Drain-based Magic System (a la Shadowrun)

[Radiating Gnome]

Here's a sketch of a Drain-based magic variant I'm toying with. Let me know what you think.


Drain-based Magic system


This is a magic system inspired, in part, by the drain based system used in games like FASA’s Shadowrun.

Classes.

There are three spellcasting classes. The classes are essentially the same, in game mechanics terms, except that each class uses a different attribute as the base attribute for spellcasting

Mage: the mage is an intelligence based spellcaster. Mages master the magical arts through study and research.

Believer: the believer is a wisdom-based spellcaster. Believers master the magical arts through meditation and faith in some sort of higher power.

Talent: the talent is a charisma-based spellcaster. Talents master the magical arts through sheer force of personality and innate ability.

Mages, believers, and talents use the base Sorcerer advancement chart, with a few modifications.

To begin with, they don't have a set number of spells per level per day. Also, spells cast do not automatically succeed.

Casting a spell requires a successful Spellcraft skill roll, with a DC of 10 + Spell Level + Caster Level. It is possible to make a spell easier to cast by casting it at a caster level lower than a character's current spellcasting level.

Drain:

Once the spell is successfully cast, it takes effect as normal. Then the spellcaster must immediately make a resist Drain skill roll to avoid suffering drain from the spell. The DC of the Resist Drain spell is DC 10 + CL + SL. If the test fails, the spellcaster takes stun damage equal to CL + SL. If the test succeeds, the spellcaster still suffers 1 point of drain for casting the spell. If the spellcaster suffers enough drain to be knocked unconscious, the additional subdual damage becomes real damage. So, if a caster were to suffer twice as much drain damage as she had hit points left it would stagger her and put her at 0 hit points. More drain than that could potentially killer her, as if she had taken damage in combat.

Spells and Schools:

A starting spellcaster can choose one school of magic to be proficient with per bonus point in her key ability (A believer with a Wisdom of 15 has a Wisdom bonus of +2, and can choose two schools of magic in which to be proficient). Additional schools can be learned by taking the new feat "School of Magic" (see below).

Choosing Spells: A spellcaster uses the Sorcerer "known Spells" table to determine how many spells she can know at a given level. She can only select spells from schools in which she is proficient.

Spell Selection: Spells can be selected from the spells listed in the player's handbook -- from any of the class lists, but the spell must belong to one of the schools in which the spellcaster is proficient.

Ritual Magic: Performing a spell as a part of an elaborate ritual that takes a great deal of time ((CL + SL)x 10 minutes) is called ritual magic. Ritual magic allows casters to take 20 on a particularly difficult spell's Spellcraft roll. Ritual magic also makes it possible for other spellcasters, through the ritual, to assist the lead spellcaster. This assistants can add a +2 circumstance bonus each by participating in the entire ritual and making a spellcraft roll with a DC of 10 + SL.

It is not possible to take 20 on the resist drain roll. However, each character assisting with the ritual can also take a share of the drain load, as determined by the lead spellcaster. An assisting character cannot take more drain than she has current hit points (she can be knocked unconscious by the drain, but not killed). Characters can also us centering skills, with the appropriate feat, to resist the draining effects of ritual (and regular) magic. (see bleow).

Overreaching: Characters can try to push the limits of their power, but with dire consequences. They can boost their effective caster level, when casting a spell they know, by a number of levels equal to their attribute bonus, They resist the drain normally, but the damage the spellcaster suffers for the spell is physical damage, not subdual damage. If a character is reduced to less than 0 hit points by overreaching, and somehow survives, she suffers one point of permanent Constitution damage.

Spellcasting in systems that use Vitality/Wound points rather than standard hit points: Treat normal spellcasting drain as vitality damage, and overreaching drain as wound damage.

New skills:

Resist Drain (Con). This represents a spellcaster’s ability to resist the draining effects of channeling magical energies through their body.

New Feats

School of Magic (Specific School)

The character masters a new school of magic.

Magic School Focus

The Character gains a +2 circumstance bonus to spellcraft rolls for spells in the selected school, and a +1 bonus to resist drain from spells in this school. This feat can be taken multiple times, but each time a different school must be selected.

Centering (skill)

This feat allows the character to select a skill which becomes a centering focus for her spellcasting. This skill becomes an integral part of the spellcaster's spells, and provides a +3 circumstance bonus to rolls made to resist drain. Appropriate skills include perform and craft skills. More often than not, these skills will be much more effective as a part of ritual spellcasting, but assuming circumstances permit the spellcaster to perform the skill while in combat (singing, dancing, sketching, but perhaps not cabinetmaking) it's possible to using centering while casting spells in more immediate action.

To successfully use Centering, the character must make a successful centering skill roll of DC 10 + spell level.

This feat can be taken multiple times, each time selecting a different skill. A spellcaster can use only one type of centering skill at a time.

This skill becomes a class skill for the character.

 

[Imhotepthewise]

I wanted to respond to this one, I'm surprised no one else did. This seems beautifully simple and and I don't know what d20 modern will do to make it any better. Good job. I hope someone with more spellcasting acumen than I will weigh in.

 

[las]

For the spell level part of the drain I thot this will help.

(I thot this for my idea on how this will work)

Drain per spell level (You spell level in your equashen)
0th-1d3
1st-1d6
2nd-2d6
3rd-3d6
4th-4d6
5th-5d6
6th-6d6
7th-7d6
8th-8d6
9th-9d6

This is when they fail there resist Drain skill roll this would count as there spell level for drain.

 

[Oni]

If I am understanding this correctly drain does subdual damage to the caster. If that is correct I think that you may perhaps encounter the same problem that I did with a fatigue base magic system in DnD. (my attempt is here: http://personal.rmc.edu/~jcpugh/Channeller.html ). The problem comes down to HP and constitution. The higher a caster's HP the more spells they can cast. for one thing HP are highly variable from level to level as they are randomly determined within a certain perameters and so if you have two casters who are equal in every other aspect but one rolled well on their HP and the other poorly there will be a large disparity in their power levels. Now some might argue that much of anyclasses power is determined by the randomness of dice, but I think it will make itself especially evident when the classes sole ability is based upon them. The second problem is one that is related to the first, and that is constitution. A fatigue based casting system drastically increases the importance of Constitution stat. For the default DnD caster the difference between 16 and a 20 isn't going too large an impact on the number of spell per day the caster can cast, however if a system that is based on subdual damage the difference between a 16 and a 20 is very vast due to the culmulative nature of a con bonus on HP, in otherwords it makes high statistics overly important in a game were they already make a large difference. I think you will find this to be double the case with your system, as the ability to resist drain is based on Con as well. I would at the very least made resist drain based on wisdom, or perhaps the primary casting attribute of the particular cast, to at least deemphasize some of the importance of constitution.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

You make some good points -- and I had considered the problem of the system favoring healthier spellcasters.

Actually, part of my model to build this is the Star Wars Force system -- the force abilities (read:spells) cost vitality points to use -- with no opportunity to resist the drain. Those force-enabled characters have higher hit dice, too -- d8 and d10's, I think.

This system also grants some advantage to characters that take a lever or two of fighter, or maybe barbarian, every once in a while, so they can gain a lot of hit points to cast spells with. And this may seriously boost the number of spells they can cast without rest, but it doesn't improve their spellcasting ability -- they sacrifice the ability to cast a wider variety of higher level spells for this boost in the number of spells. And I anticipate there will be characters who take these fighter levels from time. Still, they delay access to the much more powerful spells by doing so, and that will become a serious problem as they advance.

Take, as an example, the 10th level character who has 9 levels of fighter and one level of Believer. He may well have as much as 100 hit points (with a high constitution and good rolls), and be able to cast his selection of first level spells all day long without rest, but who really cares? He'll be casting magic missile, producing one missile a round, and missing out on the real action. In the long run, a character with this sort of imbalance will end up giving up on the spellcasting and focussing on his sword.

So, yes, with this system, health will be important to a spellcaster. I don't know if I would use this system as a parallel to other magic systems in a D&D world. But as the only system for magic in a world, it won't be unfair, everyone would be playing by the same set of rules.

 

[Jeph]

Try this instead of taking subdual damage:

For each level of a casting class that a character takes, they gain 2+(key ability modifier) Drain Buff (DB) points.

When a character takes fatigue from casting spells, they first loose DB points, until they have none left. Then, they start taking Fatigue Points. Refer to the following chart to determine the affects of Fatigue:

Fatigue Points ---- Effect
1-2 ------------------ Character suffers -1 affective Str, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha
3-4 ------------------ As above, but -2
5-6 ------------------ As aboce, but -4
7 + ------------------ Character must make a Fort save (DC 10 + FP amassed) or fall unconcious. Every time the character gains FP, and every time they do something stressfull (such as running, charging, fighting, walkin more than half a mile), they must repeat the save. In addition, they suffer penalties as above, but -6.

If you do this, you may want to say that for every 14% of their HP total they take in Subdual damage, they gain 1 FP.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Originally posted by Jeph
Try this instead of taking subdual damage:

An interesting idea, but IMO there are some problems with it. For one thing, it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the game. Why track a new attribute, Drain Buff, and Fatigue points, when that's uneccessary?

While it's true that the fatigue point system you propose is a bit closer to Shadowrun, with the penaties to abilities and actions, that was one of the things about the shadwrun system that I always found hard to manage (more bookkeeping) and run right. In the end, I think this system will be more playable.

AS for the drain buff of 2 + Bonus per level, that will come in as less than a sorcerer's standard hit points (avg per level of 2.5, with the starting 4 as a boost), so will offer less power and do just about the same thing as subdual damage does, but do it more complexly.

What's nice is that there are also good rules in the PhB for recovering Subdual damage that are pretty friendly to this system -- a character recovers 1 point per level, per hour -- so a fifth leve character, in three hours rest, can recover 15 points of subdual damage -- for a 5th level spellcaster, without constitution bonuses, that is more than enough to restore his entire casting pool (4+(4x2.5)=14).

I would consider changing the base HD for these classes, though -- make it a D6, maybe, but no more than that. It quickly looks like these characters are going to be able to cast spells all day, but don't forget that this system asks them to make a spellcraft roll to get the spell off correctly in the first place -- making individual spells a little less effective (because they might fail).

If you do this, you may want to say that for every 14% of their HP total they take in Subdual damage, they gain 1 FP.

Would this not also be the case for regular damage? Again, this adds an unecessary level of bookkeeping that would only server to slow the game down.

-rg

 

[willpax]

This has some similarities to the homebrew system I've developed. One way I mitigated the effect of CON on caster power was to create alternate ways to supply power.

First, you could have magic items that function like the psi crystals (the caster channels a certain amount of power on one day to have it available later).

Second, you could allow material components (properly researched for each spell) to substitute for a certain amount of power loss. In my system, the caster always takes at least 1 VP (I use the VP/WP system, which works very similarly to the subdual damamge mechanic). Above that, material components can supply power based in part on cost. Cheap components (like fluff and dung) supply 1 VP, which is significant at lower power levels. More expensive and rarer components supply increasingly more.

Neither of these actually solve Oni's problem (and mine as well) with CON becoming an incredibly important stat for a mage. I will second Oni's suggestion that CON not be a stat with double or triple importance; basing your resistance to casting fatigue on WIS is a good suggestion.

All of this looks good. Let us know how it plays.

 

[Jeph]

*snip*

While it's true that the fatigue point system you propose is a bit closer to Shadowrun

*snip*
-rg

WIERRRRRRD . . . I never even saw the Shadow Run rulebook, much less play it.

Ya know, you said you based it off of the force powers from SWD20, which use a VP/WP system. Why don't you use that for your DnD games, too? It fits in seamlessly (except for the spell Death Knell, which sucks anyway), and seems more aligned with the kind of magic system you'r trying to set up.

 

[Jeph]

AS for the drain buff of 2 + Bonus per level, that will come in as less than a sorcerer's standard hit points (avg per level of 2.5, with the starting 4 as a boost)

Just wanted to point out that almost all Sorcs have their Cha at least 1 point higher than their Con, which actually means that they get more benefit from the system. The extra 1.5 subdual HP from level 1 is almost nothing, especially when characters have 7 FP to soak up before they get KOed.

Not to be argumental, I see the flaws in FP/DB system.

I'm just too nitpickey for my on good when I want to be, sorry.