Okay, so I'm trying to put together a 3.5 setting for my group that has a few caveats and themes. One of those themes was that arcane magic is dangerous. Using it untrained will, yes, will, always, cien-por-ciento, without fail cause insanity and degeneration (shades of wheel of time here, I guess). It can be harnessed in the same way that a nuclear reactor can (i.e. don't let it get out of control and melt down), and is generally too powerful not to make use of, but carries a serious burden. Sorcerer types are feared and apprehended when possible (sometimes) or killed outright (safer). Wizard types are fearfully respected and generally given a wide berth, 'cuz they're essentially playing with fire.

I'm trying to work out which classes to use, as the standard PHB spellcasting classes are a little high-magic for my tastes.

One thing I found was the Archivist out of Heroes of Horror that seems to fit the theme I'm going for pretty well. I want a sorcerer/self-taught type to have lots of power available, while a wizard/learned type will have less power but generally be a lot safer about things.

Can anyone recommend any 3.5-compatible spellcasting classes that might sorta fit the bill? Or perhaps ways to mod the wizard and sorcerer to give 'em a more "dangerous magic" feel?

Maybe think about using "ritual magic" that requires more than one caster and lots of prep time/components. For that matter, you can "tone down" magic if you strictly stick to the component/etc. requirements. I'd recommend going the "assistants needed" route unless the caster is a few levels above the actual level spells become available at, then they can go it alone. i.e. 1-5 require assistants/time/components, then at 6th he can do 1st by himself, 7th he can do 2nd, etc. Another option is to make LEARNING spells harder. You need to find the spell and inscribe it in your book, or be taught it by higher level sages and such.

A thought, anyway.

If you're not worried about balance with other classes, there are a lot of ways to do this.

If you are, one thing you could do would be to weaken the classes slightly but give them the following special ability: they can burn spell slots to cast higher level spells, but with a progressively increasing fumble factor. So that e.g. a 2nd level sorcerer could burn a 1st level spell slot to bust out a 5-die fireball, but it would have a 20% chance (thinkin' 10 x level difference) to get seriously fucked up some way (GM's option or roll on a cool old-school magic fumble table: nails the caster, nails the wrong target, double normal power and size so gets people it's not supposed to, opens a vortex to the plane of fire and elementals come out to raise hell, whatever.

This way the extra power's always there, begging the player to use it, but when things go wrong, boy they go wrong. And it piggybacks on top of the regular mechanics.

You could make a character's highest level-slots only usable in this way if you want a lower-magic feel, maybe starting the fumble chance at 10% for same level or below. Or you could tweak the percentages for wizard/sorcerer so that sorcs had an easier time generating really high power levels (no cap on level up casting, say) but had a bigger fumble chance than the wiz.

You could check out Green Ronin's magic system in Black Company and True Sorcery.  It seems to make magic 'dangerous'.  Also, the magic system in Mongoose's Conan is 'corrupting'.

But frankly, if you want to keep spellcasters a viable PC option, this is going to be hard to do without some radical reworking of 3e.  The game just isn't built for it.

I do, indeed, have true sorcery, but I decided that the spellcasting was a bit too cumbersome, especially without pre-worked out spells. My players have this thing about doing too much math at the table, which is to say, they don't like it.

Conan magic, likewise, doesn't quite fit in. I do want spellcasters to be able to direct large amounts of energy, scry distantly, and generally accomplish really neat things, but at what cost.

As for viability, my attitude toward this is "You can toss around xd6 attacks, drain Constitution, get bonuses to AC and inflict curses, blindness, and deafness, but it's dangerous to do so. Boo-hoo."

The thing is, magic items will be very scarce, and hitpoints will be limited at higher levels (rather like Conan d20), so a 6- or 7-d6 fireball will be difficult to save against (without magic items to boost reflex saves) and do a large percentage of total hit points of even fighter-types (and with an average damage of 21 - 24, will force a massive damage save in my variant). In other spells from the SRD that would be relatively ho-hum and plain-cake can do a lot of damage.

the warcraft/world of warcraft d20 stuff had "fel magic" rules with corruption & the like.  unfortunately i'm at work and can't access my books

I believe Dragon Magazine did a conversion of Dark Sun some time ago. It should contain a Defiler Class or Prestige Class that might be useful.

You may want to check out the wilder class from Wheel of Time.  It's certainly got power in spades, and is pretty much guaranteed to slowly go crazy.  There's also physical danger to them when they overchannel.  Plus, it's really close to the default system so it will feel pretty familiar.

Couldn't you use the magic rules from Call of Cthulhu d20?  Spells cause sanity damage and temporary ability score damage...

If you throw a skill roll to halve the cost or negate it, you could easily make untrained use of spells a Very. Bad. Idea.

It also has guidelines for applying the same costs to spells from the PHB IIRC.

Quote from: joewolzCouldn't you use the magic rules from Call of Cthulhu d20?

This was what I was going to sugget.

The problem with weakening the spellcasting classes is that then no one takes them so you have game with no magic instead of dangerous magic.  If you offer them extra power at great cost, they'll almost never use it.

I'd get rid of spell casting classes and make it something almost anyone can do, with a few feats and skills to partially control it.  

D20 Modern has a few magic using classes (some casters, some with special abilities that could be adapted.  You might want to check out the D20 Modern SRD, both the main book and Urban Arcana.  The latter has has incantation rules for ritual magic that is open to anyone.

An simple alternative for toning down the level of magic is ruling that no more than half of your levels can be in spellcasting classes, then adding a rule for casting unknown spells at some risk.

Well, this isn't for d20, but should be compatible.  In Palladium Fantasy, I wanted to create a Wild Mage, I just took the Wizard class and gave it not only more spells, but some more higher levels than they'd normally get.  Only problem being, they're extremely unstable casters.
 
When they cast, they roll a 1d20:
 
A 1 is cataclysmic failure.  Something terribly unpleasant happens, as determined by the GM
 
A 2-6 casts, but nowhere near the right spell.  Could be a much higher level spell, could be a 1st-level spell.  I have them roll percentiles.  I then compare that roll to the invocation list in Palladium Fantasy, and count down to whatever spell happens.  If it's directed, we roll a dice to see who's the lucky/unlucky recipient.  This part is wildly popular with the group.
 
A 7-10 doesn't cast, but still costs them PPE (power points).  Fizzle.  Sorry.
 
11-17 Casts normally.
 
18-19: Double any effects of the spell.
 
20:  Triple any effects of the spell!
 
So that's how I worked it for my game.  It's a fun, popular class in many of my games.  Dangerous as hell, but so very, very unpredictably fun.

Quote from: NicephorusThe problem with weakening the spellcasting classes is that then no one takes them so you have game with no magic instead of dangerous magic.  If you offer them extra power at great cost, they'll almost never use it.

no way!  someone will almost always take it.  it's a great roleplaying opportunity to boot.  for my group, anyway, ymmv etc.

Some thread necromancy here on a related topic to the original subject, which is to say magic system set-up for the 3.5 setting I'm cooking up.

cross-posted to d20haven:

So I was bouncing ideas off my buddy concerning the organization of magic for a 3.5 setting I've been trying to put together on and off since about 2001.

Basically, I'm dividing magic sources in to three different types: Celestial, Terrestrial, and Human/Internal. Celestial magic does stuff with energy, matter, life and death, the astral, and fate
Terrestrial magic has to do with spirits, the ethereal, nature, and elements.
Internal magic sorta blurs the line and comes from within the user.

There are three different methods of using it: Granted, Learned, and Innate
Granted casters get it from an external source and are invoking spirits and whatnot.
Learned casters manipulate arcane phenomena to achieve their results
Innate casters use magic instinctively to evoke their results.

The different types of magic indicate the spell lists that would be used. We arrived at Celestial being the Cleric list, Terrestrial being the Druid list, and Internal being the Sorcerer/Wizard list

The methods determine spellcasting progression and the primary attribute. Granted casters use Wisdom, and gain access to entire spell levels. Learned casters use Intelligence and gain access to 2-3 spells per level and can easily acquire more through scrolls or magical writings. Innate casters use Charisma, have more spells per day than the other casters, and gain more spells per level, but have a very hard time gaining new spells from magical writings.

My buddy suggested making the classes into Celestial/Terrestrial/Internal mage and having different class features similar to a Ranger or Monk's fighting style every X levels to differentiate the methods, but I'm currently leaning more toward making the classes into Granted/Learned/Innate mage and having the aforementioned class feature branches be more about the type of magic they use (actually kinda similar to the World of Warcraft d20 method, now that I think about it).

Comments? Suggestions?

Did you look at Grim Tales? It looks like you've already surveyed that type of product, but it definately filled the bill when I wanted darker, more dangerous sorcery.

Quote from: RubioOkay, so I'm trying to put together a 3.5 setting for my group that has a few caveats and themes. One of those themes was that arcane magic is dangerous. Using it untrained will, yes, will, always, cien-por-ciento, without fail cause insanity and degeneration (shades of wheel of time here, I guess). It can be harnessed in the same way that a nuclear reactor can (i.e. don't let it get out of control and melt down), and is generally too powerful not to make use of, but carries a serious burden. Sorcerer types are feared and apprehended when possible (sometimes) or killed outright (safer). Wizard types are fearfully respected and generally given a wide berth, 'cuz they're essentially playing with fire.

I'm trying to work out which classes to use, as the standard PHB spellcasting classes are a little high-magic for my tastes.

One thing I found was the Archivist out of Heroes of Horror that seems to fit the theme I'm going for pretty well. I want a sorcerer/self-taught type to have lots of power available, while a wizard/learned type will have less power but generally be a lot safer about things.

Can anyone recommend any 3.5-compatible spellcasting classes that might sorta fit the bill? Or perhaps ways to mod the wizard and sorcerer to give 'em a more "dangerous magic" feel?

There was actually a d20 Wheel of Time RPG, one corebook plus a supplement.  You could use the channeler classes from that, if that's along the lines of what you want magic to be able to do.