On some magic threads there's been discussion of the sort of magic that people attempted to do in Medieval Europe often involved summoning/binding angels and demons and getting them to do stuff for you. The "spells" that did this were very time consuming and generally required a well-stocked location and proper astrological timing. That's a radical over-simplification I'm sure but I think the general idea is right.

Having all casting times measured in hours is hard to fit into D&D magic so someone suggested in order to make it work with D&D mechanics have the spells to bind demons take a long time but giving one of your demons an order to go and do something could be something you could do in combat. This would work pretty much like Vancian magic in practice with casters taking time to bind demons ahead of time and then being able to use each of them once during an adventure.

Let's take this and run with it.

To get the ability to shoot fire out of your fingers (or whatever) once you need to cast a spell to bind the appropriate demon. The demon then trails after you until you tell it to make fire shoot out of your fingers. Then fire shoots out and the demon goes free until you spend time to bind it. Obviously herding demons is hard so depending on your level there's a limit to how many demons you can have bound at any one time. In order to get your demons bound you need:
-Time. Lots and lots of time. Hours for a ritual and possibly days or even weeks of prep time.
-A proper magical laboratory, not the floor of some random dungeon.
-The proper astrological timing. Have a demon that can only be bound during a solar eclipse or what have you would be interesting. So you can have a massive collection of spells but only a limited selection at any one time unless you're willing to wait for the stars to be right.
-For some perhaps the right location. Maybe a certain spell can only be cast from the top of a volcano (would have to lug your magical gear up there).

Would provide for some interesting game play I think.

One thing this would do would be to make it much harder for wizards to get their magic back which makes attrition a lot more of an issue. You can have a long wilderness journey in which the PCs can go for days without anything dangerous happening still wear the party down since the wizard can't get his mojo back for the ENTIRE course of the journey.

It would also inject a lot of downtime into the game generally, which I think would be interesting. I've had games in which the party gained a whole stack of levels during 8 weeks of in-world time and having the wizard need a few weeks to get his mojo back would be an interesting way of prevent that and give time for the world to progress around the PCs and for lots of current events to trickle into them.

It'd also make time measured in weeks and months a bit meaningful since it'd take a long time for PCs to recover from an adventure (slower recovery of magic also means slower recovery of HPs). So if there are two crises at once the PCs might have to pick and choose since they might not have time to deal with one, take a lot of downtime to recover spells and then deal with the second.

Thoughts?

An interesting idea to experiment with, certainly. I'd use it for a system where everywhere could learn magic, though it'd be hard to maintain more than one - two demons without proper scholarly training.

Have you ever looked at the late 3e book Tome of Magic? The Binder class in there was very interesting. Unfortunately it was pretty hard to come up with new spirits to bind to yourself – each "vestige" gave you a few spell-like abilities (of course, expressed as standard D&D spells), possibly an ambient constant personal effect, some sort of personal side-effect, and also possibly incompatibility with other vestiges. So it was a real pain to come up with new ones. But I could have seen something like it being the basis for a whole new spell system: what they called "vestiges" (to distinguish from other supernatural entities, I suppose) could be demons, nature spirits, elementals, angels...

Quote from: Imp;725671Have you ever looked at the late 3e book Tome of Magic? The Binder class in there was very interesting. Unfortunately it was pretty hard to come up with new spirits to bind to yourself – each "vestige" gave you a few spell-like abilities (of course, expressed as standard D&D spells), possibly an ambient constant personal effect, some sort of personal side-effect, and also possibly incompatibility with other vestiges. So it was a real pain to come up with new ones. But I could have seen something like it being the basis for a whole new spell system: what they called "vestiges" (to distinguish from other supernatural entities, I suppose) could be demons, nature spirits, elementals, angels...

IIRC you could more than one vestige active at a time and each one modified your stats in different ways. Sounded like a headache to keep everything tracked.

But basically I really like Vancian mechanics as game mechanics. I'm thinking about this sort of stuff because maybe "you let one your demons loose to cast the spell and you have to spend some downtime to get it back" might be easier for some players to swallow than "you forgot the magic words and have to memorize them over and over" even though the mechanics are the same.

I'm also thinking a lot about how to insert more downtime into D&D since I'm enjoying having a month of in-world downtime between every adventure in the dwarf fortress game I'm running and think having players have to spend a lot of time in-game time to recover fully from an adventure could change the way gameplay works in some interesting ways.

In case of D&D, I'd work this on a something for something basis, so to speak - so while taking spell takes a lengthy time of preparations, you could cast a few spells (since it's all just commands to the demons) in one round. Also, some beings could be more universal than others. A flame demon could, depending on it's power, be used to cast fireball, or just create a ball of light.

I model magic sort of like this, but actually less like goetic magic binding demons that literally follow the Magic-User around as a "spell" and more like a cross between the talismanic systems of Francis Barrett/Eliphas Levi and the are memoria-based magic of Giordano Bruno.

I assume that spellbooks are more like tables for calculating the names of celestial intelligences and spirits, and the astrological influences that govern any desired spell effect on any given day of the week or hour of the day (there are tables exactly like that in FB's The Magus.) Prepping a spell is like making a magic square and Using it to encode special names as magical sigils. Each set of names encoded powers a single spell, but the power waits for the final incantation and gestures. The Magic-User picks some trigger words and uses memory palace techniques to memorize the gestures that trace sigil and the key words selected. This takes 1d6 ten-minute turns of memorization; higher-level Magic-Users get better at memorizing, so they can prep two, three, or four spells of a given level in the time they used to need for prepping a single spell.

So, they kind of do the fancier ritual magic, but off screen and greatly abstracted. Want to prep spells in the dungeon? Go ahead, I'll roll a die in secret to see how long it takes, and roll for wandering monsters every turn, too. It's more stressful, so I'll only let you do one at a time. You'll need some paper and ink, too, and your idiot adventuring buddies have to shut up and sit still. Can they do that? We'll see...

This sort of approach works really well with the RuneQuest 6 version of Animism ... the "spirits" can be demons, angels, fae, djinn, elementals, or tribal animal and ancestor spirits, with a few tweaks here and there. There are rules for finding, summoning, and binding these Otherworldly creatures, "negotiating" with them, through Spirit Combat, which can also be figured as a contest of wits, a riddle game, a series of recitations of holy words ... Then they can be bound into a fetish or wand, staff, amulet, etc, or a complex sigil. This can be used to invoke them in play, to embody them and use their effects (for example releasing a fire elemental and having its mystical flames suddenly light up your weapons, or shoot fire from your fingertips etc), or you can break the fetish to release them and obey a command from the summoner, who may have learned their true name to control them, or have a bargain struck with them. Traps can even be prepared by binding a demon into a "breakable" fetish, such as a wax seal on a door or a mandala drawn in sand on a cavern floor, so that a trespasser unleashes the spirit, which attacks ... It's a very cool system, and could possibly be ported into D&D with some effort. The Sorcerer magic users can achieve Solomonic-type magical effects by learning a series of spells: Evoke (to summon the creature), Imprison (to bind it in a magic circle once it's there), Protective Ward (for the magic circle you stand in!), Dominate (to bend the creature to your will ... roleplaying can be substituted for bargain-making/true name learning), and Banish (to get rid of them once you're done). All in all, Animism provides a more organic, tribal feel, or a form of magic for a specialist that ONLY gets powers from summoned demons/djinn whatever, and Sorcery provides a more academic series of spells to be mastered to gain the effects .... It's great stuff, I recommend it ....

As far as I can see it basically is Vancian magic with a longer prep time. It's kind of ironic that for all the criticism levelled at this kind of magic system in D&D, it's probably the most playable yet accurate representation of the dominant magical tradition in Europe from the Renaissance to the modern period.

Quote from: The Traveller;725751As far as I can see it basically is Vancian magic with a longer prep time. It's kind of ironic that for all the criticism levelled at this kind of magic system in D&D, it's probably the most playable yet accurate representation of the dominant magical tradition in Europe from the Renaissance to the modern period.

Yup, am thinking about using that as my default in future games. I like the effects of longer downtime, seems more logical (why do I forget all the spells!), has some nice Elric-ish flavor to it and having restrictions on where/when you can "memorize" your spells might make for some interesting choices.

Quote from: Daztur;725786Yup, am thinking about using that as my default in future games. I like the effects of longer downtime, seems more logical (why do I forget all the spells!), has some nice Elric-ish flavor to it and having restrictions on where/when you can "memorize" your spells might make for some interesting choices.

Yes, I'm working on making something similar for my fantasy campaign. Especially in low magic, or rare but high powered magic settings it's a shoo-in. I've also set up tables for the fakes and misguided too:

Random magician selection at chargen, three attempts allowed:

On a d10,
1-3: Charlatan
4-6: Conjurer
7-9: True Believer
10: Magician

Second attempt, on a d10:
1-5: One of the other three not already taken, in order
6-9: The second of the other three not already taken, in order
10: Magician

Third attempt, on a d10:
1-9: The last option not already taken
10: Magician

Charlatan:
Charlatans know how to baffle and bamboozle the naive and innocent, and even better how to con them out of their coinage. Sleight of hand, lying, and con artistry are their talents, anything from fairground thimblerigging to selling potions to faking a visitation from a god in order to gather donations.

Conjuror:
These would be stage magicians or court wizards, knowledgeable of many tricks like fireworks, mechanics and sleight of hand, but are aware that there's someone behind the curtain. Certain priests might also fall under this category. There's a general understanding that their powers are mostly trickery though, as they move in more educated circles than the charlatans.

Still, conjurors are not to be underestimated - that they triggered a pump up their sleeve to spew flaming oil rather than summoning a demon to achieve the same end doesn't change the way that you're still on fire.

True Believer:
This is someone who believes they are doing magic, or invoking holy powers, but in reality are not. Due to the strength of their beliefs they carry a great conviction about with them. True believers tend to excel at persuasion, leadership, and rabble rousing, as well as having deep and esoteric but mostly useless knowledge of some occult subject which may or may not exist.

Magician:
The real deal.

NB charlatans, conjurors and true believers have all got very valuable skills which can help the group out of many tricky situations, so it's not a gotcha setup.

Reminds me of Stormbringer where you summoned demons and bound them to make armor, weapons, amulets etc that let you do things. The demons could come unbound and it was a dangerous thing to do in general. It was a cool system that worked well. Though the effects of items were more permanent but I always liked that you still had to instill your will on them so using them too much was a risk, At least in the games I played in and ran.

I have been thinking about this kind of thing too. I am designing a system for fun right now that caters to the things I like to see in fantasy. One of the thing I like is the whole conception of magic in many of the old pulps where magicians use a bit of summoning, some enchantment, hypnosis, slight of hand, alchemy, and a lot of good old fashioned trickery. I have this idea where magicians use more mundane, but poorly understood arts for most things, but can break out summoning for when something potent is required. I don't really like flash and bang magic much in my games, however it seems to be what players favor. However for some reason it just sits better with me to have a magician hurling fireballs form a ring that has a demon from some firey plane bound to it.

Anyway just some half baked thoughts on the subject.

And don't forget trials/pilgrimages/quests that need to be undertaken by the magic user as part of the spell casting process, whether to build up certain kinds of energies prior to the binding or to impress a patron demon. The Ninth Gate is a decent example of that.

These can be nicely esoteric, say a reference to "journeying from mouth to spring of the bronze river and back again" could involve working out that hundreds or thousands of years previously a certain river had been used to transport copper ore to the smelting pits near the delta, which may be exceptionally difficult to discover. Archaeological digs and interviewing tribal storytellers in the swamps could be involved.

On that one I'd probably give additional clues like "when the raven sings twice", as a reference to the two headed totem of the tribes who used to live there but were only recently forced out. They aren't likely to be especially talkative either, and I wager the tribal shaman will have a clue what's going on.

Maybe giving the spellcaster only a handful of real, working spells at the start would be a good idea, and if they track down or stumble upon other spells in the course of the game, those might potentially be the only copies of those particular spells left in the world.

Heady stuff.

Right, that's very much the kind of thing I was thinking of. It would make spell casting an adventure in and of itself. I was also thinking that alchemy should play a larger role I the day to day adventuring kind of magic, a vial that when shattered explodes, a handful of exotic herbs dusted about the air to cause sleep amongst your enemies, that sort of thing. Another thing I would like to see would be potential repercussions of summoning, there is the very real possibility that a mag could get in over their head.

Good idea. Another thing to consider purely from a gameability point of view is how attractive it would be to play a magic user if the lead time for casting a single spell was so long.

If it takes three weeks of concerted in-game effort to get a single fireball spell together, and then it's gone, how many players would go for that? Mind you a fireball spell is quite powerful, but where to draw the line really. Perhaps in setting history the march of technology might have simply outpaced magic - why spend a month putting yourself at risk to cast a fireball spell when you can just buy a hand grenade from an arms dealer.

I don't know if anyone's watched the movie Warlock, excellent flick, but magic in that works along similar lines. The warlock gathers up ingredients including the fat of an unbaptised male child and makes a literal flying potion. More interesting though was the way it raised the idea of counterspells, which aren't themselves innately magical. Like when the warlock blinded the farmer and the witch hunter cured it by dangling keys over his eyes or something similar.

Knowledge of how to beat adverse enchantments might be reasonably common in some areas, even if only among priests. Cold iron piercing the flesh of a sorceror say might dispel quite a few enchantments, or expose the sorceror to attacks as long as demons or spirits are bound to him (hammering iron nails into the footprints of a warlock to hobble him, counter-countered by pressing his feet into wood), indicating that the binding is something of a merging as well. This kind of mythology could also tie in very nicely with the idea of faeries and what exactly their magical powers are all about.