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Shinken
2014-09-20, 12:00 AM
Hello, folks.

I'm looking for RPGs (preferably with a free to play version, even if it's only a preview) where using magic has an actual cost - it makes you tired or insane or something like that. That needs to be part of the mechanics instead of just fluff.

Slipperychicken
2014-09-20, 01:42 AM
Shadowrun does this with its Drain mechanic. Casting spells has a chance to deal the equivalent of nonlethal damage (called Stun damage), as does summoning spirits.

LokiRagnarok
2014-09-20, 01:57 AM
Shadowrun's magic system inflicts damage onto you depending on how much power you put into it. You basically make saves (roll 5 or 6 on a d6) against the damage. So, for example, casting a 1m long stone wall may be relatively effortless to you because you basically always save against the damage from it. Casting a 5m long wall will require more saves and you probably won't make all of them. So you take damage. You get a penalty on your rolls depending on how much mental damage you have taken. (This may be fluffed as getting a light headache, getting dizzy, having blood come out of your nose, having trouble to stand upright etc. Your brain is more or less getting fried because you are telling the laws of physics to go and cry in the corner).
After too much mental damage, you fall unconscious.

A higher-level character will be able to make more saves and will cast higher powered magic, because she knows she can take it on. Of course, a reckless, but exceptionally lucky low-level character can still put a lot of effort into one attack and make the same damage as a higher-level one - if they don't mind the risk of overexhausting themselves.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-09-20, 08:41 AM
I've always liked the Call of Cthulhu magic system.

It's pretty simple. Magic is incomprehensible things humans were not meant to know, so using it is greatly taxing to your mental condition and drains your sanity. Relative by how powerful the magic is.

If you drain too much sanity in a short period of time, you can gain a permanent mental disorder, compulsion, or so forth. And such problems become cumulatively worse the farther down you slide.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-20, 09:52 AM
Mage: The Ascension included the possibility that magic would cause Paradox... basically, the price reality made you pay for fiddling with it. Too much paradox and weird things start happening around you, including hallucinations, summoning a spirit, or psychotic breaks.

Ars Magica has magic tire you out, and anything lasting longer than a day requires Vis... sort of a physical representation of magic.

Gracht Grabmaw
2014-09-20, 10:10 AM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is the thing you want.
Not only is magic extremely taxing, if your spell - any spell - fails, you are utterly screwed and can count yourself lucky if it merely backfires and kills you. And naturally the more complex and powerful a spell is, the more likely it is to fail.

Sartharina
2014-09-20, 11:32 AM
There's also the old standby of AD&D.

Inevitability
2014-09-20, 03:43 PM
D&D 3.5 had Sanity rules, where magic would also drain your sanity. It's more of a long-term thing though.

Leviting
2014-09-20, 05:57 PM
Eclipse Phase's psi-gamma deals physical damage to asyncs who use it, so you can end up dead from trying to mind control a guy too many times. It forces you to consider whether or not psychic stab is worth it when you get hurt only a bit less.

S@tanicoaldo
2014-09-21, 09:32 AM
Try one of this:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?334322-Corrupting-Magic

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?367366-Help-with-corruption-effects-for-the-abuse-of-magic

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?330117-How-to-make-magic-a-evil-or-corrupting-thing-Tips-for-a-low-magic-world&p=16955188#post16955188

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?49448-Corrupt-spells

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?218504-Corruption-A-(small)-Magic-Expansion-(PEACH)

Or use the Binder class I think they have got the "Power for price" ideia in a very nice way.

Arbane
2014-09-22, 03:05 AM
I see a lot of the obvious ones have been mentioned, so I'll just toss in a mention of Unknown Armies's magic system, where to use magic at all, you need to be obsessive about something (money, television, booze, sex) to well past the point of insanity. And you need to do strange and often self-destructive things to get and keep magic power (watch TV eight hours a day, hoard money obsessively and never spend more than a small amount, drink from historically important vessels and never sober up, take pointless risks of harm...) to the point that being a clued-in normal with no issues is practically a supernatural power in its own right.

The indie RPG Sorcerer, where the only kind of magic humans can do is summoning, binding and banishing demons - the demons are the ones with the power, and they always want something in exchange. Not necessarily your soul, but something that might eventually be an equally big pain to get. (The example ones are a bit lower-key: A gun that needs blood dripped down its barrel, a woman-like entity that just enjoys causing trouble, a disembodied mouth that wants to have its contract renegotiated often...) Also, one of the stats is Humanity - using demons lowers it, and when it hits zero, you can't pretend to be normal any more. (You gain Humanity back by banishing demons.)

ISTR the indie RPG The Riddle Of Steel had magic that cost time off your lifespan when used. Sure, you can cast that spell... is it worth it?

The Conan d20 RPG had magic that's powerful, but hard to get the energy to fuel - methods like demon worship, bizarre drugs, and human sacrifice were common. This is why sorcerers are not welcome in polite society.

The Japanese RPG (tabletop, not computer game) Double Cross is about people who've been infected with a virus that gives them superpowers - with a chance of them turning into insane monsters if they overuse them. Using your powers increases Encroachment, and when it goes over 100%, you become an NPC... unless the normal people you care about can drag you back. Some powers don't work at all unless you're at or over the brink.

RuneQuest's Divine Magic is the most powerful magic in the setting, and using it won't kill you, but to get it, you have to join a god's cult and you have to permanently sacrifice points from your magic/soul stat. (It is possible to gain them back, but it isn't fast or easy.) And the spells only work once, ever, unless you're a priest or a Rune Lord (a divine champion - think paladin in D&D), and becoming either of those requires immense dedication and will take up most of your life.

Here's TVTropes' master list of methods to get Power At A Price (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerAtAPrice). (Obviously, do not read if you don't have a lot of spare time.)

Psyren
2014-09-22, 08:14 AM
There's also the old standby of AD&D.

I didn't see many of those being much more than fluff themselves. Yeah, Haste aged you a year for instance, but how many adventurers die of natural causes anyway? (Or more poignantly - what would your life expectancy have been without that haste buff?)



Or use the Binder class I think they have got the "Power for price" ideia in a very nice way.

Or if you're playing in Pathfinder, Radiance House's Occultist conversion, which has a ton of vestiges spirits (http://alharadnd.wikidot.com/occultist-spirits) and many drawbacks.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-22, 10:00 AM
I didn't see many of those being much more than fluff themselves. Yeah, Haste aged you a year for instance, but how many adventurers die of natural causes anyway? (Or more poignantly - what would your life expectancy have been without that haste buff?)

Well, considering that magical aging forces a system shock roll, and failure results in your death...

MLai
2014-09-22, 10:55 AM
Well, considering that magical aging forces a system shock roll, and failure results in your death...
This seems like too steep a penalty for a spell that basically allows you to take double-turns for the rest of the encounter. Useful but not pants-wettingly amazing.
(My knowledge of AD&D comes from only the TSR PC games.)

LibraryOgre
2014-09-22, 01:56 PM
This seems like too steep a penalty for a spell that basically allows you to take double-turns for the rest of the encounter. Useful but not pants-wettingly amazing.
(My knowledge of AD&D comes from only the TSR PC games.)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was an unintended consequence, not a design feature.

Tyrrell
2014-09-22, 03:31 PM
In Ars Magica as noted above you can take fatigue damage (much like in shadowrun) and doing big magic (ritual magic) uses "vis" - stuff like the heart of a fire drake, the leftover cocoons from caterpillars who nested on particular magical wildflowers, or the water collected on a stone pillar the morning of St. Swithin’s feast day. Stuff that you'd otherwise be able to use to enchant magic items, enchant the bond with your familiar, perform a longevity ritual, or something else more permanent.

But there is also the issue of warping, perhaps the greatest and coolest cost of using magic in the game. Using magic on a target long term, messing up when you use magic, or even just the use of moderately powerful magic on a target for which the magic was not specifically designed twists either the target or the caster. The results of this warping can take many forms depending upon the tradition of the magician. For people who aren't magicians, it normally manifests as the accumulation of magical flaws and curses over time. For the Order of Hermes magicians, (the ones that the game centers upon) warping involves temporarily becoming detached from reality for longer and longer periods of time as the warping becomes stronger and more difficult to control until eventually the magus disappears never to return.

Segev
2014-09-22, 03:58 PM
I have long wanted to see a system of magic wherein its use cost you age. Not youth, age. As in, you get younger when you use magic, and the more powerful the magic, the younger it makes you get. From the unnoticeable "hour or few" to the quite noticeable "several years." It'd definitely stack up if you did it too much.

The problem is making it viable as a game mechanic; it could work in fiction, as the author just decides to only apply the reduction as he finds dramatically appropriate. In a game, though, it requires rigor, and establishing it at a level where it's neither a non-cost nor a prohibitive (as in, you can't use it often enough to really be considered playing a mage) cost is tricky.


But from a fluff standpoint, this is a legitimate cost, as there is a limit to how much age you have, it naturally builds up as you wait to recharge, and it would explain the longevity of magic users. Also, the longer-lived you are naturally, the more power you can potentially accumulate through not using magic.

meschlum
2014-09-23, 02:46 AM
Not free, and with fairly different undertones from what's been discussed so far, but Reve: The Dream Ouroboros might qualify.

The premise is that all of reality, and everyone in it, is ing dreamed by dragons. Some dream the landscape, others dream the people - and when people figured out how to manipulate the dreams, they made it possible for the dreams to bleed into each other. This led to a golden age of magic, until the high wizards grew overly ambitious, the dreams grew restless, and the dragons woke up. Now they've fallen asleep again, with bits and pieces of older dreams popping up here and there, and rifts connecting different realms are far more common.

Mages use a fairly original casting system, shifting their conciousness closer to the dragons and imprinting the effects they want there - while running the risk of meeting stray figments of living dream, or even a dragon. Spells are powered by a mana point equivalent, and anyone who is below maximum MP runs a risk of meeting a dragon while asleep - which typically induces a short lived obsession of some sort (give all your money to the first stranger you meet, speak in verse for a few days, wear your clothes inside out...). If you're very lucky (high current MP and being a powerful mage help), you might defeat the dragon, and gain a short lived or permanent ability.

On the other hand, the darkest magic is the magic of Thanatos, awakening, which brings death, curses, and transformations. Those who use it risk more unpleasant side effects, at least from the perspective of ordinary people (drink only blood for a while, hate and attack the first stranger you see...).

And sometimes, the things you encounter and urges you acquire while using magic become too problematic - in which case, you can simply deny they exist. This shatters their power over you, but by denying the dream, you are denying yourself - and will eventually gain a (random) semi-permanent disability.

So you get mildly mad mages, with random tables for the type of irrational behavior that takes place, and a longer term price for abusing evil magic, forcing yourself to be sane, and overusing magic. The GM can pick results rather than rolling them, if you want more themed outcomes or a progressive descent into specific brands of compulsive behavior.

Studoku
2014-09-23, 04:00 PM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is the thing you want.
Not only is magic extremely taxing, if your spell - any spell - fails, you are utterly screwed and can count yourself lucky if it merely backfires and kills you. And naturally the more complex and powerful a spell is, the more likely it is to fail.
And, of course, the psychic powers in any of the 40k based systems.

Aotrs Commander
2014-09-23, 05:26 PM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is the thing you want.
Not only is magic extremely taxing, if your spell - any spell - fails, you are utterly screwed and can count yourself lucky if it merely backfires and kills you. And naturally the more complex and powerful a spell is, the more likely it is to fail.

In my experience as a DM (of 1st Edition WHFRP)... it kind of wasn't, since it took very little time for the PC wizards to get to the point they didn't need to make a magic test (i.e. 2D6 under your current magic points, so only when you're at 12 or less) and Fireball was stupidly effective, especially when I ended up using the critical hits and the dice-god player frequently ended up chaining explosions...

Mind you, 1st edition WHFRP was a pretty banal... even poor... system mechanically, made up for by the fact that the modules were some of the best I'd ever seen until Paizo came along fifteen or so years later.

I assume the later version must be different, or you never got very far with the PC wizards...