Oh no, not another FFd20! (magic system) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Oh no, not another FFd20! (magic system) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Dressi
08-25-07, 12:35 AM Yeah, I've done it too. But I’m redoing my version of it because, well, it got very complicated, and it was older, just when 3.5 came out. So now I’m going to take some stuff that's been done recently and see what I can come up with. One of them was doing things like in Book of 9swords, giving fighters maneuvers and such. but then I was stuck on how to do magic this time around since I wanted to make it simpler.

I had been doing something similar to psionics. You get MP and spend it on spells you can get access to by level. Then I upped it a little more by making it capable to cast any spell if you have the MP to do it but you have to be skilled at the magic, basically making a d% check to see if you can cast the spell. The higher level you were, the better your chance. The lower level the spell, the better your chance.

So I’ve come up with a few ideas about how to handle it. and I was wondering what you guys would think about it or if you had your own ideas about it (or links to previous posts I didn't find). The class of magic is white, black, blue and esper (summon spells). Summon spells are special for summoners that have spells that are specific per the summons, such as a spell only Shiva could cast. The schools or skills of magic are varied as well. Class and school don't really need to be set here, that's arrangable and can even be tossed out. What I’m going for is HOW the spells are cast.

1: MP & Skill based w/ augments.
You have a skill which represents the type of spell (such as healing or elemental fire). So you make the check. In my current form of this idea, it starts out DC 10 + spell level. At 1st level you get your ability modifier and ranks, so it's pretty easy BUT failure does exist. Armor provides penalty to the cast (and certain jobs will reduce armor penalties such as the dark knight, paladin, etc).

So you make a check and spend your MP and cast a spell. Well you don't just have to cast the spell, but the spell comes with augments. The augments are based in units called variables. So Cure costs 8 MP to cast and has a variable of 4 (one-half). You can, say, spend 2 variables (another 8 mp) and increase the Cure's effects. But you can also raise the DC of your skill check, giving you less chance to successfully cast the spell, but you don't have to spend MP to gain a variable. So you can raise the DC and get a couple variables out of it and use MP to give you a couple more variables and make the spell more powerful and useful.

With this, you can craft a spell as you cast it, making it just as powerful as you'd like it to be. You have the option to cast a lot of spells at base-line MP costs or you can spend larger amounts of MP or take risks for casting failure to gain a more powerful effect.

Jobs, such as black mage, will gain bonuses to cast certain spell types and will even be able to reduce MP costs, reduce the variable MP cost and even have variables they can just add for free certain times per day. This augmentable ability I got from psionics a while back and used in my previous version of FF, but I wanted to make it more craftable.

An easy alternative is that there are no longer ANY spell levels but simply there's Fire, its effect is directly related to how much you can do with it MP wise (or by saving some MP by raising the DC).

However, that can become complicated per cast as you have to figure out what you exactly want to do, spend time calculating MP costs and DC's and then making a check, and perhaps can fail and sorta meaning that you've just wasted time. So i came up with another idea.

2: reservoir system
You have MP, but you don't spend it. Say you have 12 MP. You can cast any spell you have either chosen or have access to as long as it is less than 12 MP. Then you regain MP at an accelerated level, like 1d6 or so each round back up to 12. You can spend all of it at once and you gotta wait longer.

As in the first system, you can augment the spell but there's no skill involved, just increasing the MP price of the spell. so you can make a lower level spell more useful at higher levels by spending more MP to cast it. Under the second system, you regain this MP back rapidly, but I haven' determined how rapidly. I was thinking at a rate of 1d per cater level each round that you don't cast a spell in. So that a d4 would be a lower mage and d8 or so would be higher, d12 probably for master mages, but that scaling is still up to be decided. It could even be set such as you gain your caster level back each round regardless of casting or not, just like HP regeneration.

So what keeps you from casting spells every other round for 24 hours? Nothing really...but each spell will have a recast time, so you can't cast it again soon. This makes you want to get as much out of the spell as you can, so you'll probably augment spells that you want to get that effect out of. And some other spells you just might want to cast to wear a target down, debuff them perhaps and then wait until your MP gets back up to a certain level and then throw a lot of it into a single casting, then now only have you cast your big spell and can't use it again but you have to wait a number of rounds before you can even use a lower spell again.

2b: An alternative doesn't involve regenerating MP, but instead you don't ever actually spend MP. You have a limit of MP which really means that you can cast any spell you have access to as long as it is less than that MP level and you can augment up to that point. So you can cast an unlimited number of spells a day but only of a certain power. But not only do spells have a recast time you have a recast time. You can't cast spells round by round by round but must wait.

2c: another. as 2b in that you have a limit of the level/power of spell you can cast (obviously) and you can augment spells up to that level of power. This works more like Saga Edition force powers in that you can use them a limited number of times in battle, except you can only cast a certain number of spells in battle before you must rest and regain your spells.

what the second system does is that you have a reservoir that is limited on an encounter by encounter basis. So that at the end of the day you can still cast spells, but how long you last in a battle before having to rest again is what separates characters of various levels and expertise. there are other was to create the effect of a reservoir on an encounter by encouner basis. You can make it skill based in that everytime you cast a spell you get a -1 on the check unless you spend a full round meditating to remove part of the penalty.

3: Keep it traditional, sorta
In this I use the spellpoint system similarly described in unearthed arcana, except that it's more related to how many spells a sorcerer can cast each level and how many levels of spells he can cast. You multiply the number of spells in a level per day by the level of the spell, do that for all levels of spells and sum it up, that's the MP for the level basically. A 1st level spell costs 1 MP. A 2nd level spell, 2 MP. If you augment it (metamagic feats sorta) then you increase its MP cost by 1, kinda like raising its level. but in the traditional system you can spend your 4th level spell slot to cast a 1st level spell. Instead, your 4th level spell slot grants you 4 MP that you can use any way you want, 4 1st level spells, a third and a 1st . . . etc.

This system is actually pretty simple, the augmentations are minimal and the MP costs are not large. We're not dealing with 200-400 MP here anymore, more like 60-80 tops. So you can't actually spend all your MP in one spell anymore as with the above mentioned systems but instead are more traditionally limited on the power of your spells, by access.

4: Like a lot of reserve feats. . .
Yep, just like a lot of reserve feats. This idea didn't come across with the complete mage reserve feats, but that's about the best comparison to communicate the idea.

So you have spells you can cast. At the beginning of the day you pick the spells you can cast that day, or whatever depending on how I end up deciding how you even gain access to spells. But so as long as you have those spells you can use the "power" available to them. So you have prepared Fire. You can use a fire attack once a round, similarly as effective as hitting someone with a bow, but you aren't making a check against their AC, they're making a save against your DC. But you can actually cast the spell for a much greater effect, though once you do, you lose the ability for that "power" and can't make anymore fire attacks.

There are no spell levels really, but you can set Fire at 1st level or 6th level, depending on what levels you have access to, and the "power" scales by the level you prepare the spell at. Initially the idea is that you have actually fewer spells prepared each day and only have 1 spell you can prepare at each spell level plus a few extras based upon ability modifiers. However, with this initial idea you have very generic spells, such as Fire, which is one spell that can do it all fire based, it can do fireball, scorching ray, fire burst, flaming sphere, wall of fire, etc, all based upon what you level you set it at. If you set Fire at a higher level, you can do more with it, see? Same with Cure, as it cures more HP, restores abilty point damage, removes fatigue, regenerates body parts all depending on the level you set it at. As well, the "power" will have more effects.

Ok so . . . whaddya think?
Thomar_of_Uointer
08-25-07, 02:34 PM Which Final Fantasy game is this based off of?
Dressi
08-25-07, 04:38 PM No single one in particular though I like FFXI's races and idea of weapon skills.
Thomar_of_Uointer
08-25-07, 04:52 PM No single one in particular though I like FFXI's races and idea of weapon skills.

Hmm... All of the Final Fantasy games had different magic systems, and many were so drastically different that they were unrecognisable (like Final Fantasy VII). Any magic system, no matter how flexible or generic, will fail to capture every single Final Fantasy game, so I find it very silly that you're saying "no Final Fantasy in particular" because your system, by necessity, will reflect one or some Final Fantasy games while failing to reflect others.

Why not specify which games you're trying to emulate? That will make it much easier for people to help you with the system, and it will give them a better idea of what to compare it to.
Dressi
08-25-07, 06:01 PM I guess you're right. The "final fantasy" about it is really just names of spells, creatures and such. Since none of the final fantasies are based upon one founding mechanic, you can't really have a final fantasy flavor in your game mechanics, but rather in the setting, the names of things and weapons, appearances, etc. So this was really a question more about mechanics and what would feel like a newer, fresher magic casting system that wouldn't seem like a D&D clone, cuz I don't want to have mine be just another D&D setting with little differences here and there. I'm writing the classes from scratch and not basing them on anything in D&D. I'm adding a 7th stat, adding a defense to armor which converts some damage sustatined to non-lethal damage, changing and regrouping skills (something similar to saga edition). So I figured that since I'm making a lot of mechanical changes to the way characters are made, I'd do something with the magic system. These four were the ideas I came up with to break away from a stricker system of MP (spells per day) and 9 levels of spells.

But if I need to adhere to one actual game or another, I'm going for FFXI.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dressi 08-25-07, 12:35 AM	Yeah, I've done it too. But I’m redoing my version of it because, well, it got very complicated, and it was older, just when 3.5 came out. So now I’m going to take some stuff that's been done recently and see what I can come up with. One of them was doing things like in Book of 9swords, giving fighters maneuvers and such. but then I was stuck on how to do magic this time around since I wanted to make it simpler. I had been doing something similar to psionics. You get MP and spend it on spells you can get access to by level. Then I upped it a little more by making it capable to cast any spell if you have the MP to do it but you have to be skilled at the magic, basically making a d% check to see if you can cast the spell. The higher level you were, the better your chance. The lower level the spell, the better your chance. So I’ve come up with a few ideas about how to handle it. and I was wondering what you guys would think about it or if you had your own ideas about it (or links to previous posts I didn't find). The class of magic is white, black, blue and esper (summon spells). Summon spells are special for summoners that have spells that are specific per the summons, such as a spell only Shiva could cast. The schools or skills of magic are varied as well. Class and school don't really need to be set here, that's arrangable and can even be tossed out. What I’m going for is HOW the spells are cast. 1: MP & Skill based w/ augments. You have a skill which represents the type of spell (such as healing or elemental fire). So you make the check. In my current form of this idea, it starts out DC 10 + spell level. At 1st level you get your ability modifier and ranks, so it's pretty easy BUT failure does exist. Armor provides penalty to the cast (and certain jobs will reduce armor penalties such as the dark knight, paladin, etc). So you make a check and spend your MP and cast a spell. Well you don't just have to cast the spell, but the spell comes with augments. The augments are based in units called variables. So Cure costs 8 MP to cast and has a variable of 4 (one-half). You can, say, spend 2 variables (another 8 mp) and increase the Cure's effects. But you can also raise the DC of your skill check, giving you less chance to successfully cast the spell, but you don't have to spend MP to gain a variable. So you can raise the DC and get a couple variables out of it and use MP to give you a couple more variables and make the spell more powerful and useful. With this, you can craft a spell as you cast it, making it just as powerful as you'd like it to be. You have the option to cast a lot of spells at base-line MP costs or you can spend larger amounts of MP or take risks for casting failure to gain a more powerful effect. Jobs, such as black mage, will gain bonuses to cast certain spell types and will even be able to reduce MP costs, reduce the variable MP cost and even have variables they can just add for free certain times per day. This augmentable ability I got from psionics a while back and used in my previous version of FF, but I wanted to make it more craftable. An easy alternative is that there are no longer ANY spell levels but simply there's Fire, its effect is directly related to how much you can do with it MP wise (or by saving some MP by raising the DC). However, that can become complicated per cast as you have to figure out what you exactly want to do, spend time calculating MP costs and DC's and then making a check, and perhaps can fail and sorta meaning that you've just wasted time. So i came up with another idea. 2: reservoir system You have MP, but you don't spend it. Say you have 12 MP. You can cast any spell you have either chosen or have access to as long as it is less than 12 MP. Then you regain MP at an accelerated level, like 1d6 or so each round back up to 12. You can spend all of it at once and you gotta wait longer. As in the first system, you can augment the spell but there's no skill involved, just increasing the MP price of the spell. so you can make a lower level spell more useful at higher levels by spending more MP to cast it. Under the second system, you regain this MP back rapidly, but I haven' determined how rapidly. I was thinking at a rate of 1d per cater level each round that you don't cast a spell in. So that a d4 would be a lower mage and d8 or so would be higher, d12 probably for master mages, but that scaling is still up to be decided. It could even be set such as you gain your caster level back each round regardless of casting or not, just like HP regeneration. So what keeps you from casting spells every other round for 24 hours? Nothing really...but each spell will have a recast time, so you can't cast it again soon. This makes you want to get as much out of the spell as you can, so you'll probably augment spells that you want to get that effect out of. And some other spells you just might want to cast to wear a target down, debuff them perhaps and then wait until your MP gets back up to a certain level and then throw a lot of it into a single casting, then now only have you cast your big spell and can't use it again but you have to wait a number of rounds before you can even use a lower spell again. 2b: An alternative doesn't involve regenerating MP, but instead you don't ever actually spend MP. You have a limit of MP which really means that you can cast any spell you have access to as long as it is less than that MP level and you can augment up to that point. So you can cast an unlimited number of spells a day but only of a certain power. But not only do spells have a recast time you have a recast time. You can't cast spells round by round by round but must wait. 2c: another. as 2b in that you have a limit of the level/power of spell you can cast (obviously) and you can augment spells up to that level of power. This works more like Saga Edition force powers in that you can use them a limited number of times in battle, except you can only cast a certain number of spells in battle before you must rest and regain your spells. what the second system does is that you have a reservoir that is limited on an encounter by encounter basis. So that at the end of the day you can still cast spells, but how long you last in a battle before having to rest again is what separates characters of various levels and expertise. there are other was to create the effect of a reservoir on an encounter by encouner basis. You can make it skill based in that everytime you cast a spell you get a -1 on the check unless you spend a full round meditating to remove part of the penalty. 3: Keep it traditional, sorta In this I use the spellpoint system similarly described in unearthed arcana, except that it's more related to how many spells a sorcerer can cast each level and how many levels of spells he can cast. You multiply the number of spells in a level per day by the level of the spell, do that for all levels of spells and sum it up, that's the MP for the level basically. A 1st level spell costs 1 MP. A 2nd level spell, 2 MP. If you augment it (metamagic feats sorta) then you increase its MP cost by 1, kinda like raising its level. but in the traditional system you can spend your 4th level spell slot to cast a 1st level spell. Instead, your 4th level spell slot grants you 4 MP that you can use any way you want, 4 1st level spells, a third and a 1st . . . etc. This system is actually pretty simple, the augmentations are minimal and the MP costs are not large. We're not dealing with 200-400 MP here anymore, more like 60-80 tops. So you can't actually spend all your MP in one spell anymore as with the above mentioned systems but instead are more traditionally limited on the power of your spells, by access. 4: Like a lot of reserve feats. . . Yep, just like a lot of reserve feats. This idea didn't come across with the complete mage reserve feats, but that's about the best comparison to communicate the idea. So you have spells you can cast. At the beginning of the day you pick the spells you can cast that day, or whatever depending on how I end up deciding how you even gain access to spells. But so as long as you have those spells you can use the "power" available to them. So you have prepared Fire. You can use a fire attack once a round, similarly as effective as hitting someone with a bow, but you aren't making a check against their AC, they're making a save against your DC. But you can actually cast the spell for a much greater effect, though once you do, you lose the ability for that "power" and can't make anymore fire attacks. There are no spell levels really, but you can set Fire at 1st level or 6th level, depending on what levels you have access to, and the "power" scales by the level you prepare the spell at. Initially the idea is that you have actually fewer spells prepared each day and only have 1 spell you can prepare at each spell level plus a few extras based upon ability modifiers. However, with this initial idea you have very generic spells, such as Fire, which is one spell that can do it all fire based, it can do fireball, scorching ray, fire burst, flaming sphere, wall of fire, etc, all based upon what you level you set it at. If you set Fire at a higher level, you can do more with it, see? Same with Cure, as it cures more HP, restores abilty point damage, removes fatigue, regenerates body parts all depending on the level you set it at. As well, the "power" will have more effects. Ok so . . . whaddya think?
Thomar_of_Uointer 08-25-07, 02:34 PM	Which Final Fantasy game is this based off of?
Dressi 08-25-07, 04:38 PM	No single one in particular though I like FFXI's races and idea of weapon skills.
Thomar_of_Uointer 08-25-07, 04:52 PM	No single one in particular though I like FFXI's races and idea of weapon skills. Hmm... All of the Final Fantasy games had different magic systems, and many were so drastically different that they were unrecognisable (like Final Fantasy VII). Any magic system, no matter how flexible or generic, will fail to capture every single Final Fantasy game, so I find it very silly that you're saying "no Final Fantasy in particular" because your system, by necessity, will reflect one or some Final Fantasy games while failing to reflect others. Why not specify which games you're trying to emulate? That will make it much easier for people to help you with the system, and it will give them a better idea of what to compare it to.
Dressi 08-25-07, 06:01 PM	I guess you're right. The "final fantasy" about it is really just names of spells, creatures and such. Since none of the final fantasies are based upon one founding mechanic, you can't really have a final fantasy flavor in your game mechanics, but rather in the setting, the names of things and weapons, appearances, etc. So this was really a question more about mechanics and what would feel like a newer, fresher magic casting system that wouldn't seem like a D&D clone, cuz I don't want to have mine be just another D&D setting with little differences here and there. I'm writing the classes from scratch and not basing them on anything in D&D. I'm adding a 7th stat, adding a defense to armor which converts some damage sustatined to non-lethal damage, changing and regrouping skills (something similar to saga edition). So I figured that since I'm making a lot of mechanical changes to the way characters are made, I'd do something with the magic system. These four were the ideas I came up with to break away from a stricker system of MP (spells per day) and 9 levels of spells. But if I need to adhere to one actual game or another, I'm going for FFXI.