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Dante & Vergil
2010-09-30, 12:10 AM
Which systems use a freeform system for their magic?
Also, is there anything simillar for martial art's moves or combat manuevers in general?

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-30, 12:10 AM
Define "freeform". Do you mean "non-Vancian"?

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-30, 12:17 AM
Definitely "non-vancian". I mean systems where you can build your spells on the fly with as much as your imagination allowed by the rules, and maybe have prerequisites to do them, like mana and/or skill checks as examples.

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-30, 12:19 AM
Mage. Either Ascension or Awakening, though I recommend the later because it's finished, balanced, and, well...well, frankly, oWoD kinda sucks. Just buy nWoD. Go ahead. Do it.

Additionally, the entire new World of Darkness is VERY easy to 'brew for, highly flavorful, and very open to on-the-fly rules interpretations, and comes with my unconditional approval.

Check out Fax Celestis' D20 Rebirth, which is currently hammering out a few classes that literally forge their own spells per-casting.

GURPS, perhaps, might also be what you're looking for.

DukeofDellot
2010-09-30, 12:30 AM
GURPS, perhaps...

Yeah, in the back of GURPS Magic they have a few alternate Magic systems, including one that's basically "Say what you want to do with your magic, and roll against your Magic! skill."

There's Syntactic Magic that you get a bunch of Words... if you've played Eternal Darkness, it's a bit like that magic system. You know a "Create" Verb, and a "Fire" Noun, so you can cast "Create Fire" roll it up and you have... well... created fire. "Protect Water" to make a book waterproof, "Strengthen Body" to lift heavy objects, "Move Body" for a neat Force push thing, or even "Protect Body (from) Fire" to make yourself Fireproof.

It's neat, but I've never used it.

I believe I've also played a FATE game that had a freeform magic system, but I don't remember much of the details... too much other games in me, I suppose.


Edit: That said, GURPS also has a pretty neat Martial Arts book. I was skeptical at first, but I'm very proud of the buy. It works on a "Technique" system where all your attacks are modified by special options.

For example you can attack to punch someone proper, you can use "Hammer Fist" or "Uppercut" to protect your fist when attacking or add a little damage, or you can use an "All-Out Attack: Double" to sacrifice your defenses to preform a Hammer Fist (Which is their term for Karate Chop) to the arm then an Uppercut to the Chin. Which is two attacks at penalties I don't feel like looking up right now, if you do enough damage on the first attack you might break the guy's arm (not likely, but possible) and the second will more than likely disorientate the guy.

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-30, 12:42 AM
Yes. Good... good.:smallamused:
So we have

Mage: the Awakening
Mage: the Ascension (Though Awakening and nWoD is better. Good to know.)
New World of Darkness good to 'brew stuff for.
Some of Fax's D20 Rebirth classes can do freeform casting.
Gurps does magic AND martial arts. Sweet!
FATE

Any more to add to the list?

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-30, 12:45 AM
I should note something - oWoD isn't unfun. It's just not the game(s) that were advertised either. oWoD is epic storytelling in a crapsack world that is fated to die (horribly) no matter what you do, 'cause White Wolf tells the storyteller to be a jerk about it. Many aspects of its games are wildly unbalanced (especially with crossover) and many more are unfinished (rotes in oMage). But it does have a compelling flavor HEAVILY reliant on IRL religion. If you don't wanna deal with any of that, or you'd like to play in a game that actually is what it's billed to be, or you just like balanced systems that are ALSO flavorful and awesome, check out nWoD instead.

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-30, 12:53 AM
I should note something - oWoD isn't unfun. It's just not the game(s) that were advertised either. oWoD is epic storytelling in a crapsack world that is fated to die (horribly) no matter what you do, 'cause White Wolf tells the storyteller to be a jerk about it. Many aspects of its games are wildly unbalanced (especially with crossover) and many more are unfinished (rotes in oMage). But it does have a compelling flavor HEAVILY reliant on IRL religion. If you don't wanna deal with any of that, or you'd like to play in a game that actually is what it's billed to be, or you just like balanced systems that are ALSO flavorful and awesome, check out nWoD instead.

Okay, good to know.

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-30, 12:58 AM
Shadowrun can be easy to 'brew for, and allows you to select the potency of your spells by default. Check out the 4th edition sometime.

Scion by White Wolf isn't precisely balanced, but it's not really...broken, either. In any event, it incorporates Stunting, which provides flying bonuses for cool descriptions of actions. ANY actions. Scion is a game that rewards, say, flinging one's lightning bolt at a transformer box to make an EMP. Just don't expect a Scion of Aphrodite to have the same potential power as one of Odin.

Exalted (also White Wolf) is more or less a paragon of what you're looking for, but it's WILDLY broken all over the place, and all its campaigns are held together by duct tape and spite. AWESOME system, mind. Tons of fun. But they actually made QUADRATIC WARRIORS. And then PUBLISHED THEM. There are entire sourcebooks the community just bans on sight.

DukeofDellot
2010-09-30, 01:01 AM
Gurps does magic AND martial arts. Sweet!
Syntactic Magic, like in Eternal Darkness, works.



Oops... um Syntactic Magic is one of the alternate Magic systems in the back of GURPS Magic, it's not it's own game.

Also, if you do go with GURPS, make sure to pick up Fourth Edition. Unlike DnD, each new edition IS so much better than the last that you really wouldn't want to go back.

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-30, 01:23 AM
Gurps looks good. Oh and,


There's Syntactic Magic that you get a bunch of Words... if you've played Eternal Darkness, it's a bit like that magic system. You know a "Create" Verb, and a "Fire" Noun, so you can cast "Create Fire" roll it up and you have... well... created fire. "Protect Water" to make a book waterproof, "Strengthen Body" to lift heavy objects, "Move Body" for a neat Force push thing, or even "Protect Body (from) Fire" to make yourself Fireproof.

What systems use the one like this?

DukeofDellot
2010-09-30, 02:17 AM
It's in GURPS... if you're unfamiliar with the game... there's a free version GURPS Lite (http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG31-0004), however Magic is one of the things that the Free version does not contain.

It's often called a "Toolkit" system as the GM you sit there before each campaign and choose which parts you're going to use and which are nixed, in fact there are optional rules that contradict each other such as the "Harsh Realism in Combat" Rules and the "Rubber Realism" Rules. There are at least a Dozen Magic systems supported officially published, and the game even has rules for creating new ones.

"Syntactic Magic" is one of the Magic Systems presented in GURPS Magic (which is mostly based on the "Default" Skill-Based Magic System) where the Player is presented with two lists of Spells, Nouns and Verbs, that are cast in harmony to create spells on the fly. Your character must learn each spell word to use them, but a player might have a spell list of...

Verbs: Control, Create, Move, Strengthen, Transform.
Nouns: Body, Fire, Light, Mind, Sound.

Each of these are skills that work in conjunction to each other, so the player would have to look over the list and combine them, and discuss the results with the GM. What the spells actually do are decided on the spot and each combination can be reused for other purposes if necessary. But some results could include:

Create, Move, (and) Strengthen Fire! (Exploding Fireball)
Move Body! (Speed boost... or Flight.)
Transform Body (into) Fire! (Gives you the "Body of Fire" Template)
Control Light (and) Sound! (Illusionism)
Control Mind! (Jedi Mind Tricks)
Strengthen Body! (I think I said that one already...)

...

I'm sort of a preachy sort... from the House of Kromm, speaking the virtues of the Universal System. Bad Habit, it is.

Edit: I think I might have to sig that.

Werekat
2010-09-30, 02:58 AM
Just for the record: Ars Magica (any of the editions, if I remember correctly) allows it, but the process is a lot more difficult than working with spells you have learned. By "a lot more" I mean that, as someone used to playing Mage, it took me all of three sessions to adjust completely to the success-failure ratio.

Still, its possible, and if you're looking for ideas on how its done in different systems, you might be interested.

Benly
2010-09-30, 03:53 AM
Didn't Ars Magica pioneer the noun-verb system that GURPS calls syntactic magic, or am I misremembering? I know at least one edition of AM used it.

World Tree also uses a version of it - it's a very fun and kind of obscure RPG, but it's got its own very involved setting so I wouldn't try to port its material to another game.

icefractal
2010-09-30, 04:32 AM
Also any system with a "Variable Pool" type of element - HERO, M&M, BESM, a lot of universal and/or supers systems have it. Of course, you do need to know the system pretty well for this to be your primary ability, or else it will bring things to a crawl.

Psyx
2010-09-30, 04:52 AM
Ars Magica and Mage are the obvious two suggestions.

If you want to expand it to a cinematic martial arts system, then I'd really recommend Feng Shui: It allows you to do whatever you fancy with both magic and martial arts. And it's great.

Tyrrell
2010-09-30, 07:19 AM
Shadowrun can be easy to 'brew for, and allows you to select the potency of your spells by default. Check out the 4th edition sometime.

Scion by White Wolf isn't precisely balanced, but it's not really...broken, either. In any event, it incorporates Stunting, which provides flying bonuses for cool descriptions of actions. ANY actions. Scion is a game that rewards, say, flinging one's lightning bolt at a transformer box to make an EMP. Just don't expect a Scion of Aphrodite to have the same potential power as one of Odin.

Exalted (also White Wolf) is more or less a paragon of what you're looking for, but it's WILDLY broken all over the place, and all its campaigns are held together by duct tape and spite. AWESOME system, mind. Tons of fun. But they actually made QUADRATIC WARRIORS. And then PUBLISHED THEM. There are entire sourcebooks the community just bans on sight.

Exalted and Scion have stunt rules that are a sort of free form melee system but none of these games have a free form magic system.

I'd recommend Ars Magica 5 back in 1987 Ars Magica did do the first verb-noun magic system that was the template for others. Ars 5 (2004) is truly at least 17 years more polished than Ars 1 was.

A large difference between Ars Magica and most free form systems is that free form magic although the most used magic in the game is only a part of the magician's repertoire. The spell that a character can expect to make up on the fly is less than half the power of the most powerful spell that he could cast as a spell that he's studied.

This wrinkle lets characters have access to powerful magic without making the characters preposterously powerful.

To paint a broad picture of the systems strengths and weaknesses - it gives the characters bazillions of options through the most descriptively rich set of rules you could imagine. If you think that rules should be a minimalist tool that to provide maximum freedom rather than a source of rich descriptive detail, then the game you're looking for isn't Ars Magica.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-09-30, 08:03 AM
Monte Cook wrote a d20 WoD rulebook, which has a great conversion of the Mage magic system for d20 rules.

And when I say "great", I mean "broken in the RAW".

The following tweaks tend to make it more balanced with other d20 material: Limit component points per spell to up to 1/2 component points per day Increase cost for adding a die of damage to 1+previous number of dice Ban the casting of spells to replenish component points Ban the lowering of Spellcraft DC by spending points
Without those limits, you can blast off huge spells (a 10d6 damage spell only costs 9 points more than a 1d6 spell, for example), with lowered difficulties, leaving only a few points left, then cast more spells to regain your spent points.

Psyx
2010-09-30, 08:43 AM
Monte Cook wrote a d20 WoD rulebook

...Which is considered amongst my regular gaming friends as the worst WoD OR Monte Cook thing ever written. And it had stiff competition.

coffeedragon
2010-10-08, 08:55 AM
...Which is considered amongst my regular gaming friends as the worst WoD OR Monte Cook thing ever written. And it had stiff competition.

Personally, I quite enjoyed it.
Yes it's overpowered, but then the whole setting/system is designed as such.
I believe many people didn't like the new take on the World of Darknes setting, but unto each their own.

The setting and in fact much of the content ddin't do much for me at all, but the magic system had me drooling!
It doesn't fit into a D&D game unless you make changes such as those listed by Altair_the_Vexed, but I found it a beautifully elegant system compared to what else I've seen out there.

BeholderSlayer
2010-10-08, 09:00 AM
Black Company d20

Basically, spells are given an array of effects. You may augment spells with more powerful effects, wider AoE, etc. However, casting spells causes nonlethal damage to the spellcaster, mitigated by their spellcasting power (there are actual terms for these concepts, I just don't remember). A caster is only limited in the number of spells they can cast by their hit points. The spells system is almost perfectly freeform in nature.

The game system is pretty gritty, complicated, and very lethal. I may one day run a Black Company game, but I have a lot to learn first.

Dante & Vergil
2010-10-09, 08:42 PM
The Black Company d20 is what True Sorcery is based on, if I remember correctly.

Ilmryn
2010-10-09, 09:26 PM
There is a freeform magic system for DnD. Here. (http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/qcmg)

Knaight
2010-10-10, 01:42 AM
Most not D&D fantasy has freeform magic systems. That said, Ars Magica has one of the best, though the Door To Shadow system in FATE works as well.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-10-10, 05:49 AM
...Which is considered amongst my regular gaming friends as the worst WoD OR Monte Cook thing ever written. And it had stiff competition.
Sure, your mileage may vary. But the freeform magic system is very well built, aside from the points I raised.

Just because everything about a setting or splatbook sucks doesn't mean it won't contain awesome gems for use elsewhere.