Do you even cast, bro?

[Hiram McDaniels]

I'm working on a thing. Fantasy heartbreaker. Setting is a Masters of the Universe/Thundarr the Barbarian type world of adventure, magic and super science.

Gamma World 7E (stripped down D&D4) forms the base of the system with a few updates. There are 10 levels of character progression, and three broad classes based on power type: skill, tech and magic. It's basically the Mass Effect trichotomy (is this an actual word?)

I know what I'm going to do with the skill and tech classes:

The Adventurer: Charles Atlas superpowers. They get a whole host of abilities based on what skills they take. Resource management is round-by-round, and they get to perform combos that make the action economy roll over and show it's belly. They also get metacurrency to spend on story powers.

The Artificer: Arthur C. Clarke magic. Take the classic Vancian D&D Wizard and reskin their spells as gadgets; that's what this class looks like. They also get salvage and jury rig abilities so they can swap some of their stuff out between rests.

The one I'm having trouble pinning down is the magic class: Mystic. I definitely don't want to do the typical D&D fire-and-forget style magic (because that's now the Artificer's schtick). There are a few different directions I'm leaning in...

*Broad Magic: Basically, instead of discrete spells you have wider categories like: Fire Magic, Dimensional Magic, Illusion Magic etc. Each category provides a few examples of what you can do; maybe in the form of a few at-will powers that you can upgrade round-to-round by spending some metacurrency like mana; similar to D&D psionics I guess.

Maybe it's like an Ars Magicka thing where you have your category, Fire Magic for example, and a list of different effects like:

Evoke Fire: shoots fire damage at motherfuckers
Abjure Fire: protects you from fire
Conjure Fire: creates a persistent zone of flaming death
Divine Fire: detects heat sources within the area
Transmute Fire: change the size and intensity of flame from a raging inferno to a pile of smoldering embers and vice versa.

You could go even broader than that by using M:tG style blue, red, green, black & white magic and add a mana gathering system for resource management.

*Discrete Magic: Individual spells with codified effects. Maybe something effects-based like Savage Worlds, where the game gives you specific, but generic rules for the spell:

Armor: grants a bonus to AC

The game then gives different flavors for what this might look like:

Trappings: A shield of pure force; forming a sheathe of stone over your skin; a corona of light that temporarily blinds and disorients attackers.

If we go back to the M:tG style color magic, this could provide the flavor to the spell effects. So for the armor spell:

Blue Magic: Magically displaces the caster, granting a bonus to AC.
Red Magic: Creates a form of solid Ice around the caster, granting a bonus to AC
Green Magic: Sheathes the caster in a thick coat of bark, granting a bonus to AC
Black Magic: Surrounds caster in a shroud of scarabs, granting a bonus to AC
White Magic: Summons a guardian spirit to defend against attacks, granting a bonus to AC

Now there are two problems with this paradigm that I'm immediately spotting:

A) If all the colors of magic effectively do the same thing and the only difference is flavor text, what's the point of having the distinction at all?

B) Turning your body into living ice or summoning an angel should have more mechanical implications than just an AC bump.

I mean, you could just hand wave it entirely: This spell has this effect, and you can describe it however you want. This probably wouldn't hurt anything balance wise, but it's pretty goddamn boring.

Conversely, I remember that Frank Trollman has an idea he posted a while ago about keywording. Basically, you use keywords as building blocks for powers and abilities. Each keyword has specific mechanics codified into it, and those mechanics become a part of whatever ability has the keyword attached.

So running off of this idea, what if different colors of magic granted keywords with actual mechanics instead of just flavor trappings?

Then there is the overall problem I see with all of this, which heading in the direction of a build-your-own-power-on-the-fly system. This always turns out to be a bookkeeping nightmare at the table. Furthermore, I haven't even brought up spellcasting methodology specialization yet. Definitely something to avoid.

So my goals for this:

*Make the Mystic Class fun to play. That means giving them cool shit to do without extraneous bookkeeping at the table.

*Make the Mystic Class distinctive from the other classes. Or at least, give them their own avenue to getting through the adventure and their own way to manage resources. Maybe the Mystic gets to cast Fireball and the Artificer gets to throw a grenade that does AoE fire damage, but these should feel different in some way.

Is there something I'm missing? Some easy solution? Any games out there with an amazing, comprehensive and evocative magic system that I can cram into a d20 frame work?

[OgreBattle]

It can help to design the 'natural world' and 'big monsters', think about how magic works for them, then apply it to player characters

I think part of where D&D magic shits on the setting is the disconnect between PC's and the World, and then the casters retroactively getting everything that gods can do

[Hiram McDaniels]

It can help to design the 'natural world' and 'big monsters', think about how magic works for them, then apply it to player characters

I think part of where D&D magic shits on the setting is the disconnect between PC's and the World, and then the casters retroactively getting everything that gods can do

I'm having a little trouble parsing exactly what you mean. AFAIK spellcasting monsters like Liches and Arcanoloths have always operated like PC's in regards to spell slots and spells known (excepting 4E of course). Do you mean that other supernatural abilities like a Dragon's breath or Beholder's eye rays should work the same way?

As for the second part, are you suggesting codifying exactly what magic can or can't accomplish? Or are you referring to skill inputs/outputs in general?