Niffin's and the consequences of powerful magic.

[frogglesmash]

In Lev Grossman's The Magicians casters who channel more arcane energy than they have the strength to handle get consumed by said energy and become a niffin, an emotionless being made of pure arcane energy. I'm interested to see if anyone knows of or has homebrewed something like this i.e. mechanics for using magic above your level and consequences for doing so, preferable something like the above, but I'm interested in anything y'all can bring to the table.

[Komatik]

In The Riddle of Steel (which uses a dice pool system), spellcasting permanently ages the sorcerer. You can resist this effect by putting a portion of your magic dice pool to resist the aging effect. The more powerful the spell, the more complicated the spell, and the faster you want to cast it, the more dangerous casting the spell becomes and the more risk you have to take or safety resources to invest. A careless wizard can knock themselves out (sometimes mid-combat) or just plain age themselves to death.

[ATHATH]

Shadow Sun Ninja's capstone?

[frogglesmash]

Shadow Sun Ninja's capstone?

The fluff is very close, but the mechanics crappy and don't sort the desired fluff at all.

[Venger]

there's always the taint mechanic. just make sure you don't allow tainted scholar.

[Thurbane]

For the end creature, maybe a modified Joystealer?

[GilesTheCleric]

I've heard AD&D/ FR had related mechanics when casting 10th-level+ spells; iirc the first time you tried to cast the spell, it would fail outright. This is because Mystryl wanted the caster to think carefully about using the spell. So, if that's true, then there's precedent for a setting's deity of magic deciding to turn off the weave/ block the magic of a single caster, and of course being a deity, they could easily PAO the caster into a creature of their choice.

[Zanos]

I've heard AD&D/ FR had related mechanics when casting 10th-level+ spells; iirc the first time you tried to cast the spell, it would fail outright. This is because Mystryl wanted the caster to think carefully about using the spell. So, if that's true, then there's precedent for a setting's deity of magic deciding to turn off the weave/ block the magic of a single caster, and of course being a deity, they could easily PAO the caster into a creature of their choice.
I believe one of the incarnations gets told in pretty direct terms by Ao that if she denies anyone arcane magic then she isn't doing her job and will be replaced by someone who will do their job. I think she was trying to restrict Evil spellcasters at the time, as a Chaotic Good incarnation or somesuch.

I don't think there's any failure the first time you cast a level 10+ spell. At least, it wasn't mentioned in any of the Netheril material when Karsus casts a 12th that results in a bunch of horrible apocalyptic stuff happening.

[Flickerdart]

In Lev Grossman's The Magicians casters who channel more arcane energy than they have the strength to handle get consumed by said energy and become a niffin, an emotionless being made of pure arcane energy. I'm interested to see if anyone knows of or has homebrewed something like this i.e. mechanics for using magic above your level and consequences for doing so, preferable something like the above, but I'm interested in anything y'all can bring to the table.

Wilders can use their Wild Surge to raise their manifester level, but if they fail a percentage roll they suffer Psychic Enervation (daze and loss of power points).

[GilesTheCleric]

I don't think there's any failure the first time you cast a level 10+ spell. At least, it wasn't mentioned in any of the Netheril material when Karsus casts a 12th that results in a bunch of horrible apocalyptic stuff happening.

I didn't notice any of that when I read through the two Netheril books, either, but I imagine it might have been from a novel or a rulesbook I haven't yet read. I remember seeing someone mention it on candlekeep, which is why I brought it up.

[inuyasha]

Well, you could use a heavily modified version of the Ravenloft Dark Powers Check mechanic, where you expand it to include all magic as "black magic" and have a pre-made "Dark Path" that all spellcasters go down, making them grow more powerful in spellcasting but weaker in emotion. I'd make custom one's for each spellcasting class.