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View Full Version : Magic Without Spells (3.5 Homebrew)



EtherianBlade
2012-11-23, 09:58 PM
With the wide variety of abilities granted by various feats, it struck me as an interesting and dynamic idea to create a homebrew system that does not use any spells at all, just skills and feats. Feats would be expanded and categorized to include numerous supernatural abilities that mimic, in a general way, the effects of some spells.

I was thinking of a tiered system of feat advancement in which the effects of feats increase in both scope and power as more feats in the same tree are added. For example, I could have a Fire Projection feat tree in with feats called Flame Dart, then Scorch, then Fireball. By the time the character has selected Fireball, both Flame Dart and Scorch would be more powerful because the character now has three feats in the tree.

I would also like to not use power points, or uses per day, but still have a way of managing the use of these spell-like feats so that magic-users don't get too powerful too soon.

Thoughts, ideas?

EtherianBlade
2012-11-23, 10:06 PM
I was reading Kellus' thread and there are a lot of good ideas there, but I don't want to go quite in that direction. I may borrow a few ideas, however, since I am designing this around a pseudo-steampunk backdrop.

Henlein_Kosh
2012-11-23, 10:59 PM
I have played around trying to create a skillbased magic system, and my method of controlling the powerlevel was to increase the casting dc for each spell the caster has already cast that day, something similar might work for you

EtherianBlade
2012-11-23, 11:03 PM
I have played around trying to create a skillbased magic system, and my method of controlling the powerlevel was to increase the casting dc for each spell the caster has already cast that day, something similar might work for you

That's a not a bad idea at all. Implement a scaling DC for using the ability; eventually, they'll fail the DC and won't be able to use the ability for the rest of the day.

However, my players have a nasty tendency to roll a lot of 1s . . . .

Just to Browse
2012-11-25, 02:56 AM
The result of a system like this is that you're granting at-will spellcasting from a feat. That's totally doable, and I see it done in plenty of classes. Thefire mage (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Fire_Mage_(3.5e_Class)) does this (though it's a high-powered class), so there's no problem with proof-of-concept.

Now, actually writing the system is effort, and I've never seen at-will casting from feats outside of (I'm pretty sure) the Spellshaping Codices, so you're pretty much on your own there.

Amechra
2012-11-25, 06:36 PM
This may be to your interests. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=67.0)

Absol197
2012-11-26, 03:30 PM
I did something very similar with my Avatar system, and I see no reason why it couldn't be expanded to D&D-type magic.

The basics were that it was a skill-based system.

Each bending style (perhaps schools of magic here) has a list of techniques (spells) that it could use. Each technique was designed to be focused, but allow some flexibility. Each technique also has a base DC: simple techniques had DCs in the 10 to 20 range, while powerful and difficult techniques had DCs that reached up to 40.

Techniques have two ways they can be used: simple and advanced.
The simple use is a basic effect, and it can be used at will. No matter how well you roll on your skill check, the simple effect never increases or gets bigger.
The advanced use is much bigger and more effective than the simple use (typically, bonuses or damage was doubled, or the advanced use had other effects). Additionally, the effect of the advanced use got bigger the higher you rolled. For every 5 by which you beat the base DC, the effect got bigger by a given increment. The advanced use could be used once per day.

Learning techniques was also important. You could learn each technique more than once (through feats, class features, and by investing skill points in the appropriate skill), and learning it additional times gave you several benefits. For each time you learned the technique, the basic effect got a little bigger, and you could use the advanced version one additional time per day.

I can post some examples, if you'd like :smallsmile: .

This could easily be worked into a magic system. The general gist would be that you can learn a bunch of spells, but not be very strong at them, or learn a small list of spells that you can cast well. Basically, a choice between versitility and strength. It also has the appeal that you can learn any spell of any "level" whenever, but if you can't reliably make the DC, then you can't really get the benefit (some kind of spell-failure effect should be used here. I'm partial to, "If you failed by 4 or less, no spell failure; if you failed by 5-9, roll on the Wild Magic table; if you failed by 10 or more, roll on the Rod of Wonder table.")


~Phoenix~

EtherianBlade
2012-11-28, 03:47 PM
Sorry for not responding earlier; we had some power outtages here.


This may be to your interests. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=67.0)

That was an interesting read. I had some of those basics in mind when I started writing the sourcebook for my campaign.


I did something very similar with my Avatar system, and I see no reason why it couldn't be expanded to D&D-type magic.

The basics were that it was a skill-based system.

This could easily be worked into a magic system. The general gist would be that you can learn a bunch of spells, but not be very strong at them, or learn a small list of spells that you can cast well. Basically, a choice between versitility and strength. It also has the appeal that you can learn any spell of any "level" whenever, but if you can't reliably make the DC, then you can't really get the benefit (some kind of spell-failure effect should be used here. I'm partial to, "If you failed by 4 or less, no spell failure; if you failed by 5-9, roll on the Wild Magic table; if you failed by 10 or more, roll on the Rod of Wonder table.")


~Phoenix~

I've been debating about using a DC system for using the magic feats ever since it was suggested above. It would essentially be like making a combat roll for the magic-using character.

What I LOVE about your suggestion is the use of a wild magic table for spell failure. That could make for some very interesting results in a fight (or even out of one). I would probably want to use at least two different tables, though, one for combat magic and one for out-of-combat magic. It wouldn't do to have a Charm effect fail and result in a fireball going off.

As it is right now, I'm more or less forcing players who want a magic-using character to specialize along a certain path. There are just too many magic feats and special abilities to enable any one character to use all types of magic. Tentatively, I'm going with the list of schools as presented in the PHB, but I'll probably amend that down to a smaller handful of magic paths.

Thanks for the ideas.

Amechra
2012-11-28, 04:14 PM
Why use the inferior wild magic table? At least use the one where destroying the setting is a possibility. (http://centralia.aquest.com/downloads/NLRMEv2.pdf)

Just to Browse
2012-11-28, 04:51 PM
Why use the inferior wild magic table? At least use the one where destroying the setting is a possibility. (http://centralia.aquest.com/downloads/NLRMEv2.pdf)

:smalleek: h-how do you even roll 1d1000?

Also, to wild magic failures:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me6pnnTLhA1ruf3d3.gif

http://cdn.electricpig.com.s3-external-3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/oh-god-why.jpg

Eldan
2012-11-28, 05:01 PM
:smalleek: h-how do you even roll 1d1000?


Well, 1d100 is 2d10. I'd imagine 1d1000 is 3d10.

EtherianBlade
2012-11-28, 05:13 PM
Well, that was . . . interesting. :smalltongue:

Actually, that reminds me of the Wandering Damage Matrix that was once published in Dragon magazine many, many years ago. One of the ones I remember was:

"Your character's nose hairs catch on fire and he dies from smoke inhalation."

Just to Browse
2012-11-28, 06:22 PM
Well, 1d100 is 2d10. I'd imagine 1d1000 is 3d10.

Funny thing about that is I was trying to figure it out, and the only thing I could get to was rolling 1d100 (2d10) and multiplying it by 1d10, which wouldn't get a flat result and I kept getting confused...

Amechra
2012-11-28, 08:19 PM
Heck, why not just have a tree for tapping into wild magic, and keep it away from the base system?

Then, if you want to deal with it, you can, and if you don't want to, you don't have to.

NichG
2012-11-29, 09:58 AM
I think I'd lean more towards the Feat-based system. All the Skill-based systems I've seen have certain shared downsides:


- They encourage or even require overspecialization towards magic at the cost of mundane skills, if you want to go the magic route.

- Buy-in for completely new powers is really cheap, but making them very potent is expensive, so you end up with everyone having the same set of powers that are good at low level (because its just a few skill points), and so whatever work is done to design the low end of the system ends up not really differentiating characters very well.

- They just tend to be really really complex, requiring magic users to basically do miniature character-building type exercises at the game table to design their 'spells' on the fly.


The feat-based system on the other hand means that investing in the system is a fair chunk of your character's customization, which befits things that have a lot of power and versatility like access to magic. Plus, its not as fiddly as skill points and constructing DCs.

I'd say you could have something like:

- A feat to buy access to a given elemental type or class of effects. Maybe make this a vague sort of 'school of magic' classification instead - Teleportation, Shields, Divination, etc. Each of these gives you +1 CL in the particular school it represents, as well as allowing access to basic effects in that school.
- A feat to just buy a bit more power, but no new tricks. Gives you +2 CL in all schools you can access. Can be taken multiple times.
- A 'school focus' feat that gives you +4 CL in one school, but thats all it does.
- Feats that give you specific tricks or access to higher level ranges of abilities, unique to each school and forming chains with prereqs. Each gives you +3 CL to the school it is based on, as well as access to the new power.

So, where are my numbers coming from? I figure that a dedicated caster in this system would put all their feats towards magic. They get a feat every 3 levels. So if they choose to focus on power and take school focus, they can have a caster level a little ahead of the curve. If they focus on developing one school, they have a caster level on par with the curve. If they try to spread out, they have a low caster level but a lot more versatility. Initial CL will be a bit higher in this system since as a human you could start with 2 feats, and then get your 3rd feat by Lv3 for a maximum of CL 9 but only for basic effects. A more realistic human build might have CL7 by Lv3.
Flaws make this system very very powerful, so be careful with them as well as anything that can give you extra feats that can be used on this stuff. Capping CL to HD helps prevent this overshoot.

An example for the Shielding school, say:


Shielding School
You can make magical shields that protect against basic kinds of damage (slashing, piercing, bludgeoning, fire, acid, ...), giving a Resist equal to your CL for 1 round/CL to the target against the chosen element. This can protect people, objects, or areas (e.g. making a wall that reduces such damage that passes through it). +1 CL to Shielding

Dual-shield
Prereq: Shielding School, CL 5.
You can make shields that protect against two kinds of damage at once. +3 CL to Shielding.

Invert Shield
Prereq: Shielding School, CL 7.
You can use your power over shielding to reduce the target's resistance to an element, instead of protecting someone from an element. +3 CL to Shielding.

Reactive Shield
Prereq: Shielding School, CL 10.
You can create a shield as an immediate action. +3 CL to Shielding.

Ablative Shield
Prereq: Shielding School, CL 3.
Instead of your shields providing resistance, they provide an ablative HP pool equal to 2*CL. +3 CL to Shielding.

And so on...

EtherianBlade
2012-11-29, 04:12 PM
I think I'd lean more towards the Feat-based system. All the Skill-based systems I've seen have certain shared downsides:

The feat-based system on the other hand means that investing in the system is a fair chunk of your character's customization, which befits things that have a lot of power and versatility like access to magic. Plus, its not as fiddly as skill points and constructing DCs.

Some really good ideas there. I am using a variation of the d20 Modern rules, with the Strong, Tough, Smart etc. classes, so characters actually have more feats available to them as they gain levels.

I agree that using a skill-based system would nerf characters in that they wouldn't spend too many SP on mundane skills, which are always necessary in my games. I saw a lot of that happening in Star Wars d20, to the point where a Jedi Guardian played by a friend of mine could lift a herd of Banthas in the air with his mind, but couldn't jump over Yoda's head if his life depended on it.

I'm thinking I'll construct some basic magic feat trees and playtest them with some of my players and see what works and doesn't work.