Is there a truly modular spell system currently out there?

[SangoProduction]

I know about Spheres of Power. It's a cool, very intriguing system. And it's modular in a sense that you build your own spell list. But, it isn't about making spells out of spell components. After playing with it for a while now, I really got an urge for some truly modular spell systems.

I don't know of any, so I made my own quite a while ago.
Examples
1) "Second Wind": Runes: Heal
Effect: The caster heals himself.

2) "Flurry of Strikes": Runes: Channel, Blast
Effect: The caster empowers their fists with raw magical force to land a series of devastating blows.

3) "Lay on Hands": Runes: Single, Melee, Heal
Effect: The caster lays a hand on a target and heals them.

4) "Steal Power"; Runes: Single, Short, Dispel (magic), Heal;
Effect: The caster dispels a magical spell, and redirects the energy to instead heal himself or an ally. Since the Dispel rune generates an effect separate to the spell, the Separator rune is uneccesary.

5) "Explosive Step"; Runes: Melee, Bubble, Blast, Teleport, Reflex; Meta Runes: Elemental(fire), Separator;
Effect: The caster and a small amount of non-living stuff that he touches within a small radius teleport away, causing an explosion of fire on arrival.
He targets himself with the teleport, and the fiery blast happens in a bubble after the teleport, allowing a reflex save from those in the area. The Separator Meta rune allow the caster to teleport himself (and anything else in he wants, in range) without also having friendlies affected by the Blast rune.

Does anyone know of a Build-A-Spell system out there?

[ZamielVanWeber]

Would epic spells qualify? If you scale down... everything they could make a fine base for something like that.

[Vizzerdrix]

I think shadowrun did this. 4th or 5th edition, cant recall.

[SangoProduction]

Would epic spells qualify? If you scale down... everything they could make a fine base for something like that.

Oh I remember something like that. I'll check it out.

[rs2excelsior]

Words of Power (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/ultimateMagicWordsOfPower.html) does this, I think. It seems to give you effects, target types, etc. that you combine on the fly like you're talking about with your runes. I've never tried it so I don't know how well it works, but there you go.

[Zezzy]

The closest thing I can think of for 3rd edition is Kirthfinder's innate metamagic system.

Kirthfinder allows spontaneous casters and spellbook preparation casters to learn spells with metamagic already applied.

Basically, you could scribe in your own special spell, Glacial Blast (fireball with versatile spell (fire to cold), cascade spell (damage attribute (dex))) as if it were a 5th-level spell, causing all creatures in a spread to take 1d6 cold damage/level (max 12d6), and dealing 1d4 dexterity damage, fortitude save for half. This would act in all ways as a default spell, and you would be unable to remove the metamagic from it, as it is now a part of that unique spell.

Due to its intensive metamagic list you can create a massive variety of spells by combining them. There's a whole section that describes how to recreate spells by just learning pre-modified spells, such as the following:


Chill Touch = Ray of Frost + Versatile Evocation (negative energy) + Fell Weakening + Reach Spell (close to touch, -1 level) = 1d6 negative energy + 1d4 Strength damage

Ego Whip = Damage Attribute (1st-level) + Reach Spell (touch to close) + Cascade Spell (Daze) = 1d4 Charisma damage, dazing on failed will save

Flame Strike = Ray of Frost + Versatile Evocation (fire) + Reach Spell (close to medium) + Shape Spell (ray to cylinder) + Energy Admixture (holy/unholy)

Orb of Acid = Ray of frost + Versatile Evocation (acid) + Sickening spell + Irresistible Evocation (no SR) + Vitriolic Evocation

Scintillating Pattern = Color Spray + Lingering Spell + Concentration Spell + Widen Spell + Shape Spell (cone to spread) + Heighten Spell

[Anxe]

Didn't GURPS do this?

And I guess the Elder Scrolls video games, but that's probably not what you were looking for.

[rel]

The old dragonlance system (with the cards) had a build your own spell system.

Basically you described the effect and then using a set of criteria determined how hard the spell was to cast and how costly it was.

From memory it is a bit bare bones and free form though.


I like the idea of reworking the epic spell system into a combined magic system to handle spell casting at all levels of play

I can't see the end result resembling current D&D spellcasting too closely but maybe that is a good thing.

[FreddyNoNose]

I know about Spheres of Power. It's a cool, very intriguing system. And it's modular in a sense that you build your own spell list. But, it isn't about making spells out of spell components. After playing with it for a while now, I really got an urge for some truly modular spell systems.

I don't know of any, so I made my own quite a while ago.
Examples
1) "Second Wind": Runes: Heal
Effect: The caster heals himself.

2) "Flurry of Strikes": Runes: Channel, Blast
Effect: The caster empowers their fists with raw magical force to land a series of devastating blows.

3) "Lay on Hands": Runes: Single, Melee, Heal
Effect: The caster lays a hand on a target and heals them.

4) "Steal Power"; Runes: Single, Short, Dispel (magic), Heal;
Effect: The caster dispels a magical spell, and redirects the energy to instead heal himself or an ally. Since the Dispel rune generates an effect separate to the spell, the Separator rune is uneccesary.

5) "Explosive Step"; Runes: Melee, Bubble, Blast, Teleport, Reflex; Meta Runes: Elemental(fire), Separator;
Effect: The caster and a small amount of non-living stuff that he touches within a small radius teleport away, causing an explosion of fire on arrival.
He targets himself with the teleport, and the fiery blast happens in a bubble after the teleport, allowing a reflex save from those in the area. The Separator Meta rune allow the caster to teleport himself (and anything else in he wants, in range) without also having friendlies affected by the Blast rune.

Does anyone know of a Build-A-Spell system out there?

I made a spell primitives system back in the 80s. It was like assembly language for spells. It even had dirty side effects if you didn't add in some type of protection.

[ATHATH]

Google "Perplexicon". It's a popular type of game over on Bay 12 Forums that focuses on its modular magic system.

The creator of that system, Piecewise, has moved on to create Cabal: The Death of Magic (among many other things, including a game that grew so large that an entire subforum had to be created to house it), which uses a similar system, but is probably more appropriate for actual tabletop/non-deathmatch play. Link (note that there is a link to the ruleset of the game within the opening post): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=163892.0

[weckar]

Ars Magica RPG is this in a nutshell. An awfully big nutshell.

[Necroticplague]

I like the idea of reworking the epic spell system into a combined magic system to handle spell casting at all levels of play

I can't see the end result resembling current D&D spellcasting too closely but maybe that is a good thing.
Not sure it would really be worth the effort, though, considering how broken and poorly-strung-together the whole thing is.

On a related note, I'm not sure the concept of 'build-your-own-spell' is even remotely balanceable, considering that different spells need very different things to be useful. Casting time of a minute is something crippling that renders almost any blasting spell completely irrelevant, while barely being even remotely relevant for daylong/permanent buffs and utility. So do you balance casting time modifiers to the blasting spell, or the utility spell? Same with almost every facet of spellcasting, where there's probably quiet a few things one category can pile on while another can entirely ignore.

[XionUnborn01]

This is way unrelated to D&D,m but the tabletop game Epic Spell Wars has cards you use to make spells. You could adapt that to a class/ system somehow.

[Eldan]

Mutants and Masterminds is a point-buy based superhero system that is extremely flexible in power creation, so that might work for you. It's d20-based, too, so at least a bit compatible. It doesn't use damage and hit points, though.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mutants and Masterminds is a point-buy based superhero system that is extremely flexible in power creation, so that might work for you. It's d20-based, too, so at least a bit compatible. It doesn't use damage and hit points, though.
I built a ton of iconic D&D stuff in M&M a few years back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279503-D-amp-D-in-M-amp-M-a-new-approach-to-rebalancing-3-5-PF). The system's got its own quirks (in particular, in basically refuses to do quantitative buffing), but the basic idea (a set of base Effects, a set of Modifiers to said effects, including the ability to Link them to always work in conjunction) is pretty close to what you want. Not terribly compatible with 3.5, though.

[rel]

On a related note, I'm not sure the concept of 'build-your-own-spell' is even remotely balanceable, considering that different spells need very different things to be useful.

Any magic system aside from a very simple or rules free one will have some effects more effective than others.

For example in the D&D 3.x magic system evocation and enchantment is in general weaker than conjuration and transmutation. The problem is that in D&D this differentiation has happened almost by accident.

A good magic system needs to adress this sort of thing:
a) The good options should be expected and advertised as such
b) The difference in effectiveness between the best and worst options should again be known and the result of concious design effort.
c) The balance of the magic system as a whole vs the rest of the game needs to be designed in.

So the real difficulty of designing a magic system is specifying in exacting detail what you want someone using the system to be able to do.

[EldritchWeaver]

Maybe Elements of Magic Revised works as well. Spells are created by combining a word and a verb. Can't remember, though, if you can combine more than one verb or word.

[Florian]

I really got an urge for some truly modular spell systems.

Ars Magicka is probably the "gold standard" when it comes to magic systems, closely followed by Mage. So far, nothing I´ve seen for d20 comes even close to those.

[Necroticplague]

Maybe Elements of Magic Revised works as well. Spells are created by combining a word and a verb. Can't remember, though, if you can combine more than one verb or word.

I remember seeing a dnd wiki homebrew that worked on a similar concept.

EDIT: found it, here's a link for anyone looking for inspiration (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Wordcasting_(3.5e_Variant_Rule)).