hy another magic system? Well, simple really. We wanted the magic system in our role playing game to have several properties:
hy another magic system? Well, simple really. We wanted the magic system in our role playing game to have several properties:
speed and ease of use
mages who tire and die as a result of spellcasting
mages that can perform simple tasks with magic without too much energy
duelling mages, with chances to counter spells, etc.
powerful spells cast by solitary mages over the course of months, invoking fell energies and performing hugely powerful sorceries.
AD&D has the first of these properties, but lacks the others, which we felt seriously robbed the serious roleplayer of much of the color of traditional magic.
Anaams is based on a manna system, and dynamic spell effects are calulated by the game master at spell casting time. Eventually, some tables will be provided which help in determining spell effects for various manna expenditures. Traditional AD&D spells have been maintained, in part, by complex spells, but these are intended to be very rare in most game worlds, and are difficult and dangerous to cast.
The core of Anaams are the what learned scholars call the schools of magic. There is a large number of these schools, many of them unknown to man, or merely rare and dangerous knowledge.
The most common schools, known to most apprentices and common mages, are:
earth - the powers of creating and manipulating earth and soil, summoning earthquakes, landslides, and the like.
air - the powers of creating and controlling wind, air, and breezes, this school empowers mages to fly books across rooms and summon terrible tornadoes to seek out and destroy their enemies. (and for the exceptionally talented, both at the same time!)
fire - the power to create and control flame and fire, heat up and chill objects and fluids, and destroy your enemies with mighty gouts of flame.
water - the power to create, control, and understand water and watery things. Waterspouts, jets of wet vengeance, and dancing tears are the realm of the water mage.
These four are the most commonly known and understood. There are others, slightly more esoteric, but still not unheard-of.
light - the power to manipulate light and cause entertaining children with visions of things which are not there, as well as wreak horrible blindnes on your enemies.
lightning - not to be confused with light, this is the power of manipulating those fell bolts of energy that fall from the heavens in the worst of storms. The ability to channel these bolts in useful directions, call down bolts from the heavens, and create bolts from nothing are all province of the lightning mage.
plants - this is the power of altering and communing with those green companions of ours on this green earth. Plants that grow unnaturally quickly and that uproot themselves from the ground to do the bidding of humans in the area are not uncommon sights around an advanced plant mage.
animals - the realm of nonsentient animals is the realm of the animal mage.
Thirdly, there are the schools which are somewhat well-known, but almost never studied, both because they are difficult as well as treacherous. These schools include:
space - this is the school of warping and shaping the very space we live in. Beware, though: many who follow this path open gateways to places mortals cannot survive and worse.
time - this is the strange and mysterious realm of the chronomancer, he who walks between eras as swiftly as one walking to the butcher to pick up a string of sausages. Many horrible dangers await the unwary.
Finally are the extremely rare schools, seldom heard of except from ancient, crumbling tomes or drunk merchants. These are those schools too dangerous, too difficult, or too useless for normal men to follow them. No one knows how many schools of magic there are.
Manna is the energy which surrounds and pervades us, fills and animates us, and the energy which powers magic. The exact nature of manna is a mystery, even to powerful theoretical mages, who babble things about strings and particles and waves, but the details are complex and unnecessary to the practicing mage.
For each school of magic in which a mage is proficient, the mage has a manna pool. This pool is some structure deep within the mage's life force, and houses a quanitity of manna from that school. When a spell requiring energy from, for example, the earth school is cast, the amount of earth manna that the mage has been storing in his earth manna pool is drained by the amount of manna reqiured to cast the spell.
This manna is regained over time, at a rate determined by the environment in which the mage is travelling. For example, if one is travelling across an open plain, a mage might regain a single unit (known commonly as a nell) of fire manna per day. When in the heart of a volcano, however, the mage might regain three or four nells of fire manna per day.
The mage's manna pools are also of limited size. Once a pool fills up, any extra environmental manna merely washes off of the mage's life force, and is lost.
Manna can be manipulated by the mage in order to cast spells. These spells have effects which are related to the nature of the school of magic. For example, a mage expending wind manna may choose to cause a book to levitate across the room into his hand. He could do this again and again, provided that the air manna in his air manna pool lasted. Then he would have to rest until his pool replenished.
When a mage weaves energies from several schools of magic together, she is casting what is known as a complex spell. This is differentiated from a simple spell, in which the mage draws upon only a single school of magic for her purposes.
Complex spells are more difficult to cast, but can be considerably more powerful. Unfortunately, their difficulty and power combined make them very dangerous to cast.
Normal, simple, spells can be effected using only the will of the spellcaster. The spellcaster uses the manna from the appropriate school to manipulate the element he wishes into complacence, then performs his task. The concentration and mental discipline required to weave together energy from several schools is considerable, and is rarely accomplished without visual aids, props, verbal and somantic gestures, and helpers. With these aids, the spellcaster can focus clearly enough upon the intricate strands of manna, and can effect his spell.
Also, using complex spells, a spellcaster can use more manna for a single spell than she can normally store in her manna pools. Since a complex spell takes a significant amount of time to cast, the mage can channel more energy into the spell as she regains it from the environment. In this way, very complex spells can be built up. To store the energy, however, external objects, diagrams, or helpers must be used, or else the built-up manna would just waft away into the ether.
Complex spells are typically found in rare old tomes, and are very difficult to research on one's own. Typically researching of new complex spells is a pastime left to madmen and the extremely powerful. Any spell requires that the spellcaster have minimum capacities in various school-specific manna pools, or the spell simply cannot be cast. Any proficient mage, however, can attempt to cast one of these spells, if this important prerequisite is met. The consequences of failure of a spell, however, can be death, dismemberment, and worse.
Ok, ok. Enough flavor and color for Anaams. On to the "meat": the rules and mechanics that make it playable. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress, and that any flaws and imbalances in this system are due to its relative infancy and my own wooden-headedness.
Also keep in mind that all of these rules are meant to be integrated into a home-brewed variant of Advanced Dungeons&Dragons gaming system by Wizards of the Coast. We play a fairly loose game in our group, and aren't as worried about game balance and the like, since we don't hesitate to alter the game to make sure that everybody's having fun. If something gets out of hand, and the group agrees, we remove it. I advocate this as a useful and entertaining way of playing all role playing games.
There are a number of new attributes required to make this magic system go. They are based on a slight variation of the AD&D proficiency system, which I will now describe.
To advance in our campaign, the game master simply stops the game at a likely point, and (considering the actions and accomplishments of each character, as well as the character's player's wishes, as well as the character's current stats) arbitrarily assigns ability advancements to each character in the adventuring party.
This system seems to work well, and solves many of the problems found in traditional, rule-centric approaches, in which attributes advance too quickly or too slowly, have artificial and unbelievable limits, etc (as long as you have a good game master!). It also allows proficiency scores to advance over time, which make up the core of this sytem. It is still experimental, however, so if you choose to partake in it, be careful of game balance, etc.
Our modified proficiency system has one other interesting feature
which is necessary for our discussion of Anaams: derived
proficiencies. A derived proficiency is a proficiency
defined in terms of another proficiency. For example, a proficiency
derived from the cooking proficiency could be a cooking
beans proficiency. If one's score in cooking was 10, for
example, and one's cooking beans proficiency was defined as
cooking - 5, then one's effective proficiency at
cooking beans would be 5. If one worked on cooking beans in
particular, one might be able to modify it to become cooking
- 4 (i.e. - 6). If one worked on becoming better at
cooking, one might modify one's cooking score to be 11, and the
cooking beans proficiency would increase to 6 automatically.
This is a very powerful proficiency system, and works in conjunction with arbitrary advancement. It is useful for expressing things like weapon proficiency groups, etc, simply and easily.
There are several proficiencies and attributes required to make Anaams go. They are listed here.
Magic Use (initial: 2, unproficient: 0)- Also known as "the art" and "chanelling", this proficiency normally starts at a skill of 2. This is the skill base for all school-specific magical manipulation proficiencies.
School-specific Magic (initial: magic use - 2, unproficient: 0)- there is one of these proficiencies for each school of magic. Thus, there is a Fire Magic proficiency, a Water Magic proficiency, a Time Magic proficiency, etc.
To cast a spell, first the player must announce to the game master his intention to cast a spell, how many manna points will be expended, and what the desired effect will be. The player must then roll a 20-sided die, and try to roll below his school-specific proficiency subtract the number of manna points expended.
Example - Wilf Lackheartson, a simple fire mage, wishes to fill a room with fire. He decides to spend 4 nells of fire manna on his task. He has a fire magic proficiency of 6. Therefore, he needs to roll a (6 - 4) == 2 or lower. He rolls, and gets an 11. He has failed. Hopefully he can counter the ill effect he has created by accident better than filling the room with flame.
School-specific Manna Pools - This is a new attribute which represents the amount of manna the mage has left in a given school. There is one such pool associated with each school-specific magic proficiency held by the mage. Manna pools start off with 1 point, but as the mage becomes more proficient, may gain the ability to store more manna. This manna is replenished with time, depending on one's environment. The amount of manna in a pool represents the maximum amount of manna the mage can expend during the casting of a single spell. This manna is removed from the pool during the casting of a spell. When a manna pool is emptied, no more spells can be cast from that school until it has been replenished in some way.
(Note: what about falling unconscious, etc? How much manna can one expend while still being conscious and sane?)
As stated previously, manna will eventually return to the spellcaster. This is a natural process, and will normally occur no matter what the spellcaster is doing. Manna is restored while asleep, fighting, even casting spells.
In a normal environment, and for a normal school of magic, manna is restored to each manna pool the spellcaster has at the rate of 1 nell of manna per day. That is, for every full day and night, 1 nell of manna is added to each of the spellcaster's manna pools.
The rate of manna recovery is highly dependent on the environment in which the mage is inhabiting. For example, windy mountain peaks typically have a high concentration of wind manna, and so the rate of wind manna recovery is higher there. The actual rate of manna recovery in these places is widely varying, and is entirely up to the game master. The rate of manna recovery of a specific place can vary over time (coastal cities typically have water manna concentrations in the air which reflect the tides).
There exist areas which are magic rich, where the manna recovery rates are very high (like volcanoes, the depths of the ocean, wind-swept mountain peaks, and the like), and there are other regions in which magic is very rarified. These latter places are known as dead magic zones, and are the bane of spellcasters, and the boon of their enemies. In these regions, no recovery of magic is possible. It is also whispered of other places, where the land's revulsion to magic is so strong that it is impossible to cast spells at all. Even if a mage had stored manna, he would be unable to effectively shape it into a spell. Luckily these magic poor and magic-sapping regions are quite rare.
There are other ways, it is said, that manna can be recovered. Some dark mages are able to sap the life force of helpless humans, drawing it directly into their manna pools. Magical items are said to exist that can increase one's manna recovery rate, or occasionally fill all one's manna pools to overflowing. Other things are said, but most of them are rare. Most mages must make do with the natural recovery system described above.
Magic is a very complex and dangerous task, and attempting to learn it on one's own, while possible, is probably unwise. Not only is the eager student unlikely to learn anything useful, but he will probably kill himself if he does find something out accidentally. It becomes clear that a teacher is necessary.
Luckily, there exist mages who are willing to take on an apprentice for a while. The price they exact from their pupils varies. There are magical schools in which the wealthy can learn the mystical arts. Some solitary mages are willing to take on a pupil in exchange for manual labor, or quests for items. Some, more unscrupulous, mages take on pupils if the pupils are willing to partake in their nefarious magical experiments. It's usually unwise to traffic with the latter, but sometimes they know something you just can't learn any other way...
It becomes clear, very quickly, that for every mage in the world, there is a different payment scheme. There are a few things one can say about the actual training though.
To become a mage in the first place, to get initial training, is difficult, and not for everyone. First, the mage must have an intelligence of at least 9, and the higher the better. There are no specific rules for intelligence in this document, but the clever (or nasty) game master can probably come up with some consequences of being not too bright and attempting to bend the forces of nature to one's will.
The length of one's initial training depends very much on one's teacher: some teach more slowly than others, etc, but typically takes at least 4 or 5 years. At this point, the pupil is capable of wielding simple small magics, and most pupils decide to stay on with their teachers for a few more years before they become competent enough to go out on their own.
To progress in spellcasting ability after one's initial training, one has three choices.
One can attempt to learn on one's own. This is typically considered foolhardy and suicidal, but some amount of natural progression in spellcasting ability comes with practice. It is rare, however, that a powerful mage becomes very powerful on his own.
One can attend a teacher. This can be expensive, depending on the teacher, but is typically relatively safe. You are learning directly from somebody who can demonstrate technique and critique your own technique, and knows the challenges and dangers of each technique. Also, the more powerful mage can be standing by to take care of things which get out of hand.
One can learn from books. These books are typically rare and difficult to read and understand. Often they are old, and poorly translated, and in bad condition, so all of the words are not necessarily there or legible. This is where most advanced study must be done, however, since one might be a more skilled mage than any who might teach you. Only beware: some ancient mages laid traps in amongst their own writings, so that if their books fell into the wrong hands, hands that knew not which words were true and which were false, horrible consequences might fall upon the theif.
Priests use a related magical system, but its not entirely alike.
Instead of having seperate manna pools for various schools of magic, priests have a single manna pool: their life force. Through the power of their god, they are able to shape their life force into miracles.
Because they are using their life force, magic is more dangerous and immediate for preists. One has as manny nells of manna in one's life force as one has Constitution points. If one uses all one's life force manna up, one dies.
Recovery of life force manna is slow and painful. If reduced to less than one half of his life force manna, the priest must be cared for abed, or risk losing all of his life manna altogether. If cared for appropriately, life force manna is recovered one point at a time, each point taking a certain amount of time to recover, as depicted by this table.
If bed rest is not taken, life manna heals at half the speed that this table describes. If more than half of his life manna has been spent, a priest cannot move about without aid, and no healing will take place until bed rest is taken, and he heals over half of his original life manna again.
| Constitution Point | Days (bedrest) to Recover |
|---|---|
| 1 | 20 |
| 2 | 19 |
| 3 | 18 |
| 4 | 17 |
| 5 | 16 |
| 6 | 15 |
| 7 | 14 |
| 8 | 13 |
| 9 | 12 |
| 10 | 11 |
| 11 | 10 |
| 12 | 9 |
| 13 | 8 |
| 14 | 7 |
| 15 | 6 |
| 16 | 5 |
| 17 | 4 |
| 18 | 3 |
| 19 | 2 |
| 20 | 1 |
Table 1: Life Manna Recovery
Example - Polo Madrigal, an accomplished priest of the war god Ur, decides that he would like to smite his enemies with a powerful blast of celestial music. He screams taunts at his god, demanding that the god grant him the power to destroy these mere mortals with the power of his flesh, for the glory of Ur. Fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately, Polo razed a town in tribute to Ur the previous day, and the god decides that this worthy disciple should have his request granted.
Polo has decided to spend 12 constitution points on his task, since he has an entire army of opposing priests to smite. His god lets him have all 12, and the damage is devastating: pulped bodies fly through the air at close to the speed of sound as triumphant organ music propells them on their gory way. Polo, who only had 16 constitution points to begin with, slumps down to the ground like a sack of meal.
Luckily for Polo, his able and loyal manservant, Ig, was present on the battlefield, and managed to drag him to the safety of a nearby hovel. After killing the inhabitants, he begins to nurse his beloved master back to health. Since Polo is at a constitution of 4, to reach a constitution of 5, he must spend 16 days of rest. To get to 6, he must spend 15 days. Thus, to get to his original total of 16, he must spend 16+15+14+13+12+11+10+9+8+7+6+5 days, which comes to a grand total of (GM goes for his calculator) 126 days, over 4 months of bedrest. Probably Polo will insist on getting up and about as soon as he can walk (which he can do, after he has over half of his constitution points back, albeit with much difficulty). It will take 16+15+14+13=58 days before this is possible, which is still about 2 months.
If Polo hadn't felt so strongly about the situtation, he may have only spent a more reasonable 4 life points on his task. Then he would have only to spend 8+7+6+5=26 days before he would be at full health again, and he could continue on his journey, and be at full health, with no bed rest, in a mere 52 days (slightly less than 2 months).
(Is this reasonable? It's fairly harsh on priests, and makes magic use a rare and mysterious thing. It probably wouldn't suit high combat campaigns well. Perhaps halving the values in the table, depending on the game world in question?)
Life manna can be manipulated in various ways.
A god can help a priest to shape the life manna into a magical effect, as described above. It takes a long time to recover one's manna, if spent in this way. See the above table and examples!
One can transfer one's life force from one's self into another being or object. This is done through arcane rituals, not described here. As long as these objects are not destroyed, the priest cannot die. That is, his body can be destroyed, but his will and consciousness lives on in the objects or beings that his life manna is invested in.
This investiture does not give the priest any special powers, although if his god wills it, a priest could potentially cast spells from within objects after the death of his mortal frame.
Investing one's life into objects and beings is dangerous, and priests who practice it are prone to insanity.
Note that even if a priest invests his life in more than one being or creature, he still has only one consciousness. The more vessels his soul is poured into, the more seperate sets of stimuli he must endure. This also increases the odds of insanity.
Note also that if a priest inhabits an item such as a book or rod, unless it has special provisions, he won't be able to sense his surroundings. This can be quite horrible, if he has no parts of his sould in sensitive vessels, and also increases the risk of insanity.
It is possible, but not recommended, to rape the life force from an unwilling being, and use it for one's own purposes. Only the most reviled of priests perform this most horrible of ceremonies, and even the more violent and power-hungry faiths, such as Ur's priesthood from the examples, feel revulsion in the presence of these mere mortals. If that weren't enough to discourage the desirous of power, there are also special risks involved in the procedure.
Most gods will have no part in this ritual, and will as likely smite down a follower for considering this path seriously, as look at them.
Weaknesses, fears, diseases of the mind, and psychoses harbored by ones victims are filtered through the life-sucking priest as the process goes on. This, unless particularly pure victims are chosen (and who knows how pure anybody really is anyway?), the priest is gradually driven mad, and will probably eventually die, either by his own hand, or of "natural" causes: the various mental problems from assorted minds acting against one another and destroying the priest's mind in the process.
Priests also have no real "magical skill" per se. All they have is devotion to their god. Their god works through them. If they have been good priests, then the effects that they ask for will be granted, as long as the effect to be granted doesn't go against the will of the god - use some common sense. Also, the weaker the magical effect, the more likely it is that the god will grant it. For example, an effect requiring a single nell of manna will probably work except if the priest has been really really nasty. An effect requiring several nells of manna will probably only work if the priest has been particularly devout, performed the appropriate sacrifices, and, for very high manna-cost effects, performed extraordinary duties in the service of his god.
Thus far, two types of magic have been described. The first, in which a mage manipulates manna from various pools to achieve a certain effect, is the standard way of invoking magic. The second, available only to preists, is the manipulation of one's own life manna in the service of your god. There are other forms of magic, however.
If one mage can do something, six can do the same thing better. That's the idea behind circles of magic. It is possible for mages, working together, to combine their magical potentials. This is a dangerous ritual, for much greater magical forces can be manipulated, and all present share equally in the consequences of failure. This is a rare ritual, and not often practiced, as a result. But there are rumors of circles of mages, off in a distant land....
Something that has been missing from the AD&D magical system for a long time has been the presence of meaningful magical duels. Spells as they stand are one-shot, either destroying one's opponent or letting them go so they can destroy you. They are typically brief, fierce, and more a question of who gets a spell off first. Not too much drama.
Thus, Anaams attempts to rectify the situation with a more free-form, "natural" approach to magic. Wielding magic in Anaams is much more like hitting somebody with your fist: it's close to one's instinct, and the quick witted, clever, and well-prepared will win the day.
Offensive magic is much like any other spell. You think of what you want to do, decide (as fast as you can) how much energy you wish to spend on firing it off, and you let it loose. Complex spells are rare in magical duels, mostly because they take too long to cast. Most magical duels are, therefore, much more primitive than typical spellcasting: lots of fire and blasts of wind being thrown about, and not too much careful planning and plotting by the participants.
Magical items are sometimes employed in magical duels: they enable a sort of preplanned complex spell to be brought to the aid of the utilizing mage. On the other hand, in most ritual duels, held by guilds of mages and the like, magical items are expressly forbidden, with dire consequences for the offender!
How to defend against an onslaught of magical energies, brought to bear by your direst enemy? A knotty problem, indeed. And it would be much more knotty if not for a few extra talents that mages possess.
A mage can sense the flows of magic being manipulated in the immediate area. If the mage posesses the Identify Magic proficiency, he can determine approximately what sort of powers are being brought to bear against him. Of course, the mage must be familiar with lots of different sorts of magic in order to identify them when they're being used against him in battle.
Once a mage has identified the magic being used, he can attempt to counter the magic, avoid the magic, or begin a fresh assault on his opponent. They each have their merits and places.
Countering the magic is the process of casting a spell which will disable or nullify the casting spell. Creativity and quick thinking are needed here.
Avoiding the magic is done more often than one might imagine. Magic has to travel through space (at least, most of it does), just like arrows or swords, so throwing yourself out of the way onto the ground, and leaping nimbly up onto your feet is as good a defense as many.
Fresh assaults are the domain of the brazen. Often this involves bearing the brunt of your opponents attack, while spurring off a fresh assault of your own, hoping to kill him before he kills you. This could also be combined with option # 2, in which one leaps to the side, simultaneously hurling off a fresh blast of fiery death, but then one's attack is lessened.
