I have been thinking my worldâ,¬,,¢s (Andi) magic-system and while I like to use basic DnD I have made following additions:
Nature of magic: Life Force or mana.
First there is nature of magic itself in my world. My entire world (a planet) is surrounded with a force that is used by all forms of magic-user from adepts to gods and is called mana by central culture of the campaign. It is the life-force that creates life and is released when living thing dies and wizards and other wizardly magic users use it directly to create any effect they need for the spells.
But this force has a will of its own. While not intelligent, it has a need to be alive and uses any opening to fulfil this need. It normally manages this by entering creatures that are about to be born after which living thing is created and closes up with only small amount of life force trapped inside. Anything that is alive (is able to reproduce and is from this plane of existence) has mana in it. But in order to use magic, magic-user has to let more mana than he was born with into him as a conscious act. And that is like using a blender to mix nitro and glyserin.
Every living creature has heavy protection against external mana after they are born. They also have some internal defences, but these are not nearly as strong as external defences. Wizards (and other non-clerical spell casters) deliberately lower their external defences, let the mana in and use it to create spells. This is dangerous.
If wizardly magic-user has to make a concentration check while casting and fails, he has to make a will save (difficulty based on failed spell level). Failure means those defences go down by single point/level of spell failed. If one wants to rebuild his defences, he has to stay off the magic as the force will slowly radiate away. Reaching 0 will mean that caster is taken over and turns into mana-monster.
Exact design is still unfinished, but basically mana-monster is like The Thing from those movies. Unintelligent, it absorbs living creatures around it into its own body and has a potential to reach a single planet-size creature holding entire Life-Force in single organism. Fortunately while these monsters can be formidable, they are not indestructible.
New Area of Magic: Living Artifacts.
Magic-users have also made breakthroughs in controlling and creating such monsters and mana, the life-force, can be deliberately inserted in creature and these creatures -if properly bind- can be commanded by proper spells.
Uses are multiple as these creatures could be loaded with magic or include fusion to include features of multiple creatures. They are known as â,¬ËLiving Artifactsâ,¬,,¢. Kind of like familiars in steroids or magic version of genetic engineering. Any creature, including human or demi-human, could be used.
Creature used for this purpose loses all mental abilities, skills and feats and so one canâ,¬,,¢t â,¬Ëupgradeâ,¬,,¢ characters with tiger-claws and catâ,¬,,¢s eyes in this style. But you can build an assassin to do your biding by inserting into a human abilities from a tiger and other abilities from a bat. Or magic user can load spells into these creatures. Since actual spell capacity isnâ,¬,,¢t connected to the size of the creature, you could load a fireball into a mouse and let critter loose in your enemyâ,¬,,¢s castle with orders to find him, before this magic smart-weapon goes off. Powerful, granted, but this is high level stuff (not to mention single-shot).
Mechanics:
In order to get Life Force to create Living Artifact, you would have to kill something, store the released mana and insert it into base-creature.
Base-creature should give the basic hit-points and other base characteristics to Living Artifact. If just left as-is it has stats the base-creature, minus mental stats, which it doesnâ,¬,,¢t have, but has to be controlled. Any living creature will do (anything, but undeads, outsiders and constructs could be used), even dragon or magical beast if you manage to get one into a lab and tie it down, but more formidable creature, more mana is needed to turn it into base-creature. Actual balancing of this is far from finished, but Iâ,¬,,¢m thinking about using creature CR as base of both mana gained from its death and mana needed for its turning. You could gain 1/10th of creatureâ,¬,,¢s CR in mana-points when it dies and need 10 times creatureâ,¬,,¢s CR in mana-points to turn it into base-creature.
Other creatures combined to base-creature would cost exactly the same (10 x CR) but you could only choose single stat, trait or ability from the creature to import into base-creature.
Then there are spells. Living Artefacts shouldnâ,¬,,¢t be able to throw spells (as one closes the creature to keep the mana in, there is also no possibility for the creature to collect and use the free flowing mana from environment to cast spells in traditional manner), but you could load spells into the creature to be triggered at command or any given trigger. Iâ,¬,,¢m currently thinking about 10 x Level in mana-points to load a spell, metamagic of course included in that level.
Thought of 1st Draft:
Far from finished system, I like this system more every time I try to polish it. It limits the magic users as they are in danger of turning into DM-controlled monsters if they donâ,¬,,¢t limit their spell throwing and thus only use magic when absolutely needed (no more magic as a tool in everyday tasks, dangers are too great). On the other hand, it also makes magic something to be feared as nobody in his right mind would like to be next of the magician who makes that last crucial mistake.
Not to mention all those dead creatures (or villagers) which wizards use to create Living Artefacts and weird creatures that result from their creations (explains hippogriffs and others kind of neatly). That would make a serious dent into any wizardâ,¬,,¢s social-life and make the torch and pitchfork- mobs more common. But it also gives perks.
And then there are the adventure possibilities. No longer the evil wizards ritually kill those 9th level virgins (no need for virgin, but there are traditions) to open some mysterious gate. Now he is just stacking up mana-points to build up his army of Living Artefacts. True Dr Frankenstein style wizards and artificiers.
Or loose Living Artifacts, slightly failed experiments that produce unexpected side-effects.
I give more details, once I manage to create the spell lists and test a few Living Artifacts to see how hard they are to create/use.
Haven't even decided yet, should Living Artifacts be standard Item Creation or do I want them be a school of magic like necromancy. They are permanent, thus they should be item, but they also are under control, thus they are similar to necromancy.
Iâ,¬,,¢m also tempted to expand this mana into clerical spells in some form and have few ideas that fit into my world (under construction), but I would like to hear opinions about my Life-Force based magic system. Too powerful? Too limiting? Anything else?
Any thoughts about entire system or part of it are welcomed.
I think this is very creative and interesting. At first, based on the title and first few lines, I was going to direct you to conception of magic because it seemed you were equated mana to lifeforce. Of course, that's basically what it really is - the Polynesian word for ki.
But you go for more of an external force, as well, which is interesting. It sounds likes you mean to remove spells per day in favor of risk per spell (I do something similar, so I think that can work)?
The living artifact thing is also a nice addition.
Quote from: Phoenix KnightIt sounds likes you mean to remove spells per day in favor of risk per spell (I do something similar, so I think that can work)?
The living artifact thing is also a nice addition.
I was thinking about removing the spells per day, but now plan to keep basic system (at least for now). Basic idea behind my thinking was the mana-points and since you could only collect them when something dies, it would mean that wizard would be spending lot of time in slaughter-houses. Thinking the ways wizard would 're-fill' the mana-points mid adventure was enough to make me smile while I scraped the idea.
About the Ki (Chi in Chinese), Life Force and Mana in my setting.
I was thinking it like this:
Mana = Something wizards use. Actually same stuff as Life Force, but spell caster catches it from surroundings and uses it to form a spell effects.
Life Force = External force. This is the uncontrolable life force with will to be alive.
Chi = Life force that gets trapped inside when creature is born. Creature can learn to use it, like monk does, but it is seperated from mana as after birth amount of chi inside creature never changes.
Quote from: WormwoodThinking the ways wizard would 're-fill' the mana-points mid adventure was enough to make me smile while I scraped the idea.
I'm almost curious. Certainly keeping core makes things more accessible to more people, even if this does sound a good way to ditch it.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
I like the idea of it, for reasons largely already stated, but I'd also add that alternate magic systems that actually work as alternates of something similar are always interesting. For instance, psionics is clearly meant to be different from magic, and so it raises immediate questions. However your idea is compatible and yet different enough to make it clear that you could actually make use of it alongside say a more Hermetic type system like traditional D&D.