Adding a cost/risk to magic

[Kane0]

So I'm slowly picking away at development of my campaign world, and I'm looking to implement some sort of mechanic that promotes an older sword & sorcery style of play. What i'm NOT going to do is take away spellcasting or disallow certain classes, so what I'm aiming for is a careful consideration of much and how strong you use your magic, while also using this as a crucial worldbuilding element.

The current idea I'm messing around with is a small twist on the 'magic drives you mad' trope. Exposure to magic (using it or it being used on you) runs the risk of rendering you 'feral'. Only ideas for the mechanic (see below), but a feral creature always becomes an NPC, mutating into monstrous versions of themselves as it consumes them (for example grung get turned into bullywugs, tabaxi into gnolls, dragonborn into drakes, etc). Ferals form the bulk of intelligent, low to mid level enemies that were previously occupied by traditional fare like orcs and goblinoids (since those have been adapted into PC races).
Plus to drive the point home, once you're feral magic doesn't have any additional adverse affect on you, so civilized folk are always on the back foot, having to be very careful with their usage while the monsters of the world are under no such limitation. This provides a built-in reason why there aren't an abundance of archmages and high priests to solve all the world's problems, and if there are any they aren't going to be liberally applying magical solutions to everything.

Necromancy and mad science might even be a valuable but contentious medium of treating the buildup, or simply 'transferring' it to someone else.

But once you're feral, there's no known cure. The process is irreversible barring godlike intervention.

Oh, and any excessive magic use in a given area can also make them wild magic zones, which in turn spreads the 'feral plague' and means societies at large tend to take an extreme and harsh view on the study and use of magic even in controlled environments (for good reason).

Thoughts? Opinions? Third party content already doing this? Torches and Pitchforks?

Edit: New working draft!
When you cast a spell or use a magical ability (or are successfully subject to the same) roll a d20; the DC equals the level of the spell/spell slot, or otherwise the proficiency bonus of the caster/originator. Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. [Number between 3 and 10] feral points and you're out. During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC.

Magic items are generally safe ('contained' during creation), with some exceptions like wands and staves.
In this campaign setting no races have innate access to spells (i'm providing 9 races specifically for the world), although under my rules I do offer level 1 feats so you can pick up magic initiate or the like that way.

[GeneralVryth]

My initial thought is no one is going to play a caster in your world, except maybe a Paladin depending on how this works with smite. The system is also a quintessential example of something that in practice only effects PCs. It also makes caster enemies to the party stronger for the same reasons, they are usually going to be one time foes while players need to deal with the consequences of the encounter potentially forever.

Short form this is a really bad idea unless you trying to bad casters and make them more dangerous for your players.

[sithlordnergal]

I rather like this risk to using magic over more standard risks that I see on the forum. It makes for a pretty fun risk/reward system, and adds some fun flavor to the world. My only nitpick would be this:

If a player turns feral, don't just turn them into an NPC. Instead, treat them closer to how you would treat a player that's turned into a Werewolf or Vampire. They still get to be their character, but they have the benefits and detriments of going feral. Both mechanically, and narratively. If you have an RP heavy group, add in permanent Insanity too. I.E. they can freely use magic with no bad effects, but they are no longer welcome in civilized society.

[animorte]

This makes me think of Fable. The more you used magic, the more it would start to show up on your body. It began to reflect in your alignment which would affect your interaction with others. Going more evil would sprout horns and dark scars and basically the permanent Cloak of Flies invocation. Just using magic in general would line your skin with glowing scars and the like.

Another note, this reminds me of Howl's Moving Castle as well. *spoiler* He can do all sorts of magic, but the more he uses it for the war, the form begins taking over. Then you realize so many of the things he has been fighting against are former mages that are now completely overcome by the form and... basically feral.

Anyway, those are interesting examples this reminded me of and if those provide some ideas to implement, nice!

...Oh, I got carried away and forgot to mention the Wild Magic function. I wouldn't do the same thing on full scale, but it may be worth considering a lesser form of it that grows with time, getting more out of control.

[Marcloure]

I don't want to sink you boat, but I don't think D&D is fit for this Sword and Sorcerery type of magic. There are other systems, or even earlier editions, that fit better this whole idea of magic being dangerous and corrupt.

[Kane0]

Another note, this reminds me of Howl's Moving Castle as well. *spoiler* He can do all sorts of magic, but the more he uses it for the war, the form begins taking over. Then you realize so many of the things he has been fighting against are former mages that are now completely overcome by the form and... basically feral.

Anyway, those are interesting examples this reminded me of and if those provide some ideas to implement, nice!

That wasn't a direct inspiration in this case, but yes that's the feel I'm going for. Magic is understood, but that doesn't make it safe.

[Tanarii]

I think you need to create all new classes. There are too many that depend on casting spells from early on.

Alternatively, choose a level of spells that you feel are okay to be commonly used by the sword guys, and only have ones above that level risk headsplosion... uh feral-ization by the sorcerer guys. That way you can have EKs and ATs and Rangers and Paladins, along with low level clerics wizards etc etc

Or just make feral-ization something that only full casters have to face.

Or better yet, since it's "sorcery" that should be bad to give that sword & sorcery feel, make it Arcane Spellcasting. That'll still put ATs and EKs at risk, along with the 3 "Sorcery" full casters Wizard/Sorcerer/Warlock, plus Bards. But won't impact Paladins, Rangers, Clerics or Druids.

[Xihirli]

Maybe instead of rolling a save every time you cast a leveled spell but they don't do much until you fail a whole bunch, they make saves when they use up X# of spell slots in a day.
Maybe... 10? 10 slots in one day and you have to make a save?

EDIT: And maybe instead of just "you've failed an arbitrary number of saves, tear up your character sheet" it's every fail or every Y number of fails, you get a new flaw and they keep stacking up until the player's agreed "yeah I think we've passed the point of no return, NPC me."

[Kane0]

Running some quick testbed numbers:

When you cast a spell, Cha save against your Spell DC. Same thing if something (successfully) casts a spell on you. Which includes heals and buffs, so that'll be fun.
Anyways.
Fail the save, and you take on contamination equal to the spells level. You can handle half level (round down) + prof before you go feral.

So looking at some sample levels.
Level 2: 3
Level 6: 5
Level 12: 9
Level 16: 8 +
Level 20: 16

If you're a full caster, you start to actually feralize yourself at level 2 if you fail saves against all of your own spells
If you're a half caster, this starts at level 5 when you get a total of 8 spell levels compared to a capacity of 5
If you're a one-third caster, this starts at level 7, again when you get a total of 8 spell levels compared to a capacity of 6

And that's before failing saves vs others using magic on you.
So that's definitely punishing enough, but at least the majority of casters come with Charisma saves built in (Bards, Clerics, Paladins, Sorcerers and Warlocks), plus there are plenty of ways to boost saves and this wouldn't be adding yet more emphasis on the Warcaster feat.

[rel]

Nice idea, I say go for it see if your players bite. The howling of the internet peanut gallery doesn't matter if the game at the table is working well.

I wouldn't tie the mechanic to any particular stat. That just makes some classes better than others. Just use proficiency, level or even a flat D20 roll (save on 11+ no matter what).

I don't think rituals should be exempt unless you go ham on the restrictions. A 10 minute cast time is a trivial challenge to overcome.

You might want to limit or remove the effect for the instant or very short duration combat spells.
Basically create a short list of Specific spells like fireball or smite that don't build up the bad vibes and have it apply to everything else as normal.
So your wizard or ranger can blast away in a fight but is less likely to circumvent a challenge entirely with a timely teleport.

You could even remove the other spells from the spell lists entirely and make them available to anyone as found rituals or similar.
Sure, anyone even the barbarian can learn the secrets of flight or teleportation. The monk can seek forbidden knowledge and learn the secret of casting mage armour.
But such power comes at a price...

Final thought; This system of slow buildup with no penalty until the end inadvertently incentivises a player playing a magic user as normal, with no regard for the contamination and simply rolling a new character whenever the old one goes feral.
Or just retiring the old characters when the buildup gets bad.

Not likely to come up at a lot of tables, but worth considering so it doesn't blindside you.

[animorte]

The howling of the internet peanut gallery doesn't matter if the game at the table is working well.
What a fabulous sentence.

+ Three and a half

[Segev]

Ever since reading a novel series where magic made the mage get older, I have been enamored of the idea of a system where it did the opposite. It would explain quite neatly the "unnaturally long-lived mage" trope, and comes with a cost and a natural recharge method (wait to get older again). It even sounds like a non-cost until you really think about it: use too much magic, and you're a kid again, or even a baby or...well, you could de-age to the point you're not able to survive without extensive care from others

Like "using magic ages you," though, this is very hard to put actual numbers to. In a narrative, you can just say that ehis or that use of minor magic is not enough to be a noticeable problem. But in designing a game system for this magic, hard numbers of how much age each spell level (or each spell, even) takes off becomes an important thing to calculate.

You need to determine how many spells you expect a mage to use in a given day, how often they should be able to use to that level and not deage in a way that will require cutting back, and how powerful a spell that uses a minute, and hour, a day, a month, a year is. Can one spell knock decades off? If so, how powerful is that spell? Certainly, it isn't something a human mage is casting very often or in quick succession!

[NichG]

Maybe do this but get rid of casting classes and let anyone with a reference and a skill church e attempt magic as if they were a caster, but with these risks in place (and worse if they flub the spell)

[Jerrykhor]

Yeah nah, that sounds like a really bad idea. Not only nobody will play a caster, why would any party risk having a caster in their ranks if they might go feral?

[animorte]

You need to determine how many spells you expect a mage to use in a given day, how often they should be able to use to that level and not deage in a way that will require cutting back, and how powerful a spell that uses a minute, and hour, a day, a month, a year is. Can one spell knock decades off? If so, how powerful is that spell? Certainly, it isn't something a human mage is casting very often or in quick succession!
That's a neat concept. Guess that solves the curious case of Benjamin Button.

My first thought on how to do this is somewhere abouts losing a week for each spell level cast. Cantrips don't bother much. Rituals cut down to half or function as cantrips.

Say, a max level Wizard goes ham in one day, all spell slots (not including class features or recovered spells). They would lose 89 weeks, or 1.7 years.

Doesn't seem too bad all in one go, but based on that you would still need a lot of downtime. Maybe it would work better as one 1st-level slot brings back 1 day. Still slow going, but perhaps reasonable.

[Mastikator]

Some thoughts

What do you mean "exposure to magic"? Is casting a spell exposure to magic? Is being targeted by a spell exposure to magic? Because if it is then you run into some VERY harsh side effects. And if it's not, then you need to precisely define exactly what is and isn't exposure to magic. The players need to know exactly what it is and be able to make informed choices, be ready for them to say "no" to every quest that involves the risk of exposure to magic unless the reward is something well beyond their expected reward for their level.
The charisma save makes charisma casters the best spell casters. However, they are still doomed.
Making a save to resist becoming an NPC is extremely risky. Even a 1st level sorcerer casting their two 1st level spells has a 75% chance of becoming an NPC, a wizard* has an 88% chance, meaning most spell casters won't survive their first day of actually using their primary class feature. The only way a player can be a spell casting class and not turn into an NPC is to never cast spells, which makes them a liability to the party.
It would seem to make resilient (charisma) mandatory, but actually all spell casters are doomed.
How are spells from race features affected? Are they effectively dead features too?
How are spell slots consumed by paladin smites affected? Are paladins the only ones who can spend their spell slots without turning into an NPC?
What about magic items, does attuning to a magic item expose you to magic?


Ultimately I agree with @Tanarii, you need to redesign ever class and subclass that has magic of some kind, which is almost all of them. You also need to be very careful how you balance monster encounters, many rely on the party having access to magic items and spells, especially once you enter T2. However to have a chance to enter T2 at all the players will need to completely avoid all magic.

*assuming 16 int and 10 charisma

I think the concept might work but you need to reconsider the whole "single exposure to magic = more than 50% likely to turn into an NPC forever" because those odds will kill the party in less than a day. Every day:


Casting a spell and attuning to a magic item counts as being exposed to magic. Nothing else does.
Every time you are exposed to magic you roll a d20, if the d20 rolls on a number equal or lower than the spell level then you add 1 feral point. Cantrips roll with advantage and count as level 1. Magic items count as level 1 and only roll when attunement begins. Being targeted by a spell does not run the risk of becoming feral, only casting a spell.
Each time you finish a long rest you can make a con save against 10 + 2x total feral points, if you succeed you lose 1 feral point. This means that low level of feralness can be shaken, but if you have lots of it, then it becomes hard to remove.
When your feral points reach 10 you become an NPC.
Each feral point makes you more visibly feral, all NPCs and PCs can tell just by looking how many feral points someone has. There are no mechanical downsides to having many feral points as long as you have less than 10.
A region can also accumulate feral points, when a creature gains a feral point the region they're in also does. Regions drop 1 feral point per month. If a region reaches 10 it turns into a wild magic zone and stays like that for at least 100 years.
Anyone in a wild magic zone rolls with disadvantage when they roll for feral. They also trigger wild magic surge when they gain a feral point.

[SharkForce]

as described, due to sheer volume of saving throws made I predict your players are going to be routinely writing up new characters as their old ones become NPCs if they have primary spellcasters in the party.

personally, I'd prefer those classes just not exist for players if you're going to give them drawbacks like gradually over time pretty much guaranteeing that they become NPCs.

I'm not saying don't have this rule in your world, to be clear... I'm saying that having wizards and sorcerers that rely heavily on casting powerful spells to make their contributions as PC classes feels like it isn't going to work. I would suggest designing new classes that rely less on routinely casting spells to accomplish things. after all, pretty much everyone agrees that gandalf the grey is definitely a wizard, but it isn't like he ran around using fireball or even fly or detect magic all the time.

alternately, here's another idea: birthright setting in 2e had it so that any human could be a magician (limited to level 1 and 2 spells of any school, then can only learn illusion and divination, and I think a few more weapon proficiencies) but only those with a bloodline could be full wizards... you could do something similar.

For example, suppose a cleric can use their domain spells (and only their domain spells) safely. each group of priests would essentially have their own secrets for preventing the risk that applies only to a handful of spells. this would work for paladins too.

warlocks have a similar built-in solution (especially if cantrips are allowed).

you'd have to come up with something new for other classes that don't have subclass-based spell lists if you're using this of course. maybe wizards have to prepare a special tool (carving a spell into their staff or whatever) to use magic safely.

of course, that's just one way you can do it... and even then I'd still want to give the primary spellcasters more ways to contribute without using their magic (not necessarily a *lot* more, mind you)

as a final "just throwing out ideas, use them if you want or ignore them if you don't", you could try having spells cast as a ritual be safer (not in the PHB sense where you don't use a slot, just like... if you are willing to spend 10 minutes casting the fly spell, any saving throws against becoming feral could be made with advantage or something)

[Tanarii]

Ever since reading a novel series where magic made the mage get older, I have been enamored of the idea of a system where it did the opposite. It would explain quite neatly the "unnaturally long-lived mage" trope, and comes with a cost and a natural recharge method (wait to get older again). It even sounds like a non-cost until you really think about it: use too much magic, and you're a kid again, or even a baby or...well, you could de-age to the point you're not able to survive without extensive care from others


Chronowild mage. Each spell you cast has a 50/50 chance of aging or de-aging you a number of time units equal to the spell level. :smallamused:

[Kane0]

Nice idea, I say go for it see if your players bite. The howling of the internet peanut gallery doesn't matter if the game at the table is working well.

I wouldn't tie the mechanic to any particular stat. That just makes some classes better than others. Just use proficiency, level or even a flat D20 roll (save on 11+ no matter what).

I don't think rituals should be exempt unless you go ham on the restrictions. A 10 minute cast time is a trivial challenge to overcome.

Final thought; This system of slow buildup with no penalty until the end inadvertently incentivises a player playing a magic user as normal, with no regard for the contamination and simply rolling a new character whenever the old one goes feral.
Or just retiring the old characters when the buildup gets bad.

Not likely to come up at a lot of tables, but worth considering so it doesn't blindside you.

Eheheheheh. To be fair though, so far it appears around 50/50.

Good points, maybe just make it a statless save like death saves are. Straight d20 vs the spell level or CR of the critter.

Well yeah but thats a problem of players making disposable PCs.

[Bane's Wolf]

This is a very cool idea :smallcool:

I really like the idea of Magic having a cost. It gives a reason for it to be used sparingly.
Your idea that it even corrupts those its used on intrigues me. Players will be hesitant to get healing or combat buffs from their own friends, unless there is a DIRE need.
The drama would be delicious :smallbiggrin:


I would be very careful with this mechanic though. If magic is too dangerous, no-one would use it.


Running some quick testbed numbers:

When you cast a spell, Cha save against your Spell DC. Same thing if something (successfully) casts a spell on you. Which includes heals and buffs, so that'll be fun.
Anyways.
Fail the save, and you take on contamination equal to the spells level. You can handle half level (round down) + prof before you go feral.

So looking at some sample levels.
Level 2: 3
Level 6: 5
Level 12: 9
Level 16: 8 +
Level 20: 16

If you're a full caster, you start to actually feralize yourself at level 2 if you fail saves against all of your own spells
If you're a half caster, this starts at level 5 when you get a total of 8 spell levels compared to a capacity of 5
If you're a one-third caster, this starts at level 7, again when you get a total of 8 spell levels compared to a capacity of 6

And that's before failing saves vs others using magic on you.
So that's definitely punishing enough, but at least the majority of casters come with Charisma saves built in (Bards, Clerics, Paladins, Sorcerers and Warlocks), plus there are plenty of ways to boost saves and this wouldn't be adding yet more emphasis on the Warcaster feat.

This seems VERY punishing to me. :smalleek:
A caster could go feral in one or two fights with a few unlucky rolls.

Correct my math if i'm misunderstanding, but a sorcerer rolling a CHA save (D20 + prof + CHA mod) against his own spell DC (8 + Prof + CHA mod) = 40% chance of failing?

A wizard without a high CHA would fail more than 50% of his saves?

How long do you want a spellcaster to be in the game before ferilization removes them?

Edit: i take too long to type, and others express my concerns better than i did :smallwink:

[Amechra]

What if you tied it to spell recovery instead, and made the save's difficulty was related to the number of spell slots you recovered?

[Clistenes]

It would probably make everybody upset: People who plays spellcasters would be upset because they can't use magic freely, you would have to balance it making magic more powerful so it's worth the risk, and that would upset people playing martials.

The only way I think it would work is by making everybody a rogue or martial, adding magic on top of that as a bonus.

[Bane's Wolf]

What if you tied it to spell recovery instead, and made the save's difficulty was related to the number of spell slots you recovered?

This is an interesting idea.
Perhaps recovering your spell slots after a long rest is an arduous process of dragging magical essence into your mind (or however we want to fluff it)
You can recover maybe your class level worth of spell slots without risk, but any more becomes dangerous and involves rolls to avoid getting feral points.

This would encourage mages to use their spells very carefully, and would make mages use their downtime to carefully and safely re-build their spell slots between adventures.

This might not be what Kane0 is looking for for their setting, considering it doesn't address how magic used on people also causes feral corruption, but i find the idea very cool.

[Kane0]

Mastikator raised a boatload of good thoughts, going to amend the OP to catch as many as I can.

[Mastikator]

Since races with innate spell casting no longer have innate spell casting, you may want to consider giving them something else. It may be as small as 1-2 new proficiencies. I'd say 1 cantrip is worth 1 skill, and a spell/long rest is worth 1 skill. It's not very flavorful but it gets the job done unless you can give heroic members of a race something more interesting and flavorful for their race.

Another option is to just not give them anything, bring the mundanes back into the forefront. The more I think about it the more I like that option actually.

[Kane0]

Since races with innate spell casting no longer have innate spell casting, you may want to consider giving them something else. It may be as small as 1-2 new proficiencies. I'd say 1 cantrip is worth 1 skill, and a spell/long rest is worth 1 skill. It's not very flavorful but it gets the job done unless you can give heroic members of a race something more interesting and flavorful for their race.

Another option is to just not give them anything, bring the mundanes back into the forefront. The more I think about it the more I like that option actually.

Yeah i'm basically making 9 new races specifically for the setting. You have your vanilla humans, your wee humans, extra-large humans, the dragon/lizard people, 'orcs', frog people, bird people, rat people and the cats n' dogs.

Plus potentially templates to apply for the planetouched (angelic, demonic, fey, four elements, maaaaybe shadow), essentially swapping out one or two racial features.

On the power scale they're all dialled back a touch from stock races because i'm throwing in that free level 1 feat and detaching ability score increases from the rest of the character creation process (basically +1 to three different stats of your choice, theoretically coinciding with race + class + background).

[Arkhios]

As has been pointed out before, high risk and no reward is going to drive a wedge between your game and players otherwise interested in playing a spellcaster.

I would consider offering some kind of reward in return for taking the risk. For example, with the proposed number between 3 and 10 (...actually, I'd say 4+, see below why), while you stay below that, you have a benefit for something related to spellcasting. For example, depending on the level of feralization, you get a bonus to spell attack rolls and save DC's (up to +3), but since the higher your bonus is, the higher is the risk of losing yourself to becoming feral.

[Mastikator]

An idea:

You could make a list of safe spells- at least every class spell list should have one. These spells are less feralicious and you roll charisma save with advantage. These should be healing/anti corruption spells, like cure wounds, lesser restoration, etc.
You may then also make a list of unsafe spells at least one for every class. These spells are more feralicious and you roll charisma save with disadvantage. These should be corrupting spells like hex, animate dead, inflict wounds, etc.
It's fine if most spells are in neither list, only especially pro/anti feral might be on the lists.

This would lend to the world building that some spell casters are nicer for society than others. Healers good, necromancers bad. (if that is the kind of world building you're going for).

Another idea:

Feral NPCs retain their spell casting, so you may have feral wizards who go around raising the dead, just for the lulz basically.

[Kane0]

Another idea:

Feral NPCs retain their spell casting, so you may have feral wizards who go around raising the dead, just for the lulz basically.
Yeah this part was absolutely the intention.

[Unoriginal]

One of the hard parts in adding risk to magic is that the risk has to be fun for the people around the table, but still a risk in-universe.

Maybe you could write a random table of effects that everyone must roll on when using a spell slot, with the effects ranging from weird but inconsequential to the "do a save or go feral" one.

Or the feral process could be gradual, with different effects for each stage, par and you only lose your character at the final stage (or midway through, before the really nasty mutations).

[Tanarii]

As has been pointed out before, high risk and no reward is going to drive a wedge between your game and players otherwise interested in playing a spellcaster.
It doesn't stop folks from playing them in e.g. Warhammer FRP or Warhammer 40k. People play casters and psykers all the time, despite being noticeably weaker than D&D casters and having a non-negligible chance of headsplosion or letting horrors into the world (and on top of the party).

Folks play them less, but it's not just the cost, it's that non-casters have a wide variety of interesting options to make them appealing. So you end up with casters not the vast majority of every party. Instead of half the party being full casters and another quarter 1/2 or 1/3 casters, you end up with 1 at most.

Which would be absolutely fine ... if D&D had enough non-caster classes to support it. Or you're okay with parties being old-school: 1 Magic-user, 1 Cleric, 1 Thief, and 5-10 Fighters. Except since "Rogues" are Dex warriors + Thief Skills now, it'll prob be more of them than Fighters. :smallamused:

[RSP]

If an RP heavy group, the mere fear of casters in the world may be enough to limit anyone’s castings, without going “save or die” from spell use.

Even in non-RP groups the reaction to casters will be itself a hurdle (though murder hobos may just start playing the feral bad guys) with repercussions.

[noob]

Ever since reading a novel series where magic made the mage get older, I have been enamored of the idea of a system where it did the opposite. It would explain quite neatly the "unnaturally long-lived mage" trope, and comes with a cost and a natural recharge method (wait to get older again). It even sounds like a non-cost until you really think about it: use too much magic, and you're a kid again, or even a baby or...well, you could de-age to the point you're not able to survive without extensive care from others

Like "using magic ages you," though, this is very hard to put actual numbers to. In a narrative, you can just say that ehis or that use of minor magic is not enough to be a noticeable problem. But in designing a game system for this magic, hard numbers of how much age each spell level (or each spell, even) takes off becomes an important thing to calculate.

You need to determine how many spells you expect a mage to use in a given day, how often they should be able to use to that level and not deage in a way that will require cutting back, and how powerful a spell that uses a minute, and hour, a day, a month, a year is. Can one spell knock decades off? If so, how powerful is that spell? Certainly, it isn't something a human mage is casting very often or in quick succession!

The societal ramifications of that side effect of magic would be major for example it would mean that lots of people that becomes old enough will start trying to learn magic regardless of if they are able to or not meaning that there would be a whole lot of scammers trying to convince people that they can learn magic and reaping massive profit from charging massive prices for magic lessons of dubious efficiency.

[Unoriginal]

It doesn't stop folks from playing them in e.g. Warhammer FRP or Warhammer 40k. People play casters and psykers all the time, despite being noticeably weaker than D&D casters and having a non-negligible chance of headsplosion or letting horrors into the world (and on top of the party).

Thing is, in WFRP or the 40k systems, the risk of losing your character in gruesome ways at the drop of a hat is expected and accepted (and for many, part of the fun).

And while casters and psykers are weaker than D&D casters in those systems, all the characters are, relatively to the dangerosity of the world (except maybe the one where you play Space Marines, and even then...).

When "farmer with a pig stick" or "town drunk (unarmed)" are both lethal threats AND legit options for PCs, the weak wizard apprentice who has a small risks to accidentally unleash hell is not out of place.

Also while I'm no expert, I'm pretty sure the system in those games is still less harsh on casters than the one proposed in the OP.

[noob]

Thing is, in WFRP or the 40k systems, the risk of losing your character in gruesome ways at the drop of a hat is expected and accepted (and for many, part of the fun).

And while casters and psykers are weaker than D&D casters in those systems, all the characters are, relatively to the dangerosity of the world (except maybe the one where you play Space Marines, and even then...).

When "farmer with a pig stick" or "town drunk (unarmed)" are both lethal threats AND legit options for PCs, the weak wizard apprentice who has a small risks to accidentally unleash hell is not out of place.

Also while I'm no expert, I'm pretty sure the system in those games is still less harsh on casters than the one proposed in the OP.

It is actually worse because it is much less controlled: instead of a progression toward ferallness that can be reverted by waiting a few weeks, each individual ability use can randomly get you possessed by a demon which will make you infight with your friends or other bad stuff which will require you to get a new character (although the odds are really low if you are using weak abilities).

[stoutstien]

Honestly if you just remove the 5-7 really bad spells(wish. Infinite summons, hey look I copied the fighter lol, force cage) and tone back the frequency they can toss out the rest it would level out.

That and make spell lists matter again.

Leave the risky casting for a class/subclass

[Leon]

Yeah nah, that sounds like a really bad idea. Not only nobody will play a caster, why would any party risk having a caster in their ranks if they might go feral?

People will always player a caster no matter the cost and the sheer power that magic provides warrants a cost to use it.


As has been pointed out before, high risk and no reward is going to drive a wedge between your game and players otherwise interested in playing a spellcaster.


Magic effect is the reward, magic is inherently powerful it needs some cost.

[zlefin]

Edit: New working draft!
When you cast a spell or use a magical ability (or are successfully subject to the same) roll a d20; the DC equals the level of the spell/spell slot, or otherwise the proficiency bonus of the caster/originator. Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. [Number between 3 and 10] feral points and you're out. During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC.

Magic items are generally safe ('contained' during creation), with some exceptions like wands and staves.
In this campaign setting no races have innate access to spells (i'm providing 9 races specifically for the world), although under my rules I do offer level 1 feats so you can pick up magic initiate or the like that way.

Thoughts about this listed working draft:
In some ways it's like the 'gritty' rest rules; in that if you accumulate any significant feralization, either by using magic or having it cast on you, the correct play is to go and rest somewhere until it goes away. This also means there needs to be time costs built-in to the campaign or else people will just always rest until it clears fully.

It means there's no direct long term risk to magic use, at least not that's defined. The risk only happens if you exceed threshold; in particular this means that since you control your own use, the risk comes from monsters using magic on you more than you planned for. In a controlled setting away from combat you could consistently use magic very safely until the ill-defined effects on the environment happen.

Since both casting and being subject to a successful spell both effect, it means from a party level, buffs and healing spells, especially party-wide buffs, produce much higher feralization than magic targetted at foes. Are ferals still resistant/immune to hostile magic under this system? cuz if so that renders a lot of spells just plain useless vs a large number of foes, and it means using spells on non-feral foes runs a risk of turning them feral, as you don't know how much they've already accumulated.

If I'm reading the numbers right, a level 1 spell would have a DC of 1? And saves are no longer relevant except for the reduction by rest? So low level spells can be cast pretty easily with very little risk, but as a caster levels the expected amount of feralization if they used all their slots will steadily rise over time?

[Herbert_W]

So I'm slowly picking away at development of my campaign world, and I'm looking to implement some sort of mechanic that promotes an older sword & sorcery style of play. What i'm NOT going to do is take away spellcasting or disallow certain classes, so what I'm aiming for is a careful consideration of much and how strong you use your magic, while also using this as a crucial worldbuilding element.

For many classes, "I cast lots of spells" is a core part of the class' identity, both thematically and mechanically. This is more true in 5e than older editions. Your design goals present you with a bit of a Morton's fork with regard to those classes. You could:


Restrict them - but you already said that you don't want to do that.
Simply add a risk/cost to using magic - but that puts certain classes at a strict disadvantage compared to player's expectations, which players will probably not like at all (but, as usual for player reactions, you may be lucky and have a table that's cool with it). If you put a class at such a disadvantage that nobody wants to play it then this is functionally equivalent to restricting it.
Give magic-using classes a boost as well as a cost/risk - but this would require care to balance. This could result in spellcasting being underpowered, overpowered, or possibly both depending on luck and optimization.
Redesign each spellcasting class - which is a lot of work.
Redesign all spellcasting classes, at once, with one or more ideas that'll work for all of them.


I think a reasonable starting point would be to get rid of cantrips. Cantrips are the reason why 5e spellcasters can do something explicitly magical every round, even when they're out of spell slots. Clearly, a design goal for spellcasters in 5e was to allow their players to always roleplay as a spellcaster, and never be stuck as a guy-who-is-basically-a-worse-martial. That's opposed to your design goals, where temporarily loosing magic is a consequence that you'll want to keep on the table.

If you're getting rid of cantrips, I'd recommend replacing them with something that fills the same mechanical role but without being flashy or explicitly magical. Classes that gain utility cantrips could gain extra skills instead. Classes that gain combat cantrips could gain the ability to use their spellcasting ability modifier in place of a physical ability modifier for attacks (but perhaps only attacks, not damage - we don't want a spellcaster without spells to out-damage a martial), and the ability to have the damage they deal could as a different damage type for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance and immunity and for things such as interfering with a troll's regeneration.

Another reasonable starting point would be to, instead of adding more rolls when a spell is cast, attach more consequences to rolls that are already happening. One idea that I like is to attach consequences to a target succeeding on a saving throw. (If there's multiple targets, consequences occur when any target succeeds and only happen once regardless of how many succeed.) This would have both interesting wordbuilding and mechanical implications.

From a worldbuilding perspective, this makes it clear that magic doesn't follow the rules of normal physics - that magical cause and effect doesn't always flow in the direction that we expect. This helps magic to feel magical, and not like technology that's merely been dressed up as fantasy.

From a mechanical perspective, this makes some spells more risky than others. Healing and buffing party members is safe, and I regard this as a positive consequence - healing and buffing implies teamwork (not just in the sense of "we're both whittling down the same pool of HP," but actual "we have synergy" teamwork) and that's great. Casting magic out of combat is relatively safe, but still costs spell slots. Estimating an opponent's chance of failing a save becomes even more important - there's more than just your action and a spell slot at risk. Fitting more targets into the area of an e.g. fireball doesn't just give you more damage for free - it's still a better use of resources to catch more foes per fireball, but no as much better. Catching a whole crowd of densely-packed goblins in a cave in a fireball is less "whoohoo lodsa damage!" and more "expensive but worth it."

Now, what should the aforementioned consequences be? Your idea of players accumulating feral points is IMO a fundamentally good one, but there's some details that I'd tweak:


I'd make the number of feral points that a PC can accumulate depend on level and be higher for spellcasters. After all, "I cast spells" is a core part of some class' identity and "I can cast more spells safely than others" is a natural extension of that in a setting where spellcasting is dangerous. So, I'd set a player's maximum number of feral points to be something like a multiple of their proficiency bonus plus a multiple of the level of the highest-level spell in their daily spell slot allotment.
Instant NPCification is too much too suddenly. I'd have an escalating scale of consequences, starting with merely cosmetic, escalating to occasional wild magic surges, then negative mechanical effects, then worse mechanical effects, etc.
I'd ensure that players don't know their total number of feral points. They might have a rough idea - they know what level of feralization effects they're experiencing, but not how close they are to going up or down a level, say. This can be achieved by having saves to remove feral points rolled in secret and the number of points removed on a success be random and also rolled in secret.
I'd tie removing feral points to not using magic. For example, I might have it so that a PC can roll to remove a feral point only if they complete a long rest and their daily spell allotment is already full. (This should interact in an interesting way with warlocks. Warlocks will have, if you use the first point in this list, a lower threshold for feralization as they have a daily spell slot allotment of zero. However, warlocks will also always be able to save to remove a feral point since their daily spell slots are therefore always full.)
I'd allow players to choose to accept consequences other than acquiring feral points. For example, if a player would gain a feral point from casting a spell then they could instead let the spell fail entirely, wasting their spell slot and action. This makes acquiring a feral point a choice, fitting with the theme of magic being expensive but worth it.


Since the risk of ferilization takes something away from spellcasters, it's appropriate to give them something back. Furthermore, this "something" should be tied to ferilization in such a way that a player can't gain this benefit without suffering the cost, to avoid players exploiting it in an overpowered way. Say, for example, gaining a feral point could also temporarily supercharge a PC's magic, by giving them some number of temporary spell slots (which could work like the spell slots that sorcerers gain from spending sorcery points).

Finally - the thresholds for feral points need to be tuned in such a way that a player who casts a normal amount of spells will feel enough pressure that they won't want to waste their magic, but not so much that they end up underpowered. That's a delicate balancing act. You can tweak the thresholds at which ferilization effects occur and the rate at which feral points are removed. You can tweak the length of adventures and the amount of downtime that PCs get between them. Napkin math can get you most of the way but this is something that you might need to adjust on the fly - and it's a good idea to check with your players to make sure that they're OK with that.

[Psyren]

Ever since reading a novel series where magic made the mage get older, I have been enamored of the idea of a system where it did the opposite. It would explain quite neatly the "unnaturally long-lived mage" trope, and comes with a cost and a natural recharge method (wait to get older again). It even sounds like a non-cost until you really think about it: use too much magic, and you're a kid again, or even a baby or...well, you could de-age to the point you're not able to survive without extensive care from others

Like "using magic ages you," though, this is very hard to put actual numbers to. In a narrative, you can just say that ehis or that use of minor magic is not enough to be a noticeable problem. But in designing a game system for this magic, hard numbers of how much age each spell level (or each spell, even) takes off becomes an important thing to calculate.

You need to determine how many spells you expect a mage to use in a given day, how often they should be able to use to that level and not deage in a way that will require cutting back, and how powerful a spell that uses a minute, and hour, a day, a month, a year is. Can one spell knock decades off? If so, how powerful is that spell? Certainly, it isn't something a human mage is casting very often or in quick succession!

How debilitating this would be would depend entirely on what being a kid means to your capabilities. Do you retain all your adult knowledge and skill? How far back do you need to go before you start losing motor functions or cognitive capabilities? As is, this sounds like as long as you stay above... like 9 years old or something? Maybe even 6-7? This becomes Cursed With Awesome.


Honestly if you just remove the 5-7 really bad spells(wish. Infinite summons, hey look I copied the fighter lol, force cage) and tone back the frequency they can toss out the rest it would level out.

I agree, there are really only a relative handful of spells that need toning down in 5e compared to prior editions . And even "I copied the fighter lol" can exist if the drawback is sufficient, it's not like everyone is spamming Tenser's Transformation for example.

But if OP and their table are having fun with this exercise I won't get in the way of that.



It doesn't stop folks from playing them in e.g. Warhammer FRP or Warhammer 40k. People play casters and psykers all the time, despite being noticeably weaker than D&D casters and having a non-negligible chance of headsplosion or letting horrors into the world (and on top of the party).

Folks play them less, but it's not just the cost, it's that non-casters have a wide variety of interesting options to make them appealing. So you end up with casters not the vast majority of every party. Instead of half the party being full casters and another quarter 1/2 or 1/3 casters, you end up with 1 at most.

Which would be absolutely fine ... if D&D had enough non-caster classes to support it. Or you're okay with parties being old-school: 1 Magic-user, 1 Cleric, 1 Thief, and 5-10 Fighters. Except since "Rogues" are Dex warriors + Thief Skills now, it'll prob be more of them than Fighters. :smallamused:

There really should be a named fallacy for "{Game that is nowhere near as popular/accessible as D&D and has vastly different player expectations from D&D} does {system/idea} just fine!"

[KorvinStarmast]

The current idea I'm messing around with is a small twist on the 'magic drives you mad' trope. Exposure to magic (using it or it being used on you) runs the risk of rendering you 'feral'. Only ideas for the mechanic (see below), but a feral creature always becomes an NPC, mutating into monstrous versions of themselves as it consumes them (for example grung get turned into bullywugs, tabaxi into gnolls, dragonborn into drakes, etc). Ferals form the bulk of intelligent, low to mid level enemies that were previously occupied by traditional fare like orcs and goblinoids (since those have been adapted into PC races).
Plus to drive the point home, once you're feral magic doesn't have any additional adverse affect on you, so civilized folk are always on the back foot, having to be very careful with their usage while the monsters of the world are under no such limitation. This provides a built-in reason why there aren't an abundance of archmages and high priests to solve all the world's problems, and if there are any they aren't going to be liberally applying magical solutions to everything.

Necromancy and mad science might even be a valuable but contentious medium of treating the buildup, or simply 'transferring' it to someone else.

But once you're feral, there's no known cure. The process is irreversible barring godlike intervention.

Oh, and any excessive magic use in a given area can also make them wild magic zones, which in turn spreads the 'feral plague' and means societies at large tend to take an extreme and harsh view on the study and use of magic even in controlled environments (for good reason).

Thoughts? Opinions? Third party content already doing this? Torches and Pitchforks?

Edit: New working draft!

When you cast a spell or use a magical ability (or are successfully subject to the same) roll a d20; the DC equals the level of the spell/spell slot, or otherwise the proficiency bonus of the caster/originator. Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. [Number between 3 and 10] feral points and you're out. During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC.

Magic items are generally safe ('contained' during creation), with some exceptions like wands and staves.
In this campaign setting no races have innate access to spells (i'm providing 9 races specifically for the world), although under my rules I do offer level 1 feats so you can pick up magic initiate or the like that way.


Nice idea, I say go for it see if your players bite. The howling of the internet peanut gallery doesn't matter if the game at the table is working well.
1. Love the basic idea.
2. Rel is right, let the howlers howl and fling poo.
3. Good idea to get rid of innately spell casting PC races.
4. The costs-mechanic-balance could use a mechanism like Death Saving Throws since you are using D&D 5e.

When you cast a spell or use a magical ability (or are successfully subject to the same) roll a d20; the DC equals the level of the spell/spell slot, or otherwise the proficiency bonus of the caster/originator. Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. [Number between 3 and 10] feral points and you're out. During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC.

Magic items are generally safe ('contained' during creation), with some exceptions like wands and staves.
In this campaign setting no races have innate access to spells (i'm providing 9 races specifically for the world), although under my rules I do offer level 1 feats so you can pick up magic initiate or the like that way.
I disagree with the "are exposed to magic" rider on that. (Or are successfully subject to the same).
An NPC cleric spamming sacred flame or guidance at you might trigger feralness if you are not careful. Remove that.
Anyone else casting magic on you is already putting you at risk if they are hostile, and are already putting themselves at risk if they are an ally.

I suggest that you put the onus on the person (PC or NPC) who casts the spell.
Yes, you need to make tick marks on your NPC casters since they are, in world, subject to the same risks.
Adds a bit of overhead but stays internally consistent.

Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. Suggest that leveled spells cast from magic items are included, but you could give advantage to the save, or a bonus equal to PB.
Suggestion:

When you hit "Level plus Proficiency Bonus" you make another save. I'd make the save ability based on the class. FTRs Con, Rangers Wis, Casters their casting stat.
Yes, bardic inspiration will help here!

after the third failed save. The transformation begins.
As with death saves, once you have failed three you go feral.
What to do with the first and second failed save I am not yet sure, but I'd suggest rolling on the wild magic table on the first two failed saves, and on the third one you have gone feral.

During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC. I like that you can sometimes recover/restore.

The only downside is more rolls, but a lot of players like rolling dice. The risk is still there, and profligate magic use will force saves.

I'd offer Divine casters advantage on the save, but that's personal taste. No need to do that for your base system.

By the way, this system that you are going for is somewhat similar to the Stress system in Blades in the Dark.
Too many stress equals trauma, and too many trauma retires the PC from the game.
You have "too many spells and failed saves yields feral points (Stress) too many stress and you get Trauma (the death save progression) and at max limit of trauma you have wrecked the character.

I'll try to put these thoughts into a more organized form in a bit, but I love the idea you are aiming for.

Just had an idea:
Every time you cast a leveled spell, you roll a d12. You have to beat the spells level to avoid a feral point.
For a level 1 spell, you have to beat a 1 (roll a 2). For a level 2 spell, you have to roll a 3.
No modifiers.

Might be simpler than what was outlined above. It puts higher risks on higher level spells.

[JackPhoenix]

It is actually worse because it is much less controlled: instead of a progression toward ferallness that can be reverted by waiting a few weeks, each individual ability use can randomly get you possessed by a demon which will make you infight with your friends or other bad stuff which will require you to get a new character (although the odds are really low if you are using weak abilities).

The games also works in a way that allows the wizard (or psyker) use a sword (or a gun) and be reasonably effective even without using their powers. Sure, they won't match combat specialists, but a plasma bast is a plasma blast, no matter who's holding the weapon. And, of course, neither is a class-and-level based system, anyone can use their XP to advance however they want, careers just change costs and give free stuff.

D&D does not work that way.

[Amechra]

(although the odds are really low if you are using weak abilities).

I'm a bit more familiar with Warhammer Fantasy (2e, specifically), but the chance of bad stuff happening when you cast spells is actually kinda low since it triggers on rolling doubles/triples/quadruples on d10s and a lot of the results are either cosmetic or mild.

If you're casting spells with two Magic Dice (which is honestly enough for most bread-and-butter spellcasting if you also Channel), there's a 0.075% chance of getting possessed by a demon... for one minute. And you don't turn into a super-boss or anything (that's a 40k thing) — you're just a jerk for a minute with no memories of it afterwards. At most, your GM might be a jerk and have you attack your party... but it definitely wouldn't be a boss-fight out of nowhere (mostly because spellcasters aren't nearly as powerful in comparison to their companions).

And, notably, Divine Magic doesn't have that problem¹, since it uses a different miscast table entirely.

¹ I mean, you can technically get the possessed by demons result if you're wildly unlucky, but it happens literally 0.015% of the time assuming a DM who's angling for that result.

---

As for the working draft in the OP... I'm not sure if I like it all that much? I don't have time to run the numbers right now, but it feels like it's incredibly easy to pace yourself so that you won't run into any long-term issues unless you're literally spamming magic multiple days in a row.

[Segev]

The societal ramifications of that side effect of magic would be major for example it would mean that lots of people that becomes old enough will start trying to learn magic regardless of if they are able to or not meaning that there would be a whole lot of scammers trying to convince people that they can learn magic and reaping massive profit from charging massive prices for magic lessons of dubious efficiency.Possibly, if magic and its costs are well-known. There's a lot of variance this can have depending on other setting conceits. Consider the setting where magic is rare and wizards are mysterious and there may even be stigma against it. "Witches steal the life force of young men to fuel their vanity," might be a rumor that goes around, totally ignorant of how magic actually achieves the youthening effect.


That's a neat concept. Guess that solves the curious case of Benjamin Button.

My first thought on how to do this is somewhere abouts losing a week for each spell level cast. Cantrips don't bother much. Rituals cut down to half or function as cantrips.

Say, a max level Wizard goes ham in one day, all spell slots (not including class features or recovered spells). They would lose 89 weeks, or 1.7 years.

Doesn't seem too bad all in one go, but based on that you would still need a lot of downtime. Maybe it would work better as one 1st-level slot brings back 1 day. Still slow going, but perhaps reasonable.
Yeah, it becomes a much harder thing to balance in terms of downtime. It would, if it's time-based and not relative-age-based, explain why elves are typically better mages than humans (longer life span to burn through), but still.


How debilitating this would be would depend entirely on what being a kid means to your capabilities. Do you retain all your adult knowledge and skill? How far back do you need to go before you start losing motor functions or cognitive capabilities? As is, this sounds like as long as you stay above... like 9 years old or something? Maybe even 6-7? This becomes Cursed With Awesome.There's lots to be explored if it were carried over in fiction. I will say that the intent is not "cursed" so much as "you've spent a lot." So, if you're "cursed wtih awesome" down to 9 years old, for example, even if you retain all your knowledge and experience, you still can't really afford to cast all that many more spells of significant power.

Put another way, it's less about "being young is a curse, woe is me that I am a child again," and more about, "well, it's going to be a long time before I can afford to cast much magic again, and even using limited magic will slow me down a lot."

To use animorte's suggested numbers, for example, if you cast more than 1 first level spell in a week, you're growing younger and younger, until you basically can't afford to cast magic. Or lack the motor control, depending on how that all works. The young man in his prime who wants to stay in his prime casts on average one spell level worth of spells per week, and avoids magic use outside of that.

(This gets even harder to balance if you remove the "spell slots" limitations, and try to make age the only cost of casting, because it just isn't practical in a game to balance a PC's casting resources against essentially his full lifetime supply. Imagine, for example, that a wizard had all the spell slots he would ever have at day one, calculated as if he were going through a specified number of adventuring days in his whole career. That's be grossly overpowered unless the player RP'd concern over ohw much magic the wizard would have left over after the game is over.)

[Zuras]

If you want to add a cost/risk to magic, and keep things on a 5e base, I would actually avoid just stapling additional (bad) consequences onto normal spellcasting. All that will do is persuade players to avoid spellcaster classes, since 5e classes are intended to be balanced with functional non-carcinogenic magic.

If magic has an additional cost and risk, just make it available for everyone who wants to risk the price. The easiest way is to just make spell scrolls re-usable, and let every class use them, risking the standard (awful) side effects if they do. That way nobody has to play a wizard, but everyone gets to potentially engage with your magical corruption system. Several OSRish systems (Knave, Mork Borg, Warlock!) handle magic this way.

Modding 5e this way is generally a bad idea, though. Why mod 5e and deal with all the balance issues instead of playing DCC, Beyond the Wall or one of the many other D&D-like systems that handle dangerous magic natively?

[LibraryOgre]

Edit: New working draft!
When you cast a spell or use a magical ability (or are successfully subject to the same) roll a d20; the DC equals the level of the spell/spell slot, or otherwise the proficiency bonus of the caster/originator. Cantrips are exempt, rituals give you advantage on the roll and wild magic zones disadvantage. If you fail, you gain a level of feralization. [Number between 3 and 10] feral points and you're out. During a long rest you can attempt a Charisma saving throw against DC 10 + number of feral points you have accumulated to reduce it by 1, with advantage if someone administers you with a successful medicine check against the same DC.


"DC equals level or slot" leaves low-level magic pretty safe... even your 5th level spells are going to have only a 25% chance of giving you a feral point. If you have a chance to discharge some on a long rest, then there's going to be relatively few ferals... 20 people cast 1st level spells, and odds are good that only one gets a feral point. If you need a good number of feral points to go furry, it will be slow going.

You might instead go with Ferality being tied to your Ego... your Intelligence + Charisma + Level (AD&D's personality score). Casting a spell does "damage" to your personality score equal to the spell slot (halved for rituals, doubled for wild magic zones). Reach 0, and you go feral. Wisdom, in this case, would protect you... you can ignore up to Wisdom Modifier points of Ego Damage per day. Clerics, who usually have high wisdoms, are ahead of the game. Every long rest, your Ego heals a number of points equal to your highest slot level, or your Wisdom bonus, whichever is higher, minimum 1.

For non-casters (or casters subject to another's spells), make the damage lesser... 1 point per spell or effect. Conan can fight a bunch of wizards and be fine. Not having slots, he heals Wisdom bonus point of Ego damage with a long rest.

So, a 5th level Wizard with a 18 Intelligence, 12 Wisdom, and 10 Charisma would have an Ego of 33. If he cast all his spells for the day, he takes 16 Ego Damage (4*1st level, 3*2nd level, and 2*3rd level, -1 for Wisdom). Takes a long rest, his Ego heals 3 points, down to 13. Same thing again? 29 total Ego damage (13 from the day before + 16 from today).

Casting spells, especially going nova, is dangerous. If you're in a magical duel, you might win the battle but lose the war, becoming feral from a combination of spells. If you can manage to go through several days without casting spells, you get safer. Using rituals is safer.

[Kane0]

Thoughts about this listed working draft:
If you accumulate any significant feralization the correct play is to go and rest somewhere until it goes away.

Are ferals still resistant/immune to hostile magic under this system?

If I'm reading the numbers right, a level 1 spell would have a DC of 1? And saves are no longer relevant except for the reduction by rest?
Yep, that's intended.

No, once feral you can't get any more feral thus you can use magic without concern.

Yes, for a 2nd level spell you'd need to roll 2 or higher, for a 5th level spell a 5 or higher, etc. Cantrips and 1st level spells would be impossible to fail under normal circumstances.
Yes, the Charisma save is to remove 1 Feral point during a long rest, like reducing exhaustion but not guaranteed. If necessary the DM could step in with some measure like increasing that recovery time from one day to one week, then one month, then one year.



1. Cantrips are the reason why 5e spellcasters can do something explicitly magical every round, even when they're out of spell slots. That's opposed to your design goals, where temporarily losing magic is a consequence that you'll want to keep on the table.

2. Now, what should the aforementioned consequences be? Your idea of players accumulating feral points is IMO a fundamentally good one, but there's some details that I'd tweak:

Instant NPCification is too much too sudden. I'd have an escalating scale of consequences, starting with merely cosmetic, escalating to occasional wild magic surges, then negative mechanical effects, then worse mechanical effects, etc.
I'd ensure that players don't know their total number of feral points. They might have a rough idea - they know what level of feralization effects they're experiencing, but not how close they are to going up or down a level, say. This can be achieved by having saves to remove feral points rolled in secret and the number of points removed on a success be random and also rolled in secret.
3. I'd tie removing feral points to not using magic. For example, I might have it so that a PC can roll to remove a feral point only if they complete a long rest and their daily spell allotment is already full. (This should interact in an interesting way with warlocks. Warlocks will have, if you use the first point in this list, a lower threshold for feralization as they have a daily spell slot allotment of zero. However, warlocks will also always be able to save to remove a feral point since their daily spell slots are therefore always full.)


4. Since the risk of ferilization takes something away from spellcasters, it's appropriate to give them something back. Furthermore, this "something" should be tied to ferilization in such a way that a player can't gain this benefit without suffering the cost, to avoid players exploiting it in an overpowered way. Say, for example, gaining a feral point could also temporarily supercharge a PC's magic, by giving them some number of temporary spell slots (which could work like the spell slots that sorcerers gain from spending sorcery points).

5. Finally - the thresholds for feral points need to be tuned in such a way that a player who casts a normal amount of spells will feel enough pressure that they won't want to waste their magic, but not so much that they end up underpowered. That's a delicate balancing act. You can tweak the thresholds at which ferilization effects occur and the rate at which feral points are removed. You can tweak the length of adventures and the amount of downtime that PCs get between them. Napkin math can get you most of the way but this is something that you might need to adjust on the fly - and it's a good idea to check with your players to make sure that they're OK with that.

1. Not necessarily, i'm OK with magic still being common and accessible and low level magic isn't quite as world-changing as the higher level stuff. The world can still have magical academies (of sorts), temple services, without there being a huge disconnect of 'why does everything appear vaguely medieval when we have things like shape stone and plant growth?'

2. I'm thinking a ten point scale, gaining at most one point per round. Healing a point might only be possible if you haven't gained a point that day, and things like attunement or other permanent magic effects add one point that can't be recovered until you ditch the source. But feral points would always be known however, informed decisions being more fun than uninformed in this case I think.

3. I'm thinking all 1-9 points would be cosmetic in a mechanical sense, but escalating in the RP sense. 1-3 points would be irritability, short on patience, difficulty concentrating. 4-6 points would be fitful sleep, dropping complex speech patterns, acting on base instincts. 7-9 points would be almost no impulse control or executive function and the start of the physical changes

4. I don't believe a nerf necessarily must coincide with a buff in order to get the players to swallow the medicine. I get the carrot and stick method, but the buy in at my table will be 'I'm aiming for this sort of game style' rather than 'i'm aiming to rebalance casters'

5. Absolutely agreed



By the way, this system that you are going for is somewhat similar to the Stress system in Blades in the Dark.
Too many stress equals trauma, and too many trauma retires the PC from the game.
You have "too many spells and failed saves yields feral points (Stress) too many stress and you get Trauma (the death save progression) and at max limit of trauma you have wrecked the character.

Damnit this is what I get for not finishing my reading pile before getting distracted and going off writing again.



"DC equals level or slot" leaves low-level magic pretty safe... even your 5th level spells are going to have only a 25% chance of giving you a feral point. If you have a chance to discharge some on a long rest, then there's going to be relatively few ferals.

You might instead go with Ferality being tied to your Ego... your Intelligence + Charisma + Level (AD&D's personality score). Casting a spell does "damage" to your personality score equal to the spell slot (halved for rituals, doubled for wild magic zones). Reach 0, and you go feral. Wisdom, in this case, would protect you... you can ignore up to Wisdom Modifier points of Ego Damage per day. Clerics, who usually have high wisdoms, are ahead of the game. Every long rest, your Ego heals a number of points equal to your highest slot level, or your Wisdom bonus, whichever is higher, minimum 1.

Yeah that's intentional. I want it to be just punishing enough to generate interesting decisions rather than reduce fun.

I could, but I do want to keep the whole thing as straightforward as possible. If I can avoid some 7th stat situation that would be preferable, counting up feral points like tracking exhaustion or death saves should be enough.

[Witty Username]

I would second cutting cantrips, risky dangerous spellcasting + spellcasting every trun feels weird. Even if the gameplay change is small.

[Leon]

I'd personally let Rituals be exempt from it ~ your taking the extra time to do it ritually and have set up some buffers/safe guards as part of the preparation. Where as casting the spell normally your doing it fast and dirty. Maybe have a option where taking a longer time to cast lets you minimize the accumulation of dangerous energies at the expense of it being slower to cast but without the extensive time and preparation that rituals take.

[Kane0]

I would second cutting cantrips

I'd personally let Rituals be exempt

Damn I love this place sometimes :smallbiggrin:

[Zuras]

I'd personally let Rituals be exempt from it ~ your taking the extra time to do it ritually and have set up some buffers/safe guards as part of the preparation. Where as casting the spell normally your doing it fast and dirty. Maybe have a option where taking a longer time to cast lets you minimize the accumulation of dangerous energies at the expense of it being slower to cast but without the extensive time and preparation that rituals take.

Many systems with nasty magical side effects have rituals work safely, but only if you aren’t interrupted. That would fit with the risk/reward equation (ritual magic in a dungeon would be far riskier than at your home base).

[Brookshw]

It doesn't stop folks from playing them in e.g. Warhammer FRP or Warhammer 40k. People play casters and psykers all the time, despite being noticeably weaker than D&D casters and having a non-negligible chance of headsplosion or letting horrors into the world (and on top of the party).

Folks play them less, but it's not just the cost, it's that non-casters have a wide variety of interesting options to make them appealing. So you end up with casters not the vast majority of every party. Instead of half the party being full casters and another quarter 1/2 or 1/3 casters, you end up with 1 at most.

Which would be absolutely fine ... if D&D had enough non-caster classes to support it. Or you're okay with parties being old-school: 1 Magic-user, 1 Cleric, 1 Thief, and 5-10 Fighters. Except since "Rogues" are Dex warriors + Thief Skills now, it'll prob be more of them than Fighters. :smallamused:

Agreeing with the above. I wouldn't mind some riskier magic rules baked into D&D as an optional rule. While on the tangent of WFRPG, I also could see D&D having an optional thing along the lines of degrees of success for warrior classes when attacking, i.e., extra damage or effects based on how much they beat the AC by.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm going to second 'its probably best to hop to another system'.

Also note that games which have corrupting magic tend to have 'safe' spells/traditions, ways to mitigate or minimise the risk, or a low chance of anything actually happening. The Warhammer games tend to have the latter two, you can pull spells for less/no risk of demons in exchange for them being less powerful, and has the first in that only some styles of magic (generally Chaos-aligned ones) inherently generate Corruption points.

Plus as people have pointed out magicians in such systems tend to be okay fighters. It helps that most games don't scale to the extent D&D does (the ones that do tend to involve literal godhood), and that the warriors in other games also tend to be competent at mundane skills.

[Leon]

Plus as people have pointed out magicians in such systems tend to be okay fighters. It helps that most games don't scale to the extent D&D does (the ones that do tend to involve literal godhood), and that the warriors in other games also tend to be competent at mundane skills.

It is a flaw in D&D that it has classes who can do magic and only magic to the extent where if the magic is off for whatever reason they are a dead weight in combat and a much reduced source of utility out of it.

[Tanarii]

Also note that games which have corrupting magic tend to have 'safe' spells/traditions, ways to mitigate or minimise the risk, or a low chance of anything actually happening. The Warhammer games tend to have the latter two, you can pull spells for less/no risk of demons in exchange for them being less powerful, and has the first in that only some styles of magic (generally Chaos-aligned ones) inherently generate Corruption points.
Forbidden Lands has miscasts, major ones can result in a demon spawning on top of the party (which is a big deal because demons are dangerous) or just reaching out through a portal and yoinking your character away forever.

Spells are divided into three tiers of casting, and spellcasters start being able to cast the first tier of spells.

Spellcasters who have advance advanced their spell casting skill (and thus tier they can cast) at least once always have the option to safe cast spells from below their maximum tier. That means those spells can't get a critical result, but also can't get a miscast.

And all spellcasters get an option to cast spells once tier above what they can normal.

In D&D terms, that'd probably mean only making feral-ization checks for certain spell levels based on character level. Something like "you can safe cast any spell three or more levels lower than the maximum level spell you can cast. Safe casting doesn't require a check to become feral."

[LibraryOgre]

In D&D terms, that'd probably mean only making feral-ization checks for certain spell levels based on character level. Something like "you can safe cast any spell three or more levels lower than the maximum level spell you can cast. Safe casting doesn't require a check to become feral."

Perhaps its a function of upcasting? A basic CW is going to be safe; casting it as a 2nd level spell, though, carries a risk.

[Segev]

On switching to other systems, you'll want to really think about what you want out of a system. (I know you're potentially using D&D only because it's "default," but if you are specifically using it because it does something you like well, you may be best sticking with it.)

The caution I would give on systems wtih built-in downsides for magic is that built-in downsides are hard to balance, and so you'll want to very carefully examine how you would build and play a caster in such a system.

[zlefin]

At present the risks seem almost too low; or would want a fairly low target number for feralization.
It takes until about level 10 before a caster using all their spells every day would even have a problem on average.

A level 20 caster has fair odds of casting all their spells and still only getting 3-4 points of feralization.

The nautre of the scaling also means that low level casters have low risk, and it's only the high level ones that are likely to get in trouble. Especially since low level casters will face low level enemies, so it'll be easy to make the saves vs those too. It seems like a tier 1 party would basically never be in any risk. I think one of hte proposals that makes it so the risk curve is a bit smoother between low and high levels would help.



At these values it seems like the main risk would come from hostiles casting a lot of spells on you (or of hostiles intentionally trying to convert people by capturing them then bombarding them with lots of spells). Aside from that it would occur from high level hostile mages casting a bunch of non-lethal aoes for a similar effect.

[Herbert_W]

I would second cutting cantrips

I'd personally let Rituals be exempt
Damn I love this place sometimes :smallbiggrin:


To be fair, these aren't necessarily contradictory.

Rituals are the most consistently slow form of magic in 5e, and being slow implies being cautious. Thematically, it makes sense for rituals to be a safe (or at least safer) form of magic even in a world where most magic is dangerous. Mechanically, rituals can't be used to solve many problems including most combats, so having rituals be safe still leaves plenty of room for PCs to face difficult decisions about whether to use magic or not.

Cantrips are the easiest and most convenient form of magic in 5e. Thematically, cantrips speak to magic being (sometimes) used without preparation (aside form learning it in the first place) and without limit, which tends to lead to it being used without much thought. Mechanically, cantrips give spellcasters something to do that lets them contribute to the party's success even when they aren't spending spell slots - which in turn means that sometimes all of a caster's good options on each turn are some form of magic.

There's a deeper point to be made here: you want people to think carefully about whether to use magic, as categorically opposed to not-magic, right? In order for "Do I want to use magic?" to be a viable question, there needs to be both reasons why a person doesn't always want to say "Yes!" - and also reasons why they can justify saying "No." If all of a character's realistically viable options for their action on a turn are some form of magic, then the only question they can consider is whether to use this magic or that magic, not whether to use magic at all.

That's why I'd recommend replacing cantrips with something that's both thematically and mechanically not magic - to make "No. No magic right now." a more viable option for full spellcasting classes, so they more often face that choice.

[Kane0]

Im alright with being able to answer 'yes' to 'do I use magic' as long as 'the strongest i can afford' is not just a question of resources but risk. The risk doesnt even have to be super high, just enough to give pause and consideration.
That and i dont want to totally redesign all the classes that rely on magic at a fundamental level, so rituals and low level magic being safe is okay (they dont break the gameworld nearly as much as spamming the mid to high level stuff).

Edit: D&D is fundamentally a high magic environment, theres only so much I can swim against the current lol

[Brookshw]

At present the risks seem almost too low

One ofy players really like wild magic surges so we set up a house rule where the chance of getting them was cumulative on each casting until it proc'd, OP could do something similar if he wants to increase the risk, maybe make it reset on a short or long rest

[Anonymouswizard]

Edit: D&D is fundamentally a high magic environment, theres only so much I can swim against the current lol

Yeah, a lot of systems with costs and risks for using magic tend to assume magic is less common than D&D does. Assuming you're creating characters by the book you'll get a Wizard Apprentice in WFRP like 1-3% of the time (more often if you're also an elf). A wizard apprentice who has to deal with the fact that angry peasants can't read their 'please do not burn, signed The Emperor' papers before they even think about casting magic.

I mean, you also get games like Shadow of the Demon Lord where magicians aren't restricted, and there's a lot of 'safe' magic that won't increase your Corruption just from learning it. But SotDL also assumes that most corruption will come from mundane acts, and entirely mundane parties are more viable there than in D&D5e.

[Zuras]

Yeah, a lot of systems with costs and risks for using magic tend to assume magic is less common than D&D does. Assuming you're creating characters by the book you'll get a Wizard Apprentice in WFRP like 1-3% of the time (more often if you're also an elf). A wizard apprentice who has to deal with the fact that angry peasants can't read their 'please do not burn, signed The Emperor' papers before they even think about casting magic.

I mean, you also get games like Shadow of the Demon Lord where magicians aren't restricted, and there's a lot of 'safe' magic that won't increase your Corruption just from learning it. But SotDL also assumes that most corruption will come from mundane acts, and entirely mundane parties are more viable there than in D&D5e.

Part of the problem with amping up the Magic=>Corruption/Madness level in 5e is just expectations. People get more upset when they feel something was taken away from them than if they never had it in the first place. That makes modding 5e more fraught than just playing a new game with identical mechanics. It’s also why creating new classes helps reduce the problem.

If a Wizard in your game doesn’t play like a regular 5e Wizard, players can get unhappy, but if a Corrupted Bloodmage doesn’t play like a Wizard, that’s fine. It’s not rational, but it’s how people’s brains work.

[Amechra]

This, pretty much. 5e just makes too many assumptions about magic being safe and spammable for this kind of change to be something you can quickly and easily layer on top of the classes. This is a game, after all, where you're expected to burn at least 2-3 spell slots per fight if you want to do level-appropriate stuff. You really need to account for that before you make spending spell slots risky.


Yeah, a lot of systems with costs and risks for using magic tend to assume magic is less common than D&D does. Assuming you're creating characters by the book you'll get a Wizard Apprentice in WFRP like 1-3% of the time (more often if you're also an elf). A wizard apprentice who has to deal with the fact that angry peasants can't read their 'please do not burn, signed The Emperor' papers before they even think about casting magic.

WFRP also makes it so that getting ultimate power as a spellcaster takes ages. Journeyman Wizard and Master Wizard are both so long that it's entirely possible that the game is ending by the time you start Master Wizard. Also, thanks to a setting quirk, you'll be paying off your student debt for the whole adventure unless you somehow get to Wizard Lord (no, seriously, the Wizard careers require you to tithe 10% of your treasure to the Wizard College you studied at).

That said, if I remember correctly it's not the peasants you have to worry about — it's the people from small towns, who are way more likely to be where some embarrassing radical "burn all the witches!" Sigmarite got sent to "retire". Peasants tend to mostly have experience with Jade Wizards, who generally leave a great impression (because they're the guys whose actual job is to tromp around the countryside and cast Plant Growth on crops).

[Bane's Wolf]

Im alright with being able to answer 'yes' to 'do I use magic' as long as 'the strongest i can afford' is not just a question of resources but risk. The risk doesnt even have to be super high, just enough to give pause and consideration.
That and i dont want to totally redesign all the classes that rely on magic at a fundamental level, so rituals and low level magic being safe is okay (they dont break the gameworld nearly as much as spamming the mid to high level stuff).

Edit: D&D is fundamentally a high magic environment, theres only so much I can swim against the current lol

I like your attitude of not wanting to redesign the classes and game world, just make spellcasters consider the risk before casting.
Something i might consider would be to give them an option to swing the other way briefly:

- You can cast a spell, without using a spell slot, but you instantly take that spell's level worth of Feral points, without a roll!


This would allow a wizard to cast a needed spell in desperate situations, after they have run out of appropriate spell slots, but at a huge cost to your "ferality".
This gives them a slight boost, to make up for the new cost of magic, but at a huge risk.
I'm picturing a mage casting an emergency Teleport spell (7 points:smalleek:) to save the party, but then being too scared to cast anything else until some of those points have been purged.

This would also have a side-effect of boosting your Feral Bad Guy Mages, because they can spam their most powerful spells without (further) penalties, making them a scary powerhouse on the battlefield.:smallamused:

-----------------

As i was typing this, another idea popped up...
If you'd like the slide into Ferality to be a "Slippery Slope", perhaps make the DC of the check slightly higher, as your feral points go up?

- You add one quarter(rounded down) of your current feral points to the DC of the roll.

So for the first 3 feral points, everything is the same.
At 4 points, the DC is spell level +1 (so even your 0 level cantrips have a small chance to gain you more feral points)
At 8 points, the DC is spell level +2 (so every cast is becoming very risky, and any spell over level 1 has a chance to instantly Feralize you)

This could be over-tuning it a bit much though...
You know your tables best and this has the risk of being a little too punishing, unless players have plenty of options to rest and cleanse themselves of the corruption :smalltongue:

[Kane0]

Ooh now that is a good idea. Its a 'buff' to counterbalance the 'nerf' to casting but at the same time engages with the same mechanic for an interesting risk-reward decision.

Edit: I'm also toying with the idea that each thing you attune to gives you a feral point you cant lose until you drop the attnement, but also allowing PCs to attune to a number of things equal to their prof bonus.

I dont really see the need to make ferality a death-spiral for my particular table, but thats just my table. I do also tend to run games with time available for PCs to rest and use downtime, but time does of course pass for everyone else too so there are times its best not to sit around.

[Waazraath]

In general I like the concept, it fits well with a lot of fantasy flavour and with earlier editions of D&D where magic could be costly (mishap table when teleporting, accelerated aging with haste). The devil is in the details of course when balancing the whole thing, but I would definitely like to try a campaign (or edtion) with this feature.

[Segev]

In general I like the concept, it fits well with a lot of fantasy flavour and with earlier editions of D&D where magic could be costly (mishap table when teleporting, accelerated aging with haste). The devil is in the details of course when balancing the whole thing, but I would definitely like to try a campaign (or edtion) with this feature.

Teleportation is still risky. Aging from being subject to haste never quite worked out as a real cost due to the age at which adventuring happens (especially if you're an elf), and also led to unintended consequences like dragons casting haste on themselves repeatedly to get to the highest age categories to make themselves more dangerous and powerful.

[Psyren]

Ha, I don't know why I never thought of the dragon thing before now. Genius!

Regarding Haste, it's worth remembering that the current version has a drawback/risk, and it's one I consider to be a lot more impactful than incrementing a character's age.

[Waazraath]

Teleportation is still risky. Aging from being subject to haste never quite worked out as a real cost due to the age at which adventuring happens (especially if you're an elf), and also led to unintended consequences like dragons casting haste on themselves repeatedly to get to the highest age categories to make themselves more dangerous and powerful.

Lol, true. Main point though is that I like these mechanisms (power, but at a cost) if implemented properly. In 2e (I think it was that edition, but long time ago) teleportation could get you killed, but it was a calculated risk, characters died using it and it was fine cause at other moments it saved the day.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's also possible to add a financial cost to magic by bumping up the presence of inexpensive but significant material components (potentially alongside removing foci). Which 5e is relatively well suited for with its vast amounts of useless treasure, 'what components are you bringing into the dungeon, and what do you have to leave on the cart' becomes an important consideration and limits your ability to shuffle spells into your prepared caster's repertoire. Probably best done with some kind of thematic consistency, but it likely wouldn't unbalance the game.

It would almost certainly annoy the players, but 5e gives them too many freebies anyway :smalltongue:

[Kane0]

It's also possible to add a financial cost to magic by bumping up the presence of inexpensive but significant material components (potentially alongside removing foci). Which 5e is relatively well suited for with its vast amounts of useless treasure, 'what components are you bringing into the dungeon, and what do you have to leave on the cart' becomes an important consideration and limits your ability to shuffle spells into your prepared caster's repertoire. Probably best done with some kind of thematic consistency, but it likely wouldn't unbalance the game.

It would almost certainly annoy the players, but 5e gives them too many freebies anyway :smalltongue:

Oh I do already have something for mundane consumables in my back pocket, separate thing i'm tackling that will also likely give some pause to casters (and archers).

[Zuras]

It's also possible to add a financial cost to magic by bumping up the presence of inexpensive but significant material components (potentially alongside removing foci). Which 5e is relatively well suited for with its vast amounts of useless treasure, 'what components are you bringing into the dungeon, and what do you have to leave on the cart' becomes an important consideration and limits your ability to shuffle spells into your prepared caster's repertoire. Probably best done with some kind of thematic consistency, but it likely wouldn't unbalance the game.

It would almost certainly annoy the players, but 5e gives them too many freebies anyway :smalltongue:


I’ve never found expensive material components to be a useful tool for limiting the power of spells. It’s great for preventing spamming of spells like Awaken, Find Familiar and Simulacrum, and resurrection magic, but minor, modest costs are just an annoying tax on your attention unless you’re using a magic system that lets you employ them creatively.

If you want to impose a financial cost of some kind, I’d actually lean into using magical foci. Basically make the foci expensive but consumable—the idea being that while using the external focus, most of the magic is outside of the caster, and thus causes less or no corruption, but will warp and eventually destroy the staff you’re using to focus magic through.

If you handle things that way, odds of bad corruption results without an external focus could stay quite nasty, while not badly nerfing casters. This also lets you adjust things during play more easily, as you can change the cost of foci and the amount of corruption they absorb before breaking pretty easily without disrupting the rest of the setting rules.

It also lets you restrict certain spells, purely by re-shuffling their components. You can just rule specific spells can’t be cast using an external focus. Those spells would then be far more dangerous to cast.

Again, for my purposes, I don’t want the corruption costs to be an oppressive tax hanging over things (like in a horror game), I want it to drive drama, so in addition to being moderately costly in terms of money, I’d also require a caster attune to their focus before using it (as with a magic item, taking an hour). This would periodically give you situations a wizard just blew out their staff, but the BBEG isn’t down, and they have to decide whether to risk a spell mishap.

[Amechra]

Using finances as a limiter doesn't really work in 5e specifically because everyone has a ton of "useless" treasure. It just ends up feeling a little toothless.

...

Here's a dumb idea: what if you added a Feralness ability score to the game, and made that what all spellcasters use as their spellcasting ability score? Treat it like the Honor ability score in the DMG — casters start with a 14 in the stat, you can increase it by doing unclean actions (like spamming tons of spells or committing certain taboo acts), and it's only possible to decrease through extensive purification. Make spellcasting feats into Feralness half-feats, have people turn into monsters at 20 Feralness, and the job's a good 'un.

Yes, this does mean that monsters all have 20 in their spellcasting ability scores — that's just a pleasant side-effect.

[Pex]

My thoughts on this has not changed.

I don't care that games have published it. No game system should punish a player for doing something the game says he can do. Punishing is to mean to be worse off for doing the Thing than if you hadn't done the Thing at all, accepting the obvious you have one less resource use of doing the Thing. That means no loss of health, no loss of turns, no loss of actions, vulnerability to attack, no insanity, no loss of ability scores or game mechanic equivalent, etc.

If something is so powerful you feel the need to punish the character for doing it as a matter of balance, then either nerf the ability so that you no longer feel that need or just don't have that ability at all and do something else.

[Witty Username]

I generally think, risk is problematic game design, but this is discussing specific homebrew for a table specific setting.

It is more important at this juncture to ensure that the rules consequences are understood and intended then if it would be a good idea for D&D to do it generally.

[Segev]

My thoughts on this has not changed.

I don't care that games have published it. No game system should punish a player for doing something the game says he can do. Punishing is to mean to be worse off for doing the Thing than if you hadn't done the Thing at all, accepting the obvious you have one less resource use of doing the Thing. That means no loss of health, no loss of turns, no loss of actions, vulnerability to attack, no insanity, no loss of ability scores or game mechanic equivalent, etc.

If something is so powerful you feel the need to punish the character for doing it as a matter of balance, then either nerf the ability so that you no longer feel that need or just don't have that ability at all and do something else.

While I think I agree with your sentiment, here, the overall rule is... off, I think. I agree, for instance, that the Frenzy rule in the 5e Berserker Barbarian is bad because it just isn't good enough to warrant a level of Exhaustion every time you use it. Even though Exhaustion is thematically fitting.

However, I do think thematically-fitting costs are not a bad thing, inherently. The trouble is, as always, balancing them for gameplay. Especially permanent costs. Remember that, in a lot of fiction, long-term, permanent costs are the only cost, when present. Shadowlands Taint in Rokugan is the only penalty for using shadowlands powers; you can generally use them pretty much at will if you're willing to slide down that slope. L5R balances this by making the permanent costs high enough that you have a short lifespan on that PC if you use them too regularly. We're talking 5-10 uses, total, before the character becomes an NPC, if I recall how things work out correctly. This works because you don't build a character around using them. They are explicitly "extra" power on top of whatever your character build resources grant you, and you don't need them to be effective. Instead, using them gives you an edge, similarly to how having a magic item the DM just gives you without any other cost increases a PC's power.

If you make the "power with a price" have a long-term price, you basically can't build a character around using it. Because a game is short term enough that you're either giving essentially-unlimited resources to that class, or the cost is so high that they would never use their powers unless they were planning on the one and only quest the game asks of them being their demise.

To illustrate, imagine if you calculated how many days of adventuring it would take for a PC to get from the current level to the next, then multiplied the spell slots available to the casters by that number. They refresh spell slots only when they level up. Now, imagine this is a one-shot, where they'll never level up, and won't even earn enough XP to get halfway through the level. The PC will be grossly overpowered, since he'll have more than twice as many spell slots as he should for the time the game will run, since why would he care if he runs out of spell slots after the game is over?

The reason for short-term, replenishing resources is simply that that is the best way to balance a power system around which a PC is to be built.

You can get away, in storytelling, with long-term costs, because the characters involved have their whole lives to live, and giving up well-being later in life is still a cost that weighs on them. Especially if those costs are visible in their own experience, having seen those who've "overused" the power.

It doesn't work when the scale on which the cost comes due and the scale in which the story occurs is too different, at least not when running a game. Every PC becomes a willing martyr for power in that case, and those who don't nerf themselves with no benefit the player will ever see.

[NichG]

This works because you don't build a character around using them.

Very much this.

That's why my general model for 'risky magic' is that its great in a world where literally anyone can use magic and everyone pays the very severe cost of doing so, rather than a world where 'user of magic' is a job description. So Call of Cthulhu type of theme where the thing that makes magic scary isn't just what it can do or what it costs, but that a random Lv0 guy who finds the Rite of Summoning Cthulhu can go and summon Cthulhu (at the cost of his sanity, life, and form perhaps - but he can just go and do it).

The emergency accessibility is what justifies the cost and makes it an interesting temptation. "I'm having trouble keeping up, do I take the risk of a permanent consequence to get a boost?", "This is an important fight and its life or death, do I risk my character to give us a better chance of winning?", etc.

But if its like, 'to even have the option to screw myself over I also have to sacrifice my ability to be good at the things that don't automatically eventually screw me over, AND I'm unlikely to survive long enough to actually get good enough at it that the stuff I get from it is even worth the risk', then it doesn't feel like good design to me.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Very much this.

That's why my general model for 'risky magic' is that its great in a world where literally anyone can use magic and everyone pays the very severe cost of doing so, rather than a world where 'user of magic' is a job description. So Call of Cthulhu type of theme where the thing that makes magic scary isn't just what it can do or what it costs, but that a random Lv0 guy who finds the Rite of Summoning Cthulhu can go and summon Cthulhu (at the cost of his sanity, life, and form perhaps - but he can just go and do it).

The emergency accessibility is what justifies the cost and makes it an interesting temptation. "I'm having trouble keeping up, do I take the risk of a permanent consequence to get a boost?", "This is an important fight and its life or death, do I risk my character to give us a better chance of winning?", etc.

But if its like, 'to even have the option to screw myself over I also have to sacrifice my ability to be good at the things that don't automatically eventually screw me over, AND I'm unlikely to survive long enough to actually get good enough at it that the stuff I get from it is even worth the risk', then it doesn't feel like good design to me.

I agree with this. For the long-term risk model to work right, it needs to be built into the system AND you can't have characters whose identity revolves around spellcasting.

It'd be like if making a melee attack had a chance to cause permanent injury to every time you did it (aka the old bad fumble house-rules).

I'd prefer if magic was less reliable, less broad-ranging, less of a "push button, get solution" way of bypassing the chance of failure attendant in everything else. But not by imposing long-lasting penalties or randomly blowing up your allies. It'd take a reconfiguring the idea of what a spell is and how spellcasting works in general to accommodate it.

For the short term, you could do some sort of "stress". Casting bigger spells imposes more stress, which fades fairly quickly (recovering some on a short rest, more on a long rest as long as you haven't cast a major spell during that interval) if you're not casting major spells (defining that temporarily as "the highest tier you can cast, using 0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9 as the tiers"). At some level of stress, gaining more stress would run the risk of making you temporarily an NPC (for the duration of the narrative scene), much like a dominate effect, as the corruption takes over. So you can choose--do I pump the big spells out all at once and risk turning against my allies temporarily, or do I pace myself and not be as effective.

[Luccan]

So the main problem* with this is that Wizards and Sorcerers are just screwed. Druids have wildshape, Clerics get weapons and armor not to mention uses for Channel Divinity, Bards have skills and various uses for Bardic Inspiration, and Warlocks get Invocations (also the meme of "I cast Eldritch Blast again" exists already for a reason). Wizards and Sorcerers basically just get spells and modifiers to their spells, particularly at lower levels. Unlike Warlocks, they don't really get to modify their preferred combat cantrips much. So they lose out more than every caster in the game and that can be seen as a soft ban, even if it's not your intention.

If I may, I'd suggest the following: Sorcerers can spend points to either get a bonus on their roll to avoid feral points or skip the roll entirely and Wizards, being students of magic, have figured out how to specifically cast the rituals in their books without fear of Feral influence


*Attempting this is not itself a problem since no one but your table has to play it and you'll presumably get player buy-in

[Kane0]

I'd prefer if magic was less reliable, less broad-ranging, less of a "push button, get solution" way of bypassing the chance of failure attendant in everything else. But not by imposing long-lasting penalties or randomly blowing up your allies. It'd take a reconfiguring the idea of what a spell is and how spellcasting works in general to accommodate it.

For the short term, you could do some sort of "stress". Casting bigger spells imposes more stress, which fades fairly quickly (recovering some on a short rest, more on a long rest as long as you haven't cast a major spell during that interval) if you're not casting major spells (defining that temporarily as "the highest tier you can cast, using 0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9 as the tiers"). At some level of stress, gaining more stress would run the risk of making you temporarily an NPC (for the duration of the narrative scene), much like a dominate effect, as the corruption takes over. So you can choose--do I pump the big spells out all at once and risk turning against my allies temporarily, or do I pace myself and not be as effective.

In this case i'm limiting myself to a relatively simple houserule rather than an entire system overhaul :P

Thats pretty close to the current draft actually. The higher level spell, the higher chance of building up towards the NPC state, and you can cool off those points over a few rests. Though is this case the failure state is permanent, and potentially the enemy can also cause you to risk gaining points.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In this case i'm limiting myself to a relatively simple houserule rather than an entire system overhaul :P

Thats pretty close to the current draft actually. The higher level spell, the higher chance of building up towards the NPC state, and you can cool off those points over a few rests. Though is this case the failure state is permanent, and potentially the enemy can also cause you to risk gaining points.

It's exactly the permanent status that's the problem in my mind. The normal cycle time for everything else is measured in small numbers of long rests (even recovering from 5 levels of exhaustion is still only 5 long rests). But then I felt the exact same way about permanent injuries in general. My setting has permanent injuries on getting knocked to 0 and healed, but they're off for PCs because we all (the players and I) don't like the effect on PCs (which is basically increased suicidal behavior).

I much prefer a model of treating it like a dominate person effect (limited duration) rather than "ok, you used your class features arbitrarily too much or were unlucky on your saves, roll a new character." And having it be very blatantly transparent and not down to bad luck. Because that way lies death spirals.

[Segev]

So, here's one possibility:

Everyone and anyone can use any spell they can learn. Rituals are "safe" if done in the proper way (i.e. the 10 min. extra casting time), as long as you have the "ritual caster" feature (whether from feat or class). But if your Champion Fighter/Barbarian Berserker wants to cast the fly spell, and he has the knowledge to do so, he can...at whatever the "great cost" is. Increasing his feralness, or whatever.

The benefit of being a spellcaster is that you can spend spell slots to cast spells without paying the nastier cost.

If being feral makes your magic more powerful, it will also have a temptation open to the full casters, to accept some of the taint in return for the power boost. "I can handle it, surely," they might think to themselves.

[KorvinStarmast]

No, once feral you can't get any more feral thus you can use magic without concern. But doesn't the feral state turn the PC into an NPC?


3. I'm thinking all 1-9 points would be cosmetic in a mechanical sense, but escalating in the RP sense.
1-3 points would be irritability, short on patience, difficulty concentrating.
4-6 points would be fitful sleep, dropping complex speech patterns, acting on base instincts.
7-9 points would be almost no impulse control or executive function and the start of the physical changes You almost need to create a new class for the feral state. Blades in the Dark has a neat idea on a PC ecoming a ghost when their trauma hits 4 or they die due to too many wounds. If you take a look at BitD, go to the back and see if their ghost playbook is the kind of template that you can apply to your feral one.

but the buy in at my table will be 'I'm aiming for this sort of game style' rather than 'i'm aiming to rebalance casters' Good call.


Damnit this is what I get for not finishing my reading pile before getting distracted and going off writing again. I was complimenting you on how your idea parallels one that we are playing and have all found to be a useful mechanic. The risk / reward piece is what I like about it. I am at two trauma now (reckless and vicious) having maxed stress twice during a score (and I had recovered from stress during most down times, so it could have been worse) - and the game incentivizes me to lean into that.
For example: last night, I did. Went for the throat immediately when we met some cultists. Two of the three were down before my teammates got one on the ground and convinced me to not kill him. In our first sessions, I was waaaay less bloody handed; my MO was more prone to stealth and misdirection ...

If I can avoid some 7th stat situation that would be preferable, counting up feral points like tracking exhaustion or death saves should be enough. Yes, treat it like exhaustion.

The risk doesn't even have to be super high, just enough to give pause and consideration. {snip} dont want to totally redesign all the classes that rely on magic at a fundamental level, so rituals and low level magic being safe is okay (they dont break the gameworld nearly as much as spamming the mid to high level stuff). I like this approach.

My thoughts on this has not changed.

I don't care that games have published it. No game system should punish a player for doing something the game says he can do. Then stop playing D&D. You get punished for using your rage if you are the Beserker Barbarian ... and (potentially) for using spells if you are a Wild Magic Sorcerer.
Yes, I see the core principle that you are getting at.
Oh, wait, you can also cast a spell and the NPC/Monster makes a save and nothing happens. This cool thing you were going to do ... doesn't happen, you burn the spell slot, and you have to wait for your next turn to try something else.

So the main problem* with this is that Wizards and Sorcerers are just screwed. Not sure how this is a problem. Beast Master Ranger has been getting the shaft since about 2014.

[Zuras]

It's exactly the permanent status that's the problem in my mind. The normal cycle time for everything else is measured in small numbers of long rests (even recovering from 5 levels of exhaustion is still only 5 long rests). But then I felt the exact same way about permanent injuries in general. My setting has permanent injuries on getting knocked to 0 and healed, but they're off for PCs because we all (the players and I) don't like the effect on PCs (which is basically increased suicidal behavior).

I much prefer a model of treating it like a dominate person effect (limited duration) rather than "ok, you used your class features arbitrarily too much or were unlucky on your saves, roll a new character." And having it be very blatantly transparent and not down to bad luck. Because that way lies death spirals.

Normally, insanity, corruption, madness and similar mechanics work best in systems where not having a character die for five straight sessions leaves you feeling left out. If players are actually expecting to reach tier 3 over the course of many months of play, I agree they can’t be taking lingering damage like that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Normally, insanity, corruption, madness and similar mechanics work best in systems where not having a character die for five straight sessions leaves you feeling left out. If players are actually expecting to reach tier 3 over the course of many months of play, I agree they can’t be taking lingering damage like that.

Yeah. If death is cheap and common, permanent injuries don't matter much. Because they're not permanent as far as the player is concerned. If it's not, the calculus differs strongly.

[Luccan]

Not sure how this is a problem. Beast Master Ranger has been getting the shaft since about 2014.

Yeah and that's bad. I don't see why a subclass being poorly designed makes it good that two entire classes could be rendered useless by homebrew mechanics. Especially since the OP states that there was no intent to ban anything. With that in mind vastly undercutting two classes doesn't produce the desired result, since as I said it could be viewed as a soft ban.

[Pex]

Then stop playing D&D.

No.


You get punished for using your rage if you are the Beserker Barbarian ... and (potentially) for using spells if you are a Wild Magic Sorcerer.

Exactly. That is bad design. They should not have been made that way. As I wrote, I don't care games have published such things. They should not have been published that way and come up with something else. I stand by that statement. I will not retract.


Yes, I see the core principle that you are getting at.
Oh, wait, you can also cast a spell and the NPC/Monster makes a save and nothing happens. This cool thing you were going to do ... doesn't happen, you burn the spell slot, and you have to wait for your next turn to try something else.
Not sure how this is a problem. Beast Master Ranger has been getting the shaft since about 2014.

Making an attack and missing or casting a spell but monster saves is not punishment. I already defined what I mean by it.

There have existed punishments I got over. They're relatively minor drawbacks but are technically punishments based on my defining the term. In 3E it was Power Attack and Charging. Power Attack is taking a penalty to hit for extra damage. Charging is to be able to attack while moving beyond your speed but at -2 to AC. In 5E the -5/+10 of Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter would count. Also does the barbarian's Reckless Attack since everyone attacks the barbarian with advantage, not just the opponent the barbarian attacked. A small minus number to a character's statistics for one round as a cost to do one specific Thing but not All Things the character is meant to do I can possibly look past, devil in the details. I may not like it, but I can get over it. Anything more than that is a Nope from me. No losing hit points. No losing turns. No losing actions. No minus number to a character's statistics for the rest of the adventuring day.

All those various blood magic/blood warriors people keep raving about. Nope from me.

[Kane0]

There have existed punishments I got over. They're relatively minor drawbacks but are technically punishments based on my defining the term. In 3E it was Power Attack and Charging. Power Attack is taking a penalty to hit for extra damage. Charging is to be able to attack while moving beyond your speed but at -2 to AC. In 5E the -5/+10 of Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter would count. Also does the barbarian's Reckless Attack since everyone attacks the barbarian with advantage, not just the opponent the barbarian attacked. A small minus number to a character's statistics for one round as a cost to do one specific Thing but not All Things the character is meant to do I can possibly look past, devil in the details. I may not like it, but I can get over it. Anything more than that is a Nope from me. No losing hit points. No losing turns. No losing actions. No minus number to a character's statistics for the rest of the adventuring day.

All those various blood magic/blood warriors people keep raving about. Nope from me.

Sounds to me risk might be a better word than punishment? It's fine to be risk averse as a player, I'm absolutely guilty of using magic missile more than I probably should, but as you say the devil is in the details and it can be a hard balancing act. If the reward doesn't match the risk then it's not a good trade, and quickly turns into feeling like punishment.

To be clear, I don't want to punish casters for casting, nor soft-ban them existing. I just want magic to feel a bit more weighty than D&D typically defaults to, like it has an impact beyond the immediate effect and that has shaped the world.

Of course this is really only for my game/table anyways, so it's OK for this to just be a no-sell for others. I'm putting it up here for discussion and to ensure that is a fair mechanic and generates the feel i'm aiming for.

[Psyren]

No.



Exactly. That is bad design. They should not have been made that way. As I wrote, I don't care games have published such things. They should not have been published that way and come up with something else. I stand by that statement. I will not retract.

I agree with you that Berserker and Wild Magic Sorcerer as currently presented are badly designed/badly conceived versions of this. I do think it's possible to design double-edged swords that are less extreme than these however.

[Kane0]

Thinking through the specifics for classes under this model

Artificer: Middling generation, poor recovery
Barbarian: Low generation, poor recovery
Bard: High generation, good recovery, rituals
Cleric: High generation, average recovery, rituals
Druid: High generation, poor recovery, rituals
Fighter: Low generation, poor recovery
Monk: Low generation, poor recovery
Paladin: High generation, good recovery
Ranger: Middling generation, poor recovery
Rogue: Low generation, poor recovery
Sorcerer: High generation, good recovery
Warlock: High generation, good recovery
Wizard: High generation, poor recovery, rituals

So the ones that are really screwed over are the classes that use magical abilities that would trigger against prof bonus, but don't have decent charisma nor proficiency in the saving throws. Basically, martials with magical subclasses.
The casters that don't have decent cha saves do come with native ritual casting to lessen that particular blow, bards in particular enjoying both good charisma and ritual access but on the flipside liable to generate considerable ferality amongst teammates by handing out inspiration. Clerics are also prone to generating a lot of collateral ferality but only have charisma save prof and not high scores themselves.

Across the board, I think the ferality when having magic used on you is the biggest threat, since that is prone to a lot more snowballing and accidental gain. Could potentially be unfair, or just one more way to burn character resources on not failing saves.
And on that note, i'm thinking anything that would apply to d20 tests or death saves would also apply to the ferality roll.

[Rafaelfras]

Thinking through the specifics for classes under this model

Artificer: Middling generation, poor recovery
Barbarian: Low generation, poor recovery
Bard: High generation, good recovery, rituals
Cleric: High generation, average recovery, rituals
Druid: High generation, poor recovery, rituals
Fighter: Low generation, poor recovery
Monk: Low generation, poor recovery
Paladin: High generation, good recovery
Ranger: Middling generation, poor recovery
Rogue: Low generation, poor recovery
Sorcerer: High generation, good recovery
Warlock: High generation, good recovery
Wizard: High generation, poor recovery, rituals

So the ones that are really screwed over are the classes that use magical abilities that would trigger against prof bonus, but don't have decent charisma nor proficiency in the saving throws. Basically, martials with magical subclasses.
The casters that don't have decent cha saves do come with native ritual casting to lessen that particular blow, bards in particular enjoying both good charisma and ritual access but on the flipside liable to generate considerable ferality amongst teammates by handing out inspiration. Clerics are also prone to generating a lot of collateral ferality but only have charisma save prof and not high scores themselves.

Across the board, I think the ferality when having magic used on you is the biggest threat, since that is prone to a lot more snowballing and accidental gain. Could potentially be unfair, or just one more way to burn character resources on not failing saves.
And on that note, i'm thinking anything that would apply to d20 tests or death saves would also apply to the ferality roll.

Why not the Insanity rules on the DMG ( minor, major and permanent as it add up)? The ferality is a personal preference?
Also, for balance sake (not that matters) why Charisma? Ithink charisma casters already have too many things stacked in favor of then (bacause how many classes use it) In my opinion the saving throw should use the spell casting stat since it is what the spell caster is using to his spellcraft.
Also in a game that not even death is permanent it should have a cure, hard as you want it to be, but it should have a cure.
As for getting it from magic being used in you, dosent that just buff enemy spellcasters because they dont have to worry about ferality at all and their spells now have another bad effect tied to them?

[Kane0]

Why not the Insanity rules on the DMG ( minor, major and permanent as it add up)? The ferality is a personal preference?

Essentially yes, but it's also a worldbuilding element



Also, for balance sake (not that matters) why Charisma?

Because the ferality is far more an effect on your personality and sense of self than it is your intuition and willpower, and Wisdom saves are so damn prevalent already. It's also somewhat convenient that Charisma is a proficient save even for full casters that don't use it as their casting stat.
INT saves would make sense if it was madness, which is a related and more common trope.



Also in a game that not even death is permanent it should have a cure, hard as you want it to be, but it should have a cure.

I've been toying with the idea, not sure if I want it to be artifact/wish level or something like greater restoration or remove curse. Maybe a scaling chance of success depending on what you use.
Or better yet, a spell that allows you to transfer ferality points rather than just remove them. Could be neat.



As for getting it from magic being used in you, dosent that just buff enemy spellcasters because they dont have to worry about ferality at all and their spells now have another bad effect tied to them?
Yes, yes it does :smallamused:

That's kinda the point though, the ferals and monsters out in the wilderness away from civilization are dangerous, they can do things the civilized cannot, it's not an even playing field. The civil have the advantage of co-operation, and if they don't make good use of that they can and will be wiped. I should probably stress that it isn't a grimdark or horror/survival sort of setting, just notably less high/heroic fantasy than the 'default' assumptions.
Though I should also note that as consolation, feral spellcasters won't be especially common. Magical monsters would make more appearances than feral mages (ferals do tend to get killed and eaten, but the ones that live long enough gradually mutate into proper monsters). Plus I do run non-ferals with a sort of morale so they will take feralization into account and not suicidally feralize themselves just because I know as DM they won't make it to the next session.

[Pex]

Sounds to me risk might be a better word than punishment? It's fine to be risk averse as a player, I'm absolutely guilty of using magic missile more than I probably should, but as you say the devil is in the details and it can be a hard balancing act. If the reward doesn't match the risk then it's not a good trade, and quickly turns into feeling like punishment.

To be clear, I don't want to punish casters for casting, nor soft-ban them existing. I just want magic to feel a bit more weighty than D&D typically defaults to, like it has an impact beyond the immediate effect and that has shaped the world.

Of course this is really only for my game/table anyways, so it's OK for this to just be a no-sell for others. I'm putting it up here for discussion and to ensure that is a fair mechanic and generates the feel i'm aiming for.

It's all good. You do you. You asked for opinions including "Torches and Pitchforks?". Count me in that category. Hypothetically you sell this someday I'm not a customer. That's all it is.

[Leon]

My thoughts on this has not changed.

I don't care that games have published it. No game system should punish a player for doing something the game says he can do. Punishing is to mean to be worse off for doing the Thing than if you hadn't done the Thing at all, accepting the obvious you have one less resource use of doing the Thing. That means no loss of health, no loss of turns, no loss of actions, vulnerability to attack, no insanity, no loss of ability scores or game mechanic equivalent, etc.

If something is so powerful you feel the need to punish the character for doing it as a matter of balance, then either nerf the ability so that you no longer feel that need or just don't have that ability at all and do something else.

A Cost isn't a punishment (unless of course you expect everything to be free), the sheer potency of what magic can do warrants it to have a cost associated with it in terms of entry or effect.

[Tanarii]

Sounds to me risk might be a better word than punishment?
Punishment is intentionally inflicting a negative consequence that would not otherwise naturally exist so that someone chooses not to do something again.

If the magic rules are defined in advance such that the player knows the rules of using magic, and they choose to play one, it is a "natural" consequence of the rules despite being fictional (and in-universe the world's system of magic). And neither character nor player is being punished.

If a GM arbitrarily decides to add a cost on the fly to magic because they don't like how awesome an existing character is, that's probably the GM punishing a player. If they added a cost to a spell because of what their player chose to do with it, I'd say that'd definitely punishing.

Edit: None of this is to say it's necessarily good design. I personally don't like the Berzerker subclass, and consider it poorly designed. But it's definitely not a punishment to suffer exhaustion if the player chooses to play one and uses Frenzy. It's a natural consequence. But that natural consequence is a cost that far too often outweighs the benefit.

[Goobahfish]

Probably would need to buff spellcasting a bit if you are going to nerf it so heavily.

[Segev]

On Wild Magic Sorcerer, I actually think they did a better job in 5e than they have in the past. In the past, it was an enormously mixed bag with at least as many bad effects as good, with huge swings in how bad or how good. The 5e Wild Magic Sorcerer actually has a significant majority of positive or neutral effects; it is generally good when you get wild magic going off. There are bad things, and they can be catastrophic at low level, which means some work or tweaking is needed, but it is actually mostly not-bad to good effects, with even the most devastating (fireball centered on you) being a thing that you can benefit from if enemies are nearby.

[Kane0]

I think you could replace the fireball on self with something like Nathair's Mischief or something and like 80% of peoples issues would disappear.

[Snails]

Probably would need to buff spellcasting a bit if you are going to nerf it so heavily.

Why even take more than a 1 level dip in a spell casting class? Just avoid the fussy new rules.

Intention does not really matter, because that is an internal process going on within the DM's skull. What matters are the expectations as they happen to be successfully communicated to the players. It would be nice if the players' expectations map accurately with what is going on within the DM's skull, but that is not a given.

For a short campaign, I think these ideas about Feral would probably work. But in a long campaign, I think they would likely grate on me as a player, for the reason that the really interesting stuff I am used to doing in T2/T3 would effectively be restricted to the NPCs. Or maybe I dare risk one powerful spell per day. Yippee. <golf clap/>

[Pex]

A Cost isn't a punishment (unless of course you expect everything to be free), the sheer potency of what magic can do warrants it to have a cost associated with it in terms of entry or effect.

The issue is not a cost existing. The issue is what the cost is. A spell slot is a cost. Mana points is a cost. A limited number of uses per day is a cost. Those are not "punishments".

[Segev]

I'll suggest again that the best way to make "magic has a terrible price" be something felt in-setting is to make the magic-at-the-cost available to everyone. Anybody willing to risk the price is able to do magic, maybe with some learning, but not years of study or anything, and often easily enough that it can be stumbled into.

Then, spellcasting classes (to use 5e as a basis) can expend spell slots to avoid the risk or other cost. The spellcasters have studied, learned, or otherwise gained protections from the corruptive or dangerous effects, and can pull of "this much" magic safely. Perhaps the cost/risk is spell slot level dependent, so higher-level spells cost or risk more harm. Maybe spellcasters can take smaller risks by spending lower-level spell slots and paying the difference in risk/cost to upcast them without the actual spell slot to back it up. By the same token, of course, those who aren't spending spell slots due to not being casters can cast all the way up, too, at this risk and cost.

Spellcasters are thus no less powerful than before, and the non-casters can close any gaps by risking the dangerous costs of magic if they want to.


If you're worried about it boosting casters "too much," then don't let them upcast by only paying the price difference, and they're in the same boat as everyone else if they want to cast beyond their means.

[MadBear]

This sounds fun. I know it's exactly the kinda thing that my group would love to try.

My only thought would be lowering the DC for lower level spells and just make it higher level spells (4+ maybe) that are hard to cast without risk. My thought being, it's only really high spell slots that break the game, and at lower levels without magic, casters will feel inferior.

Or if not that, I'd add some sort of small buff to make-up for the detriment. Maybe, if you fail the feral check, it does not consume the spell slot. This sort of fits in with the magic consuming you, while not being something you're happy about when it happens.

[Kane0]

Or if not that, I'd add some sort of small buff to make-up for the detriment. Maybe, if you fail the feral check, it does not consume the spell slot. This sort of fits in with the magic consuming you, while not being something you're happy about when it happens.

Ooh i like that. 40% chance to get another 9th level slot for the low, low price of 1 ferality, and at the same time the ferals dont care about slots at all!

[MadBear]

Ooh i like that. 40% chance to get another 9th level slot for the low, low price of 1 ferality, and at the same time the ferals dont care about slots at all!

I mean, getting a 2nd 9th level slot is super powerful, but also getting closer to losing your character makes it not something me or my players would risk unless there was a worthwhile payoff.

[MadBear]

What if the number of feral points you needed to go insane was inversely proportional to your characters proficiency bonus?

Like you could have 6 at level 1-3, but at levels 17+ you could only have 2 before going insane. Something along the lines of the more powerful you become in using magic, the easier you are to sway.

That'd make it less punishing to lower level characters, but higher level characters need to be way more cautious. (and by the time they get to higher levels, they have a better chance of finding ways to mitigate the danger, so ramping it up along side them makes sense).

[Kane0]

I was thinking the amount of attunement that characters pick up over time with magic items would achieve the same effect, but under their own control

[KorvinStarmast]

To be clear, I don't want to punish casters for casting, nor soft-ban them existing. I just want magic to feel a bit more weighty than D&D typically defaults to, like it has an impact beyond the immediate effect and that has shaped the world. Bingo. And that's why I like your efforts in this direction.

I agree with you that Berserker and Wild Magic Sorcerer as currently presented are badly designed/badly conceived versions of this. I do think it's possible to design double-edged swords that are less extreme than these however. Yes! Trouble is, that takes more work than the devs were willing, or funded, to do.

Thinking through the specifics for classes under this model
Let me see what I can do to help.
Artificer: Middling generation, poor recovery
Don't waste time on it.

Barbarian: Low generation, poor recovery
Rage refresh on a short rest, not a long rest.

Bard: High generation, good recovery, rituals
Too much to discuss here, since bard steps all over other arcane casters. Just delete the class for your campaign.

Cleric: High generation, average recovery, rituals
As they don't cast arcane spells, maybe give them advantage on the feral resistance rolls?

Druid: High generation, poor recovery, rituals
See Cleric.

Fighter: Low generation, poor recovery
Boost Indomitable to Legendary save 1, 2, or 3 times, versus the current schema.

Monk: Low generation, poor recovery
Make them immune to this, as it's ki, not arcane magic.

Paladin: High generation, good recovery
Paladin is fine as is, and is divine magic.

Ranger: Middling generation, poor recovery
Ranger needs no change, and they use divine magic anyway.

Rogue: Low generation, poor recovery
Let the AT have some risk, otherwise, no need to mess with.

Sorcerer: High generation, good recovery
Add 1 meta magic at 7, also make spell progression add 1 per level with no reduction. 21 at 20.
They cast arcane magic, they get to embrace the risk.

Warlock: High generation, good recovery
Don't touch this one, and let the risks play out as they may.

Wizard: High generation, poor recovery, rituals
Arcane magic exacts a price. They get around this a bit with their exceptional capacity for rituals from the book.

Across the board, I think the ferality when having magic used on you is the biggest threat, since that is prone to a lot more snowballing and accidental gain. Could potentially be unfair, or just one more way to burn character resources on not failing saves.
As I suggested before, remove that.

And on that note, i'm thinking anything that would apply to d20 tests or death saves would also apply to the ferality roll. Yes, use the death save approach, as I suggested a few posts back.

Punishment is intentionally inflicting a negative consequence that would not otherwise naturally exist so that someone chooses not to do something again.

If the magic rules are defined in advance such that the player knows the rules of using magic, and they choose to play one, it is a "natural" consequence of the rules despite being fictional (and in-universe the world's system of magic). And neither character nor player is being punished.

If a GM arbitrarily decides to add a cost on the fly to magic because they don't like how awesome an existing character is, that's probably the GM punishing a player. If they added a cost to a spell because of what their player chose to do with it, I'd say that'd definitely punishing.

Edit: None of this is to say it's necessarily good design. I personally don't like the Berzerker subclass, and consider it poorly designed. But it's definitely not a punishment to suffer exhaustion if the player chooses to play one and uses Frenzy. It's a natural consequence. But that natural consequence is a cost that far too often outweighs the benefit. + 10

Probably would need to buff spellcasting a bit if you are going to nerf it so heavily. Nope. Spellcasting is already an inherent buff.

I think you could replace the fireball on self with something like Nathair's Mischief or something and like 80% of peoples issues would disappear. Good idea! let the caster bear the cost not the rest of the party.

What if the number of feral points you needed to go insane was inversely proportional to your characters proficiency bonus?

Like you could have 6 at level 1-3, but at levels 17+ you could only have 2 before going insane. Something along the lines of the more powerful you become in using magic, the easier you are to sway.

That'd make it less punishing to lower level characters, but higher level characters need to be way more cautious. (and by the time they get to higher levels, they have a better chance of finding ways to mitigate the danger, so ramping it up along side them makes sense). Brilliant. I like this approach.

[Kane0]

To refine the rule then:

Spellcasting: When you cast a spell or use a spell slot, roll a saving throw (no stat), the DC equals the level of the spell cast or slot expended. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend the spell slot or casting but instead gain 1 ferality point. Casting a spell as a Ritual grants you advantage on this saving throw.
Magical Abilities: When you use a magical ability (that would be affected by an anti-magic field) that does not function by the use of spell slots, you roll a saving throw (no stat) against DC equal to your proficiency bonus. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend a use of that ability but instead gain 1 ferality point.

Being in a wild magic zone imposes disadvantage on ferality saving throws.
Attuning to a magic item gives you one ferality point that cannot be recovered (see below) until that attunement is lost.

If you reach 10 ferality points a creature goes feral. Feral PCs are rendered unplayable and handed over to the DM to control as NPCs.

Recovery: As part of a long rest, a creature may attempt a Charisma saving throw, the DC equals 10 + the number of ferality points the creature has. If successful, the creature removes one ferality point.


Optional: The DM may allow some means of restoring a feral creature, such as via a Heal spell or the use of powerful magic items.
Optional: Creatures that fail their ferality save when using magic also contaminates it, forcing any other creature affected by the spell or magical affect to also make a ferality roll against the same DC.

[Rafaelfras]

Essentially yes, but it's also a worldbuilding element... and other clarifications




Thank you for the clarification


I'll suggest again that the best way to make "magic has a terrible price" be something felt in-setting is to make the magic-at-the-cost available to everyone. Anybody willing to risk the price is able to do magic, maybe with some learning, but not years of study or anything, and often easily enough that it can be stumbled into.

Then, spellcasting classes (to use 5e as a basis) can expend spell slots to avoid the risk or other cost. The spellcasters have studied, learned, or otherwise gained protections from the corruptive or dangerous effects, and can pull of "this much" magic safely. Perhaps the cost/risk is spell slot level dependent, so higher-level spells cost or risk more harm. Maybe spellcasters can take smaller risks by spending lower-level spell slots and paying the difference in risk/cost to upcast them without the actual spell slot to back it up. By the same token, of course, those who aren't spending spell slots due to not being casters can cast all the way up, too, at this risk and cost.

Spellcasters are thus no less powerful than before, and the non-casters can close any gaps by risking the dangerous costs of magic if they want to.


If you're worried about it boosting casters "too much," then don't let them upcast by only paying the price difference, and they're in the same boat as everyone else if they want to cast beyond their means.

Yeah personally I agree more with this


To refine the rule then:

Spellcasting: When you cast a spell or use a spell slot, roll a saving throw (no stat), the DC equals the level of the spell cast or slot expended. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend the spell slot or casting but instead gain 1 ferality point. Casting a spell as a Ritual grants you advantage on this saving throw.
Magical Abilities: When you use a magical ability (that would be affected by an anti-magic field) that does not function by the use of spell slots, you roll a saving throw (no stat) against DC equal to your proficiency bonus. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend a use of that ability but instead gain 1 ferality point.

Being in a wild magic zone imposes disadvantage on ferality saving throws.
Attuning to a magic item gives you one ferality point that cannot be recovered (see below) until that attunement is lost.

If you reach 10 ferality points a creature goes feral. Feral PCs are rendered unplayable and handed over to the DM to control as NPCs.

Recovery: As part of a long rest, a creature may attempt a Charisma saving throw, the DC equals 10 + the number of ferality points the creature has. If successful, the creature removes one ferality point.


Optional: The DM may allow some means of restoring a feral creature, such as via a Heal spell or the use of powerful magic items.
Optional: Creatures that fail their ferality save when using magic also contaminates it, forcing any other creature affected by the spell or magical affect to also make a ferality roll against the same DC.

Yeah the "benefit" of a failed save is something that can make up for it (2 level 9 spells can really do A LOT imagine gaining a 3rd or a 4th one, you will pay a price and end the encounter so I think it will give you the feel that you want)

My sole suggestion still is let the caster use his spellcasting stat to try to remove the corruption, The stat represent what the caster use to do magic and that part of himself should also try to resist it and maintain the sense of self ( wizards do it by rationalization, clerics by force of will and charisma casters through the strength of their ego, etc... ) I get it why charisma, it make sense but I dont think a universal corruption through magic should favor some classes over others. The corruption itself is already enough and as there is different ways of casting a spell there should be different ways to fight its ill effects Martials would use the same logic, using their high mental saving throw.

[JNAProductions]

Thank you for the clarification



Yeah personally I agree more with this



Yeah the "benefit" of a failed save is something that can make up for it (2 level 9 spells can really do A LOT imagine gaining a 3rd or a 4th one, you will pay a price and end the encounter so I think it will give you the feel that you want)

My sole suggestion still is let the caster use his spellcasting stat to try to remove the corruption, The stat represent what the caster use to do magic and that part of himself should also try to resist it and maintain the sense of self ( wizards do it by rationalization, clerics by force of will and charisma casters through the strength of their ego, etc... ) I get it why charisma, it make sense but I dont think a universal corruption through magic should favor some classes over others. The corruption itself is already enough and as there is different ways of casting a spell there should be different ways to fight its ill effects Martials would use the same logic, using their high mental saving throw.

Issue with that is that, by assigning it to your casting stat, you get to add your casting stat and nearly always your proficiency bonus.

So, at level 1, you have a +4 to +5. Your highest spell is level 1, and your prof is +2. You cannot fail these saves. In fact, you can't EVER fail the save from a non-spell magic, since the DC equals your prof bonus, which you're adding to it. (Unless you have a negative mod to your casting stat.)
Crunching the numbers, assuming you start with a 16 at level 1 and use your first two ASIs to max your casting stat...

Yeah, I don't think you can ever fail a save without some outside penalty.
Level 17? You're rocking +11 to a DC 9 save.
Level 15? +10 to DC 8.
Level 9? +9 to DC 5.

[Leon]

The issue is not a cost existing. The issue is what the cost is. A spell slot is a cost. Mana points is a cost. A limited number of uses per day is a cost. Those are not "punishments".

A spell slot (point/Per day) is not a cost, its a counting metric. Its a lame excuse for not having a more tangible limitation to the power that magic provides. Having a chance spell to not work, to work more than expect, at half its rate, go in this case a lil bit feral is a cost and a risk, and magic should be risky for what it does.


To refine the rule then:

Spellcasting: When you cast a spell or use a spell slot, roll a saving throw (no stat), the DC equals the level of the spell cast or slot expended. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend the spell slot or casting but instead gain 1 ferality point. Casting a spell as a Ritual grants you advantage on this saving throw.
Magical Abilities: When you use a magical ability (that would be affected by an anti-magic field) that does not function by the use of spell slots, you roll a saving throw (no stat) against DC equal to your proficiency bonus. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend a use of that ability but instead gain 1 ferality point.

Being in a wild magic zone imposes disadvantage on ferality saving throws.
Attuning to a magic item gives you one ferality point that cannot be recovered (see below) until that attunement is lost.

If you reach 10 ferality points a creature goes feral. Feral PCs are rendered unplayable and handed over to the DM to control as NPCs.

Recovery: As part of a long rest, a creature may attempt a Charisma saving throw, the DC equals 10 + the number of ferality points the creature has. If successful, the creature removes one ferality point.


Optional: The DM may allow some means of restoring a feral creature, such as via a Heal spell or the use of powerful magic items.
Optional: Creatures that fail their ferality save when using magic also contaminates it, forcing any other creature affected by the spell or magical affect to also make a ferality roll against the same DC.

Looks good.

[Kane0]

My sole suggestion still is let the caster use his spellcasting stat to try to remove the corruption, The stat represent what the caster use to do magic and that part of himself should also try to resist it and maintain the sense of self ( wizards do it by rationalization, clerics by force of will and charisma casters through the strength of their ego, etc... ) I get it why charisma, it make sense but I dont think a universal corruption through magic should favor some classes over others.

My question would be what about creatures who are not spellcasters in that case? Say for example the champion fighter who got stuck with a corrupted Bless or a wild magic barbarian accumulating ferality from raging.

[Rafaelfras]

Issue with that is that, by assigning it to your casting stat, you get to add your casting stat and nearly always your proficiency bonus.

So, at level 1, you have a +4 to +5. Your highest spell is level 1, and your prof is +2. You cannot fail these saves. In fact, you can't EVER fail the save from a non-spell magic, since the DC equals your prof bonus, which you're adding to it. (Unless you have a negative mod to your casting stat.)
Crunching the numbers, assuming you start with a 16 at level 1 and use your first two ASIs to max your casting stat...

Yeah, I don't think you can ever fail a save without some outside penalty.
Level 17? You're rocking +11 to a DC 9 save.
Level 15? +10 to DC 8.
Level 9? +9 to DC 5.
No, the ferality saving throw is like a death saving throw, is statless (so equal to everyone and thats why 40% when cast a 9th level spell)


My question would be what about creatures who are not spellcasters in that case? Say for example the champion fighter who got stuck with a corrupted Bless or a wild magic barbarian accumulating ferality from raging.

Easy, I would heavly advocate for constitution saving throw, their body is resisting the corruption like dwarves in LotR.

[JNAProductions]

No, the ferality saving throw is like a death saving throw, is statless (so equal to everyone and thats why 40% when cast a 9th level spell)

Easy, I would heavy advocate for constitution saving throw their body is resisting the corruption like dwarves in LotR

Ah, I misread your post. I read it as the saves in general would be with spellcasting stat, not JUST the recovery saves.

[Kane0]

Easy, I would heavy advocate for constitution saving throw, their body is resisting the corruption like dwarves in LotR.

My only real contention is that con, dex and wis saves are already the big three, i'd personally prefer to diversify a bit.

[Rafaelfras]

My only real contention is that con, dex and wis saves are already the big three, i'd personally prefer to diversify a bit.

I get it, but the con would be just for Barbarians and Fighters anyway so I think would be a nice flavor for those 2 classes as it is very fitting for then to resist magic corruption by being solid, impregnable.

Edit: Also my Wizard long term goal in your world now is cleanse magic. Will he succeed and change the world for ever? Or will he become just another monster while trying an impossible dream?

[Pex]

A spell slot (point/Per day) is not a cost, its a counting metric. Its a lame excuse for not having a more tangible limitation to the power that magic provides. Having a chance spell to not work, to work more than expect, at half its rate, go in this case a lil bit feral is a cost and a risk, and magic should be risky for what it does.



Looks good.

The attack roll misses. The monster makes its saving throw - negates spell entirely or has a reduced effect like half damage. 5E already has the costs. Magic is not guaranteed to work. There doesn't need to be anything more than that.

[Arkhios]

I get it, but the con would be just for Barbarians and Fighters anyway so I think would be a nice flavor for those 2 classes as it is very fitting for then to resist magic corruption by being solid, impregnable.

Edit: Also my Wizard long term goal in your world now is cleanse magic. Will he succeed and change the world for ever? Or will he become just another monster while trying an impossible dream?

Both Artificers and Sorcerers have proficiency in Con saves as well. 4 out of 13 classes is approximately 30% of the whole, so it's not nothing.

Re: Edit: That's actually a very good idea, imho! Snarky towards the setting premise, yes, but an awesome character concept.

[Rafaelfras]

Both Artificers and Sorcerers have proficiency in Con saves as well. 4 out of 13 classes is approximately 30% of the whole, so it's not nothing.

Re: Edit: That's actually a very good idea, imho! Snarky towards the setting premise, yes, but an awesome character concept.

No, artifices and sorcerers use their casting stat as they both are spellcasters.
Fighter and barbarian dont have proficiency in a mental Saving throw, thats why they are different. And I support con because it make more sense then strength
Rogues for example would roll Int, rangers and monks wisdow and paladins charisma, because it is the mental (and spellcasting) stat they have proficiency

[Angelalex242]

Paladins in general would seem to be safest.

Presuming they prioritize Charisma, Divine Grace doubles their charisma bonus, plus proficiency.

That might be a point of pride for them from level 6 on.

[Kane0]

Paladins in general would seem to be safest.

Presuming they prioritize Charisma, Divine Grace doubles their charisma bonus, plus proficiency.

That might be a point of pride for them from level 6 on.

Yes their aura of protection also applies to death saves too, so it would apply to the ferality save too.

Edit: and on that note some other things that would apply:
Bless, lucky, flash of genius, bardic inspiration, diamond soul, favored of the gods, bend luck, dark ones own luck, protection of the talisman, portent, resistance (ive got a homebrew version actually worth using), ring/cloak of protection, luckstone

[Arkhios]

No, artifices and sorcerers use their casting stat as they both are spellcasters.
Fighter and barbarian dont have proficiency in a mental Saving throw, thats why they are different. And I support con because it make more sense then strength
Rogues for example would roll Int, rangers and monks wisdow and paladins charisma, because it is the mental (and spellcasting) stat they have proficiency

Granted, I jumped back into discussion without having reading all thread up to this point, so maybe I missed something that was discussed about this up-thread. Rules As Written though, on the other hand...

[Bane's Wolf]

To refine the rule then:

Spellcasting: When you cast a spell or use a spell slot, roll a saving throw (no stat), the DC equals the level of the spell cast or slot expended. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend the spell slot or casting but instead gain 1 ferality point. Casting a spell as a Ritual grants you advantage on this saving throw.
Magical Abilities: When you use a magical ability (that would be affected by an anti-magic field) that does not function by the use of spell slots, you roll a saving throw (no stat) against DC equal to your proficiency bonus. If you fail this saving throw, you do not expend a use of that ability but instead gain 1 ferality point.

Being in a wild magic zone imposes disadvantage on ferality saving throws.
Attuning to a magic item gives you one ferality point that cannot be recovered (see below) until that attunement is lost.

If you reach 10 ferality points a creature goes feral. Feral PCs are rendered unplayable and handed over to the DM to control as NPCs.

Recovery: As part of a long rest, a creature may attempt a Charisma saving throw, the DC equals 10 + the number of ferality points the creature has. If successful, the creature removes one ferality point.


Optional: The DM may allow some means of restoring a feral creature, such as via a Heal spell or the use of powerful magic items.
Optional: Creatures that fail their ferality save when using magic also contaminates it, forcing any other creature affected by the spell or magical affect to also make a ferality roll against the same DC.

This looks very good :smallbiggrin:

I'd like to steal parts of this for my own setting, but very modified (homebrewing the homebrew :smalltongue:)

I want my arcane magic to be risky, specifically "Dark Magics" like demonic magic or necromancy. These might give a character Corruption Points (ferality points lite :smallwink:)

I'd like to make this a great temptation to players, so perhaps have the corruption points a character has add to their spell power in some way, making them significantly more powerful, but at the risk of going too far and losing control of their character.

I'll definitely consider a lot of the discussion here. Thank you for all the insights :smallbiggrin:

[Grim Portent]

Jumping over a lot of the thread, but I'd be inclined to go as mechanically simple as possible for such a thing.

When you cast a spell you get Ferality/Corruption/Madness/Whatever points equal to the spell slot level, 0 for cantrips. Hit 100 points and you go insane or mutate into a monster, you lose points equal to half your level every day. Points can be transferred to a willing or incapacitated target at a rate of 1:3, each point the caster is reduced for applies 3 points to the target.

The only ways to maintain sanity are to periodically abstain from the use of eldritch powers or to offload the burden onto those weaker than yourself, or volunteers if you're lucky enough to have people willing to shoulder the arcane burden. Means spellcasters are discouraged from going whole hog every day, instead having rest days where they try to cast few if any spells to keep their points low, such as regular downtime between adventures.

It's also more dangerous the higher your level, as the points you can gain scale faster than the rate at which you can ethically dispense them, encouraging more powerful casters to bend or break previous moral limits in their pursuit of power. Want to throw all your spell slots around at level 5? You can do it for days with no problem. Do it at level 20? You'd better have someone to offload ferality onto or you're turning before day 2 is over as the greater energies you channel overwhelm and drown your sense of self.

NPCs can only sustain points equal to their hit dice before transforming. So offloading any energy into a commoner or basic goblin turns them into some sort of wretched humanoid, while a knight or similar can withstand more eldritch corruption before falling. The 'monsters' are not necessarily evil or irrational, but a less pleasant form of existence than they started as with a corresponding rise in cruelty and cowardice.


Half-casters and monks and the like gain and lose points at the same rate as full casters, which means they have to really go ham for an extended period to risk turning, to reflect their lesser magical power being less corrupting. Ferality gain rate for some magic adjacent non-caster classes would be low enough to not be worth tracking.

[noob]

Jumping over a lot of the thread, but I'd be inclined to go as mechanically simple as possible for such a thing.

When you cast a spell you get Ferality/Corruption/Madness/Whatever points equal to the spell slot level, 0 for cantrips. Hit 100 points and you go insane or mutate into a monster, you lose points equal to half your level every day. Points can be transferred to a willing or incapacitated target at a rate of 1:3, each point the caster is reduced for applies 3 points to the target.

The only ways to maintain sanity are to periodically abstain from the use of eldritch powers or to offload the burden onto those weaker than yourself, or volunteers if you're lucky enough to have people willing to shoulder the arcane burden. Means spellcasters are discouraged from going whole hog every day, instead having rest days where they try to cast few if any spells to keep their points low, such as regular downtime between adventures.

It's also more dangerous the higher your level, as the points you can gain scale faster than the rate at which you can ethically dispense them, encouraging more powerful casters to bend or break previous moral limits in their pursuit of power. Want to throw all your spell slots around at level 5? You can do it for days with no problem. Do it at level 20? You'd better have someone to offload ferality onto or you're turning before day 2 is over as the greater energies you channel overwhelm and drown your sense of self.

NPCs can only sustain points equal to their hit dice before transforming. So offloading any energy into a commoner or basic goblin turns them into some sort of wretched humanoid, while a knight or similar can withstand more eldritch corruption before falling. The 'monsters' are not necessarily evil or irrational, but a less pleasant form of existence than they started as with a corresponding rise in cruelty and cowardice.


Half-casters and monks and the like gain and lose points at the same rate as full casters, which means they have to really go ham for an extended period to risk turning, to reflect their lesser magical power being less corrupting. Ferality gain rate for some magic adjacent non-caster classes would be low enough to not be worth tracking.

Seeing how many foes adventurers beats up, I feel it will somehow encourage adventurers to be more merciful and spare foes in exchange for them to accept some corruption.

[Unoriginal]

Idea: what if you could cast the spell (or some spells, at least) as a group, and share the cost between all participants?

[Grim Portent]

Seeing how many foes adventurers beats up, I feel it will somehow encourage adventurers to be more merciful and spare foes in exchange for them to accept some corruption.

In the context of the set up I proposed, many enemies would turn into monsters should they agree to that, which may or may not be worse than death. Of course someone like a bandit doesn't really have rights in a medieval legal system, so you can do whatever you want with them when you capture them alive, and my proposal does allow for forcing corruption into an unwilling but helpless victim.

Depending on what counts as a monster for the purposes of corruption, as in what is already corrupt and cannot be used to offload corruption, it might be the case that very few regular enemies are even valid targets.