Vegan Magic
It is the fourth and final installment of our trek across cryptozoological Ireland. While there are any number of clurichauns and corpse candles and salmon of knowledge left on the folkloric table, the selkie has a special place in my heart. That’s because the very first campaign Laurel and I played together was a pirate game. I’ve talked about my goblin cabin boy before, but Laurel was our captain. A selkie captain. And I can’t believe I only just now made the connection to My Hero Academia. There’ll be no living we me.
Any dang way, before I get inundated with the inevitable chorus of “that’s not how druids work,” I’d like to make two points. First and most importantly: bite me. But since naked animus doth a poor blog make, let’s talk instead about that other thing going on in today’s comic. Namely, the cost of magic.
Since Handbook-World occasionally follows the logic of Dungeons & Dragons, we can start with our old pal Jack Vance. I’m quite fond of the guy for one of my all-time favorite fantasy quotes, but I understand if you guys have other opinions. Gamers tend to have strong feelings about Vancian magic, but the Dying Earth version of spell slinging does make an interesting touchpoint. You can only keep so many spells in your head at once. They disappear from your brain upon casting. You’ve got to re-learn them through study the next day. These are exactly the kinds of limitations that we’re talking about.
Other examples abound. Since we already let our weeb flags fly with the Captain Selkie reference, you could just as easily point to the weakness of One For All. Here’s a superpower that literally destroys the user’s body with a fraction of its potential. The whole sell-your-soul-for-power theme of liches and warlocks applies here too. And since I’m finally about to finish the series after all these years, the pseudo-druids of Animorphs have their hard time limit of two hours before getting stuck forever in animal form.
If any of you guys are worldbuilders in your spare time, you ‘ve probably read this advice before. Outlining the limitations of your magic system helps with verisimilitude. It gives stakes to action sequences, keeping your heroes from becoming invincible supermen. And in terms of TRPG gameplay, it gives interesting decisions to your PCs, asking them to weigh carefully when and how to cast their spells.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk about magic systems and limitations? Who gets it right in terms of balance? What is the most interesting limitation you’ve seen on magic use? And is there a version of ‘the cost of magic’ that strikes you as especially unfun? Whether you’re a superhero, a wizard, or a kid permanently stuck as a red-tailed hawk, tell us all about the limits of your power down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure haul will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
I feel like Selkies have a lot of value as a playable species for people who want a mermaid sort of vibe but don’t want to deal with the hassle of being stuck with a fish-tail on land and aren’t willing to embrace their inner mudskipper.
Shifting human legs when dry always feels like a cheat with Mermaids to me, but Selkies have the appropriate history and legitimacy to make it the shifting work, plus the interesting angle of needing the sealskin.
I did the mudskipper thing once upon a time.
Never skip tail day, bro!
Firstly I’d like to note that while this isn’t how druid’s work, it is how the Animal Skin Witch Major Hex work. (That’s a proper string of capitalized nouns.)
As for limitations of magic, or even more broadly the trappings thereof, this is an area where the Spheres of Power third party series shines for pathfinder.
The basic idea is that you define your magics requirements and restrictions yourself (either on a campaign basis as a GM or for an individual character, depending on your groups preference), with a bunch of fun options.
Some of these restrictions being general, some being “sphere” specific, and some being implicit through the sorts of sphere-effects you have access to.
For instance, my first character using this system was this ascetic tattooed warrior monk type of the god of time and resurrection. Her magical power was relatively limited but still plenty to have fun with (think something closer to a Paladin amount magic than a Bard amount, but still a bit more than a vanilla paladin).
She had this living phoenix tattoo familiar (which could get off her and fly around) in the shape of a phoenix (the holy bird of her god). She could only cast magic when it was close-ish and conscious.
Furthermore she needed to be free to engage in full-contact-spell casting, and to maintain a special meditative mental state to use her powers. (The former meaning somatic components, and the latter meaning that being under hostile emotion effects, down to and including a simple intimidate check, would stop her).
Her powers where the ability to apply various defensive/fate based boons (on herself), to influence her own flow of time (mostly speeding it up, but also snapping a bit to an alternate timeline position to get a miss chance) and finally to teleport short distances (limited to places she could get by normal means, since it worked by freezing time and walking there).
Another of my characters using the same system was a secret priest of a persecuted faith, who had to cast magic by invoking stories of her goddess. She was a full-blown full caster.
Her magic was that she knew the secret name of the Flame of Life and could command it by invoking stories of ancient pacts (while also entertaining the Flame as payment). Her magic obviously needed a free voice, but also an actually skilled storytelling (through a combination of drawbacks and class features, the same Performance oratory check was needed to use her magic and to hide it’s source through symbolism and allegory, people could see through this with a succesful spell-craft or knowledge: religion check).
She also needed a focus (a piece of amber thrown into a firepit and then coaxed to have a bit of the flame go inside it so that the Flame could hear her stories).
Finally her magic was *very* obvious when used, thus the importance of hiding it’s source.
Powers wise commanding the Flame of Life allowed her to do a bit of mundane burning as well as some serious healing including bringing people back to the death if ti had only been a few rounds, and as a special trick to bring life to various inanimate objects in emulation of the gods making the mortal races out of clay/driftwood/and so on.
When doing the latter magical flames burned along the objects which could be put out to dispel the magic prematurely.
I’ve never looked into the animal skin hex. Any decent builds for it?
As for spheres… Heavy sigh bro. No idea when I’ll ever get the chance. This kind of granularity is great for longtime players and mechanics nerds like me, but that never seems to be the preference of my groups overall.
In my opinion the Animal Skin Hex comes into play a bit to late to really build around (It’s too powerful for first level so they made it a major hex which pushed it back to 10th).
But it is a neat enough trick to put in your bag of tricks even as a 10th-level full caster.
Plus it isn’t limited to a certain number of times pr. day, which allows some neat stuff. Depending on how your DM interpret “similar to Beast Shape II” you might have to spend a standard action every [level] minutes.
So if you can get yourself a way to cast spells as a bird you could live the rest of your career as a Raven/crow/hawk/cat/bear or other tiny-to-large animal of your choice whose skin you can get. (A couple of ranks in survival for the skinning is useful here, or perhaps one in craft:taxidermy)
Beastspeak (a 2nd level witch/druid spell) can do in a pinch, but for long term I recommend a ring of eloquence. Somatic components are harder to cover if your GM doesn’t think the form you choose should count.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of Vancian Magic. Furthermore, I love how Spheres of Power allows the players to work with the GMs to determine how their individual magic works via Casting Traditions (drawbacks, boons, and variants).
I don’t particularly have a contribution about the drawbacks of magic, I just want to chime up that the Red-tailed hawk thing fucked me up as a wee lad.
Still hurting about those Animorph books, I signed on for a cool shapeshifting adventure, not an exploration of the trauma of war and 10 year old me wasn’t ready to encounter themes of space colonization and total war against civilian populations.
Book 53 of 54 as of this morning. Only recently found out they’re all free and uploaded via Dropbox. Apparently the authors are cool with it:
https://forreadingaddicts.co.uk/news/all-54-animorphs-books-are-all-available-for-free-online/
I knew seal ladies were a Scandinavian thing, I didn’t know they were an Irish thing. I wonder who got it from who.
https://youtu.be/PS62iRXBeJc
Well, a lot more Scandinavians invaded Ireland than vise versa, and they’re not a common feature in other Indo-European folklore. It’s not impossible that viking raiders picked up the legend from Irish thralls or something, but…
My reading indicated Orkneys as the origin. It’s been popularized as an Irish thing thanks to The Secret of Roan Inish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Roan_Inish
As far as limitations go, I really like 3.5’s Incarnum subsystem. The system is all about channeling the power of souls through your body, in the form of “soulmelds”.
First, each of the three classes has access to a different list of soulmelds, representing different traditions. For instance, Totemists are channeling the souls of magical animals, so if there isn’t a magical animal with a similar ability (i.e. the soulmeld you want isn’t on your list), you’ll need to spend a feat to learn it.
Second, you can only handle a certain amount of power. This one has three parts. You can only shape a certain number of soulmelds (based on your level in the relevant class). You’ve got a new resource (“essentia”) representing how much total power you have to split between your shaped soulmelds, though you can reallocate it between them as a swift action. And you’ve got a limit on how much essentia you can put into any one soulmeld, based on your character level.
Lastly, you can’t just shape soulmelds all willy nilly. Each one has to be put onto one of your chakras (and will alter your appearance appropriately), and you can only have one soulmeld per chakra. Once you get high enough level, you can also “bind” soulmelds to your chakras, which gives you a much more powerful effect, but also increases their ‘metaphysical weight’; now you can’t have a magic item on that part of your body because they’ll interfere with each other.
Sounds like it would be fun to tinker with. What did your build do?
I’ve used it for a bunch of different competitions, mostly to add utility to an otherwise non-magical character (brief but at-will teleportation or flight alone would make Totemist 2 a valuable dip for most characters). Grappling is another one where Totemist shines; a friend of mine played a sea monster themed character who used the Girallon Arms soulmeld to pin enemies so he could intimidate them at his leisure. And I had one character who had her Wild Cohort take feats to pick up a few party friendly and defensive soulmelds, which she could then double-share with the party by (ab)using the fact that the Share Soulmeld works on PC-mount duos but doesn’t require the PC to be the one with the Soulmelds.
It’s a highly flexible system.
That Vance quote sounds like a paraphrasing of Ecclesiastes 9:7-10
That Bihandas quote sounds like a paraphrasing of Ecclesiastes 1:8-9. 😛
While I’ve yet to meet a magic system I didn’t like, they each have their place and need to fit the setting.
My two favorites though have to be in GURPS (of course) Ritual Path Magic and Divine Power. The first is just ritual magic, it but because the rituals can take awhile to prepare and cast, mages end up ‘feeling’ more like D&D mages as they have to ‘prepare their spells in advance (binding them in charms, or tats, or scroll, etc) and often can only safely have so many hanging around at once (the other limit is literally time).
Divine Power is of course for the priestly types and it’s basically “You have a god, pray for miracles”, so instead of spells or rituals, they directly beg for miracles straight from the source.
These systems make magic feel different than “I roll my skills, I cast my spells, and in ten minutes after I’ve rested a bit, I do it again”, which is how GURPSian Magic normally works (Spells are Skills and cost Fatigue, which recharges when you rest).
GURPS’s default magic system is nice and simple, so it’s appropriate for a core rulebook, but it’s also the worst magic system in the system.
My personal favorite would be the sorcery introduced in “GURPS Thaumatology—Sorcery”. It gives sorcerers the flexibility to cast almost any spell in a pinch, while encouraging them to have a few signature spells.
Divine Power is also pretty cool though.
The vanilla Skills as Spells system works just fine with the “Book and Path” set-up though. But yeah, for anything else, Sorcery (Powers as Spells) or the Effects Shaping or Energy Accumulation ritual systems are better.
I’m loving Divine Power, fast-talkin god into performing miracles, that’s just how we roll.
Got a “cleric of dance” in a game a the moment. Dude prays like he’s auditioning for Broadway. These rituals are a good time.
My current Dungeon Saint worships Hermes in the form of con-artist and thief (but pretends he worships Hermes in the role of God of Mercantilism), so at one point he was in the midst of a four hour long prayer for a miracle and I describe Benny (that’s Benny Morales, Saint of Hermes) as “fast-talking Hermes into doing what we need done”. Later one of the other Character’s actually asked me, “Wait, you were trying to Fast-Talk your deity? How… why… but it’s your god, like doesn’t he already answer your prayers directly?”
I just responded, “Hermes respects the hustle.”
Were the two links in the third paragraph both supposed to go to the “drink good wine and talk” quote? I was expecting something more along the lines of Panel 11.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0345.html
Updated. Thanks for the catch. 🙂
I like that the URL for that quote makes it read:
“While we are alive, we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines and discuss Jack Vance.”
As a writer, I hope to have a similar URL one day.
Ugh, vancian magic 🙁
“And is there a version of ‘the cost of magic’ that strikes you as especially unfun?”
Do you mean like spell slots and other non-senses of vancian magic? 🙁
Leaving aside that thing, the magic system is rather whimsical in that everything is possible as long as you have a spell that can do it. Thing is people believe magic got systems that needs to obey. Magic doesn’t care about rules, she obey them or not on a whim. Yet, not many people think that and they use things like the vancian magic system without knowing they don’t need 🙂
You sound like a Mage fan. 🙂
I dislike Vancian magic as a game mechanic, but mostly because it means balance assumptions collapse if your group does anything too far outside the expected encounters-per-day “schedule”. As a price for magic, Vancian magic is…functional, but boring. It’s ammunition, that’s it. It only works with a specific explanation of what spells are and how they work, and it’s a somewhat unusual one, but it’s…fine. Just fine.
I just find most other systems more interesting. Heck, even most non-game “mana bar” systems are more interesting—if you deplete your magic, you don’t just stop being able to cast spells, you physically exhaust yourself. (Continuing the weeb flag theme, look to Konosuba’s Megumin for an extreme example. She wields ungodly destructive power—literally, Aqua’s flood arguably comes second and she only does it once—but after she uses it, she can barely even move. That’s an interesting limitation! And also hilarious.)
For a top-tier example of the cost of magic, look at Pact and Pale by Wildbow. (Pale was written second, but in my opinion it’s a better story and a better introduction to the setting, and the two stories are largely independent, aside from both being set in small towns in the same magical Ontario.)
It’s hard to explain succinctly, because its magic system is arguably defined by the various kinds of prices you need to pay to use its magic.
Sometimes it’s a literal price set by some magical being or another. Sometimes it’s a karmic cost, which can make certain things easier or harder in the future. Sometimes it’s something very specific to the ritual or item in question (Pale/Pact take more inspiration from folklore than RPGs). Sometimes it’s some kind of big risk—”Going down the Forest Ribbon Trail can get you from Point A to Point B faster, but if you get caught by the Wolf without a sacrifice on hand you’ll never get to point B”.
Probably the most interesting are prices that come in the form of your identity. On one end of the spectrum, you can (metaphorically) burn your Self as fuel for your magic, leaving yourself hollowed, easier for spirits to possess. On the other hand, even defining yourself as a certain kind of magician has a cost. Calling yourself a Fae Duelist means you’ll have a harder time learning goblin-based techniques, partly because the universe expects you to follow the role of Fae Duelist and partly because nobody who knows goblin magic likes Faeries. In the middle, sources of power (such as the Demense, Familiar, and Implement) both empower your magic and color it; a chalice Implement can impede quick-and-dirty magic, it’s hard to abandon your home if it’s your Demense, etc.
Just…go read Pale. Kennet’s Others and the Blue Heron Institute do a good job of explaining how stuff works. Also, its teen heroines are brought into the magical world to investigate the murder of, essentially, a local god.
I like the idea of a “karmic cost” as a mechanic. Was just discussing a hypothetical “Kid Karma” superhero. Selfish jerk who has to (resentfully) do good deeds to fuel his powers.
No idea how that would work at the table, but I was intrigued by the premise.
Inversely… (and to play Devil’s Advocate)
Vancian Magic is good if the genre is one of cautious researching of the dangers ahead and careful preparation. You know, like the stories Vance wrote and the claims of “that’s who the game was supposed to be run” (we all have our own understandings in that arena).
I’ve run a bunch of GURPS games using the Ritual Path and Incantation systems, (Energy Accumulation and Effects Shaping ritual systems) and those both lead to an awful lot of “carefully prepare spells in advance, either to counter specifically what you know is there, or with a broad scope of ‘just in case’.”
One of those games was based on ‘The Black Company’, and the ritual system fits that genre to a ‘T’.
So no, if you want high action “orc and pie/back to the dungeon”, or even cinematic fantasy kitchen sink, without careful moderation of the challenges by the PCs, then Vancian and other spell prep systems won’t be very good. But if you want “research and careful prep” or “overly paranoid prep”, then Vancian and other such spell prep systems are perfect.
Now I’m going to go have a lie down because I came perilously close to arguing that D&D was good in some fashion…
GURPS Black Company?! You’re idea intrigues me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. 🙂
Are there campaign logs and/or house rules anywhere you’d be willing to share?
Oh man, if we’re gonna talk magic systems with hard limitations and wonderful interactions, someone HAS to talk about Brandon Sanderson. The man is a machine when it comes to pumping out balanced, thought out power systems! Nearly every one of his series has one unique to it, and since they all take place in a connected verse, they have interactions with them that are pretty amazing!
To list the ones I know of, he has:
A world where every person has their ‘breath’ which is their vitality or life force, and they can give it to someone else, and acquiring more of them makes you see colors and hear sounds more vibrantly and clearly. It can also be used to breathe life into objects in various ways akin to programming and powering them.
A world where with the right aptitudes can ingest certain metals and ‘burn’ them as a fuel source to do very specific things depending on the metal in question. For instance Iron lets you detect and push on anything metallic (not magnetic, metallic) and steel lets you pull on anything metallic. This world is noteworthy because it’s one of three equally-well-thought-out other magic systems that all have their own very consistent rules and interactions.
A world where perpetual storms that encircle the planet in waves can charge gemstones with stormlight, a source that can be used to fuel different powers for what are essentially warlocks with very limited ability pools used to an extreme, and cool swords to boot.
And a through line that connects all of these worlds into a greater universe under the mythos of a fragmented creator god, who’s fragments all have their own extremely limited limitless powers.
Seriously, I’ve yet to be disappointed by the magic systems in his books. Some of the books themselves can get heavy in places, and I’ve had to walk away for a bit, but I’ve always come back and been glad that I did.
Mistborn was fun. I know I’ve seen some 3.5 homebrew for it floating around out there… Must be burning steel. 😛
Vancian magic does a job and I suppose it does it well enough? *shrug*
There are certainly better models out there. But I guess it’s all about what you want to accomplish.
But I’ve always preferred less… restrictive or less clearly mechanical interactions with magic. Because it’s magic. It shouldn’t really be a simple numbers and hard limitations of the RAW (as written by a specific person with specific preferences on what people should and shouldn’t be able to do in a game space as variable as the people who could possibly be playing it*)
*I know we’ve done this before, but I’m looking at you specifically bland and specifically only water Create Food & Water.
Shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but I rather like Blades in the Dark’s method of handling magic. Firstly if you’re doing actual magic at all you’re probably (depending on what your group establishes) far outside the norms of even the mystic weirdos of the setting. And then the effects, rules, costs, and limitations for each individual ritual is determined by the player and the GM (and whoever else has an opinion those two want to listen to). This makes every spell unique and means your behavior is pretty unlikely to result in blowing all your fixed daily allotment of magic in a fight and then sleep even though you only woke up two hours ago.
This isn’t the only method I like, but it’s certainly up there. I’m sure there’s plenty of games out there with fun magic systems. But I bet a lot of the point of those games *is* the magic system. It’s a lot easier to be flavorful and fun with a system if it’s the main point of what you’re playing than something that needs to integrate with everything else in a (supposedly**) balanced way.
**We all know what you did D&D 3 & 3.5.
(Actually now that I think about it, is magic not just straight up better than all other options in any D&D edition before 4e?)
Do you ever get the sense that Blades style “work with your GM to create your own ritual” is putting some of the onus of design onto the player? That’s fun for some, but I could picture it being overwhelming for a newbie.
I guess, as with all games, it depends on the people involved. If you stick extremely precisely to the way it’s written then there’s specific (and equal) parts between the GM and the player to determine.
But if you have people that understand the spirit of the game, it’s pretty easy to let one party or the other handle whichever specifics you wish.
My personal experience has been myself basically throwing out the answers to all the questions at the GM and saying “You cool with all that? Or anything you want to change?”
So I can easily imagine the reverse scenario where the GM just asks the player what they want the ritual to do and then the GM coming up with ideas and asking the player if those ideas work for them.
Of course the rituals are only a single Special Ability within a list for one specific playbook. The easiest thing to do for a player who thinks handling it would be overwhelming is to just….. not take it and thus not have to worry about it. Which I imagine pre-solves the issue at least 90% of the time.
The first thing that comes to my mind when talking about Magic systems with limitations in RPGs, is Dark Heresy and the Warhammer RPG. Where magic is balanced by the possibility of terrible things happening to the caster (and surrounding area) should anything go wrong.
Through I didn´t use it myself, I did once play in a homebrew system, where Witch magic was based around the properties of the materials used, the weather and the phase of the moon (Such as some curses being stronger during a full moon, rain being purifying or the eye of newt being used in illusions. It didn´t have specific spells, but the caster would say what they wanted to do and then figure out what properties were needed for the ritual. So perhaps you needed to delay the ritual because you needed a new moon for it.
While I think it would be troublesome in a more rigid system, it made casting magic feel like magic and like an undertaking. Not just something you did quickly.
…I need to write that GM and hear if they still have the rules for it.
Sounds like one of Harey Dresden’s potion milkshakes. Neat homebrew!
https://dresdenfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Potion
Given Druid actively hunts voles with her boyfriend, her asking for a Vegan option seems a bit pretentious.
Look man, voles are assholes. Easily the worst of the rodents. That’s why it’s called a “vole hole” in the vegan cotract.
Savage Worlds’ magic starts you with 10 power points and they recharge at a rate of 1 per hour. You can take additional edges to increase your pp cap and increase the recharge rate to 2 per hour or even 4 per hour.
Time is such a rough way to do it… All those nebulous guesses of “how long it’s been since the last encounter.” I got similar opinions about 10 min / lvl buffs over in Pathfinder.
I understand why it’s not used so much in games, but I’m nonetheless partial to horror film style magic where the only cost is how easy it is, which makes it very easy to use it without fully thinking things through. Somebody just sounds the incantation out and boom, suddenly they’re surrounded by zombies or in another dimension or something.