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Post by Briarstomp on Feb 18, 2012 5:36:53 GMT -8
I always wanted to have a magic system in my games that allows for the mix of simple (repeatable?) combat spells, and allow for the create something on the fly ritual spells as well. Once upon a time I really liked the mechanisms in TORG which allowed for a character with magical skill to build their own unique spells.
Since there is some legacy TORG DNA buried in SW, can anyone point me to some good magic system implementations?
Brairstomp
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joegun
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 249
Preferred Game Systems: Savage Worlds
Currently Playing: Just GM'ing right now.
Currently Running: Rippers Resurrected, and Savage RIFTS!
Favorite Species of Monkey: Baboon
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Post by joegun on Feb 18, 2012 8:24:54 GMT -8
I haven't seen it myself, but I heard the Horror Companion has a good ritual system that uses the new Dramatic Tasks from SWD. That might be something along the lines you are looking for.
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Post by jazzisblues on Feb 19, 2012 20:39:08 GMT -8
So the question I would ask is, how much flavor do you want and how much work are you willing to do to get it? I would approach this from two different standpoints:
1. Savage Worlds would give you a reasonable amount of flexibility and if you took some liberties with the narrative results of things like bolt and burst powers you could totally get there without too much terror or flail.
2. Hero would do it as well (so would GURPS) with more work and more energy required, but with an enormous degree of flexibility and control. The words, "Variable Power Pool" become your best friends at this point.
Cheers,
JiB
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Feb 22, 2012 6:29:59 GMT -8
The Savage Worlds Horror Companion does indeed have rules for rituals. But they're pretty sparse and are really just suggestions about how to tweak the existing SW Powers rules so that they feel more like the dark, complex, and powerful ritual magics found in some horror stories. All for One: Régime Diabolique the horror musketeer game by Triple Ace Games (that uses the Ubiquity system, woot!) has an on the fly, free form spell creation system. In a nutshell, the player casting a spell chooses the variables including range, duration, area of effect, and of course the effect of the spell itself from charts. The longer the duration or more damaging the spell is, the more successes the player needs on their casting roll and all spells start at a base difficulty of 2. For example, doing a 2 die lethal attack adds +0 to the base difficulty, as does an instant duration, the ability to affect a single target, and a range of touch. So a simple Burning Hands type spell would require 2 successes on your casting roll. Upping the damage to a 6 die lethal attack adds +8 to the needed successes making the total 10 successes. Extending the duration of the spell so that it lasts for an entire scene or combat adds +4 to the needed successes on top of that. Characters can spend multiple actions casting their spells until they meet the required number of successes, allowing really powerful spells to be cast by characters with a low magic skill as long as they devote enough time to it. Once you start a ritual though you can't pause and come back to it later; you've got to keep casting until you finish. Savage Worlds doesn't have a dice pool system though, so to use this idea you'd have to tweak it. What you could do is make similar charts for range, duration, number of targets, and effect that apply modifiers to the character's Arcane Background roll. -2 per level on the chart may be a bit too much, but -1 sounds reasonable. So to use the Burning Hands example from above, if you set the base damage at D4 (2 die lethal is fairly weak in Ubiquity), then a magician could perform a simple touch attack that does D4 damage by meeting a TN of 4 with no modifiers. Increasing the damage to a D12 (or maybe 2D6) would imply a -4 modifier on the roll, meaning that a character with their magic skill at only a D8 is going to have to Ace to pull that spell off. I don't know how Savage Worlds does actions longer than a single turn. JiB? Help here? Maybe allow the player to spread the penalty out over a number of turns. So the 2D6 Burning Hands attack could be cast in a single turn at a -4 penalty, after two turns at a -2 penalty, or after four turns at a -1 penalty.
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Post by jazzisblues on Feb 22, 2012 7:33:07 GMT -8
Very cool Hyve ... That is an interesting spin.
JiB
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Post by Briarstomp on Mar 3, 2012 17:35:32 GMT -8
Some very good suggestions. I'm going to spend some time looking at the idea of spreading the checks and penalties across multiple rounds. But over all it looks like I just need to roll up the old sleeves and bang out some house rules and see how they go.
Briar
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