Magic resources in Midgard

[Prak]

So, I'm thinking about Midgard's casting mechanic. Figured I'd stream of thought this and get some feedback.

Here's what I know-

1. Magic is skill based. You train in a Skill, and have access to spells levels based on your character level(/how trained you are, which function calls to your ChLv)
2. You acquire your spells by spending skill points on Esoterica (I'm not sure whether you buy spell lists or individual spells)
3. When you cast a spell, you roll the relevant skill, DC is based on spell level
4. Attack spells then require a roll to hit your target. Because there are two chances for, say, Flame Burst, to fail, compared to a standard weapon attack, attack spells can do a bit more damage than a weapon from an otherwise comparable character.*
5. Spells are resisted with Character Level/Hit Die. Maybe a relevant stat can be added, like, maybe your saves are Level+(Str/Dex/Wis) Mod. Not sure on that yet.
6. Attack Spells are resolved like attacks. So you roll to cast, roll to hit, target rolls to avoid, and armour subtracts damage.

But I'm left trying to decide whether there should be a deplete-able resource for casting. Something like spell points.

I've got Binding, Divination, Healing, Necromancy, Runes, Transmutation, Trickery, Wild Lore, and Skaldry.

Binding works by creating a connection to individual creatures, and then bringing them to where you are, but it also covers banishing creatures bound by others.

Divination includes detection spells, seeing the future, remote sensing, and getting specific questions answered.

Healing is self explanatory, but also covers enhancement.

Necromancy handles draining vitality, inflicting disease and poison, and of course, raising the dead.

Runes is more of a style or fluff of magic than a discrete school of effects. A Rune Mage who knows the Lagaz rune can control tides, inland bodies of water, and plant growth; one who knows the Hagalaz rune can call hail, and destroy and rebuild structures; and so on.

Transmutation alters inanimate material and bestows or removes traits from animate forms.

Trickery covers illusions (creating whole fictional scenes), charms (changing people's thoughts) and glamours (altering the appearance of targets).

Wild Lore handles elemental, animal and plant magic, and shapeshifting.

Skaldry does buffs and debuffs with status effects and sonic damage.



So, the things that jump out at me immediately-
Raising the Dead and Binding Demons are fairly similar in effect, you're telling someone else to fight you battles for you, and that requires getting people to fight for you. So both of those require the spell caster going around and doing arcane things to build their potential army. Binders make contracts and Necromancers bottle souls, and then they can call forth their infernal soldiers. The easiest way to cap this is to say you can command up to your HD in flunkies, these can be demon soldiers or skeleton minions or swarms of Hel Fish or whatever.

So, for Binding, there's still Banishing, but does that necessarily need to be a limited resource thing? Would it be problematic to just say that you can attempt to banish something as much as you want, it's just really difficult?
For necromancy there's still the poison/disease and the vitality draining schools. Come to think of it, Vitality Draining could actually be the way you build points to do another form of Necromancy, or just give you hp/sp/something.

Divination could easily be at will, the only limitation being time and concentration. Reading entrails takes both, detecting for gold takes little time, but only works while you concentrate.

Healing can be prep magic. You sit down and mix salves and poultices, stick them in your bag, and pull them out when needed. This keeps the characters from just resting back to full after every encounter, especially if healing magic is primarily an enhancer to natural healing, rather than a replacement. Your limit is time, ingredients and encumbrance.

Runes could be mentally fatiguing to use, but otherwise at will. So something like a cool down, I guess. You can just throw around Hagalz magic until your brain is about to throw in the towel and just let it rest for a few hours, or you can refrain from using Hagalz magic unless absolutely necessary, but always have it available, as it's easier to recover your mental faculties when you've used less of them.

Transmutation could be physically or spiritually taxing on the subject. So the iron chain you carry can only be altered so much before it shatters under the strain of the magic, and you can only mold someone so much until you've stretched their essence too thin. This would mean that transmuters can work a little of their magic on the entire party more easily than they can all of their magic on a single target.

Trickery doesn't inherently suggest a resource mechanic.

The shapeshifting function of Wild Lore is probably best on a charge resource, and such a resource mechanism would not harm the other uses of Wild Lore, so that works.

Skaldry is supposed to be bard magic. The musical/poetry theme suggests that a model where skalds combine individual effects into larger compositions would be very flavourful, and creates a Rage Meter/Warm Up model which isn't Hulk flavoured.

[Josh_Kablack]

But I'm left trying to decide whether there should be a deplete-able resource for casting. Something like spell points.

Are you okay with characters just spamming spells?

If so, then you don't need one. Your attack spells are a bit less likely to work (and or require more chargen resources to get) but do a bit more damage than swinging a sword - but a wizard can zapzapzap for as long as a swordsman can hackslashhackslash and things are roughly even.

In not, then you need to have some sort of spell point, per-day, burnout, cool down, CMwYCPHtC, mote investiture or other limiting resource system. If you want combat healing to be a thing, this is kind of necessary, because when heal spells can pace or outpace damage, magic healing makes everyone (at least on average immune to damage) and when heal spells don't pace damage then there's little point to casting them in combat.

[Dean]

I like the idea that Demonology and Necromancy are actually the same thing. That putting a demon into a sword gets you a Daemonblade and putting a demon into a dead body gets you a Zombie. That would align clerics/paladins into being a purely anti demon class, sometimes those demons are just in dead bodies.

[RadiantPhoenix]

"Necromancy and Demonology are much alike, because demons are a form of dead people."

[TarkisFlux]

[*]Attack Spells are resolved like attacks. So you roll to cast, roll to hit, target rolls to avoid, and armour subtracts damage.

Did you discuss this in another thread, because holy fuck is that a lot of rolls for a basic attack.

[hogarth]

What are you trying to achieve by having a chance of spell failure? I'm curious.

In my experience, if the average player have two vaguely equivalent options in combat and one has a chance of failure, they'll ignore it in favour of the reliable option. For instance, in 3.X D&D, almost all wizards stay the hell away from arcane spell failure, no matter how small.

[Korgan0]

Yeah, I'd definitely try to condense it down to two rolls.

Also, were you planning on unique resource managment systems for each school of magic, and were you planning on allowing characters to mix-n-match? Moreover, from what I remember of your class write-up, some of these look like class features that should be limited to that class (Skaldry, Runes, maybe Trickery), and some of them don't (Binding, Divination).

One solution is to have little pieces of magic that anyone can pick up, and isolate some of the schools you have into being straight-up class features.

[Prak]

From a completely armchair game designer standpoint, having to roll to cast gives the feeling that magic isn't a sure thing, people can fuck up the gestures and words and fail to cast a spell. D&D posits that magic is a sure thing, that even a 1st level character is a master of the spells they can cast. You just decide to cast a spell and the worst that can happen is it can miss or be resisted, or the magic just fails to permeate the metal you're wearing. When magic requires a roll, however, it gives the impression that magic is fallible and less inherently powerful. So the spell roll is purely a flavour thing.

I'm still leaning towards making classes represent race-like essences rather than jobs or skill sets, and the idea of skill-magic is that anyone can pick it up. If the sellsword wants to pick up stealth magic, he can just do that, and proceed to sneak around in shadows to gank people, rather than having to multiclass.

[name_here]

That's definitely something you might want to go for, but I'd have attack spells hit if the spell roll succeeds if you're going to have a spell roll.

[Prak]

That's a good point/idea. I think I need to make a clear division between spells which are attacks, and spells which give you attack abilities. Like attack spells and weapon spells. So Searing Ray is an attack spell, and your skill roll acts as your attack roll, but Zuko's trick where he conjures fire daggers is a Weapon Spell, and you roll to cast, gain an attack option for it for a set number of rounds, and roll to attack when you use that option.

[TarkisFlux]

When magic requires a roll, however, it gives the impression that magic is fallible and less inherently powerful. So the spell roll is purely a flavour thing.

Because there are two chances for, say, Flame Burst, to fail, compared to a standard weapon attack, attack spells can do a bit more damage than a weapon from an otherwise comparable character.

These two goals are sort of working at cross purposes. Magic is definitely less reliable (the degree to which it is less reliable depends on unknown things at this point, so I won't worry about it or guess at it), but it is also inherently more powerful in order to make up for that by your own design goals. People will see a stronger option that requires an extra roll and a weaker option that doesn't. And since people are notoriously bad at figuring out how multiple rolls interact, I strongly doubt that it will give the impression you want it to.

That isn't to say that you couldn't make it work, particularly if it was a low chance of failure for your highest level, and scaled down as you went down in levels. If you could take 10 on the roll in combat (and you need to sort whether you can take 10 out of combat anyway), that makes lower level effects even more appealing and removes one of the rolls unless you're pushing yourself. It's just a really fine line to walk. But spell roll, attack roll, defense roll, damage roll, DR subtraction (potentially)... it's a lot of resolution time and you should understand the odds and assorted bonus interactions before you commit to it.

On merging the attack roll and the casting roll for a direct spell... it solves some / most of that but leaves multi-target spells like fireball or lightning bolt in a potentially weird place. Do those stay in the same multiple roll setup? Do those get only attack rolls now, like a grenade attack or a multi strike with targetting restrictions from the arcing? Note also that removing the spell roll and going attack only for every combat / utility spell is a lot like turning a saving throw into an attack roll against alternate defenses.

[Prak]

These two goals are sort of working at cross purposes. Magic is definitely less reliable (the degree to which it is less reliable depends on unknown things at this point, so I won't worry about it or guess at it), but it is also inherently more powerful in order to make up for that by your own design goals. People will see a stronger option that requires an extra roll and a weaker option that doesn't. And since people are notoriously bad at figuring out how multiple rolls interact, I strongly doubt that it will give the impression you want it to.

Right. I responded to your comments on the Midgard thread in IMOI too. If I used Spell Roll as Attack Roll, I wouldn't have attack spells be more powerful, since it's only a single chance to fail as opposed to the originally posited two chances. In this model, magic is just an option, intended to be on par with non-magic, but since anyone can use magic, as opposed to only certain classes, I may not worry too much with making sure DMFs can stay relevant next to people who put a skill point or two into a magic skill.

As to the multi-roll thing, I like the ideas you brought up in the IMOI thread, and am leaning towards getting rid of Brawl and Evasion as skills and using Batter and Accuracy, and a static defense value that makes a function call to your higher skill of the two.

Regarding Magic Resources-
Each type of magic will probably not have a unique resource mechanic, but I do want t few different ones, like the idea that necromancy and binding require prep work in the form of bottling souls/signing contracts/healing requires prep in the form of preparing salves and such, but Divination requires no prep, just focus and time, though it may require certain conditions to arise (it's hard to use augury if there are no birds nearby).

So to go more in depth, from a flavour standpoint at least, here are the "schools" and "subschools" of magic in Midgard-
Binding

• Calling- bringing worldly creatures (ie, creatures from Midgard, the plane of existance) to your location to fight for you. example conjuring a dire wolf.
• Summoning- bringing otherworldly creatures (ie, creatures from muspelheim, nidavelir, jotunheim, etc) to your location to fight for you. example conjuring a frost giant
• Channeling- conjuring a creature and merging it's essence with yours to gain access to some of it's abilities. example channeling a dire wolf to gain scent by which to track, or a frost giant to gain immunity to extreme cold.
• Banishment- sending a bound creature back to it's origin.

Divination

• Prophecy- Foreseeing future events, or receiving answers to specific questions. example divining the outcome of a given course of action, foreseeing the weather that will come tomorrow.
• Detection- Sensing the presence or absence of a specific phenomena or substance. example detecting the presence of gold or hostile enemies.
• Scrying- remote sensing other locations. example seeing what is happening in the jarl's chambers currently.

Healing

• Restoration- Healing hp damage, curing poison and disease (note-midgard healing magic will be much less impressive than D&D magic, and anti-disease/poison stuff will be more than a matter of casting a single spell, and more concerned with mitigation of symptoms and providing better chance of recovery)
• Enhancement- magic'roids, used to increase ability scores, grant temp hp, and the like.

Necromancy

• Affliction- Draining targets' strength, hp, etc. example inflicting damage on an opponent to gain temporary hp yourself. Notably will include abilities which allow you to heal others by taking on their wounds, since that's just reversing the target/beneficiary roles.
• Corruption- Inflicting disease and poison and sapping resistance/durability. example weakening an opponent by inflicting frostbite upon them, making a wall brittle.
• Control- Creating undead and controlling them in battle.

Runes

• By Rune- each rune is a separate "subschool" of Rune magic, with it's own effects which range from securing the camp to calling a wild ox to entangling effects, depending on rune. example Fehu is the first rune of the Futhark, and represents portable wealth (cattle, money) and security. Fehu effects might include securing the camp overnight--assuring the company is awakened before assailants can act, or conjure cattle or wealth.

Transmutation

• Alteration- changing the qualities of inanimate objects. example setting a sword alight, strengthening metal.
• Shapeshifting- taking on the qualities, and eventually entire form, of another creature. example turning into a bear.
• Transformation- changing the qualities of a creature. example making yourself less vulnerable to extreme temperatures, turning your hands to talons

Trickery

• Illusion- Creating fictional scenes or phenomena. example creating ghostly lights, or an illusory image of orcs playing cards.
• Glamour- Changing the apparent qualities of a creature. example making a creature blend into shadow, changing the sound a creature makes walking.
• Charm- It occurred to me that in the source material (Norse myth), Loki doesn't have Charm Person or Dominate Monster or other magic related to convincing people to do things, he's just super good at mundane diplomancy. So while mindraping spells might make it in, they'll probably be part of Illusion, as you are creating fictional phenomena, or Draining, as you are erasing non-tangible aspects of the target's body, Charm Person is not going to be a thing in Midgard. If you want to control someone, what you're actually doing is changing their memories so they think you have authority over them, or creating a Binding contract they are powerless to disobey.

Wild Lore

• (Elements) Bending, comes in Fire, Air, Water and Earth varieties. example Throwing fire, controlling water, etc. It's bending, what do you want.
• Ansuz- Plant magic. Make them grow harder/better/faster/stronger, maybe create Poison Ivy style minions. example entangle
• Fehuruz- Animal magic, call animals, enhance animal minions, get them to carry messages for you. Fuck with augurors. example Animal Messenger

Skaldry

• Harmony/Disharmony- Buff/debuff people and things.
• Discordance- Sonic attacks.

[hogarth]

So the spell roll is purely a flavour thing.

But how often do you expect a spell to fail for a caster with a high skill check? How about for a caster with a low skill check? How are you planning to balance spellcasters against non-spellcasters -- based on a spellcaster with the highest possible skill check, or on a spellcaster with an average skill check, or something else?

As I noted, in my experience adding the possibility of spell failure tends to restrict spellcasting to long-term pre-buffing that can be cast outside of combat (since nobody wants to fail in combat).