Good magic simulator

[Das Platyvark]

Since my original dissatisfaction with the spell system of d20, I have been looking for a system that does magic "realistically". Not taking a bunch of preexisting spells out of a book. Not much flashy, even. What I'm talking about is long, extensive rituals to call up the fey, and forcing a bargain for the resurrection of a loved one. Spilling the blood of a murderer into a circle of stones at midnight to call down the moon.
I'm familiar with M:tA, which is a little closer to my picture of spells, but is still not quite there. Does anyone know a system that allows you to perform this "realistic" magic I have in mind?

[Xefas]

Sorcerer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_%28role-playing_game%29) by Ron Edwards may be what you're looking for. You're a normal guy. You can perform lengthy and complicated magical rituals and formulas that call forth one of a variety of spirits to do your bidding, whether it's to cast a spell on your behalf, inhabit your body like a symbiote, turn into a doppleganger and be your dutiful spy, and so on. It's always risky, it's always hard to do, and it's always powerful and rewarding.

(The default setting is "modern", although it's possible to adapt it to most genres, and there are a few supplements out there dedicated to it, IIRC, if you don't feel like doing the legwork to that effect.)

[Urpriest]

Ars Magica has a good reputation, though it seems more like a mix'n'match energies and truenames system. And from what I've heard about nWoD Changeling, it's all about the pact making.

[Gardener]

The Dresden Files RPG (based off the FATE system) has a very solid Thoumaturgy system for the big, runes-and-incense rituals that scales fairly nicely, and also includes a separate system for "quick and dirty" magic. The system's also quite well-bablanced for mages and non-mages, too.

[mint]

Your post reads like you want magic to feel more arcane and significant.
A problem with this kind of magic taken to its extreme is that it plays more like a story device for capturing a feeling the ST wants for the game. Whereas players tend to want a cool, useful tool.

Anyway, here is what Ars Magica does:


There are 10 nouns and 5 verbs.
You combine the noun with a verb to produce an effect.

There's spontaneous magic which lets you do things off the cuff. It incurs either a penalty to your condition or to your roll for the spell.

There's formulaic magic which is casting a spell you know. Basically do all the things spontaneous magic can without the penalties or risk, but you have to know the spell you want to cast.

Both these types take only a few seconds to cast.

Then there's ritual magic. It's like formulaic magic with some exceptions. For one, the shortest ritual takes like 20 minutes. And where the other types of magic are more limited in targets and duration etc, ritual magic is not. And they draw on more stats for casting and can produce more dramatic effects. Really, really dramatic.
They also incur a "magic resource" cost.

[mikeejimbo]

GURPS Thaumatology has a bunch of suggestions for different spell systems. Some of the ideas would be adaptable to other systems as well, albeit with some difficulty, and a lot of the systems either require a lot of preparation or a lot of "on-the-fly" adjudication.

[Jay R]

Fantasy Hero from Hero Systems allows you to require any specific rituals or requirements into a magic system. I ran a Bard once, all of whose Inspiration spells required his harp, his hands free, his voice, five minutes time, a skill roll for harp-playing, and for everyone affected to be able to hear him. (He could inspire many more people in a quiet hall than in an open, windy spot.)

(I also built a 1-point spell that I assume any magical bard would have -- Tune Harp)

The only weakness in the system is that it uses fractions, so unless you understand sixth grade arithmetic, or are able to use Excel, you'll find it complicated.

[LibraryOgre]

You might be interested in the system for the Dragonlance SAGA system (no relation to the Star Wars Saga Edition).

Basically, each spell is defined by certain constant parameters.

Length of Invocation (the longer it is, the easier the spell)
Duration (the shorter it is, the easier the spell)
Range (the closer it is, the easier the spell)
Area of effect (the fewer it effects, the easier the spell)
Effect (there were several different effect tables, including damage/healing, bonus/penalty and other such things)

So, a 30-minute invocation that would last an instant, affect only yourself (small range and area of effect), and not do too much, would be very, very cheap, while instantly throwing an hour-long orgy of fire and destruction as far as you can see might be prohibitively difficult, and would certainly be draining.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A: I hear that Dungeon Crawl Classics (http://www.goodman-games.com/DCCRPGbeta.html) is supposed to have a magic system sorta like that.

B: work with a flexible GM, who understands the idea that "magic is mystery", a la the Pendragon view. So...most magic is handled via fluff, through story, but it's reasonable and balanced. This takes a lot of trust.

Come to think of it, the Pledge system from Changeling: the Lost might be more what you're looking for.

[Tyrrell]

Your post reads like you want magic to feel more arcane and significant.
A problem with this kind of magic taken to its extreme is that it plays more like a story device for capturing a feeling the ST wants for the game. Whereas players tend to want a cool, useful tool.

Anyway, here is what Ars Magica does:


There are 10 nouns and 5 verbs.
You combine the noun with a verb to produce an effect.

There's spontaneous magic which lets you do things off the cuff. It incurs either a penalty to your condition or to your roll for the spell.

There's formulaic magic which is casting a spell you know. Basically do all the things spontaneous magic can without the penalties or risk, but you have to know the spell you want to cast.

Both these types take only a few seconds to cast.

Then there's ritual magic. It's like formulaic magic with some exceptions. For one, the shortest ritual takes like 20 minutes. And where the other types of magic are more limited in targets and duration etc, ritual magic is not. And they draw on more stats for casting and can produce more dramatic effects. Really, really dramatic.
They also incur a "magic resource" cost.


That's a pretty sparse rendering of Ars Magica, It's all true but it's bereft of the flavor that the original poster is requesting.

Ars Magica is flashier than the feeling I get from the description in the original poster's request but it does have the flavor of magic integrated into the system in a way that I find is exactly what I'm looking for.


Wizards do often search for the blood or hair of their targets to to combine them with horoscopes and true names in order to pierce their target's defenses.

They invent water spells in underwater laboratories and collect lave from volcanoes to study fire.

Wizards do search after lost tomes

They have familiars that are more than a few bonuses but bonded with their body magic and mind in ways that change both creatures.

Wizards can and do twist their magic around a single enchanted device to take advantage of the item's magical properties when casting their own spells and craft an item of remarkable power. They do this at the cost of magically tying themselves to the item so that it can be used to pierce the wizard's magical defenses and cast spells on the wizard from anyplace in the world.

They do carry out dangerous experiments

They do use take the skull of a magical wolf to create a cloak that allows the wearer to assume the form of a wolf.

They do take the golden apples out of faerie kingdoms to power rituals to increase the health of their own crops.

They engage in formal magical duels

They trade lab notes with other wizards

They work their apprentices like dogs; copying texts, aiding them in the laboratory, creating simple enchanted items, and extracting magical power from their surroundings.

And all of these things are "hard coded" into the system. If you keep track of the history of your vis (items containing magical potential) and your books you can't help but be able to tell an entire story to describe how a character could accomplish each magical task that he or she does.

Also, much more so than in any other game I've seen, wizard characters tend to be differentiated from one another, sure if you use GURPS/Hero with everything you could have every character using an entirely different rule set (you can do this in Ars too) but in Ars Magica you actually have the differentiation in every game without having to learn lots of different variations on the system. Ars Magica characters are differentiated by:


The substance of what their magic is about (the nouns and verbs discussed above) a character who pours his xp into the mind noun is going to be much different than one who pours his xp into the creation verb (although they could both create an idea or emotion in the mind of someone else with ease). I suppose this also includes the individual spells. While there is a formidable list of spells in the core book and supplements the expectation is that characters will develop spells that are unique to them

How they distribute their efforts in improving themselves, which can be split up in a very crude way into four catagories: Characters can spend their efforts on improving their arts (the magical power that they use to cast spells, to invent spells, to enchant magical devices), Characters can spend their efforts on improving their skills (magic resistance, the ability to penetrate magic resistance, ability to control spells with precision, concentration and any other skill they care about such as archery or church lore), developing a broad selection of spells and items, or Characters can spend their efforts on changing the rules for themselves this includes learning things that change the way they do magic. An example might be awakening - the ability to create magical animals that might breed true and create races of magical creatures - or hermetic empowerment -the ability to trap spirits inside of enchanted devices and use their power to fuel ritual effects (normally only possible with rituals).

Their natural abilities their strengths and weaknesses. Their is a virtue and flaw system in Ars Magica that works really well. A character that has life linked magic - and can fuel his spells by sacrificing his body will work much differently than one who has flawless magic and casts his spells with incredible control or one with flexible magic who can change some of the parameters of his spells as he casts them. Characters with deficiencies restrictions and incompatible arts are forced to twist their magic around their weaknesses and find new and inventive ways to do things. Also virtues such as magical focus and magical potency allow characters to become especially unique when compared to other systems that I'm familiar with. These virtues allow the player to choose a specific area in which the character greatly excels; for example oak trees, contentment, or destroying stone. The bonuses you can get in this area make it practical for you to solve problems using your specialty much more often than not. It's difficult to describe how this makes an Ars magica character with a focus different from a character with a theme from another game, but I'll try. Lets take a specialization in swords for example. In Ars Magica my sword magus wants to cross a chasm bring his companions along. He decides to make a bridge out of swords to do it because for him making a bridge out of swords is easier than making one out of wood or stone. In D&D or Rolemaster he'd have to have a special sword bridge spell probably invented by someone else and ignore the more practical lower level spells that could get the job done, in Mage the Assencion he'd roll his arete and justify it by his 3 dots of matter or something of the like (I haven't played in years)- for him swords are a style choice there's no good reason why he wouldn't make it in some other way, in Hero he'd have some sort of a power based on effects that only relates to the end product not as to how it's done- sure he could describe it as swords - but it's just a variable power pool or some such and bridges are stretching it pretty far for a swords theme. Ars Magica's specializations just feel better to me.


Ars Magica gives me players that love their magi and their crazy abilities to make up spells on the spot but the characters are also reliant on their spell lists of spells that they know. It strikes the balance for me just right characters have significant power in exceptionally small areas of competence. This makes the creation of odd combinations of spells from different characters working together with out of the box thinking exceptionally common. The wacky plans using three of the cleric's spells and two from the wizard plus the thief's pick pockets ability that I loved in AD&D show up in Ars Magica they don't in some of the more flexible magic rules systems I've played.

[LibraryOgre]

One possibility, if you want to go with Ars Magica as a base (as Tyrrell points out, it has a lot of what you're looking for) is to cover most of the world with a fairly severe aura. You might steal 3e's "Rational Aura", making places with Magical Auras or Faerie Auras places wizards will seek out because they're conducive to magic. Maybe Infernal auras are conducive to magic, but corrupt the wielder over time. Or Divine auras are conducive to some kinds of magic.

That would produce some of the effect you're looking for... that magic is rare and unreliable in the real world without a significant outlay of power... but gives you certain places where it's possible, even easy.

[rayne_dragon]

Your post reads like you want magic to feel more arcane and significant.
A problem with this kind of magic taken to its extreme is that it plays more like a story device for capturing a feeling the ST wants for the game. Whereas players tend to want a cool, useful tool.

Anyway, here is what Ars Magica does:


There are 10 nouns and 5 verbs.
You combine the noun with a verb to produce an effect.

There's spontaneous magic which lets you do things off the cuff. It incurs either a penalty to your condition or to your roll for the spell.

There's formulaic magic which is casting a spell you know. Basically do all the things spontaneous magic can without the penalties or risk, but you have to know the spell you want to cast.

Both these types take only a few seconds to cast.

Then there's ritual magic. It's like formulaic magic with some exceptions. For one, the shortest ritual takes like 20 minutes. And where the other types of magic are more limited in targets and duration etc, ritual magic is not. And they draw on more stats for casting and can produce more dramatic effects. Really, really dramatic.
They also incur a "magic resource" cost.


There's also ceremonial magic, which is a way of casting one of the instant types of spells with a ritual in return for gaining bonuses from items used in the ceremony. If you want to make all magic require rituals you can just rule that all spells have to be cast using ceremonies.

Netherworld is a little-known system that would also allow for ritual magic and has a much darker tone than Ars Magica, although it is potentially more complicated to figure out. The magic in it is partially based on real world ritual magic and it is a potentially cool system if you can find a copy.