{"id":330,"date":"2012-05-18T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/2012\/05\/remaking-magic\/"},"modified":"2012-05-18T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T15:00:00","slug":"remaking-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/2012\/05\/remaking-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Remaking Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

Let’s get this out of the way: I strongly dislike <\/i>Vancian magic.<\/p>\n

When I started work on Heroes Against Darkness<\/i> we’d just finished playing a long 4th Edition campaign followed by a shorter Basic D&D <\/i>campaign.  The switch from 4th Edition to Basic was caused by a general dissatisfaction with 4th Edition (don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater) and frustration with the final module that we played (Pyramid of Shadows).  The experience of playing some Basic reminded me of why I stopped playing that edition all those years ago:<\/p>\n

\u2022  Class as race
\u2022  Spell level != character level
\u2022  Slow non-magical healing
\u2022  Clerics get no spells at 1st level, but elves get one?!?
\u2022  Arbitrary lists of armor and weapons for magic-users and clerics
\u2022  Tables (to hit), tables (saving throws), tables (thieves skills), and more tables (every damned ability score has a different one)!<\/p>\n

Now I could whine about Basic all day, but at the time it was state of the art.  Things have moved on since then, with a lot of mechanical improvements, simplification and consolidation of separate sub-systems, and better scaling for all systems.<\/p>\n

Sadly, one of the areas where things haven’t moved on in D&D<\/i>-land (at least until recently) has been the magic systems.  Until 4th Edition folded martial and spell powers into the AEDU powers system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility), D&D<\/i> had stuck with the same system of Vancian spell-casting, on top of which they layered various fixes to address specific and general issues (spell resistance, casting feats, spontaneous casting, various dalliances with psionics, etc).<\/p>\n

It’s a relic of the past that should have been discarded from D&D<\/i> shortly after it was introduced.  It doesn’t work particularly well on an intellectual, mechanical, or gameplay level.  Furthermore, it leads to the unfortunate (literal and figurative) explosion of spell-caster power as they advance in levels while the other classes are stuck with a more linear increase in power.  And if you’ve read some of my earlier posts<\/a>, you’ll know that Vancian spell systems are a terrible waste of pages in game rule systems (compared to the amount of space dedicated to non-magic classes), occupying up to half of the total pages in some editions’ player’s guides (AD&D 2nd Edition and Pathfinder being the notable examples of this).<\/p>\n

So when I decided to make my own system, the major area I wanted to rework was the magic system.  I began with the simple goal of implementing a magic system based on spell points (anima), and from there my goals evolved as I implemented the system and learned more and more about it in its evolution through playtesting.  Eventually my goals were:<\/p>\n

\u2022  Magi classes must be balanced against other classes
\u2022  Spells shouldn’t become redundant
\u2022  Spells shouldn’t scale without additional costs (Fireball<\/i>)
\u2022  Magi enhance other classes, not replace (Knock<\/i>, Invisibility<\/i>)
\u2022  No magic can break the game or the GM’s narrative control (Fly<\/i>, Overland Travel<\/i>, Teleport<\/i>, Scry<\/i>)
\u2022  No spells should have absolute effects (Finger of Death<\/i>, Sleep<\/i>)
\u2022  Allow casters to deplete HP to cast spells (blood anima)
\u2022  Just four pages of spells for each magi class<\/p>\n

This was going to be one post, but it’s turned into a monster so I’ll cover each of these areas in separate posts, so stay tuned!<\/p>\n

\n

Check out Heroes Against Darkness<\/i> over at the downloads page: Heroes Against Darkness – Game Rules<\/i><\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s get this out of the way: I strongly dislike Vancian magic. When I started work on Heroes Against Darkness we’d just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,23,24,15,19,37,7,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anima","category-dnd","category-dungeons-and-dragons","category-had","category-heroes-against-darkness","category-magic","category-mechanics","category-spells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroforgegames.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}