Verb-Noun Magic and Magic Items [Generic]

[Knaight]

Verb-Noun magic is one of the more interesting magic systems around. Basically every spell is a combination of a noun and a verb. So instead of fireball you would use Create-Fire, but if, hypothetically there was already a fire around you might use Repel-Fire. Anyways my next game involves using a verb-noun magic system, using magic marks of different colors(form is verb, color is noun), with the following verbs and nouns.

Verbs:

Nouns: Air(Pale Blue), Earth(Black), Fire(Red), Water(Dark Blue), Body(Brown), Light(Yellow), Magic(Silver), Mind(Purple)

So does anybody have ideas for magic items? I'll start.

Hunter Arrows-An arrow wrapped near the tip with a piece of paper with an Attract Body glyph on it.


Long Shot Arrows-An arrow wrapped near the tip with a piece of paper with a Repel Earth glyph on it, with a second glyph near the back. Expensive versions have repel-air on the tail.

Magic Armor- Armor with repel earth and repel magic glyphs on it.

Magic Weapon- A weapon with a destroy body and destroy earth glyph on it.

Volcanic Guard- A massive Attract Fire glyph deep underground around a volcano, and a less massive Repel Fire glyph at the top.

Siphon Brand- A particularly nasty execution tool that is used to brand Create Magic on somebody, that then burns up their life to generate magic.

Glyph Ring-A ring with a glyph drawn on it that can hold ink. Used in any number of ways, both in and out of combat, from punching somebody in the face and leaving a repel air mark on it, to quickly putting repel water glyphs on a lot of people before a hailstorm.

Further ideas are requested.

[Draz74]

"Self" should be a valid Noun.

"Repel Self" = teleport.

[Knaight]

Or you just use a "body" spell on yourself. Or an "earth" spell if your a construct. Although using repel body on yourself really shouldn't work. Now if you use repel earth on a big rock in front of you, you will be flying, so no need for teleportation.

[kopout]

attract-{place}
you go to the place

[Innis Cabal]

Well, for starts I would love to play in that game.

For the thing itself. The magic is easily very powerful. I would only assume that other words could be added to that list

Raise-Water for example. Even just a little water and BAM water spout

[Jack_Simth]

Come up with a decent listing of nouns, and a decent listing of verbs; your players will come up with the spells, all you need to worry about is the NPC's and random magic items.

The big difficulty is keeping it reasonably balanced - coming up with a way to figure out how to judge the specific effect (e.g., Does "repel earth" placed on someone make them go up a bit, or give them controlled flight?) and the magnitude of the effect (gentle floating? Flung off the earth into space? What speed of flight?)

[Innis Cabal]

I personally would say the bigger the rune, the wider the effect

[Kroy]

Burning-Hand

[Innis Cabal]

A pair of glovers with the words Spread and Fire

[Athaniar]

This sounds interesting, but is there any crunch to back it up with?

Also, nothing for necromancy?

[Heliomance]

I think Animate needs to be a valid verb. Or Life needs to be a valid noun. One or the other. That way, you could either do Animate-Body/Fire/Earth/whatever, or Create-Life.

[Decahedral Tofu]

Long Shot Arrows-An arrow wrapped near the tip with a piece of paper with a Repel Earth glyph on it.

You'd actually want the glyph barely in front of the center of mass for the best effect, other wise your arrow would point upwards every time. With proper fletching, you'll get best distance firing an arrow with repel earth glyphs in the following positions, as marked by [G]:
M = center of mass

\---\
====G==========[vG]M[^G]========G==|>
/---/

The two near the ends lessen stress on the center, making the shaft straighter. The two on either side of the center of mass represent a glyph on the bottom of the arrow and a glyph on the top of the arrow. These exert their forces near the center of mass, allowing the arrow to fly smoothly. Furthermore, if you hollowed out the shaft and put an object in there that would move slowly along the hollow shaft with another glyph on it, you'd be able to increase your distance by even more, because it would naturally encourage a wider parabolic shape, and it would cause the arrow's path become concave upward partway through the decent.

Physics + magic = happiness! :D

[Athaniar]

Agreed. Animate and Life are good (Animate-Life is resurrection, Animate-Body is reanimation, Animate-Earth to create a construct, and so on). White is a good color for Life. Wonder what healing would be? Create-Life?

[KnightDisciple]

Agreed. Animate and Life are good (Animate-Life is resurrection, Animate-Body is reanimation, Animate-Earth to create a construct, and so on). White is a good color for Life. Wonder what healing would be? Create-Life?

That, or a less powerful animate, perhaps.
Also, this is awesome. This whole concept, that is.

[Pronounceable]

Attack and protect are visibly missing from the verb list.
...

Some naughty words spring to mind for some inexplicable reason...

[Kroy]

*Snip*

Physics + magic = happiness! :D

*Facepalm*

Physic + Magic (or D&D in general)= Pain and Suffering

[Knaight]

A pair of glovers with the words Spread and Fire

Believe me, I have much more evil than this. Lets just say that invisible ink glyphs and different kinds of citrus could possibly come up. Healing would be create body, repair would usually be create earth. That said glyph gloves are in, as are glyph tattoos.

The verbs are actually fairly comprehensive, fire covers heat and electricity, water covers all nonliving liquids, earth all nonliving solids and plants, air all gases, etc.

As for attack and protect missing from the verb list, what spell you would use would depend on what you want to do. The blunt force attack would be destroy body, but you could also have fun with quite a few things, such as the repel air stamp to the face that I mentioned. As for protect, you can counter most glyphs.

As for animate, I think I'll just add life to the noun list, then that would be create life.

[Mercenary Pen]

Attack and protect are visibly missing from the verb list.

They're replaced by other more generic words (mainly destroy and repel)

[Knaight]

Although you can use other stuff to protect. Create water, for example would be pretty good against a fireball, although against physical stuff your probably going to want repel earth. And you can always just use destroy-(whatever the other guy is trying to kill you with)

As for killing people, create has a lot of use here. Create fire, create earth(or water) a few feet above them, create magic brands(if you are an evil bastard).

[Kroy]

You should add Delay and Quicken.

*Opens PHB to random age in spell section...* Fire Shield. Create fire? *Again* Iron Body? Create earth. *Again* Meteor Swarm. Create more fire?

[Knaight]

Meteor swarm looks more like a create fire, way up in the air, followed by an attract fire, in the general enemy area. Note that the PHB spells have a tendency to focus on creation(although Iron Body seems a bit more like attract earth), with the other options the "spells" used are going to be pretty different. For instance drawing repel bodies on two walls as a trap, then unveiling them and crushing people between them.

As this is for Fudge, which is a skill based system, where people take verbs and nouns as individual skills, then combine them to use spells people are going to focus more. So on one end you might have the air specialist, who took air, then a bunch of verbs, on the other a destroy specialist, who took destroy, then a bunch of nouns, with a whole bunch of stuff in the middle.

[Innis Cabal]

I have to ask Knaight, are you doing the game with this system here on the boards? Or RL.

If its the former. Show me where to sign up.

[endoperez]

The runes are a good idea. Visual representation and color coding... so much cool stuff you can do with that. You might want to make every rune to have a central piece that's drawn with thicker lines and that's easily identifiable. That way, it's much easier to learn to tell the runes from each other.


I take it you have already looked at Ars Magica (link)? 4th edition is free, these days, although IIRC you had to register to the site. You have to "buy" it for 0 $... A strange way to get it, but at least it didn't ask for any credit card/bank account info. http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=AG0204
You really should get it. You'll instantly get lots of perfect examples, not only of spells but also of what a spesific combination of verb/noun is good for.

Ars Magica worked with just five verbs: Create, Destroy, Perceive, Transform and Control. From these, you are only missing the ability to transform and change objects or things into something different (a human into a frog, some cloth into a cloak), and perhaps some advanced telekinesis/movement type stuff.

As for Nouns, AM has the four basic elements plus human body, animal bodies and anything made from them, plants, magic, mind and images/senses. You had Light. Can you use "Destroy Light" to make yourself invisible? If so, I'd suggest changing it into something that can also affect other senses, like Imaginem in Ars Magica.



I wanted to test how the colors look. I used Cyan for air, Sienna brown for body, and light gray for Magic. Light gray or white could both be used to represent silver. There are comments on the keywords you have chosen below the example spells.

Attract Air: This rune inscribed into your ship's sails will ensure favorable winds. (color:cyan)
Perceive Water: When you fill this bowl with water, you will be able to look through the surface of the body of water the water was drawn from.
Attract Water: With this rune, you throw a blast of water towards your opponent, or draw water from a well.
Repel Water: With this rune, you dehydrate your opponent, causing nausea and weakness. Alternatively, you can use it to keep your socks dry.
Destroy Fire: This piece of red glass has been engraved with a rune that will remove warmth from any fire that comes in contact with it. Jugglers and hedge wizards often wear rings inset with these beads.
Repel Earth: (<-- that is black instead of default color, honest!) Boots with a Repel Earth rune are the only sure way to fly with just a single rune... just don't go over water.
Destroy Body: This scroll is cursed. When it is opened, the scroll and any fingers in contact with it turn to dust. More powerful versions will affect whole hand or even arm. Gloves made from a material unaffected by Body rune will protect the user. (color: sienna)
Perceive Light: Your eyes open.
Destroy Magic: Your basic dispel magic effect.
Perceive Life: Anyone who sees this rune is confused for three rounds, and will spend the next seven years meditating the meaning of life in a remote mountain monastery.

Joking aside, you haven't defined what Life is or what it does. If it's all natural, living things and everything made from them, there're lots of uses for it. If it's life as in a life force that is used for healing (attract life, create life), the same things could be covered by create body. Because of this, I suggest changing the noun from Life to Nature.

Repel Nature: This amulet will try to keep all processed wood from coming in touch with the wielder. It can only affect moderately light object, such as sticks, wooden bowls and paper. Besides offering some protection from arrows, spears, clubs and splinters, it allows the wielder to impress country folk by turning pages of a book without touching it.

Similarly, Light doesn't have too many actual uses. Fire always creates light, so actual light (light and darkness effects, ability to see in the dark as long as there's at least little light) could go under Fire as Create, Destroy and Perceive effects. That would leave illusions and other tricks of light for the actual Light keyword. Since you are missing Mind/Spirit and that could also be used to produce illusions, I think you should consider adding that in. Below are several examples, using purple color.

Create Thoughts: Invisible servants, familiars, necromancy; possibly illusions and senses?
Destroy Thoughts: Madness, controlled amnesia; possibly ability to remain undetected or be invisible?
Attract Thoughts: Causing good feelings towards someone/something, calling ghosts and spirits
Repel Thoughts: Negative feelings, sending ghosts and spirits away; possibly forcing someone to stay away from you?
Perceive Thoughts: Mind-reading, finding out the direction of the nearest human; possibly ability to see through illusions?


EDIT:
Ooh, I forgot about transformations. How will you change water to ice? Repel Fire (heatis part of fire, so this is used to remove heat)? That'd mean that Fire controllers can easily neutralize Water controllers. Transform rune would be really handy for stuff like that. Fire into liquid (acid or napalm), water into solid (ice), staff into a bow, stone to mud, fingernails to claws, etc etc.

[Abd al-Azrad]

They used a somewhat similar rune system of magic in the videogame Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I mention because that system also had a method of "levelling" the spell effects. You begin learning magic with a three-rune magic diagram (Verb, Noun, and God Invoked (each God had a specific focus associated with them, so this would kind of be like a School)) and your spells can basically do whatever you dream up for them as you gain runes.

Later, you learn the "Power" rune and gain access to a five- and later seven- rune diagram. Adding extra "Power" runes to the spell makes it have a stronger effect.

For the purposes of PnP play, I would suggest also allowing players to combine, instead of extra "Power" runes, multiple spells in a single diagram. That five-rune diagram could create one great big Fireball (Create Fire! Power! Power!) or, alternately, a Fireball that also animates anyone who dies to its effects as zombies (Create Fire! Animate Body!), but both with their lower-level effects.

[Knaight]

Actually life was supposed to be sentience, so I think I'm going to replace it with mind. And I already have Ars Magica, although this is based a bit more on Four by Five magic for Fudge. I was considering using transform, but thats one of the magical limits of the setting, its possible, but difficult, and a matter of using attract, repel, create, and destroy in tandem.

As for water into ice Repel or Destroy fire would work pretty well, with Repel probably being the better choice. As for say mud to stone, probably create earth in tandem with repel water. Stone to mud would be either create or attract water, attract being the better option most of the time.

[Heliomance]

The runes are a good idea. Visual representation and color coding... so much cool stuff you can do with that. You might want to make every rune to have a central piece that's drawn with thicker lines and that's easily identifiable. That way, it's much easier to learn to tell the runes from each other.


I take it you have already looked at Ars Magica (link)? 4th edition is free, these days, although IIRC you had to register to the site. You have to "buy" it for 0 $... A strange way to get it, but at least it didn't ask for any credit card/bank account info. http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=AG0204
You really should get it. You'll instantly get lots of perfect examples, not only of spells but also of what a spesific combination of verb/noun is good for.

Ars Magica worked with just five verbs: Create, Destroy, Perceive, Transform and Control. From these, you are only missing the ability to transform and change objects or things into something different (a human into a frog, some cloth into a cloak), and perhaps some advanced telekinesis/movement type stuff.

As for Nouns, AM has the four basic elements plus human body, animal bodies and anything made from them, plants, magic, mind and images/senses. You had Light. Can you use "Destroy Light" to make yourself invisible? If so, I'd suggest changing it into something that can also affect other senses, like Imaginem in Ars Magica.



I wanted to test how the colors look. I used Cyan for air, Sienna brown for body, and light gray for Magic. Light gray or white could both be used to represent silver. There are comments on the keywords you have chosen below the example spells.

Attract Air: This rune inscribed into your ship's sails will ensure favorable winds. (color:cyan)
Perceive Water: When you fill this bowl with water, you will be able to look through the surface of the body of water the water was drawn from.
Attract Water: With this rune, you throw a blast of water towards your opponent, or draw water from a well.
Repel Water: With this rune, you dehydrate your opponent, causing nausea and weakness. Alternatively, you can use it to keep your socks dry.
Destroy Fire: This piece of red glass has been engraved with a rune that will remove warmth from any fire that comes in contact with it. Jugglers and hedge wizards often wear rings inset with these beads.
Repel Earth: (<-- that is black instead of default color, honest!) Boots with a Repel Earth rune are the only sure way to fly with just a single rune... just don't go over water.
Destroy Body: This scroll is cursed. When it is opened, the scroll and any fingers in contact with it turn to dust. More powerful versions will affect whole hand or even arm. Gloves made from a material unaffected by Body rune will protect the user. (color: sienna)
Perceive Light: Your eyes open.
Destroy Magic: Your basic dispel magic effect.
Perceive Life: Anyone who sees this rune is confused for three rounds, and will spend the next seven years meditating the meaning of life in a remote mountain monastery.

Joking aside, you haven't defined what Life is or what it does. If it's all natural, living things and everything made from them, there're lots of uses for it. If it's life as in a life force that is used for healing (attract life, create life), the same things could be covered by create body. Because of this, I suggest changing the noun from Life to Nature.

Life would also be used for animation - Create Life on a pile of earth to make a golem, for example.

[Knaight]

Yep, basically. Although with mind taking the place of life you would probably use create mind, and create magic.

I have to ask Knaight, are you doing the game with this system here on the boards? Or RL.

If its the former. Show me where to sign up.

This is definitely seeing use with my real life group, but I'm also considering running it over Skype(voice chat). I'm not a big fan of play by post. Just PM me telling me what time zone your in, and if its close enough I'll see about getting you in the Skype group. Although I'm going to need more players too.