Breaking the DM Cherry

[VertDeLion]

Hello, I am a player in a 5e D&D campaign with only experience as a player, but was thinking of taking over as our group DM after this campaign is done. Instead of keeping our previous DM's story and campaign however, I was going to make something completely different.

I had several ideas for a world and story to use, one of which either involved borrowing elements of Magic the Gathering, or something I heard of in an event panel I had recently participated in, calling it Primal Magicks

The idea behind Primal Magicks is that the fabric of magic itself has been unwound, so that instead of being able to cast spells themselves, spellcasters must draw magic from the land around them using geomancy, restricting the use of spells to whatever their current surroundings are (forest, have roots or thorns jut out, or in the desert, conjure fireballs or sandstorms)

Basically, my question is, if I decide to take either the MTG or PriMag routes, is it possible to do using the 5e system if I Homebrew it enough, how would you go about implementing such an alteration (blocking off classes or creating custom spell lists), or is there a better RPG system that you can suggest that would work better.

[FightStyles]

You will have enough work and learning to do with the rules already written as a newbie DM. I wouldn't introduce a whole change in mechanics without experience.

I am sure there is some sort of RPG out there with these rules you are looking for, but don't know about implementing them into 5e.

That's just my 2 coppers though.

[Demonslayer666]

I would highly recommend using a different world setting than your previous DM or you will hear "No, no no. It's not supposed to be like that". You can use the same world, but threat it like an alternate dimension.

Revamping how magic works is quite a large undertaking, affecting lots of aspects of D&D. Whatever system you come up with, make sure it is well defined and that the players know what to expect before they make a caster. Since this is your first time as DM, I would caution you against modifying the game too much.

A system using MTG mana would be similar to spell slots, but adding in the different colors doesn't really gain you anything. Plus spells available to cast aren't random like in MTG. You could convert spell slots to mana, and go through and give each spell a mana cost, but there are a lot of spells. I'm not sure this would add anything except an unnecessary layer of complication. I'm not sure there is a good way to do this.

Primal Magics sounds interesting, but very limiting. To implement it, you could just make spell lists that work in each zone. Maybe you could have magic work normally in most places, and have limited primal zones, and/or zones that overlap. Just a suggestion. :smallsmile:

[Reaper34]

I would get use to DMing before jumping in quite so head first. get the basics down before moving to advanced system creation.

a bad first experence with anything can be tough to recover from.

[KorvinStarmast]

Revamping how magic works is quite a large undertaking, affecting lots of aspects of D&D.
The DMG has a spell points option that probably fits the Mana idea well enough.

[Zman]

I strongly suggest not doing too much home brewing of mechanics for your first game. Start simple, a basic one stir that can be expanded to a game world. Consider limiting things to PHB only. Home brewing a ton of mechanics is asking for trouble.

[VertDeLion]

I dont have experience directly DMing, but i have been playing the backseat DM and rule lawyer to our current DM who has trouble following the rules (see my Help Balancing thread).
Its already established that my campaign would not have any affiliation to our current game world, and the other players are okay with that.
What i mean by MTG wasn't exactly the mana costs specifically, but by dividing spells by color of magic, and having mages chose their color alignment. Something similar possibly to Alara even, if anyone is familiar with MTG's Shards of Alara block.

[FlourescentKing]

The thing is, magic in MTG doesn't actually draw power from the surrounding land, it draws power from the memories that the caster has for a certain type of land. For example, a white caster will envision a field of grain they played in during their childhood, or perhaps a holy temple in which they were trained.

However, your idea about terrain-reliant magic is still pretty cool :smallbiggrin:

One way that I would work it is to have magic that would belong in that terrain be strengthened somehow, i.e. extra dmg die, higher save, etc. Also, your idea about selecting color type sounds like it would work by tweaking wizard subclasses to specialize in certain damage types rather than certain spell types, or even just using the wizard subclasses - I can easily see evocation wizards being blasty red mages, while divination is obviously blue (draw 2 cards! :smallbiggrin:).

However, it seems like other casting classes would be restricted to a single color/pair of colors. Paladins would be white (white/green for Oath of the Ancients, white/red for Oath of Vengeance), clerics would be white/whatever fits their domain, druids would be green/red (beasts from Moon, blasting from Land), rangers would be green, too....sorcerors would be almost exclusively red - wild magic is almost exactly like Possibility Storm - and warlocks would be red/black for fiend, blue for GOO, blue for Archfey....at least, that's my opinion.

Also, would there be some benefit to non-casters? It seems like they're kinda getting to hog the spotlight of this awesome idea....