components and magic systems: a (probably) new look.

[notXanathar]

I was thinking about how one might do rune magic without it just being normal spellcasting, since it's pretty hard to find a consensus on what it might be, and what I came up with was a new type of component. Then, having had a think about it I realised how much of a magic systems flavour can be encoded in the components its spells use. By contrast, the only change in flavour between spell slots and magic points is flexibility.

An example: the blood component (B). When you cast a spell with a blood component, you must be holding a weapon that deals slashing or piercing damage. As part of casting the spell take damage of the weapons type equal to 1 + the level at which you cast the spell. This damage cannot be reduced in any way. Alternatively the spell description may specify an amount of damage to take when you use such a spell.

See: no fiddling around with heightening spells by losing hp, or expending hit dice, or fiddly subclasses, or anything of that nature. just a requirement of some spells that you lose some HP to cast them.

I think that this would be really fertile ground for homebrew, although it would require some kind of narrative for it in a way that other things don't, in that you have to justify a major change to the magic system, and you would have to add a number of spells for it to make any difference to the game (unless you retcon some other spells).

Any thoughts?

[PhantomSoul]

For HP, I'd be tempted to go the Hit Die route because of interactions with potions and other sources of healing, unless it's really just a component (ie. still has a spell point or slot or whatever cost).

On the other hand, it's a flavour I quite enjoy. It could be Max HP, alternatively, like the Blood Hunter, and that would also fix the problem if you added a specification that the Hit Point Maximum Reduction can't be cured in a lot of the easier/accessible ways.

I think it pairs well with an extra perk I give to Sorcerers (or maybe would replace it): if a sorcerer spell could use a focus in place of a material component, then the innate magic in the sorcerer's blood means no material component is required.

[faustin]

Does anybody know of a magic system where wizards are heavily reliant on rare components to cast spells ("no eye of basilisk? no Turn to Stone today, mister").

[PhantomSoul]

Does anybody know of a magic system where wizards are heavily reliant on rare components to cast spells ("no eye of basilisk? no Turn to Stone today, mister").

Just house-ruling no spell focus could help capture the feel!

[NigelWalmsley]

Messing around with components doesn't really seem like it would make for a compelling distinction between "rune magic" and "regular magic". The fact that Clerics need holy symbols to cast spells and Wizards do not is not the first, second, or even fifth thing you'd think about when comparing those two classes. I think if you want to do something like this, the way to do it is to change the resource management. So your rune magic works by using crappy runes that charge up a big rune or by rewarding you for sequencing abilities runes in an appropriate order. It's true that there's not a lot of difference between spell slots and spell points, but that's far from the limit in terms of different ways magic could work.

[notXanathar]

Messing around with components doesn't really seem like it would make for a compelling distinction between "rune magic" and "regular magic". Yeah, you're right. However, I wasn't really on about distinguishing between rune magic and other magic, which I found really difficult. It was more about how spell components might be a cool thing to look at from a homebrewing perspective.


For HP, I'd be tempted to go the Hit Die route because of interactions with potions and other sources of healing, unless it's really just a component (ie. still has a spell point or slot or whatever cost).
It is definitely just a component. While hit dice are better from a how long it takes you to recover them, but I always felt that that lacked the immediate risk of death that HP loss brought, so I thought that as a component, not used to power the spells but required for them, it would be closer to the flavour that I was hoping for.