I've been thinking about a magic system that revolved around objects or ingredients for a while now (and posted a short-lived thread about it) and think i've got the bones of a system.

You can cast magic spells only with the assistance of certain ingredients. The stuff of magic - Mana, is fuelled by the ingredient. But Mana being a fickle thingy, how you manipulate it effects your future efforts.

Basically, spells utilise Negative, Neutral or Positive Mana. Each of the ingredients can be used to power one aspect of Mana in the form of a spell.

So, for example, Sparkle Root enables you to cast the negative Mana spell Blinding Flash, the neutral spell Summon Will 'o' the Wisp, and the positive spell Lamplight. You decide which one you want to cast and it costs a set amount of Mana Points to cast (a stat that PCs have). Now, you have a Mana Scale like this -

<      Negative            >   <  Neutral  >       <              Positive >

-100        to               -11    -10    0   +10     +11         to              +100


The Mana cost of the spells you cast moves this scale along. So casting a negative spell moves the scale towards the negative, neutral spells don't move the scale at all and positive spells move the scale towards the positive end. Having your Mana scale in the positive or negative side of the scale raises the Mana cost of casting spells frpom the opposite spectrum (although the unmodified cost is the one used to move the scale once the spell is cast).

The ingredient is consumed in the casting unless you fashion a Mana Token. You fashion these tokens to have either a Negative, Neutral or Positive polarity. An ingredient placed within the token is not consumed when a spell is cast. However, during creation, the token must have a polarity keyed into it. Therefore, utilising an ingredient placed in the Token, you can only cast the spell from the ingredient that matches the Token's polarity.

So a mage might have a good few ingredients on him, but only have 1 negative Mana Token, 1 Neutral Token and no Positive Tokens.

Simple, elegant and versitile.

Have you considered having ingredients be more generic? For example, instead of 'Sparkle root',

1 of Supernatural Light
3 of Direct Fire
2 of Mental Healing

Just a thought. Also, two-word casting system?

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;305983Simple, elegant and versitile.

Thanks!

QuoteHave you considered having ingredients be more generic? For example, instead of 'Sparkle root',

1 of Supernatural Light
3 of Direct Fire
2 of Mental Healing

I wanted it to be a bit more evocative than that - a;lthought there is the potentail for confusion, especially if the ingredient's name isn't evocative of what you can do with it. For this reason i'm trying to tie the two together.

QuoteAlso, two-word casting system?

Not sure what you mean, here. Could you elaborate?

Just thinking, maybe make it a bit more generic. Your spells already use about two 'words'; just expand that.