Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Sweet Magic Houserule

I was checking out The Same Universe wiki (a truly amazing wealth of material can be found there, including dozens and dozens of hex maps) when I came across this alternate spell casting system contributed by James.

http://www.thesameuniversewiki.org/Alternate-Spellcasting-Rules-Spell-Fatigue-and-Magical-Mishaps.ashx

It is a simple system for magical fatigue that increases the chance of spell failure the more spell levels cast.  It bolts on to traditional D&D magic and allows a caster to cast any spell in her repertoire with a d6 roll + level vs Spell Fatigue, a new number to track (which increases with each casting, successful or not).  A first level caster should be able to get several spells off successfully, but runs a chance of spell failure with unpredictable results.

I think it would go a long way toward "fixing" OD&D / B/X / AD&D style Vancian fire and forget magic for me.  I have just never liked the feel of magic as presented in those editions.  The house rule both increases the power of low level casters and makes magic work in a more intuitive way.  At higher levels, it looks like it would limit casters a little bit with the chance of a spell failure, but high level casters are pretty dang powerful anyway.

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