Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;501312In a bit of a hurry today, sorry, can only comment briefly ATM but...
 
-as far as limiting how often magic users are supposed to appear, you could do something with the POW attribute. If all wizards need Pow 18, in theory that means 1:216 people in the general populace would have the potential to
use magic (18 on 3d6)...?
 
-Death spheres and Life overlap, both being Water + something, is that deliberate?
 
Initially I was skeptical of powerful spells having -300% when the difference between a crummy mage and an archmage is about +60%, but the Mana Manipulation thing looks like it should work (and limit the maximum nastiness of a low-skill wizards' spells).
The variability of the d100 would mean there's a big difference in mana cost between casting a spell at a 50% success rate and casting it with a 100% certainty of it working.
I sort of like the feature that a clever wizard might be able to reduce how much mana things cost by figuring the smallest change he needs to get an intended effect, like 1 to break the chandeleir so it smashes on the guards or stick a door closed so the PCs can get away, vs. lots to just disintegreate everybody.

I went with connotations for mana types - Water and Earth are elements that are symbolic to life I'd say, while at the same time - Water and Fire are two most destructive elements.

Even 20% of difference in the skill here is really vast, as it allows you to spend also 4 more Mana Points to ensure that spell works.

I'll post some examples of spells tomorrow, as well as many design a special skill for each mana type. I have empowered Chaos Mana, while making it also quite dangerous to sanity, based on Malazan - Chaos Warren is the strongest, but using it can cause the user to go mad.

18 Power is an interesting idea, but it limits the character generation to pure randomness - most GMs won't like that, a and giving a wizard automatic maximal Power rating will make him rather tough. I think though that Power rating for a wizard could be raised with time - will need to flesh out rules.

Quote from: Rincewind1;50135318 Power is an interesting idea, but it limits the character generation to pure randomness - most GMs won't like that, a and giving a wizard automatic maximal Power rating will make him rather tough. I think though that Power rating for a wizard could be raised with time - will need to flesh out rules.

I put this poorly. The thought I had was that the peasants use 3d6, so an 18 Power would imply 1 in 200ish (0.5%) of peasants have possibly magical potential.
PCs are probably using point buy since they're heroes, but their score shows where they fit into the general population that's using 3d6.
 
You could reset the minimum down further if you wanted magical talent to be not quite that rare e.g. Power minimum 16 to learn magic skills would mean 2% of the population are magic users, Power 15 would mean 9%, and Power 13 about 26%.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;501413I put this poorly. The thought I had was that the peasants use 3d6, so an 18 Power would imply 1 in 200ish (0.5%) of peasants have possibly magical potential.
PCs are probably using point buy since they're heroes, but their score shows where they fit into the general population that's using 3d6.
 
You could reset the minimum down further if you wanted magical talent to be not quite that rare e.g. Power minimum 16 to learn magic skills would mean 2% of the population are magic users, Power 15 would mean 9%, and Power 13 about 26%.

I thought of a bit different idea - that your Mana Manipulation skills are capped by your Power x 5, so that you can become a wizard, but some people are simply born better to be them - while others will be condemned to life of "obscurity".

Pardon a fool's question - there is a Point Buy system for BRP? The only one I heard of was in Cthulhu: Dark Ages, and I never got around that. Care to post an example of PB system for BRP?

Well RQ2 (and I assume Legend) gives the option of just dividing 80 points across the attributes, costing 1:1. I hadn't realized until I looked though, its actually no more generous for points than just rolling 3d6 since there's 8 stats.
I'm not really a BRP expert so you could ask one of them if there's any other established methods they know of...
 
As far as other ideas go:
You could possibly also try one of those hybrid things where you roll dice and then allocate them to different stats (e.g. base 6 for Size and Int, then roll 22d6 (or more) and allocate as desired, no more than 2 dice to Size/Int or 3 dice to the others.
 
Or adapt the D&D 3.x purchase method with points increased 33% to allow for 8 attributes instead of 6...though we normally dump that and just allocate points 1:1 even when playing D&D..

Well, hopefully I'll give those rules today a whirl during Warhammer game.

Special rules:

Mana Points = Magic Points

Manifestations of Chaos - since Tzeentch does not control magic, but he wishes to, and tainted a large part of Realm of Magic, each time you fail to cast a spell, roll for Intelligence. If you fail, you failed to draw from mana untainted by Tzeentch. Also must test for Manifestation if you go over Safe Mana Control level when Empowering.

If you use Chaos to Empower your spell, roll 1/2 of your Chaos Skill later. If you succeed, you get a Chaos Manifestation.

The Chaos Manifestation strength depends on Inertia Factor.

Quote from: Rincewind1;500493Each element would have it's corresponding magic skill. And when a wizard'd like to cast a spell, he'd simply need to declare what effects he wishes to archive, then the GM would set an Inertia Factor - how difficult it is to bend the laws of the universe/Plane, so that the spell would work. And obviously - if you were on a Plane dominated by Water, it'd be much harder to cast a spell with Fire - based effect, and easier to cast a Water based spell - after all, on a Waterworld it is much more possible for a tsunami wave to appear, then a wall of fire.

Have you played / read Ars Magica? It has an earlier version of this mechanic, but it's more fleshed out than in Mage etc. as magic is the core thing for the game.

Regarding stats, if you wanted to enforce a minimum POW for spellcasters, maybe let players who don't roll an 18 POW naturally roll on the following table once for each point they're missing...

The "Magic changes a man..." table (D6):
1: Size -1, Power +1
2: Strength -1, Power +1
3: Dexterity -1, Power +1
4: Constitution -1, Power +1
5: Intelligence -1, Power +1
6: Appearance -1, Power +1

It's simple and it's random, so it can't be exploited, and it's only reassigning the scores you originally rolled, so your original rolls still matter.

Quote from: Ladybird;501785Have you played / read Ars Magica? It has an earlier version of this mechanic, but it's more fleshed out than in Mage etc. as magic is the core thing for the game.

Regarding stats, if you wanted to enforce a minimum POW for spellcasters, maybe let players who don't roll an 18 POW naturally roll on the following table once for each point they're missing...

The "so what effects did a childhood spent poring over musty tomes have on you" table:
1: Size -1, Power +1
2: Strength -1, Power +1
3: Dexterity -1, Power +1
4: Constitution -1, Power +1
5: Intelligence -1, Power +1
6: Appearance -1, Power +1

It's simple and it's random, so it can't be exploited.

Oh, I know Ars Magica - we have a copy in the club, and I currently have it, as I like good magic systems. But Ars Magica is a game about wizards - and I want the wizard to be powerful, but not steal the entire spotlight. And AM's magic is still pretty systematised, while I wanted a more freeform epic magic - I do agree that it's system's great. I'll probably when I have a bit of time write a similar system to this one, but with just one magic related stat - "Magic Use".

As for the system - good balancing feature indeed. Would fit in a game where working magic would require significant sacrifices.

I really wonder how Erikson house - ruled AD&D, that Quick Ben could actually do all that stuff in his game .

I read somewhere that the game erikson & eslemont played was a mashup of gurps and ad&d so maybe it had a custom magic system?

If you want another idea for a magic system that uses the colour spectrum instead of the classic elemental one give The Black Prism by Brent Weeks a read as its pretty interesting how magical powers work based on which colurs you can see most in the magical spectrum.