Okay, with my recent thoughts about magic and using the Shadow of Yesterday as inspiration...
Roll KNO+Magic Skill+2d10.
The effect of your spell is largely determined by the level. For example, a damaging spell does the level in d6 of damage. A stat-boosting spell gives the level in boost. Et cetera.
Casting a spell like this costs 1 mana or no mana if you take an extra turn. Secrets will add to the cost.
Optional: you can sacrifice success for mana cost... so you can take a -5 penalty per mana point you want to drop.
Secret of Raw Power: add +1 to the final level per MP spent. Max of DRV? Max of current level? Or just make sure the target gets a resistance roll so that a 10d6 attack still might miss outright? Probably max of current level, so that you have to be a really good mage to see the full benefit.
Secret of Distance Compression: double the base range of 5 yards for every MP spent. I didn't like the idea of restricting folks to touch spells as a default.
Secret of Mana Conservation: reduce the MP cost by 1 per level you give up. If the spell is reduced to level 0, it produces a noticable effect (e.g.- a spark of light) but no game effects. So you could light a candle with a level 0 spell, but not do even 1 point of real damage. You can't reduce the level to a negative number. Note that this means that a caster who rolls a level 4 effect could spend, say, 2 mana to boost the range and still cast it for free at level 1.
Secret of Rote Casting: you can automatically produce a level 1 effect without rolling.
Posted by Kiz at March 18, 2005 07:48 AMCommentsPost a comment