Major Magic

[logan9a]

I've been trying to figure out a 'major magic' system for Pattern/Logrus users but have not been successful.

In the various books, they use Vancian Magic (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Vancian_magic) which I fucking despise. Plus, it's not realistic that anyone would spend an hour or two every day or two prepping a spell.

Hell, most people don't work out half an hour or more every day despite the fact they know it would make them healthier. People are not realistically going to spend hours prepping spells. And also, I don't want them spending IG hours prepping spells.

So I'm at a loss for now.

Eventually, I might make some big confusing fucked up bubble map of various types of spells that work a lot like Pattern/Trump/Logrus/Shapeshifting where you can do stuff once a day unless you pick up the 'do second time in a day' or something. Not sure on that, we'll see.

If anyone has different ideas (other than "Why not let us use the minor magics as major magics" - put that under 'let's not') drop them here - maybe something will click.

Until and unless something is come up with, magics will be an NPC thing. The PC's will just have to content themselves with attempting to learn the 400-500 different major powers already in the game in the form of Pattern/Trump/Logrus/Shapeshifting.

[PotatoJedi]

What about something along the lines of…

At the beginning of the session, roll [Something]. The better your result, the more times you can use Major Magics in this session.

That way it's a finite number and you don't need to spend hours preparing anything – it's just a thing you get at the start of the adventure. Sort of a "how attuned am I this time" kind of thing.

[logan9a]

Oct 17, 2019 16:19:46 GMT PotatoJedi said:

What about something along the lines of…

At the beginning of the session, roll [Something]. The better your result, the more times you can use Major Magics in this session.

That way it's a finite number and you don't need to spend hours preparing anything – it's just a thing you get at the start of the adventure. Sort of a "how attuned am I this time" kind of thing.

It's too loose for me. Also, would require keeping track of a number thus violating Logan Rule #1.

[PotatoJedi]

We keep track of a lot of numbers… Magic points, HP, sanity, money, etc.

[logan9a]

Still, I'm thinking it's too soft. I might just develop another big assed bubble map with more spell shit on it.

[Fantômas]

In the books those that could use the greater magic did not prep spells every day. Once a spell was prepped it stayed prepped until used for utility spells and some of the more fancy one off combat spells. I don't recall Merlin having a combat spell that was just fireballs or whatever. The only time people seemed to throw magic around in combat that was not some sort of fancy one off combat spell was when they had access to some sort of source of power to draw on.

[logan9a]

Merlin did have to hang his spells on Logrus.

He went through major prep time before confronting "Mask".

[logan9a]

What I'm working on now is something akin to the old 'power words' but I'm also thinking that this stuff would work for making items as well. Not 'hey I'm churning out magic items yo' but the various artifacts the PC's can work on (one per major power).