My goal was to craft a magical system that permitted PCs to cast spells, but to keep it rare, restrained & mysterious enough to preserve the kind of Fantasy world I wanted. Obviously, I had to start by jettisoning all conventional RPG structures and start over.
But more importantly, I discovered that creating these spells had to start by establishing the ‘ceiling’ of spells first. The problem with a restructuring without knowing the established zenith of power is that we (unavoidably) slip back into excessive power by starting with (what we call) “small” spells, reasoning that the next advancement should be stronger, and the same with the next advancement, and so on.
But our starting place is likely rooted in our gaming experience, which is commonly tied to conventional RPGs (like D&D). So, a “level 1 mage” has these “small” spells: “Magic Missile” or “Sleep”, etc. If that is our starting place for casters, then you can see how inevitably our slip back into superpowers can be. If the starting casters can do those “little” spells, then the more powerful ones can do more… and more.
And so instead, I had to do a top-down restructuring. I had to ask myself, “What does the zenith of spell casting look like anywhere in this world? What can the legendary 5,000-year-old great wizards do?” And “How rare are these mega-wizards?”
Knowing what they can do has serious impact on the world. Can these top 0.0001% of people in the world’s history ever cast 'nuke'-spells? Can they ever fly like Superman? Teleport? Resurrect the dead? The answers to such questions established the ceiling of power, showing me what things can only be done by these truly rare, ancient beings.
I then asked, “If only those greatest of wizards can do X, what can the marginally weaker wizards do?” I spent time contemplating what each of these ‘tiers’ felt like, and what their effect on the world would be. What about casters who were a "mere" 1,000-years-old? 500? 100? Using this model, I finally arrived at what starting PC casters could do.
Another valuable tool for this restructuring came by allowing certain effects from a spell but making them require significantly more time to bring it about. That is, supernatural healing exists, but takes far longer than in conventional RPGs. E.g., each healing spell takes around an hour to cast but may have to be cast repeatedly on a wound to fully heal it (the worse the wound, the longer to heal). It could take a starting spellcaster with healing magic a week of daily casting to heal someone’s grievous wound.
The cost of each spell comes into play as well. E.g., a starting caster would be able to use a healing spell once/day and be unable to use any significant magic for the rest of that day.
And so, the starting spellcasters can do “very little” per day compared to conventional RPGs, but this is all part of the package of the Fantasy subgenre I want. Spellcasting & magical items are so rare that any manifestation of power always brings awe and likely, fear. A mage does not need to detonate ‘bombs’ in order to cower people. By virtue of possessing supernatural powers, all casters are “otherworldly” even if they can only do ‘small’ things.
Keeping all spellcasting mysterious (even to the spellcasting players) has proven to be effective in strengthening the “magic” of magic in players' minds as they play. Each player is only told what that character would understand about how their casting works and how each spell functions. They are not given the exact details or the complete limitations, which is in service to our goal of unifying the player-to-character perspective. None of them know how another spellcaster functions, and it could be radically different from their own methods.
All of this has paid off for us. It is possible to have spellcasting players and to yet keep the subgenre we’re after without eliminating casters completely.
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