Re: [ORE] Thoughts on a Magic system (longish)

Hi, 

I'm currently working on a magic system for a setting that uses the dice from Nemesis and a bunch of stuff from other ORE versions. 

I'd like to have spellcasters buy a basic (somewhat expensive) ability to do magic and then buy (relatively cheap) spells making use of this ability. To that end, I've come up with the following examples, using Wild Talents to build the abilities and spells:

For magic abilities there is General Magic (allows the use of any spell, but you need two dice in GM to use one die in any spell) and Fire Magic (as a template for all of the specialised types, each of them allows the use of spells within that school and you only need one die in FM to use one die in the spell).

Abilities:

General Magic

Qualities: A/D/U  Capacities: Self

Extras: Augment (+4)

Flaws:  If/Then (Can only be used to augment spells) (-1), 

   If/Then (Needs twice as many augment dice as spell dice) (-1), 

   Willpower Bid (-1)

For each of the Qualities the cost would be 3/12/24, using the cost of d/ed/td from Nemesis, resulting in a total cost of 9/36/72.

Fire Magic

Qualities: A/D/U  Capacities: Self

Extras: Augment (+4)

Flaws: If/Then (Can only be used to augment spells) (-1), 

         If/Then (Needs as many augment dice as spell dice) (-1), 

         If/Then (Can only be used for spells from the fire school) (-1),

         Willpower Bid (-1)

Here the cost would be 2/8/16 for each Quality, resulting in a total cost of 6/24/48.

Spells:

Fireball

Qualities: A Capacities: Range

Extras: Area (1d = +1 / 1ed = +2 / 1td = +4),

         Burn (+2),

Flaws: Fragile (-1),

         If/Then (Needs to be augmented by Fire Magic and/or General Magic) (-1),

         If/Then (Only as many spell dice as FM and/or half as many as GM) (-1),

         Obvious (-1)

This should cost 1/8/32.

Flight

Qualities: U Capacities: Speed

Extras: Duration (+2),

         No Physics (+1),

Flaws: Fragile (-1),

          If/Then (Needs to be augmented by Air Magic and/or General Magic) (-1),

         If/Then (Only as many spell dice as AM and/or half as many as GM) (-1),

         Obvious (-1)

This should cost 1/4/8 with Fragile or 2/8/16 without. 

I'm reading Fragile as something that would allow the spell to be interrupted even after the casting is finished, so long as it's effect is still active, which would make this type of spell either useless when including it (e.g. a protection spell that lasts only as long as the caster doesn't have to sneeze or something), or "unstoppable" without it (compared to the way magic usually works in games). 

Propably I'll introduce another Flaw like "Interruptable" or something, but I haven't decided yet.

Heal Wounds

Qualities: U Capacities: Range

Extras: Engulf (+2)

Flaws: Fragile (-1),

         If/Then (Needs to be augmented by Nature Magic or General Magic) (-1),

         If/Then (Only as many spell dice as NM and/or half as many as GM) (-1)

          Obvious (-1)

This should cost 1/4/8.

The plan is for a character to have something like the following set of abilities and spells:

General Magic (2d) for 18 points

Fire Magic (2d) for 12 points

Fireball (3d) for 3 points

Flight (1d) for 1 or 2 points

Heal Wounds (1d) for 1 point

So the dice pool for Fireball would be 2 augment dice from General Magic and Fire Magic each and 3 dice from the spell itself, using the 2/1(=2) allowed by Fire Magic and the 2/2(=1) allowed by General Magic, resulting in a total pool of 7 dice.

For both Flight and Heal Wounds, it would be 2 augment dice from General Magic and 1 die from the spell, using the 2/2 dice allowed by General Magic, for a total pool of 3 dice.

I want to have an easily expandable system, which I think I've achieved pretty nicely, after all, to create the school of Air Magic, I only have to change two words in Fire Magic and most new spells would also share the major part of their rules with all of the others.

Also, magic should be somewhat expensive, which works pretty well, also, but not as costly as for example in Witchcraft (by Eden Studios, the core rules are available for free at DriveThruRPG). As I was planning to create the characters using 100 points, the second part is something I'm not so sure about, but on the other hand, both Expert and Trump dice in the abilities is something I'm not sure I want to have anyways.

So, why did I post this? Well, for starters, I'm not so sure that this stuff really works like I think it does. (Even though I like ORE very much, most of my friends prefer D&D, DSA (a german fantasy system) or Witchcraft/UniSys, so my experience actually using them is rather limited).

And, of course, I'm alway open to suggestions that would improve the mechanics of it, even though I thinks it is already pretty simple, once the spells/abilities are created.

Thanks,

Heiko

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Cult of ORE" group.
To post to this group, send email to cult-of-ore@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cult-of-ore+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cult-of-ore?hl=en.