No.386332 [Last50 Posts]
>Magic’s limits are often as important as the capabilities
>—at least, they are for making things interesting.
>Consider Unknown Armies. (It’s another game I worked on.)
>Magick in Unknown Armies (yes, it’s got that K) is versatile and powerful, but has severe limits, too.
>One of the principal ones is this: Magick cannot override human will. It just can’t.
>It can make you want something, or fear something, it can take over your body... but it cannot make you choose.
>Only you choose.
>The central issue of Unknown Armies is personal character, so having an inviolate character was essential.
>Acting under duress or having your body act against your directions—all that raises questions of identity. If my arms strangle someone, am I a murderer? Even if I tried to stop them?
>When you’re building a game, see if you can identify magic uses that are poison to your central
concept.
>If I’m doing an exploration game, I don’t want magic to take the trouble out of travel. For a game of revenge, I don’t want the PCs to level up, learn the Spell of Phantom Stalking Doom, cast it on the main bad guy, and then have a light supper while the magic flits off to what should have been the climax of the game. A quest game won’t be fun if there’s simple magic that leads the PCs where they need to go—or that leads their enemies right to them.
REIGN, p. 149
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No.386336
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No.386338
>>386332
> What Can Magic Not Do?
In context of RPGs (and since it's RPG-relevant board not some "summon me tulpa to fuck because I'm too fucked up to find me a real girl) it all depends on the system, setting, personal needs and tastes of any group of players.
So, rather than drop some general concept and hope that it's gonna somehow evolve into a thread with 1000 likes, give some specific context, or, even better, form a more precise question. Then we talk.
Until then: "meh, it all depends".
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No.386351
>>386332
This thread is pretty awfully formatted, but the idea is interesting so I'll play ball. There are two answers to this question, depending on whether balance or flow is more important to the system/campaign.
>Magic can do exactly exactly what we say it does
You probably think of 3.PF upon reading this, but 4e also had its share of no-fun-allowed rules policing. When done poorly, this can lead to simulationist systems and players playing the game for the sake of the rules rather than using rules to play the game. I appreciate the idea of such systems, because the people who made them likely had a lot of fun imagining the way in which magic interacts with itself (the classic portable hole vs bag of holding scenario, for instance), but such specificity often leads to spell bloat, which I personally find unplayable.
Ironclaw actually has a great solution for this: low-level magic can conjure flame or move earth, and advanced magic summons lightning bolts or causes earthquakes. To prevent low-level magic from becoming obsolete, the rules specifically state advanced magic like fireballs "vanish too quickly to ignite anything, no matter how flammable." It's an obvious gameplay caveat, but I'd rather have that than a bunch of checks and balances which make the spells themselves impenetrable.
>Magic can do anything except violate common sense and ruin the game
I saw this in the Feng Shui 1e core rulebook. Feng Shui acknowledges the flow of the story as a real entity which must be preserved, and has many rules which follow this philosophy. The most blatant, and my personal favourite for just that reason, is how the GM is intended to treat players rules lawyering about what magic can/can't do.
>If the player makes a poor argument or tries to do something that would derail the plot, tell him no. If he continues to make the argument, let him try to do whatever he's arguing for, but have him fail the check without telling him the difficulty.
This is especially great because your player can still suffer magical backfire for even attempting something.
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No.386352
>>386332
>Consider Unknown Armies. (It’s another game I worked on.)
>Magick in Unknown Armies (yes, it’s got that K) is versatile and powerful, but has severe limits, too.
>One of the principal ones is this: Magick cannot override human will. It just can’t.
>It can make you want something, or fear something, it can take over your body... but it cannot make you choose.
>Only you choose.
>The central issue of Unknown Armies is personal character, so having an inviolate character was essential.
>Acting under duress or having your body act against your directions—all that raises questions of identity. If my arms strangle someone, am I a murderer? Even if I tried to stop them?
That sounds good, but it clashes with the depressing reality that most people at their core are will-less lemmings
>inb4 edgelord
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No.386370
>What can magic not do?
Be fully controlled or understood. Personally, I prefer that sort of answer. At that point, the question isn't what can magic not do, but what is the caster unable to do with magic? I'm also partial to the idea that magic is something someone must have a natural talent for and that unless you are born with the ability, you're not capable of learning it (unless maybe you sell your soul to demons or something of the like).
So magic cannot be fully understood or controlled. For that reason, it's dangerous. Dangerous for the caster and dangerous for those around him. How dangerous? Well, that depends on what the caster is trying to do. The more power the caster attempts to harness, the more dangerous it is if he loses control of his magic. If the caster is trying to do something small, like create an orb of light so he can see in a dark cave or passage, he might burn his hand. Or perhaps he creates several glowing orbs that start floating around randomly and alert anyone nearby to his presence. Or maybe his own clothes start to glow instead. The result is minor because the spell is minor, but whatever happens tends to be at least somewhat similar to what he was attempting to do. Tends to, not always - uncontrolled magic can do whatever the fuck uncontrolled magic wants to. On the other hand, let's say our caster us trying to split open the earth to destroy a castle's walls and loses control. He might split the ground under his own feet instead, or perhaps the force of the unrestrained magic tears him to pieces. Maybe he pours too much energy into it and the reshaping of the ground just doesn't stop. It could go on for days, even weeks, completely fucking up the area around the castle walls he attempted to destroy, leveling far more than the caster intended.
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No.386446
Pic related on magic going too far.
>>386332
IIRC, there's a superhero tabletop system where powers are "tiered" in what they can do. It was described pretty well so that no matter what whacky shit a player came up with, you'd be able to tier it and say what it cost to learn or start with.
So being able to punch so hard you could break a concrete slab would be 1, while being able to lift the equivalent weight of a skyscraper would be a 5.
With custom rules, you may want to use a similar system for magic or metamagic adjustments. I.e. generating a flash of fire akin to an incendiary grenade is a 1, while napaling an area the size of a city is a 5.
You've also got general balance rules to stop players doing OP shit.
> If you don't want players to kill it, don't stat it. If they're not immortal, make them smart and have them preped something that counters what a player just did. Or make them extremely good at dodging and GTFO of danger. Or give them a magical item that helps them flee or push back.
> If the spell is too powerful, take one off their roles when calculating checks. That way, you keep the player's ego when you assure they just got lucky, or you gave them easier enemies to flex on.
> As the OP post said in a way, Just say no or give it a higher chance of critical failure. Yes you have a lightning bolt that one-shots giants, but you can't aim it for shit. What makes it great is if you quietly fudge how it's calculated as the player levels up, you can give the illusion they learned to control the spell better.
>>386338
This also sort of touches on anime "power-ceilings".
Protagonists are usually weaker than the antagonist until they work out how to outwit them or fight better. A criticism of some anime is how powers can increase to such a ridiculous degree it comes off as parody (and the protagonist usually solves the problem by hitting them harder or believing in themselves,or a quick training montage to get stronger but not fight better).
There's nothing wrong if players want to escalate their magical abilities until they are god-like. The issue arises when they're escalating too fast and the DM is struggling to one-up himself.
It sounds iffy, but try to plan your player's growth as much as the campaign difficulty.
And give non-casters ways to grow beyond mortal as well.
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No.386470
>>386332
Setting dependent, but everything setting should have a few "rules" instead of just "magic is the answer" for anything.
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No.386473
>>386470
Good worldbuilding in magical fantasies settings naturally requires a good, internally consistent magic system that reflects and influences the rest of the setting.
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No.386478
>>386473
Exactly. The limitations are a major part of that, because the funny thing about limitations, is that they shape what people are going to work around. Physics tells us FTL isn't possible, so we dick around with shit and theorize as best we can about ways to get around that. If magic physics tells you that you can do everything but change the color of an object, then dammit, changing the color of something is now the #1 objective of at least half the wizards in the world, just so they can be the first one.
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No.386492
I actually like the idea of magic being something both universal and deeply personal.
What this means is that there is "common magic" which is your usual run-of-the-mill stuff - throwing fireballs around, calling down lightning and stuff like that. This magic is common because it's what your everyday Joe expects magic to be capable of - and because there's a lot of people expecting a wizard to throw fireballs around or call down lightning, everyone can eventually learn to do that. Now, the issue with this type of magic is that it's deeply dependent on what the people around you expect magic to be capable of - if you run into a mermaid culture, they won't have a clue what fire is, and so the potency of all fire-based spells is going to be diminished if not outright nonexistent. This also means that on dead worlds common magic simply does not work - there is nothing that actually believes in magic, and so magic doesn't exist.
On the other hand, you have magic that's deeply personalized. If you go insane enough, or committed enough to your own worldview, then the universe starts bending to your warped view of reality. And the best part? Your magic cannot be replicated - it's part of you, and only you can cast it. For example, if you go insane enough and decide to spite reality itself, congratulations - your magic field now is constantly active, and you're capable of altering fate and causality itself so that shit goes wrong for whomever you're spiteful against. This also means that your magic doesn't work if you don't have a target, or you're not actively fighting against someone else. Go mad enough, and you can spite Death itself - and become truly immortal in the process, except you'll still age and your body will start falling apart and all the stuff that goes along with being an undying madman. Or, if you really hate yourself, why not do everything to spite yourself? Go actively against your best interests, be as self-destructive as you can, and enjoy having limitless power at your fingertips - that you can never use for your own benefit.
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No.386550
I like the Dark Sun approach the most. Magic can do everything but it takes something from the world and power is limited by how much energy one can collect.
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No.386551
>>386332
>It can make you want something, or fear something, it can take over your body... but it cannot make you choose.
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No.386628
>>386332
In my OC Donutsteel setting, Magic is limited by where you can cast it. Major towns have some contraption to focus all the magic towards the center of the town so that it is actually in a high enough concentration to be used. essentially, if you're in the center of a city, you could cast 7th or 8th level spells, but you can't do anything in the middle of nowhere.
UNLESS you have some other magical powersource. The go-to in my setting is any remnant of the sun, which was cut into many pieces long ago.
It's sort-of like the difference between solar power and gas in a setting with no batteries.
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No.386649
>>386332
How about instead of limiting what magic USERS can do. Magic itself, being a force separate from nature, is not bound by natural physics and can do almost anything, but magic users can only utilize it in specific ways, perhaps because since they have no idea how it works and only figured out how to do the spells they can do through trial and error, in which the errors usually result in demons being summoned or the wizard in question vaporizing or some such things.
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No.386695
One option I like is to make magic just plain have a hefty "fuel" cost, mana or whatever, that comes from finite or difficult to create resources, to serve as the setting's equivalent of petroleum. More powerful spells take more fuel. Wizards are powerful, but really expensive, and that's why you don't just have a whole army of them. You can do an awful lot of stuff with magic, but due to the expense and difficulty of getting power for it, it's generally limited pretty strictly to military applications where the expense is justified. Nations fight over access to it; politics and alliances are heavily determined by maintaining its supply lines.
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No.387730
Make magic be weak/reduced by a metal of some kind or other kind of materials. For example, if I had a ton of lead by my side, it would take a stupidly powerful wizard to shoot something as simple as a magic missile.
You can also add other supernatural forces that can work as magic but technically aren't. Magic should also rely on gods of some kind, and they would require prayers and sacrifices/tributes to please them and keep their powers, while taking in account that these gods will also make their followers follow a set of behavioral, moral and societal rules. Treat it as a list of "sins", if you will. This makes it different from something like psychic powers, which, although simpler in nature (doing shit like "push", "mind slash", "mind bullet", "protective forcefield" or "mind control" [late game-tier]), do not rely on gods, but just the user. Hell, you could even make a psychic magician if you want with this system I'm coming up with. I should also remark that these "psychic spells" will also stress the user mentally, leading to insanity or even mental retardation if overdone (attacking with mind attacks when your stamina points/gauge is dry) or trying to do a very strong yet dangerous "mind spell".
While psychic powers rely on the user's own stamina, intelligence and sanity, magical power should be restored by doing favors to gods like those I have mentioned before. Magic like dark magic, necromancy or lycanthropy should be very powerful if done right, but they should always be scorned by society, except for some exceptions, (characters that are necromancers or furfags won't really hate each other at first sight.) and also be very risky in nature (getting possessed by a lich, turning into a werewolf permanently that can't barely control himself...).
In my opinion, this is how magic should be done. This way it is both more balanced, fun, and can add depth to the lore the GM may set regarding the gods that give these powers to these magicians, quarrels that have happened between them and relations within these types of magicians. For example, fire magicians hate water magicians because their god is a fucking cunt that decided to ruin fire god's fine ass Cuban cigar with his quirt gun while he was happily smoking it. Water magicians hate earth magicians because the earth god was an inconsiderate fuck who planted a lot of plants near the water god's cool fishing lake, leaving it completely dry, earth magicians hate wind magicians because that faggot wind god blew earth god's garden until every crop was destroyed, and wind god hates fire god because that cunt used the winds his cool machines generated to spread terror upon the town and he ended up getting the blame. The options are many with this "system" of mine. You lads think it's cool and slick, or shit-tier?
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No.387900
Fighting Fantasy used LIFE points as a resource for spells. This implies that if you cast too high level a spell, you could kill yourself. A rather serious drawback.
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No.387910
>>386332
Sanderson's Second Law Of Magic.
«Limitations are more important than abilities.»
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No.387936
>>386338
Tulpa's are still mental beings so even though you risk your soul and yourself it's not really physical contact.
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No.387954
>>386446
>pic
What they should have tried is find a high level mage to control a skeleton so he can try and fight the wave of bones. He would become fucking god emperor if it worked but at least the world would be saved.
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No.387977
>>387954
I rather thought the problem with the presence of an actual exponential increase without it being dispersed in the first few iterations
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No.387994
>>387730
>Make magic be weak/reduced by a metal of some kind or other kind of materials. ...
>You can also add other supernatural forces that can work as magic but technically aren't. Magic should also rely on gods of some kind, ...follow a set of behavioral, moral and societal rules. Treat it as a list of "sins", if you will. This makes it different from something like psychic powers, which, although simpler in nature (doing shit like "push", "mind slash", "mind bullet", "protective forcefield" or "mind control" [late game-tier]), do not rely on gods, but just the user. Hell, you could even make a psychic magician if you want with this system I'm coming up with. I should also remark that these "psychic spells" will also stress the user mentally, leading to insanity or even mental retardation if overdone (attacking with mind attacks when your stamina points/gauge is dry) or trying to do a very strong yet dangerous "mind spell".
>While psychic powers rely on the user's own stamina, intelligence and sanity, magical power should be restored by doing favors to gods like those I have mentioned before.
Everything above this line is gold. Everything below this line, I don't understand.
>Magic like dark magic, necromancy or lycanthropy should be very powerful if done right, but they should always be scorned by society, except for some exceptions, (characters that are necromancers or furfags won't really hate each other at first sight.) and also be very risky in nature (getting possessed by a lich, turning into a werewolf permanently that can't barely control himself...).
What the ...? So "dark" means "anything that doesn't fit the GM's idea of the campaign world"? I'm probably misunderstanding you.
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No.388011
>>387994
Yeah the furfag part really throws off what the point is, I assume it's the usual dark as in blood rituals, doing terrible things to the soul, and powers that could make you go into a murderous rage turning you into a danger to everyone around you and so on.
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No.388111
>>387994
Not sure if I'd call it gold. "Magic weakened/reduced by metal" in particular strikes me as being dumb. Certain materials being highly resistant to it, sure, but magic weakening just because that material is nearby? If we're talking about mundane materials like metal, that's just dumb.
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No.388121
>>388111
Pure metals like silver and gold have always been attributed with mystical properties, and in Ghostbusters radiation is every ghost's weakness so you can throw in radioactive materials. I'd go further and make the metal above silver in the periodic table, copper, also having magical properties but nobody pays attention to that cause it's just copper.
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No.388126
>>388121
Mystical properties, sure, but making them nullify magic still strikes me as dumb. Let's take silver for example... Silver was considered an incredibly pure metal. It being used in mirrors and early cameras is the reason behind the bit of vampire folklore about them having no reflection and not appearing in film. So if silver is pure, you could logically give it properties that make it anathema to the impure and unholy. Is magic impure and unholy? Maybe. That's very much something that varies by setting. Typically, some forms of magic are (demonology and necromancy most commonly), but not all forms of magic. The next question is just how strong are the purification properties of silver? For the presence of a sufficient amount of silver to be enough to weaken magic - even if we're only talking about "dark" magic, it would have to be pretty damn strong, and this is where it gets silly. If I keep a pouch full of silver coins on me, do I gain a degree of resistance to magic? If a cult is attempting to summon a demon, could I disrupt their ritual by throwing the coins at them? If a king has earned the ire of a sorcerer, is he safe as long as he stays in his treasury? If you give it any noteworthy anti-magic properties, it just gets ridiculous fast.
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No.388144
I tend towards the idea that "magic" is something of a blanket term. One know-it-all wizard might hear of something another wizard did and say "that's bullshit, magic doesn't work like that," because they have a very narrow understanding of what magic is. I tend to operate on the idea that magic is just the partial compatibility of other universes' (or planes') laws of nature. People who manage to harness these outworldly laws are performing "magic".
I find this approach to be pretty useful for setting tight limits to magic's capabilities while still allowing for a lot of variety and mystique. I tend towards low-profile magic worlds with room for skepticism. A pyromancer can't necessarily throw fireballs out of nowhere, but they can manipulate the spread of flames or give you third-degree burns with a simple handshake.
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No.388186
>>388126
>If you give it any noteworthy anti-magic properties, it just gets ridiculous fast.
Then all mythology is ridiculous because most of the answers to your hypotheticals is one pure silver coin, especially the demon rituals.
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No.388218
>>388126
>If you give it any noteworthy anti-magic properties, it just gets ridiculous fast.
Why? Why is it ridiculous that a silver amulet makes you immune to magic? Magic itself is ridiculous. Let it have an equally bullshit counter. Stop thinking in D&D.
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No.388240
>>388218
It's ridiculous because while silver is valuable, it's not exactly super rare. If magic is real and dangerous, why wouldn't every single person who could afford it have a silver amulet that makes them immune. It utterly trivializes something that should by all rights be an unknowable and to most folk, utterly terrifying force that violates all understanding of how the world works. An amulet that happens to be made of silver that protects you from magic is one thing. Any amulet made of silver because silver is just so damn special by itself means that unless you're a dirt farmer you've got nothing to worry about.
For the record, I'm not thinking in D&D. I've never even played D&D. I got into /tg/ through wargaming and tried a few other RP systems, but I feel D&D has too much of a "throw it all in" approach to the standard campaign settings for my taste, and also don't like how common magic is. My entire viewpoint re: magic is that it should be rare, powerful, dangerous to wield, and poorly understood even by those who can harness it.
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No.388249
>>388240
>why wouldn't every single person who could afford it have a silver amulet that makes them immune.
Why not? People get vaccines for shit. Maybe the rich put silver in all of their armor, and adventurers silver swords to fight magical things.
>magic is that it should be rare, powerful, dangerous to wield, and poorly understood even by those who can harness it.
Why? Because you like it that way? Magic doesn't need to be jack shit. If you're trying to replicate a medieval fantasy setting, you definitely don't want it to be. For the longest fucking time, people never depicted magic as throwing fireballs and shit - You don't summon a demon to fight, you summon it to teach you math or botany or some other shit. For the record, if you think silver is "too common", consider that for centuries people believed that iron was the ultimate defense against magic things.
Further, your points about rarity, power, danger to wield, and being poorly understood are completely senseless to the discussion. Magic being easy to counter does not make it rare, nor does it make it less dangerous (for instance, summoning something means not having any silver around, making you susceptible to possession or worse from a fuck up). It certainly doesn't make it easy to understand. And as for power - knowledge is power. If direct harm is needed, you can still make crops in the fields wilt, or otherwise cause havoc. Healing is still a possibility - being able to treat diseases and such is a pretty big deal. Or you can kill a healer, replace him, and kill his vulnerable patients. Monsters don't necessarily know better - You can charm a Roc or something and have it drop stones on a city from on high, where silver can't cock-block your actions. There's a massive host of possibilities, but you need to look at it through a lens more complex than "make people go boom boom".
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No.388251
>>388240
Dresden Files did it with Iron and our fair cousins really, really hate humans and want them dead because they can't enter cities freely but they're still dangerous and doesn't entirely stop their meddling, either.
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No.388473
>>388011
By furfag I meant wizard that has shapeshifting powers ala lycanthropy.
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No.388476
>>388111
I used lead as an example, but the metal I'm mentioning should be expensive and soft, so anti-magical weaponry should be quite crappy to fight something like an actual armed warrior. I used a "ton of lead" because lead is relatively expensive and the bigger the amount (in this case a fucking ton) the more effective it's anti-magical properties are. Such huge amount can't be carried by a man or a beast, but you could build lead fortresses/vehicles/tanks to protect yourself against magical warriors/battle mages/magic artillery. Some metals are better than others in reflecting/absorving/canceling magic. Stuff like lead, copper and steel can only have effect in huge amounts of said material, but stuff more expensive like really pure gold, silver, or platinum are way stronger, so you can make tools out of them that can deal with mages that aren't amateurs. You feel me?
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No.388480
>>387994
Forgot to say that by dark magic I mean magic that is focused in lies and deceiving your opponent and other kind of things socially considered as evil. Sacrificing people is a bad thing, and it would give you favor with the dark lord/god that you put in this universe, for example.
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No.388487
CONTINUATION OF MY AUTISTIC RAMBLING ABOUT MAGIC, PSYCHICS AND ANTI-MAGIC MATERIALS
A way I just came up for a light mage (priest of light) to get "godly favors" is by literally spreading the awareness of the light god through mass. If he does the ritual of mass, which is actually considered a ritual (at least considered in catholocism) he will get favors from the light god. The more people attend mass, the more he gets. He'll also get some money from the donations that the attenders offer, if they do.
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No.391239
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No.391532
>>388144
> I tend to operate on the idea that magic is just the partial compatibility of other universes' (or planes') laws of nature. People who manage to harness these outworldly laws are performing "magic".
I like that idea.
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No.391533
One idea for a setting I once had was that magic can not achieve things which the caster himself can not actually imagine. Casting a fire spell underwater hence would be very difficult because it defies conventional logic, and teleportation/portal spells likewise won't work unless the caster already has been to the place he wants to visit at least once (or you get someone who's been there to cast the spell for you).
At the same time, this issue can be circumvented by the used of assorted mind-altering drugs, even if this comes with the notable risk of having you do something which you severely regret later on.
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No.391537
>>391533
>The Fool is the greatest Magician
Scary. Imagine someone so intensively naive as to think they can literally reach the stars, or hold the moon.
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No.391542
>>391537
>tfw you're too autistic to understand death so you accidentally invent immortality.
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No.391544
>>391533
That would ultimately make it even more broken.
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No.391547
>>386332
Sadly, this kind of vague question that only has one clear answer: It depends.
It depends on the system, it depends on the setting, it depends on how you envision the nature of magic and the metaphysical rules of the fictional universe of the story you are telling. Ideally, you will have some rules and structures in place, and even if those rules still just boil down to "it's magic." those rules are still important, because as others have pointed out, what magic can't do in a given situation or setting is often more important than what it can't do.
Since every magic system can be quite different, I'd say the only universal rule for magic should be that magic cannot create more magic. No perpetual energy devices. No using a 5th level spell to loophole your way to a 9th level spell. No casting spells that allow you to cast more spells than you would normally. I wouldn't go so far as to say equivalent exchange because the caster can come up short for their effort, just that nothing a magic user does granting them more power than is supplied in the use of the magic.
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No.391621
>>386332
Depends were the magic comes from doesn't it?
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No.391623
>>391544
If you've never seen fire burn underwater before then how do you know how it'd workout underwater? Then you've got your deepest fears and the power of Listen and Believe, because it is powered by belief exploiting the wholes in that logic is also how you win.
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No.393642
>>391623
By this system all powerful wizards are literally just a bunch of easy-to-fool schizos. Sounds lame.
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No.393659
>>391533
>>391537
The best casters would be druids or barbarians because they would have almost no formal understanding of the physics the magic violates. This would create a justification for a conflict between magic and technology. In order to build better tech you have to understand the physics, but understanding the physics makes it harder to do magic. Taken to it's logical conclusion you'd have high-tech peoples who are totally unfamiliar with magic and high-magic people with near-zero understanding of materialism. They'd be tremendously alien to each other, to the degree of eldritch horrors.
>>391542
>>391544
>>391623
>>393642
You guys realize that "You can't do what you can't imagine" is different from "You can do anything you can imagine," right?
p -> q =/= !p -> !q
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No.393683
>>393659
It's still Mary Sue-ish and dumb as fuck.
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No.393698
in a world dominated by mentally limited folk. magic like that could work but it wouldn't be realistic for everybody to be like that.
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No.393919
>>391533
>specialized wizards being raised to stay as retarded as humanly possible throughout life
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No.393929
>>393919
The idea was more that Elder wizards would increasingly dangerous to the general public, partially because they simply had so much experience with all things arcane, and partially because they would continuously go batshit insane as they realized they could things that they shouldn't be able too.
Imagine how scary a Crossbreed between a Malkavian and a powerful wizard would be.
At the same time, it is equally possible that certain natural laws might take major offense at you trying to fuck with them, and will promptly fuck you right back.
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No.393937
>>393659
>p -> q =/= !p -> !q
I am glad that you brought logic into all of this because I am massively autistic when it comes to mathematical logic and I have no safe space in which to vent my autism.
The issue of what can be imagined is perceived very differently by different authorities. Some people think that there is a naive realism that limits reality. Other people think that anything that is logically consistent can become physically real, and thus true mastery of logic is equivalent to true mastery of reality.
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No.393938
>>393659
The major problem with RPG systems that attempt to put rules on subjective reality is that the player of RPGs are seldom truly sincere. The players often claim to be friends who want to have fun together, but often they truly hate each other. Thus they find it difficult to honestly admit when they are arguing at cross-purposes and they cannot resolve their differences because they operate from axioms that cannot be compared meaningfully.
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No.393964
>>393929
>The idea was more that Elder wizards would increasingly dangerous to the general public,
They'd become emotionally crippled from the abuse, nevermind schizos they'd be borderline sociopaths and animal children. Sociopaths especially have at least one thing that ensures they will be pissed and hate you forever if you do it because they are made by the environment (psychopaths are born that way), and only be satisfied with revenge. Any platitudes is just seen as an easy way out and merely lessen the revenge until he comes back cause he wasn't satisfied.
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No.394048
>>391533
My system uses something similar: Magic users are born with innate understandings of physical laws that either don't exist or are just unknowable to mundane humans. They can write down these "concepts" to create a single use spell that's limited by the reader's understanding.
The flip side is that reason will negate an effect so if someone is a quick thinker their reaction to a fireball is "oh shit... wait a second, that doesn't make sense" which will lessen or stop the spell. The human empire uses these magic users as batteries after lobotomizing them but has to hide the mage behind a lot of complex looking machinery because the skepticism of workers will harm the efficacy of the battery.
These magic users (Cursed) are inherently dangerous, they could flash broil a cow or drown a human in ambient moisture very easily. Their broken perspective from being trapped between two different versions of reality makes them completely insane in a cuckoolander sort of way.
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No.394438
>>394048
Hmm, I can understand this. Maybe add a "common sense" stat that acts as a magic defense kind of thing.
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No.397149
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No.397197
utility magics >>>>> any other magic
cave with dangerous dragon? use Telekinesis to collapse the ceiling.
want to collect the loot though? use Creation to make a 500 ft cube of lead land on its head.
need to raid a castle? use Move Earth to destroy its foundations
facing an army? use Glyph with Insanity on a bouncy ball, watch them kill themselves trying to catch it.
playing a high level character? True Polymorph a seige cannon into a shield, have fun when your DM throws you that beholder with antimagic rays.
tired of wandering monsters? Create Homunculus, send it to your destination while you and your friends hang out in the tavern, then Teleport when it arrives.
Want a sexy new body? use Magic Jar on that enemy barbarian, cast Death Ward on yourself, disintegrate your old frail wizard body and eat the ashes, then destroy the jar.
Want to kill the Tarrasque? Summon Allips to put its Int to 0, then use Unseen Servants to fill the comatosed Tarrasque’s nose/mouth with dirt, and watch it suffocate to death.
Want to kill the Kraken? Polymorph it into a camel, then Disintegrate/Powerword Kill it. When the camel’s HP drops to 0 the Kraken dies. Who’s bright idea was it to not give the Kraken legendary saves?
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No.397199
>>397197
>putting telekinesis in the magic tres instead of the psychic tree
Please read the thread.
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No.397219
Magic should be either unpredictable or depend on right materials and/or symbols and other things of value, and own skill, as the power comes not from caster but from their ability to understand or grasp the force of nature that is arcane forces. A wizard would then have to depend on odd trinkets and fluctuating and unpredictable but powerful force. Magic could be limited by it's own laws, or by amount of energy or materia that powers it being nearby.
The divine, nature spirit or demon given magic should be it's own, separate category that depends entirely on caster's contract with beings, with different pacts of multiple tiers, each with more strict rules. A god's basic pact may just involved basic magic but only involves following the basic commandments, while advanced spell giving pact will require to go on eternal mission, serving god's goals in some way. Basic nature spirit pact may require not harming natural creatures whereas advanced one will call for active protection and rooting out of all the proactive poachers and foresters. Basic demonic pact just involve some sort of regular offering that while requiring to do questionable things can be more or less neutral, like providing offering of stolen money and goods, although nothing stops you from robbing the evil merchant, or sacrificing rabid animals or violent criminals to the demon. More advanced demonic pacts would require things that are straight up wrong, you have to steal from impoverished and starving, hurt the innocent, defile the pure. The limitations would come from following the rules of contract and only using powers in ways the source of power would approve of.
Psychic powers should be apart from magical force, instead relying on development or natural aptitude. Think something like shaolin monk techniques, plus supernatural mind powers. You have born aptitude for this, or develop it trough years of meditation or practice. The source of power if your own mind, body and soul, so you're not dependent on outside force, but you must not overexert your body, and the more basic effects aren't as overtly magical or powerful as those of magicians or pact followers.
Alchemy, supernatural powered mad science, aether and morphic field science or whatnot should, being more or less scientific, thus be about predictable, reliable results. In a world where magic is a wild force, there could still be consistent rules magic always follows that could be exploited. It's pretty hard to distinguish a magician from a magic scientist when both depend on some items and own knowledge, but considering scientists rely on their equipment way more, you could argue they abandon the finesse that is controlling magic yourself in favor of more consistent straightforward results. Plus, there's a greater dependence on material, and where wizards may invoke symbolic value, scientists would rely full on physical properties of materials. So a wizard may fend off the lightning bolt with a golden pendant that has symbols of five lightning associated gods, the name of legendary hero who survived lightning unscathed, whereas scientist just puts on a lead suit or rubber boots. Mechanically this could mean scientists create or modify items that take up armor or other "major" slots, whereas mages concentrate on accessory slots - this would both allow synergy and make them distinct.
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No.397226
>>397219
What about warrior classes? How can they not get their asses kicked by supernatural stuff.
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No.397233
>>397226
>What about warrior classes? How can they not get their asses kicked by supernatural stuff.
We will make a new rule system, where the only warriors are called "grogs" and exist as bodyguards for the real player characters. And we will call this system "Ars Magica."
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No.397237
>>397233
>System centered around only 1 type of class.
Fucking gay. A good system should allow warriors, thieves, magic dudes and intellectual classes like strategists, lore-masters, bards, engineers...
That way gameplay, lore and roleplay can get deeper, and becomes funnier and better.
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No.397239
>>397237
>not knowing Ars Magica
Come on, anon.
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No.397243
>>397239
So it was an epic meme response?
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No.397244
>>397243
are you literally autistic? asking for a friend
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No.397253
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No.397254
>>397243
Shoot yourself for posting like a fag.
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No.409127
>>386332
>Magic’s limits are often as important as the capabilities
According to Sanderson’s Second Law, more important.
>If I’m doing an exploration game, I don’t want magic to take the trouble out of travel. For a game of revenge, I don’t want the PCs to level up, learn the Spell of Phantom Stalking Doom, cast it on the main bad guy, and then have a light supper while the magic flits off to what should have been the climax of the game.
That's one of he reasons why such things usually are both limited and given countermeasures in settings where they are standard.
The other is that otherwise one spell may start affecting balance of power too much. While "everything about one gimmick" can be good for one-shot books, anything longer than that risks to either overgraze the gimmick or simply get tiresome.
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No.409260
>>409127
>Spell of Phantom Stalking Doom
That is a sweet name for a spell and you can could make a whole campaign out of hunting for that one spell.
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No.409290
>>388240
You're forgetting that any world with magic is a foreign setting, which is not our world.
In our world, on Earth, silver may be rather common, but that's not a given for every world. Even if it isn't rare, there can always be an in-universe explanation why it isn't commonly used, or is hard to acquire, like perhaps the laws of the land or dangerous cartels or whatever. A magical theocracy, for example, would certainly hoard silver to make sure the plebs don't hold that shit, right?
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No.411198
>>409260
>That is a sweet name for a spell and you can could make a whole campaign out of hunting for that one spell.
>The real Phantom Stalking Doom is the friends we made and lessons we learned along the way
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No.416991
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No.416993
Test post, please ignore or delete.
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No.417007
>>386332
It depends on the setting and its source really.
Generally speaking, magic is anti-rational in nature. It's foundation rests in old real world belief systems like voodoo, the tarot, dreams, mind altering substances, religion and other mystical beliefs/traditions.
That's the base from which the idea of magic comes from.
Some settings then attempt to place logical restrictions on it (ie: reality will push back if you aren't careful, like mage in VtM).
Other settings suggest the source of it is nefarious in nature (Chaos in Warhammer).
Some settings base it on cycles (Earthdawn and Shadowrun ).
It all depends on the setting and its source, and therefore the limits on magic are inexorably liked to that source.
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No.417307
>>386332
Whatever the DM says is can not do, it can not do.
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