The Gaming Den

In a broader sense, there are game balance reasons to split up magic and there are audience accessibility reasons to split up magic. That is to say that it makes sense to have different spells on the Druid and Wizard list because otherwise Druids would be 'too good' and it makes sense for magicians in Shadowrun to have consistent rules so that the players can interact with them. But arbitrary declarations about magic and magicians don't independently have value. The different flavors of magick in Mage the Ascension are basically just pointless because the paradigms don't have game balance implications nor do they allow savvy players to solve mysteries.

-Fank

My current plan of dividing up magic is "use the imagery of the 4 Fundamental Forces"

Electromagnetism and Gravity are straightforward...


Electromagnetism
- Lightning
- Kinesis: Attract, Repel, Glide, Hover
-- Illusion: Mind/electronics affecting noise
-- Waves: Laser beams, radio comms, UV vision, gamma deathgaze

Gravity
- Create Gravity Wells
- Bridges: Fold space
- Relativity: Time slow/speed/stop powers

I'm not too clear on what feels like "Nuclear Strong" vs "Nuclear Weak" though. Transmutation, matter manipulation, alchemy is very broad so splitting into two chunks seems good, like...

Nuclear S? Perhaps call it Salt, Mercury, Sulfur
- Strengthen atomic bonds
- Dissolve bomds
- Fusion into nuclear flame
- radiation if not careful

Nuclear W?
- Transmute elements via Wuxing wheel
-- Fire expends energy and is reduced to...
-- Earth is raw material and births...
-- Metal takes hardened form and gathers...
-- Water, formless which creates...
-- Wood, potential energy that can be ignored for...
- Radiation if not careful

Is that vaguely coinciding with what Nuclear S and W forces do?

Each category of magic has some defenses against the other, ranged attacks, mobility powers.

Strong and Weak Nuclear forces don't "feel" like anything. They are mathematical descriptions of how particles interact with each other on the microscopic scale.

Adjusting math in the nuclear forces is a good enough piece of psychobabble for why you shout words and draw diagrams to make magic fire happen, but the subatomic space doesn't inherently have any emotional resonance. It's sub atomic, it doesn't even have color.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Adjusting math in the nuclear forces is a good enough piece of psychobabble for why you shout words and draw diagrams to make magic fire happen, but the subatomic space doesn't inherently have any emotional resonance. It's sub atomic, it doesn't even have color.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_charge

but I snark.

If you start talking about the cultural connotations of nuclear stuff, you get


which really doesn't scan as different whether it's electromagnetic gamma radiation, or high-energy particles (which would interact with whatever they hit via the strong and weak forces.)

In my RPG Domain d26, the magic system is mana-based but by slotting a spell twice you can bypass this restriction.

There's like 8-10 Mage classes with each their own spell list. The Shaman has the largest list but I'm hacking that down as playtesting resumes.

Spells are standardized to about 2d6+Mind stat damage with a random rider effect on a roll of 5-6 on a damage die, while debuffs straight out apply a status effect or penalty on a failed save.

You get 3 saves later with TN16 difficulty to break free of a debuff effect, fail all three and you're stuck with it for like an hour or more. Some spells are shorter duration.

Been thinking of how to do Final Fantasy XiV tabletop with a D&D d20 type feeling...

Black Mage's "Umbral Ice, Astral Fire", they're draining and unleashing ambient magic energy from targets and environment
Ice: Drains aether from target, freezing them. Builds up Umbral Ice points which reduces cost and cast time of Fire spells. Casting Ice spells remove fire points.

Fire: unleashes the mage's aether in a fiery explosion, builds up Astral Fire points which increase damage and cost of fire spells, also reduces cost of Ice spells. Casting a fire spell removes Ice points.

In such a system I can see...

You have 5 ki points to use for spells and so on.

Casting an ice spell gives you an Umbral Ice point. You can have up to 3. Umbral Ice points can be used to reduce MP cost of fire spells.

Casting a fire spell gives you Astral Fire points, up to 3. Each point increases fire damage by X and fire spell ki cost by the number of points you have.

Fiends & Fortresses does that but less fiddly.

There's also at least 3 different FF d20 rpgs.

http://www.finalfantasyd20.com/

This one is trying to cram a ton of different games together, it's a bit of a mess, but there's some pretty cool conversions in there.