A discussion during my groups last session regarding the limitations of magic users led me to draft a rough outline of a new magical path that we are will playtest sometime in the near future. The benefit of the path is the ability to cast any spell - no need to learn. The drawbacks are less consistency in spell casting, lower force spells (generally) and the real chance that the caster could cook their brain if they through too many dice at a spell.

The inspiration for it was the "will and the word" magical philosophy from David Eddings's Belgariad series.

I'm posting it here such that if anyone is willing to throw constructive critism or suggestions at it - it would be much appreciated.

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The Path of Will

The Path of Will is based upon the premise that some magical individuals are able to cast spells by force of will alone, without learning the spell. A regular character will study a spell and expend karma to learn it. When this character casts the spell, the energy is controlled and the force of the spell is guaranteed (its success though is not). A spell cast by a character following the Path of Will are initially chaotic, being moulded on a case-by-case basis by the character. Liken it to the first character connecting a hose to a tap, turning the tap on then directing the hose where they want, whereas the second character turns the tap on full, then tries to connect the hose.

This gives the magic user greater flexibility, at the cost of consistency – no two attempts at casting the same spell are likely to be the same. Also, the amount of energy put into casting in this fashion creates a definite impression on the astral. As a result, the astral signature of anyone following this Path is quite unique, and the target number for any assensing tests are reduced by 1 or 2, dependent on the power of the magic cast.

Magicians following this Path approach magic in a fashion closer to that of a mage than a shaman, hence for instances where this is an issue treat them as a mage. With the exceptions of spellcasting, a magician following this Path may perform all other magical acts in the same Path that a mage does i.e. conjuring, foci, enchanting, astral projection, initiation. For any of these acts that require a formula to be designed, determine the target number for the design test and resolve it in a similar fashion to that used below for sorcery, applying the appropriate skill and resolving the formulation / magical act in the same action.

They do possess a sorcery skill for game purposes, but they differ in theory just as a magus’s sorcery skill differs from a houngan’s. For these magicians, the Magic Pool is equal to their Magic attribute.


Spellcasting Procedure:

1. Choose the spell, note the drain code and allocate a desired force.

2. This step determines how well the spellcaster pulls the spell out of thin air (literally). The pool of dice for this test is equal to the caster’s willpower increased or reduced by a number of dice equal to their sorcery skill. Magic pool dice may also be used for this test. The target number is the drain target number at the desired force, decreased by 1 if the drain code is “L” and increased by 1 if the drain code is “D”. The number of successes on this test is the actual force dice that are used for the spell success test.

Sounds easy? Here is the catch – if the number of successes rolled is greater than the desired force, the drain becomes physical. This is because the caster has put a little too much effort into the spell and lost control of some of the energy, which will ground out through their physical body.

If the number successes are greater than the caster’s sorcery skill, then the spell goes wild. Resolve drain as if the force is equal to the number of successes and have fun J.

3. Conduct the spell success test using the above dice and resolve as per a normal spell (also with same limits to magic pool).

4. Roll the drain test as normal, noting if the drain is physical because the force exceeds the caster’s magic attribute or the number of successes rolled in step 2. The target number for the drain test is the force that the spell was actually cast with, not the desired force.

Once initiated, a magician of this Path may use successes from a centering test to reduce the target number in step 2 by one for every 2 successes, to a maximum value of half their initiate grade.

sounds good, give it a spin and tell me how it works.

Hm, a spontaneus mage. Sounds interesting. One thing I'd like to see though is a bit more attention paid to the Conjuring side. These guys don't seem to fit in with the elemental-summoning, "Be Prepared"-type of Conjuring that is the hallmark of mages; maybe they should summon spirits like shamans?

All very good points Eyeless Blond. Much appreciated.

Sounds a bit unbalanced personally...there's a reason why you have to make so much effort to learn a spell. It's to keep mages from knowing 500 different spells. Might want to try decreasing their power some to offset that advantage as all you need is a high Body to resist the physical drain (or is it Willpower? Well, with this character type he'd surely have a high Will anyway...) Cool idea though...

The Abstruse One

I've thrown two things in there that would hopefully balance things out:

1. Actual force the spell is cast at can be cast at is usually low
2. Throwing too many dice at step 2 to increase the force will probably hurt

Been reading a little David Eddings? I love it, though.

And don't forget (for flavor); The magic isn't popping out of thin air, it comes from the surroundings, or possible yourself.
So if you cast a fireball, the air around you will cool down, as you drain the heat out of it to the fireball.
You move something telekinetic; you'llyou throw yourself the opposite way, unless you hold some of the power back, to keep you stabilize.

It's been a long time since I read the books, but I remember it, to work like this, and it could be a good thing to keep in mind, if the spell goes wild

I like the idea, but it seems overpowered. As it stands right now this would turn the will mage into the ultimate low-force utility caster. If you start with a "target force" of 3-5 and don't roll more dice then the target force you would have no chance of overpowering the spell (and suffering physical drain). In these cases your target number would typically be 2 or 3, so you would end up casting the spell with a force of 2-4 (on average).

Having a player that could cast any spell with a random force of 2-4 seems very powerful. Yeah, the force is variable, but outside of combat its not much of a disadvantage. For most spells of this type you wouldn't suffer drain (especially if you had a trauma damper) so you could just keep recasting the spell untily you got a high force version. Having a mage on a run the could cast ANY detection spell, ANY heal/treat spell, ANY manipulation/illusion/transformation spell would be very powerful.

On the other hand, the mage would have to completely rethink how he would use his magic in combat. Its very difficult for this mage to cast the high force spells you want in combat. To cast a force 5 or 6 damaging spell he either needs to risk overpowering it or risk it comming out as a force 2-4 spell (and be very easily resisted). For inflicting damage this mage would probably be better off sticking to guns... though as part of a team he could be very effective using his flexibility with low force harrasment/support spells. Also, as a GM I would have to put my foot down against the inevitable... "OK, now I caste my AOE stun that only effects humans of asian ancestory wearing red body armor."

Would you envision a will mage could use karma to reroll failurs on his "emulate" roll. Could he also use karma to reroll "successes" if he wants to avoid overpowering a spell?

Pel

Pelaka, I think a nix on using karma to reroll successes is definetely in order after reading that last post!

For the initial play test we were going to limit the spell list to published spells. If it played well, the idea was then to allow more customised spells to be cast once initiated. Thankfully the player who will be trying this is the most un-munchkin of players, but also a good point about that loophole.

Let them take a metamagic that allows 1 modification per grade of initiation (or maybe per 2 grades). Later I may chart out the spectrum of options to make it easier to see what a single modification is. But as an initial example, touch range to LoS would be one change, and touch to area at range would be two changes. For convenience, switching from one elemental effect to another would only be one change if the damage type is the same (stays physical or stays stun) after the change, and two in the other cases.

Hrm, if you're going to try and limit how the will mage casts spells, I suggest you look at the system in Ars Magica. IIRC, they've got a really innovative way of casting spells that involves taking different types of spell seeds and combining them in different ways and at different powers to produce effects. The problem, though, is it would make spellcasting very very slow, even slower than it is now, because of all the different calculations and die rolls you'd need to do.

Pelaka brought up an interesting point, though, which got me thinking. It stands to reason that Will mages *would* make excellent utility casters, and in fact that would probably be the best role I can think of for them. The problem as it stands is that low-Force spells, using the trick Pelaka thought up, are far too easy to cast for these kinds of mages because of those "free" Willpower dice they get to their--whatever you would call that test to pull a spell out of the air. A spell-calling test?

So, here's my idea: get rid of them. Specifically, change that section to: "The number of dice allocated for this test are allocated from the caster's Sorcery skill dice for this initiative pass, much as dice are allocated from Sorcery for Spell Defense or Spellcasting." The big idea here is that will mages will end up having to divide their Sorcery dice among Spell-calling and Spellcasting, which means that in the end at the same level a will mage will not be throwing as many dice at the actual casting. In effect they will be casting weaker spells, but with the advantage that they, in theory, can cast any spell in existence.

Another advantage of this idea is that it gives the will mage a clearer advancement path. Will mages will have to spend a lot more Karma on their Sorcery skill to cast the same powerful spells that other mages cast. This is okay, though, because they're saving Karma from not having to actually learn new spells, so it kinda balances out that way.