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Spellbuilding Part 1 – Simple Conversion

March 19, 2014 /

The first part of the spell building system covers situations like finding a really cool spell that seems difficult to quantify or that you do not want to breakdown and rebuild. It is a fairly simple system to use spells from any OSR system, or retroclone OGL content. Before starting on that, here are the basic mechanics of the spell building system.

The system adds point values based on effect, range, duration, and any possible areas affected by the spell. The total is the spell's difficulty rating. Success in casting a spell is determined by rolling 1d20 + Intelligence score + Magic-Users's level to equal or exceed the magic-user's Saving Throw + difficulty rating. At the referee's discretion, a difficulty rating can be converted to a spell level for use in Vancian spellcasting. Like Cleric spells, converting a difficulty rating to a spell level is reversible.

This may seem like a mouthful, but to help with ease of calculation, I put Intelligence score + Caster Level on the character sheet. You'd think this wouldn't be a big deal, but it seems to make calculation easier. Since the Saving Throw already appears, it is just a matter of looking up the difficulty rating in the spell book.

In this post, I'll be taking OGL spells from various places and converting them to a difficulty rating.

Simple Conversion to a Difficulty Rating

Use the table below to convert spells to a difficulty rating:

S&W Spell Level Rating
Cantrips† 7
1 11
2 15
3 19
4 23
5 27
6 31
7 34
8 37
9 40

†Cantrips cannot do any damage. Using cantrips assumes the use of Tim Brannan's Cantrips for Basic Level Games system.

The difficulty rating in the table above is the midpoint for a spell level. Feel free to adjust the difficulty rating up or down by up to 2 points. In other words, a second level spell can have a difficulty rating from 13 to 17.

In looking for spells to serve as good examples, I looked for OGL spells from the LInks to Wisdom section on spells.

First, let's take a look at the Dreadcube (click the link for a full description). It is listed as a 7th level spell, so the new difficulty rating for this spell would be 34. It has multiple effects, so normally, I'd adjust the rating up, however, these effects can also potentially harm the caster, so I'll leave it where it is. OGL Link for Dreadcube

For those that wonder about the odds, let's take a magic-user with an INT 13 (the minimum score required to cast a 7th level spell). We'll say that the magic-user is at 14th level. The M-U will roll 1d20 + 13 (Intellegence score) + 14 (Caster Level) to be greater than or equal to 5 (Saving Throw at 14th level) + 34 for a total of 39. The magic-user will have a 45% chance of successfully casting the Dreadcube.

That seems a bit low, but 13 is the minimum Intelligence to cast a 7th level spell. Most Magic-Users for my players have an INT of 15 or 16 at least. Just for the sake of comparison, a 14th level Magic-User with an Intelligence of 15 attempting to cast this spell has a 55% chance of success.

Here's another favorite of mine from the Space Age Sorcery pdf, Pretervolve. (click on the link to download the free version). It is listed as Level 5, so the difficulty rating is 27. Seeing as there is a permanent effect after the spell wears off, I'd add a point to make the final difficulty rating a 28.

Again for the odds, we'll say that a 9th level Magic-User with an INT of 13 will cast Pretervolve. The M-U will roll 1d20 + 13 (Intellegence score) + 9 (Caster Level) to be greater than or equal to 7 (Saving Throw at 9th level) + 28 for a total of 35. The magic-user will have a 40% chance of successfully casting the spell.

Again, many characters will have a higher INT score. A 9th level Magic-User with a 15 Intelligence score has a 50% chance of success.

Section 15 of the OGL for the Pretervolve spell is:
Space-Age Sorcery, Copyright 2013, Hereticwerks; Authors James Garrison, Eric Fabiaschi, Porky

Here's another favorite, the Auric Devourer (read the post for the full description). It is listed as 1st level, so I convert the difficulty to 11. Since the description states that it is easy to cast, I'll bump it down to 10.

I'll come back to this spell another time when going through the building system itself, because it mentions other factors that will be covered later. It has a listed casting time and an area of effect.

Really quickly, a 1st level Magic-User with a 13 Intelligence will have a 50% chance of success to cast this spell.

Lastly, let's mention the Cantrips. They are not necessary at all, but I mention them here because they add something fun. Using the table, Blackflame starts at a difficulty rating of 7, and I'd leave it at that. Looking at other cantrips in the list, I would probably make Flavor a rating of 5. The key to using cantrips is that they cannot do any damage. Regardless of difficulty rating, any spell that does damage must be at least a 1st level spell.

A 1st level Magic-User with a 15 Intelligence (to represent most player characters), will have an 85% chance to cast Flavor and a 75% chance to cast Blackflame.

Using Difficulty Ratings with Class

Okay, I can turn a spell level into a difficulty rating. Now what? How does this work?

At this point, you could use the Spell Point system I mentioned to track the ability to cast spells. The cost of casting the spell is the spell level. Casting a spell deducts from a character's Mana and when Mana is zero, no more spell for you.

For your conveience, here is the table for Mana per level.

Level Mana
1 1
2 2
3 4
4 7
5 11
6 16
7 21
8 27
9 35
10 44
11 54
12 65
13 77
14 90
15 104
16 129
17 145
18 162
19 180
20 200
21 222

If the referee prefers, the traditional spell slot system can also be used.

Another alternative is to say that a Magic-User can attempt to cast a spell in his spellbook until it fails. If the Magic-User has Sleep in the spellbook, he can cast it until the dice betray him. For low level magic-users, this means that they can likely cast more spells per day, but it removes the need for bookkeeping.

Next time, we'll look at building spells based on effect, range, duration, and other factors.

The Abandoned Study of Zhanguo Jee

March 15, 2014 /

I mentioned in a previous post about creating spells with a mechanical element (number crunching) and a narrative element. It occured to me at some point tonight that a narrative tag, which I call an emphasis, does not have to be a part of a spell, but can function as a material component or a spell focus.

Let's say that amongst a magic-user's emphases, he or she has string and knots. Instead of using strings and/or knots in the description of the spell (though that would be great) I could create an M-U that uses knots to cast any spell. To keep with Swords & Wizardry, a spell's level is an indicator of the complexity of the knot required to cast the spell. Going even further, the M-U doesn't need to study spells to re-cast them. He or she simply needs to make more knots. The time requirement is the same to keep from mucking about the mechanics, but instead of hours of study to keep a semi-alive magical thing trapped in the M-U's mind to be released as a spell, the M-U weaves magical energy into a beautiful and complex knot.

Here are some examples to ponder:

Keeping that in mind, let's create an NPC wizard with emphases on knots, things that take thread form, red, gold, knots, and two or three more. We'll call him Zhanguo Jee.

Fast forward a number of years to our party delving into a dungeon and tower that are the remnants of Zhanguo Jee's tower and lab. There would be encounters with all kinds of crossbred creatures, monsters taking refuge in the tower and dungeon, local dread of the place, and the promise of great reward.

Into this dungeon, we scatter a few knots here and there. Maybe we add in a mad mongerlman M-U that was Zhanguo's assistant. He goes around muttering gibberish about how it's all tied up and can't be untied. Throw in some spiders weaving really really weird webs. Use the M-U's emphases to create some variant creatures.

This may seem like uneccesary window dressing the the party, but if they find Zhanguo's spell book and/or scrolls, the party's M-U has some new spells and a few knots to be able to get started on casting them. The referee could rule that after some study, the party's M-U can add one or two emphases to be able to cast Zhanguo's spells. Of course, there would be slight variations as the party's M-U would not have the same emphases as Zhanguo did, but that's all the more fun for everyone.

I'll have to write this up someday.

Some Problems with Spell Building Systems

March 14, 2014 /

I love the idea of spell building systems, but not always the system itself. I absolutely love EABA v1.1 and the Universal Table. Going through the book of spell examples, I found myself building all kinds of magic items and spells. The whole time, I kept thinking that it was cool to be able to quantify just baout anything I could think of.

Then I found that I was beginning to create spells/items/whatever that didn't work. The system usually broke down because the effect was too novel to quantify. I should say that EABA could quantify it, but I felt like that I was shoehorning something that really didn't fit.

When Epic Magic came out for Pathfinder, I discovered Epic Magic for D20. I read them both excited about spell seeds as a building block for new spells. But then the same problem came up. A spell I couldn't really quantify. To make matters worse for me, I found that spells with the same effect made the "trappings" or "special effects" meaningless.

For example, there is a spell on an OSR blog that describes a one-time teleportation effect from one campfire to another campfire some distance away. (My google-fu is weak, I couldn't find it to link to it and give the author credit for coming up with a great spell. Sorry!) I found that using EABA, Epic Magic, or even Open D6 gave me a spell that was no different than a spell that simply teleported the magic-user a random distance away. I liked the idea of the campfire, but found it disappointing that there was really no reason to have the "cool" version because it was more limited than the "generic" version that worked everywhere. Sure, I could houserule the system, but that seemed to be quite daunting, to say the least.

Similarly, even the straight damage spells made the boring versions more useful. Why create a fire missile spell that does 1d6 damage when you already have Magic Missile.  Creatures have immunity to fire, but very few, if any, have immunity to force or whatever substance comprises a Magic Missile. So, there's little reason to use anything but Magic Missile.

This lead my two year long quest to come up with a spell building system that I actually like. Unfortunately, I kept coming back to the same two issues over and over. I could live with effect that couldn't be quantified well, but that whole business that favors generic spells over flavorful or colorful spells seemed to change the whole business from fun to math. I love math, but not the kind that gets into min/maxxing and optimization.

So, I think I'm on to something now that I have come up with reasons for a magic-user to research and/or cast the more flavorful spells. Using the emphases system that I mention a lot around here, a magic-user would choose a more flavorful spell because it would be faster, cheaper, easier and/or more effective than the generic version of the spell. For a different kind of spell caster, the emphases system would also make the colorful versions of spells more likely to suceed than the generic version.

For example, if a magic-user has an emphasis of Fire that provides a bonus to research Fire-based spells, the Fire Missile version of Magic Missile is easier to come up with. For spell casters that use a skill roll to succesfully use spells, a spell caster with a Fire Bonus will find that the Fire Missile is more likely to work compared to Magic Missile.

More than that, if a magic-user has a series of seemingly odd emphases, it is to the spell caster's advantage to find a way to combine as many of these bonuses as possible. When a magic-user has emphases of cold, small round objects, blue, and four, he or she is more likely to cast a spell that begins with four small blue pearls of energy zooming to a target and exploding in a 30 x 30 x 10 cylinder for 1d6/level cold damage rather than a fireball spell. The effect is the same (except that one does cold damage and the other does fire damage), but with all those emphases incorporated into the spell, the magic-user either invented that spell for a song, made it up in record time, or finds it trivial to cast this spell compared to the traditional fireball spell.

Even better, I can put the 30 or so traditional tags associated with spells (like fire, ice, illusion, protection, summon, transform ,etc.) and combine them with 50 or so others I've come up with based on classifiers in other languages (like small round objects, rows, seeds, stalks, thread, charcoal, tubes, etc.) to make a random table. I roll up for or five random emphases and now there is an interesting spell for the players to find on an adventure.

I've posted a bit on my Google+ Page, but I plan to write up details here.

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