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Anonymous09/25/25, 20:37No.96617229Magic Systems
How do you prefer your magic, and how did you design the system for your setting?
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Anon09/25/25, 20:38No.96617238
It would be magic if OP actually replies to a post in his own theead
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Anon09/25/25, 20:39No.96617240
Nonexistent.
I used real life.
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Anon09/26/25, 01:41No.96618700
1. there is a cost
2. anything that people "know" about magic only aids in the confidence of the user rather than being actual fact, ie if some grand wizard tells you the "magic words" for conjuring a fireball, you believe him because he can do it, but there isn't some code to the universe that makes a fireball, it's just that you think/will it hard enough. Basically you have to believe in yourself :)
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Anon09/26/25, 02:15No.96618840
OK, I had an idea for a magic system, where magic is some kind of force that can affect matter and interacts with human thought, but the user has to know exactly what they're doing. You can't just say some magic words to make a fireball appear, you have to know about how air molecules contain hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which can be flammable and be able to visualize the strands of magic intertwining with your nerves pulling them apart and then have some way of igniting them. Also there'd probably need to be things the caster would have to do to make themselves more receptive to the magic energy like using certain drugs and/or mental conditioning rituals to induce a heightened state of concentration. Maybe there could be shortcuts like artifacts such as paper talismans or crystals that could have certain spells pre-loaded onto them like computer programs so the yser just needs to will them to activate under the right conditions.
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Anon09/26/25, 05:08No.96619373
I have a magic system I been messing with that more than just one "system." You have the classic mages and arcane system. Then those who are granted power from gods, devils, fey, etc. Those who have their own "power" etc. Think a Nen like system.
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Anon09/26/25, 05:19No.96619403
I'm going to come back to this thread in three weeks and call you a nogames faggot.
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Anon09/26/25, 06:43No.96619690
I prefer magic to actually be supernatural or unnatural, and not just something that can get automated with machines. Something that can be used, but will never be understood beyond its surface-level traits like costs, effects and consequences.
I have designed multiple systems for multiple settings, sometimes more than one system in a setting.
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Anon09/26/25, 07:15No.96619796
Not my system, it was created by a quest native for his fantastic skirmish games.
If any of this interests you, you can observe the system in action here:
>https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2024/6108817/
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Anon09/26/25, 07:31No.96619829
Sorcery is based in flexion of the soul, the contours of your own spirit and pulse of energy providing the final result: magical waveforms emanating from the spirit engaging in destructive and constructive interference.
The reason magic isn't systematically studied is because its a spiritual process far more than a mental one, each individual needing to learn the contours of their own spirit to achieve some end. To give a comparison, you can study health and muscle development all day long, but no degree of theory will make you spontaneously manifest a fit body; further, the individual peculiarities of each body means that the most effective health plan is tailored to the individual, not a one-size-fits-all package.Necromancy is similar, but pulls on the invisible cords binding souls together. Necromancy is similarly deeply personal, because manipulation of another's soul requires an understanding of what ties you together, and what you can use to influence them. As such, necromancy is typically practiced to call on the spirits of family members for support and advice, and not the endless horde of the damned you see in other settings.
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Anon09/26/25, 09:34No.96620142
Magic for mortals is entirely done through rituals which require lengthy preparations and precise hours which the rituals can be preformed. It modifies reality in some way when executed which usually persists until the laws of the universe naturally correct themselves, although the mundane effects that were a consequence of it continue to be.Most of the rituals are wild and have effects beyond what the practitioner intends. Very small changes in the ritual, such as uttering the phrases too fast or too slowly or mispronouncing them, being half a minute off in either direction, the phases of the moon, or other changes can modify the outcome and cause different side effects. A lot of the time, rituals can be fatal for their practitioners, such as one attempting to change lead to gold instead changing flesh to water.Typically, rituals are known by covens, which all have their own unique way of doing them discovered through trial and error and they typically don't experiment too often due to the danger involved. As such, you can find things like two different groups who know how to create a portal to link two places for a time, but the first group requires it to be done on a new moon before sunrise utilizing crushed pearls in a ring pattern on stone while the other just needs it to be night and can suffice with chalk drawings--there's probably better ways to do any of these particular rituals, but the cost of figuring it out is so great most people just stick with what they know.
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Anon09/26/25, 15:12No.96621361
Magic as a brand, or a trademark, that comes across something even more bizarre and fantastical, and the shareholders and labellers are freaking out. “Our shit isn’t as magical as the other shit! Noooo!”.
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Anon09/26/25, 15:23No.96621431
Omnipotent "magic" ( if you define magic as anything not possible irl) is fine with me, as long as the subdivisions of magic are defined in what they can/can't do, under what conditions, and the general sphere of influence.
Magic in most anime in garbage.
Magic in MtG is cool.
4e's power source is cool.
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Anon09/26/25, 16:34No.96621861
I like weaving as a style. Seemed fun, though easy to break so I'd never play a game with it.
My setting uses two kinds, the one being just straight gifts from gods. Those are fairly self explanatory. The other is ancient technology powered by magic batteries. Lots of golems, guns, grenades, etc. and permanent buffs from god tattoos. Most of it is fairly specific application, but has roleplay opportunities.
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Anon09/26/25, 20:00No.96623738
Narrative weight.
Most wizards believe that the worlds is filled with spirits and people who manage to entertain them have more weight and power when it comes to magic. Thus a wizard can easily burn a tree, a person, or even a stone house if they aren't really relevant to any current stories unfolding within the world. But if said wizard tries to burn the Dark Lord leading an Army of the Night? Fireball will just break on his armor into harmless embers.The more important the person the better is their magic resistance and also their ability to enact magic if they have the knowledge to do so. Doing magic actually saps your power until you do something else noteworthy either without magic or with minimal applications of it. Thus most experienced wizards use magic either when it is absolutely needed or indirectly by affecting things that do not have much weight of their own - creating and camouflaging a spiked pit in advance is way easier that trying to create it directly under a marching army for example.
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Anon09/26/25, 22:29No.96625178
why would there be a system specifically for magic?
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Anon09/26/25, 23:35No.96625593
Honestly, I just really like D&Ds (and more specifically Pathfinder's version) Vancian style spells and slots (and rituals). It just works and feels good.Fail at casting a spell? It's just nothing. No warp silliness, no blood cost, no problems, just a fizzling nothing.
Want to cast all day? You're stuck with the weakest spells possible, little blasts of elemental power or little more than tricks.
Want big magic? Rituals! The community blessing crops every year to increase growth and counter blight? A giant Plant Growth ritual.Its works really well to give the world magic, and you can throw little nuggets of fun at players without needing to worry about unintended effects from overcomplicated rules.People always want to overcomplicate it, write lots of rules and weird lore for magic but at the end of the day most of them are shit, overcomplicated nonsense, and often turn out more fun to read than to actually play (and arent all that fun to read in the first place).
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Anon09/26/25, 23:50No.96625686
I like to have different kinds of magic, and characters have backgrounds in them, so they can argue about the nuances and lifestyles they have. It encourages roleplaying.
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Anon09/27/25, 08:26No.96628038
>B/X hack
>roll save vs spells to keep spell
>spells are slave spirits that want to escape service
>spells are songs 6 seconds long per level
>1 minute round, 6 second segments AD&D 1e
>the spirit is coerced to act according to song lyrics, magic words essentially
>magic user spell-casting song can be interrupted
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Anon09/28/25, 07:29No.96634603
Magic comes from the Aether, a sort of higher dimentional energy plane. Sorcerers are people who can perceive & direct the Aetheric energies. When doing so, the human mind & body acts as a filter. Spells give the energy shape. No super fantastical powers, mostly it's just energy manipulation or telemetrics. Fireballs, lightning bolts, illusions, etc. There are also creatures which live in the Aether. People call them spirits & they are rarely friendly or benign.
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Anon09/29/25, 16:19No.96643310
Magic must be backed by a 'way' in order to be effective and the strength of the magic is determined by the conviction of the user and how close that 'way' is to the Truth.
For example, if you want to create a protective spell, you should care about what it is you're protecting and the spell's power will be proportional to your love and how much that love matters in reality. If you're focused solely on denying an enemies attack, then the spell will be less effective and might actually empower the opponent because you're giving more reality to their 'way' which is attacking you.This gives a lot more substance to things like Vampires who have a 'way' of being enigmatic monsters who suck the life of the world and can only be killed under very specific means. Ultimately the reason they're defeated isn't because they opened themselves with explicit weaknesses, but because their desire is purely selfish and degenerate, whereas someone with a heroic heart ignores those desires and believes in principles beyond their own gratification. Thus, the heroes magic is stronger because it's very existence rejects the vampire's being outright.I used to be really about systematic and rules based magic, but as I've grown older, I've come to realize how much of our thinking is abstract, built on analogy, and how much of a role faith actually plays. Ironically, Faith might actually be the most principled thing in existence, because post-enlightenment science doesn't concern itself with the fourth cause and is inherently nihilistic. Magic then should be based on the fourth cause and works it's way down. You might not be able to resurrect your dead wife because of how much meaning her life had while the necromancer can easily animate her bones because he needs a servant to build his monuments, however if you craft a golem and infuse it with all the love and meaning her life had, then it would outclass just about anything the necromancer could create.
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Anon09/30/25, 01:20No.96646857
Depends if you are asking about how people in the world manage magic or if you mean a more philosophical worldbuilding level. Spellcasting all stems from deeper metaphysical paradigms ways of understanding and interacting with reality. Mortals don’t "create" magic. They tap into or imitate the true workings of older, deeper forces.
Like electromagnetism is a thing that exists in our world that we then figured out how to use for things; Magic(capital M) is just a thing that is in their world. Mortal Spellcasting (Common Magic)
This is what most morals use. spellcasters use: wizard spells, cleric invocations, sorcerer bloodlines, etc. It’s functional, broad, and flexible—but ultimately *incomplete*. Mortal magic is a diluted synthesis of deeper principles. It mimics higher truths through symbols, gestures, and incantations.True Magic
Other beings can go beyond merely casting magic and are more deeply connected to it. Things like the Fae, demons, or gods, don't *do* magic, they just are that way. Each paradigm, or order of creatures, governs a different logic—what magic is, how it works, and what it costs.Mortals typically borrow bits from many, but true power comes from deep alignment with one. Mastery of a paradigm may unlock exclusive high-level abilities, or change how spells behave entirely for Mages that study them in great detail, but they will also introduce limits inherent to the logic of those paradigms.
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Anon09/30/25, 15:53No.96650411
magic mishaps
LOTS of magic mishaps
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Anon10/02/25, 05:20No.96661260
A characters magic is determined by his magic stat. The higher the stat, the better he is at doing magic
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Anon10/02/25, 19:19No.96665081
These are good writing tips, I don't know why people hate them.
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Anon10/03/25, 03:38No.96668432
90% of all magic has to be accomplished by touch, you can't use a proxy to affect a person.Touching them opens you up to be affected by the individual you are touching.Forcing mind control can potentially break the victims mind forcing you to micromanage control of their body.Reading people's minds comes with the risk of losing your own personality.Certain abilities only come about after you die (i.e. your heart beat stops) and it's the only way to allow you to communicate with Mind/Souls
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Anon10/03/25, 20:50No.96673886
>How do you prefer your magic
Modular, with each variant focusing on different execution but all using the same magic source.
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Anon10/04/25, 11:41No.96677442
never found a better system than mage, you can do pretty much anything, but if a player try to abuse it you can erase him from reality
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Anon10/05/25, 04:03No.96682430
Checking your Skill Rating and rolling for it.
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Anon10/05/25, 18:23No.96685787
Hey, how does /tg/ feel about elemental magic systems? And what are some settings and/or game systems with great takes on elemental magic, or resources for creating them? I recently discovered the webcomic Aurora, where the world is formed from the remains of six elemental Primordials, and elemental magic works by channeling the essence of their souls, the titular auroras/elemental winds, back into the physical substance of their bodies through a link in the soul of the mage, for instance.
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Anon10/06/25, 04:06No.96689472
>This
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Anon10/06/25, 13:53No.96691388
Do you prefer magic systems that anyone can learn, or ones that you need bloodline access to use, and why? I prefer a mix, due to the issues of classism the latter can cause, anyone can theoretically learn magic, but some lines have a greater affinity to certain branches of spellcasting.
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Anon10/06/25, 18:27No.96693199
> 1) Character describes what they want to do
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> 2) GM sets a difficulty, considering the scale, scope, and duration of the spell, and any circumstances (for instance- trying to be stealthy)
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> 3) Player rolls and adds up any circumstantial bonuses (items, potions, buffs, etc.)
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> 4) GM determines success or failure and describes what happens. Critical Failure can have dangerous and unpredictable effects. Critical Success means effects are heightened, which can also be dangerous in certain circumstances (for instance- blowing yourself up with a fireball)
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> Failure means the spell fizzles and the character loses mana
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> Characters can create their own spells, but they receive no bonuses when trying to cast spells outside of their area of expertise
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> Practically speaking, this means most characters develop a few frequently used "signature spells"
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> Characters are encouraged to write their own spellbook and record the base difficulty of the spell at the time it was cast.
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> When casting from the spellbook, characters receive a small bonus for preparedness
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> This incentivizes players to track things, which helps the GM as well
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Anon10/06/25, 21:34No.96694764
Are there any species in your setting that have particular affinities for a specific kind(s) of magic, and why that kind if so? I found this image and liked it, so Catfolk in my setting have a strong affinity for necromancy and related spells now.
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Anon10/06/25, 23:04No.96695452
Magic is setting literal rules even if those rules somewhat conflict with reality.
What this means is you can set a rule to create a fireball, and you can set a rule to curse someone.
But because it's very literal, you can slip out of a lot of it via bullshit.
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Anon10/07/25, 03:25No.96696947
How essential do you prefer focus items like wands or staves to be? I dislike the idea that spellcasting is impossible, or at least too much more difficult, without such an item, because otherwise it makes it stretch belief that magic would ever have been discovered.
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Anon10/07/25, 07:47No.96697890
What's the draw in making a "hard magic" system with so many fucking rules that then get broken for plot progression or chosen one bullshit. Sanderson's stuff is almost shounen like. I don't understand the appeal of it.
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Anon10/09/25, 16:52No.96715941
So used to Vancian.
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Anon10/10/25, 11:30No.96721861
Learning, and practicing, magic is like a science mixed with an art. Certain patterns and structures within shapes and words form a conduit for energy to flow through, and be given form. The more clearly defined the patterns and rituals, the more focused or powerful the effect. Incredibly powerful spells require Incredible precision and a lot of prep. You can't just snap your fingers and stop time. Of course, experienced battle mages can learn which parts are absolutely essential so they can short-cut some parts of an incantation, or only use the most key elements of a combination of runes.Basically, it's a machine, and what you put in is what you get out. And there's a cost to it.
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Anon10/11/25, 01:24No.96728040
Imo, the magic system in the video game Arx Fatalis is the most enjoyable ever created. You combine series of runic sound/symbols and the right combination casts a spell. For example, "Create" + "Water" + "Missile" might shoot a ball of ice. The player is given limited knowledge of how it works and must discover the combinations themselves during gameplay. If you ported such a system to a TTRPG, you'd have a real gem.
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Anon10/11/25, 18:39No.96732578
What can we do to make Vancian magic more interesting? My suggestion is making it so that spells are often stored in items.
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Anon10/11/25, 21:35No.96733514
It's nanobots mate.
Ancient gene-coded nanobots that only respond to those with a particular lineage.They were brought here by people who fell from the sky like stars;
Errant demigods cast out of a war in heaven.Their ancestors seeded the earth with dolmens that generate control fields, which link at their edges and form a sort of global wifi network.Those who are descended from the star-race can sometimes learn to manipulate these nanobots, though are usually only capable of mastering a handful of their potentially limitless functions; this can manifest all sorts of effects, from remote combustion and levitation, to reanimating dead matter or translocation, to various psychological and physiological effects.They don't call them nanobots though; Most of the setting's inhabitants subsist on a sort of deiselpunk cargo-cult level of development, and generally all but a highly secretive few consider these phenomena to be spiritual or magical in nature.In terms of gameplay mechanics, it works like this;
I point at a guy, and I declare "This guy can throw fireballs" then I say how far, at what accuracy, and how much damage they do.That's it.This is more a skirmish game/light rpg hybrid though; has more in common with 1e warhammer than anything else, in that it is fundamentally a wargame, but with strong roleplaying elements.
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Anon10/12/25, 00:13No.96734360
Intelligence based casting ONLY.
NO Charisma BS.
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Anon10/12/25, 16:13No.96737870
D&D and it's consequences were a disaster for magic.
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Anon10/12/25, 16:49No.96738047
>How do you prefer your magic
Gamable content the players can easily understand and I can easily adjudicate that still leaves room for the unknown and unexpected.
>how did you design
Took Wonder and Wickedness, rough vancian spells per day, added a push-your-luck roll under for casting over that number. Works well. The catastrophes are a bit much if you're not ready to have campaign altering shit sometimes.
I use the madlibs spell generation from Freebooters on the Frontier and Maze Rats to generate lists of themed spells for different magic opponents, keeps the spells from getting repetitive.
I've been sitting on the Book of Gaub for a colonial weird campaign for a while and wanting to build something a bit more ritual based around it but its a ways off.
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Anon10/12/25, 20:04No.96739355
>awshum!Immediately disregarded.
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Anon10/13/25, 07:39No.96742645
I like mostly mundane but magic is ritualistic. It requires time, strange ingredients, and proper skill. Also fucking up is risky. But there is one caveate that makes it worth it. As you get more skilled you can tie the magical effects to items or store them for a instant effect.
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Anon10/13/25, 08:42No.96742839
Ask the worldbuilding general.
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Anon10/13/25, 13:44No.96744042
What settings/game systems have the best approaches to magic and which have the worst approaches in your book, and why?>G0T2K
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Anon10/13/25, 17:55No.96745645
Traditional games?
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Anon10/14/25, 15:58No.96751823
Nogames faggot.
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Anon10/15/25, 02:43No.96756067
Do you like psionics and traditional magic being in the same setting, or should they be incompatible? Not counting 5e as an example of course.
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Anon10/15/25, 02:56No.96756131
>Magic
Can do pretty much anything, however, if ANY other skill/trait/etc would be appropriate for a task, the check to use magic to accomplish that task instead will be an order of magnitude higher than it would be for just using the obvious skill/trait/etc.In order to cast magic at its mundane effect? That's piss easy. Every single modification outside of that mundane effect raises the difficulty a level.>Want to use a touch based fire spell
Piss easy
>Want to cast it from a distance
Easy
>Want to cast it against two targets
Average
>Want an AoE effect
Raise it two levels, one for each bolt
>Want the effect to linger (burning zone)
Raise it twice again, one for each boltOnce you are in the average level of casting, a newbie has a high chance of failure. It's never outright impossible to do anything but so god damn unlikely it might as well be AND it's GM's choice exactly how shit goes sideways when you fuck up a spell.Best thing about this kind of system? It gives the player ALL the rope. The only thing stopping them from hanging themselves, the rest of the party, the surrounding area, and most of the country is their own self-control.
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Anon10/15/25, 19:00No.96760623
My settings magic ended up getting so complicated it needed me to make a wiki and give it a page. In short though,in the setting theres the physical plane - and the astral plane which invisibly overlaps it. In the astral plane, ideas take the form of a sort of mist, with denser concentrations of ideas becoming thicker and even changing states of matter in some cases.Some ideas are more powerful than others, namely if they are attached to powerful entities (such as "nuclear bomb") or connect to many other ideas as a root (such as "destruction" tying to "death", "pain", "darkness", "purity", etc.) Magic of any kind is when you take ideas from the astral plane and actively use them for an effect.Spells are large strings of ideas brought together, and are usually shortened verses of a larger prayer or poem. The poetry itself makes the phrasing easier to remember (poetry is meant to be spoken after all), and also allows for more subtle explanations of ideas to be said in fewer words by relying on the reader's understanding. You could theoretically detail every elemental step involved in making a fireball, but its a lot quicker and memorable to remember a bible verse than a 20-step cooking recipe without a book.Souls are themselves collections of information (for example human, male, womanless, penniless, a10 eyes) detailing every detail about yourself. Your body creates lots of magical energy due to all the concepts in it, regardless of if youre aware of it or not. If you can awaken the chakras in your soul (through traumatic life experiences and/or personal growth), you can cast spells or temporarily remove them to use astral projection (a la jojo stands).Or you can just ingest sentient hallucinogens that temporarily awaken your chakras to make deals with powerful magical entities and have them do stuff for you
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Anon10/16/25, 21:11No.96769144
What are magic systems so bad that they make you want to tear your hair out because they’re so shit? get to dislike Harry Potter magic as I got older, as they make no real explanation of why magic responds to pseudo-Latin words, say that you apparently need magic to make potions despite what Snape said early on, etc.
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Anon10/17/25, 20:55No.96776593
(me)
OP, you're a nogames faggot.