In this series I’ll be developing a new system for casting magic in tabletop role-playing games. When complete it will be available at joeyv120.itch.io
Check out Part 1 of this series for a little background on my intent for creating this system.
Unstable Diffusion
Before we get into it, I wanted to talk quick about AI artwork. As someone who has zero artistic talent, the latest AI generators provide me with a path to creating quick visual aids without having to commission an artist or digging through public domain artwork. (We can argue about the ethics of AI artwork later).
Perchance recently released a text-to-image plugin, so I created a couple of generators to play around with it, and thought I’d share them with you. Check it out:
Edward Hopper painting generator
(It’s hilarious how AI art generators struggle with hands and limbs)
Thomas Kinkade painting generator
Boons, Banes, and Advancement. Oh, my!
Last time I settled on a dice mechanic: stolen from borrowed from inspired by Ironsworn. This is what my version looks like: roll a d6+mod (Casting) and two d10s (Resistance dice). If the Casting is higher than both Resistance dice it’s a Success, higher than only one Resistance dice is a Falter, and higher than neither Resistance dice is a Failure.
Let’s elaborate what these three levels of success mean:
Success: When the Casting overcomes both Resistance dice the spell is cast. This condition should contribute to gaining experience in some mechanical way too.
Falter: When the Casting overcomes only one Resistance the spell is cast, but there are consequences. I think these consequences are mostly narrative. It might be good to have a consequence table of some sort for inspiration.
Failure: When the Casting overcomes neither Resistances the spell is not cast AND there are consequences. Perhaps this also means the caster becomes fatigued, or with some number of failures they can no longer cast spells until something like a long rest.
Stream of Consciousness
You start with a Study, let’s say it’s Mind-Compelling-Brew. You get a +0 modifier in that Study as a noob. According to the chart there’s about 10% chance of Success. Maybe every Successful casting you tick an experience point box or clock, and after so many ticks you advance in that Study and can now add +1 to your casting. At that level there is a 15% success rate. That means each subsequent advancement will come quicker as the character progresses. I think that makes narrative sense because, generally, learning a new skill starts out slower.
To counter the advancement mechanic I want to add an exhaustion or fatigue mechanic. With each Failure (about 60% to start out, we’ll call that level zero since it’s +0) you tick a “Fatigue” clock, and after some number fatigue points you are “Exhausted”. Initially, I thought Exhaustion should mean you can’t cast at all, but that would make for a boring magic system. Maybe it should be a hindrance instead, a -1 to the Casting. Does it stack? I don’t know [insert playtesting here].
This opens more questions: How many experience points to advance? How many fatigue points to become exhausted? And what about Faltering results, do either or neither or both of these mechanics apply?
[time jump]
Okay, I played with some numbers and came up with something that sounds reasonable in my head:
You need 4 practice points to advance a study. You mark a practice point (experience) only on a full success.
After 4 fatigue points you are exhausted and cast all of your studies with disadvantage (Casting -1), or maybe at +0 (not entirely decided on this yet) [insert playtesting here]. You mark a fatigue point on both a failure AND a falter roll. The exhaustion condition is cleared after a narrative rest (long rest? short rest? idfk).
In Ironsworn when the d10s match it’s like a crit. I want to do something similar. Here’s what I’m thinking: on a Critical Failure you mark all fatigue points and become exhausted, on a Critical Success you clear all marked fatigue points and clear the exhaustion condition (and add some narrative flourish to your casting).
Looking at this graphically, here’s how these statistics shake out:
The above chart shows that at level 0 you’re statistically able to attempt to cast about four spells before becoming exhausted. That improves slowly over time. This feels right but [insert playtesting here].
To advance from level 0 to level 1 you likely need to attempt to cast a spell 44 times, 26 times to advance to level 2, and so on. Note, this is not successful castings, just attempts. I’m not saying this is good or bad yet, but the jump from 0 to 1 seems harsh, while the later levels look too easy. Perhaps you level up from 0 to 1 differently, but I’d hate to add that sort of thing [insert more playtesting here].
Movin’ Right Along
I like how the success probabilities from last time look for the Ironsworn dice mechanics, and the feeling of rolling the dice against eachother, but I’m not crazy about the advancement statistics work out.
For next time I’ll go through a similar exercise but with the PbtA-2d10 mechanics and see if that can flatten the advancement curve.
In either case, I feel like this is at a point where some playtesting is appropriate, so I will also post a compiled rules set, a polished version of what I’ve got here so far.
From the Mail Bag
I want to reflect on and respond to an idea one reader provided. They suggested that — well, here’s exactly what they said so I don’t botch it.
“[…] each character could have a skill rating in [each spell component], starting at 0. Character progression would look like getting Air 1, or Warding 2 [see the full list of components below]. This would allow characters to specialize in certain uses or methods, but also incentivize not neglecting the others. As using a new Study for a specific case might require components you aren't an expert in, so even 1 or 2 points is worthwhile.
The default difficulty should be set higher as a base to align with what I think you are looking for, starting at 3. The difficulty could be set even higher depending on the scope of the spell or other circumstances.
This isn’t what I was originally thinking, where a Study of 3 Components is a self-contained set of knowledge: where you’re not mix-and-matching, but rather advancing that spell as a set. This is a pretty good idea, so I did some thought experiments on how this might work in play, and how it aligns with my design pillars, and the dice mechanics I presented in my last post.
Narratively, I don’t want characters to have access to all forms of magic from the start because, even if your Brew component is +0, for example, you might likely succeed at making a potion based on your bonuses from the other two components.
Okay, so let’s say you need a +1 or more before you can even use that component. Now the base-line modifier is +3. That would break the Ironsworn dice mechanics that I’m leaning toward, but if I use the 2d10 system I described it would just need a simple tweak to the target numbers as they suggested.
Modifiers would need to be stacked: “take a +2 from Pyre, a +1 from Warding, and a +3 from Brew, then add that to your roll…” Not that it’s difficult, but it complicates the mechanics that much more. Instead of adding a single modifier to your roll you’re adding three different modifiers to it.
I do worry that this would encourage “stat optimization”, shifting the focus from the narrative elements to the mechanics. Players would stop and look down at their character sheet and ask themselves, “what combination of components will maximize my chance of success?”. It’s only slightly different, but I’d rather the question be framed as, “How can I take my most proficient Study and apply it to this situation?”. I believe it encourages creativity.
Having fewer mechanical options on the page puts the players in a different mindset. Part of the reader’s suggestion is about incentivizing players to invest in a variety of Components, but I would rather see them get creative with the limited range of powers they have.
While I appreciate the constructive feedback, and the opportunity to think through it, I’m going to take a different path. I didn’t intend on spending so much time responding to this idea, but I also wanted to give it the attention I thought it deserved.
If YOU have a comment here’s a button for that:
Until Next Time
I welcome your feedback and constructive criticism as I continue to develop this. Feel free to comment. Otherwise, I hope to see you again soon with Part 6 of this series where I’ll work out character advancement mechanisms. Cheers!