sphere' is a basic effect that is useable, but that might not be useable since designing spells from scratch is more likely to be workable from an 'effect' seed (Move, Destroy, Heal, Conjure, etc. with costs based off amount of mana spent - Talislanta had a good system for this) whereas 'spheres' like Plant or Fire are really more thematic and could potentially have any effect e.g. a transportation effect could be flavoured as stepping in one oak and out another, or calling a flying horse made of fire.

(Edit: Talislanta 5E player's guide would be the version I mean - earlier versions of Tal had defined spell lists....http://talislanta.com/?page_id=5#5th)

Silverlion

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;638045(Edit: Talislanta 5E player's guide would be the version I mean - earlier versions of Tal had defined spell lists....http://talislanta.com/?page_id=5#5th)

4E was the one that implemented that magic system.

As for the Op.

Why nor have the PC need to pray for X rounds to build the mana they need. Once they have the man it must empower the effect they pray for--or they lose the mana and have to start again. More people praying (i.e more clerics or people guided by a cleric through a ritual) means more mana for a given effect.

Rituals would have fixed effects but normal prayer-spells would not.

Not sure what attribute you have to cover faith/piety, but that would be what you'd use.

Most prayer spells would be flavored by "sphere" or rather "theme" of the deity. So like Talislanta 4E you'd have "Theme" and "Effect" effect would be things like: Move, Damage, Heal, Transform, and some would be verboten to some deities.
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The Traveller

#3
You could base it off wish and limited wish spells, there's a large body of work out there discussing those, except with 'reality levers' specific to each sect. Praying for effects within those specialised areas works fine, fringe cases or praying for effects clearly beyond your faith should cause penalties to casting and possibly longer term penalties if it becomes a regular thing.

Other than that the Ars Magica/Mage approach seems most likely to work.

I've often felt that wizards, magi and sorcerors were like hackers, picking at the loose threads of reality to cheat the system, while priests in the modern sense were representatives of the divine order, intended to put things right and patch up the holes. Maybe a focus on reactive rather than proactive powers might help. Exorcism, wards, sanctification, blessings, and dispel magics could feature heavily.

To put it in a wider context and riff a little, if enough tears and rents appear in the divine order, the whole weakened and tottering structure of the spiritual world could be overturned, leading to the return of a dark and savage age of sorcery and barbarism, so the priests have to stay on their toes tracking these guys down, moreso cults and organised viral groups than individual mavericks, since the more people breaking the rules the weaker things get. This may be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective, the removal of the gods as the foremost powers in an area could lead to a resurgence in magical creatures and spells which didn't used to work now working outside unhallowed areas.
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Bloody Stupid Johnson

Quote from: Silverlion;6380464E was the one that implemented that magic system.
Whoops, OK cheers.

QuoteWhy nor have the PC need to pray for X rounds to build the mana they need. Once they have the man it must empower the effect they pray for--or they lose the mana and have to start again. More people praying (i.e more clerics or people guided by a cleric through a ritual) means more mana for a given effect.
The ritual angle seems a good idea. Another idea related to that - it might suggest that both priests and non-priests gain piety points - possibly just working as luck points for the non-priest (divine providence), with only priests able to use them as spells, but also able to absorb PPs from others of the same faith.

jibbajibba

Thanks for replying keep em comin.

I will check talistanta.

A couple of points. I want to stick to mana powering spells becuase I want there to be things that can store mana and things that can channel it.
Similarly in principle a magus (caster) can learn more than one type of magic and I want a single pot to pull the power from.
I don't want non-divine types to have Piety/karma as its fiddly and I want there to be a plethora of simple options for people to play with less bookkeeping if they don;t want to do magic. Also mana is basically a pot that increases with level so i want Piety to be different a modifier to spell rolls to make it different and to show that there is no stat for holiness you can be a holy fool or a holy warrior or a holy wise man.
Lastly I want magic to be setting agnostic. One of my aims is to give the GM tools and ideas to encourage their own settings. Part of that is that any sort of magic can be just pulled out of teh system and dumped. Don't want wizards okay gone, don;t want alchemists , gone. etc

Right that being said :) the limited wish idea is basically where I was at myself. The saint/mystic/priest can ask for a miracle in the sphere of the god's control and then we spend mana to make it happen. The god channels the priests power to effect the world. (They can also used a symbol to store mana and to channel mana connected to the od's sphere).
However, I felt that was a bit vague. So I worship the god of the Flame. I have the Sphere of Fire. I pray and ask for a miracle .... what can i get. Is it up to the player to ask and the GM to ad lib on the spot? Is it gods will and the GM just decides? The idea of effects liek fly, strike, cure etc is okay but the wizardy spells have Verbs, vectors and aspects so are a bit similar to that (Earth +motion +chaos = Earthquake; Shadow + Creation + Minion = Summon shadow creatures; etc)
I need a system round it because I can't handle vague :)
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The Traveller

Quote from: jibbajibba;638077However, I felt that was a bit vague. So I worship the god of the Flame. I have the Sphere of Fire. I pray and ask for a miracle .... what can i get. Is it up to the player to ask and the GM to ad lib on the spot? Is it gods will and the GM just decides? The idea of effects liek fly, strike, cure etc is okay but the wizardy spells have Verbs, vectors and aspects so are a bit similar to that (Earth +motion +chaos = Earthquake; Shadow + Creation + Minion = Summon shadow creatures; etc)
I need a system round it because I can't handle vague :)
You're saying you want a system without a system really. The closest I can come up with right now would be a standardised table for effects like

       Roll  1-5 6-10 11-15 etc
Range      5m   10m  20m etc

And the same for damage, weight/mass, speed and so on to aid ad libbing. Or maybe have opposed faith versus faith rolls and base the results on a similar table, like 1-5, a quarter desired effect, 6-10 half desired effect, 11-15 three quarters desired effect, etc.
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jibbajibba

Quote from: The Traveller;638094You're saying you want a system without a system really. The closest I can come up with right now would be a standardised table for effects like

       Roll  1-5 6-10 11-15 etc
Range      5m   10m  20m etc

And the same for damage, weight/mass, speed and so on to aid ad libbing. Or maybe have opposed faith versus faith rolls and base the results on a similar table, like 1-5, a quarter desired effect, 6-10 half desired effect, 11-15 three quarters desired effect, etc.

well those effects are covered in the mana spend
generally 1 point of mana gives you 1d6 damage, 4m of range, 1 round of duration etc ....
With this approach to miracles the questions I woudl be asking would be

i) What can the priest ask for
ii) what are the limits of the effect (outside stuff covered by mana spend) so could he cure a disease? any disease? etc
iii) how does the player express what the prist is after?


So take a concrete example.
A wizard casts a fireball spell.  He rolls to cast 2d10 + level + Intelligence (-3 to +5) vs 13 + difficulty (5 for a fireball).
He could concentrate for up to 4 rounds to focus each round giving +1 but of course getting hit breaks concentration so he would have to go back to the start.
Once he suceeds in the casting he spends 10 mana from his pool of 20 to give it range 12m (3), Damage 5d6 (5) and a 2m burst (2).
So that is how a Wizard spell works.

If the Priest has a god with a Fire Sphere. Their purity is at +3 and they are 5th level with 20 mana how would his spell work to feel different but to have a similar effect?
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Bloody Stupid Johnson

Seems like the problem is that you want a system for priests thats' more freeform than for wizards, when wizards are already quite freeform? (looks like Ars Magica here ?)

Anyway random ideas

*With wizards you could, use basically the same system but have wizards use it in advance to construct a list of known spells, perhaps with spontaneous magic possible but with higher task difficulties, while priests just request miracles on the spot.

*you could also sit down and define what the limitations are of wizard magic in general, vs. priest magic. For instance in Ars Magica a spell couldn't directly work against the will of god, affect an immortal soul, or change spheres above the lunar, whereas divine magic wouldn't have those limitations but would have different limitations; you can start to guess at these by looking at D&D priest vs. wizard spell lists (wizards can't heal for instance).
That would help somewhat at differentiating the types by effect, even though they have the same system.

*You could if you wanted partly untie priest spells from the mana system by having them all have the same mana cost, then having harsher penalties for casting higher level spells. The idea being that your god only wants you to bother them N times per day, and perhaps it requires some arcane energy to reach the plane they're on to begin invoking their power (to justify the common mana pool - or you can just not think about that one too much).

*I think you've mentioned the idea of 2 types of magic before JJ - magic as having its own physics, or of having game-based effect? Perhaps wizard magic works within the universes' laws to some extent - its more difficult to conjure 3 tons of matter than 2 tons of matter - while priest magic has more narrative limitations, where the god has unlimited energy to rewrite reality but only feels compelled to use it when the party need a deus ex macchina, or if helping the PCs serve their cause directly. So what that would mean is that you wouldn't need range or duration so much say. That would be the system you could actually get using complete GM fiat with a wonky GM, but you'd need to turn that into fixed rules somehow.

Bloody Stupid Johnson

I should try and define that last idea more? I'm not sure but say:

Roll 2d10+piety modifier + ecclesiastical rank.
modifiers:
serving the faith directly: +3
priest life-or-death situation: +2
Asking for something outside god's portfolio: -6
Routine miracle  -0 (e.g. sensing witches in area)
Minor miracle -3 (e.g. healing minor injury)
Moderate miracle -6 (e.g. summon badass angels to fight for you)
Major miracle -9   (e.g. returning a creature to life, parting red sea)

Total roll:
2 or less/critical fumble: god is vexed by request. Caster smited.
3-5: god is irked. No more spells today; reduce remaining mana to 0.
6-10: the request is not granted, or at most may happen through mysterious ways (TM)
11-19: the miracle is granted
20+: the miracle is granted with extra perks.

Hmm rereading the OP this may not be 'tight' enough for you, sorry.

jibbajibba

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;638196I should try and define that last idea more? I'm not sure but say:

Roll 2d10+piety modifier + ecclesiastical rank.
modifiers:
serving the faith directly: +3
priest life-or-death situation: +2
Asking for something outside god's portfolio: -6
Routine miracle  -0 (e.g. sensing witches in area)
Minor miracle -3 (e.g. healing minor injury)
Moderate miracle -6 (e.g. summon badass angels to fight for you)
Major miracle -9   (e.g. returning a creature to life, parting red sea)

Total roll:
2 or less/critical fumble: god is vexed by request. Caster smited.
3-5: god is irked. No more spells today; reduce remaining mana to 0.
6-10: the request is not granted, or at most may happen through mysterious ways (TM)
11-19: the miracle is granted
20+: the miracle is granted with extra perks.

Hmm rereading the OP this may not be 'tight' enough for you, sorry.

I think you get the gist of where i am going.
The wizard spells look freeform but in fact there is also a list of known spells the PCs collect. So a PC may know Fervershalls Ferverish Phantasm which they have learnt and has been encoded in the magical texts. This will be easier to cast that trying to generate a similar effect on the fly. they can also take their own spells and codify them and after time they also become easier to cast. You can , hopefully see how that could work in play.

I totally want the Divine magic to be more open and free form and I had thought that asking for miracles too often would have a cost so this kind of works. However, my sticking point is how to provide a granular system that is still free form, enough options that miracles aren't always Angel Summoning (tm) but can't just be do whatever I like.

the other option is to look at Terry Pratchett, a subject close to all our hearts,. In Small Gods the powerful gods can do anything but rarely actually bother as they have lots of followers, so Lots of followers = Lots of Power = very low chance of getting any attention, whereas Few Followers = Little Power = very High chance of getting attention.
Not sure that helps :)

So the idea that a miracle is a 'wish' is still where I end up. The wish being limited by the divinity of the requestor, their mana, or the power of the god.

I just want some tight definitions for it.
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Bloody Stupid Johnson

Quote from: jibbajibba;638224I think you get the gist of where i am going.
The wizard spells look freeform but in fact there is also a list of known spells the PCs collect. So a PC may know Fervershalls Ferverish Phantasm which they have learnt and has been encoded in the magical texts. This will be easier to cast that trying to generate a similar effect on the fly. they can also take their own spells and codify them and after time they also become easier to cast. You can , hopefully see how that could work in play.
Sounds good..

QuoteI totally want the Divine magic to be more open and free form and I had thought that asking for miracles too often would have a cost so this kind of works. However, my sticking point is how to provide a granular system that is still free form, enough options that miracles aren't always Angel Summoning (tm) but can't just be do whatever I like.
A kludge would be to make repeat effects have a cumulative penalty, but I don't know how you'd justify that thematically. Perhaps individual effects could have specific limitations (healing only works once per person per day, the PCs assigned angel can only be called once/day).

Quotethe other option is to look at Terry Pratchett, a subject close to all our hearts
Indeed.

QuoteIn Small Gods the powerful gods can do anything but rarely actually bother as they have lots of followers, so Lots of followers = Lots of Power = very low chance of getting any attention, whereas Few Followers = Little Power = very High chance of getting attention.
Not sure that helps :)

So the idea that a miracle is a 'wish' is still where I end up. The wish being limited by the divinity of the requestor, their mana, or the power of the god.

I just want some tight definitions for it.

(slight digression maybe...) the Small Gods idea works if you have a spell being separately definable by chance of success, and power cost - then a given deity can have a lower power cost for spells, but a modifier to the likelihood of the request being granted. I think this then gives a higher-level character in a big god's religion some advantage (they'll be noticed anyway, and if they do there's more power available) although that fits.

I've occasionally tinkered with a sort of parallel idea for arcane systems, where a spell can be very complex (hard to cast) but have low mana cost, or very simple but require the caster burn huge amounts of power - maybe illusions vs. the "fire, and lots of it" kind of spells).
Er, I'm not sure that helps at all, either. Sorry :)

Anyway, getting back to the original question, trying to build off the die roll system above, perhaps a table that determines what's a minor/moderate/major miracle for a particular Sphere ? A deity then has multiple Spheres, and the priest could use the best one to work out what's major and so a casting penalty (and/or mana cost).

Bloody Stupid Johnson

Actually on second thought, a 'small gods' thing is something that could be done just with the table above... Move the default miracle up to a 'midrange' miracle (so say 'moderate' is -0*). Increase target numbers to compensate. So now a small miracle gets a bonus to the casting roll (say +3), a major one a penalty (say -3).*

The minor god priest could then say double the difficulty modifier, so they can get minor miracles more often, major miracles less often (+6/-6 instead of +3/-3) - their god is more likely to be inclined to meddle in petty affairs but can't spare the power to do big miracles.

(*note I've squished the miracles from 4 ranks in the original table [routine, minor, moderate, major] down to 3 ranks [minor, moderate, major] for this version.)

TristramEvans

Well, my first question is, if you want the whole thing powered by Pacific Islander concept of "mana", why would the caster's pool of points be called something else, especially something like Karma/Baraka referencing an entirely different culture?


Otherwise I applaud the effort to distinguish different types of magic in the game. I always favour this approach.

If I had any suggestion, it might be to do some research into Theurgia, and appropriate some of the terms and concepts from there.

jibbajibba

#14
Quote from: TristramEvans;638264Well, my first question is, if you want the whole thing powered by Pacific Islander concept of "mana", why would the caster's pool of points be called something else, especially something like Karma/Baraka referencing an entirely different culture?


Otherwise I applaud the effort to distinguish different types of magic in the game. I always favour this approach.

If I had any suggestion, it might be to do some research into Theurgia, and appropriate some of the terms and concepts from there.

Casters pool of points are mana.

The stat that determines the sucess of spells is the different bit.

Like I said different types of magic I want to feel different.

So with Divine casters there will be a variable stat that will replace the Intelligence that Wizards use, the Will power that Sorcerors use and the Dexterity that Alchemists use. This stat will vary from a low of -3 to a max of +5 depending on the actions of the PC in relation to their faith.
So if the PC gets up and prays for 2 hours and makes a sacrifice of a burnt goat in line with their religion they will get up to +3 or +4 if they break taboos of their faith their stat drops, they forget to pray, they eat the wrong foods etc the ease of which they can call on their god's grace slides.

As for the terminology I will probably go with Purity although technically karma is closer to to what I am talking about as you can actually spin a tibbetan prayer wheel for an hour to increase your karma, apparently...

As for the cultural melange bound to happen as an ineviable slide effect of a degree in Anthropology specialising in myth, magic and ritual :D
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