The Problems
To preface this long-winded explanation, here are some bullet points to sell you on wasting your time with this idea:
An alternative to Vancian casting that IS NOT Mana points
A lower inherent level of magic that doesn’t gimp the casting classes
Very powerful magic is naturally rare
More opportunities to cast (yes, even with a lower magic level)
I have a couple issues with the way D&D does magic. They are really just personal problems, but they aren’t uncommon complaints. As easy and convenient as Vancian magic is to use for managing resources and scaling the power of a magic user, it is narratively annoying. Unless you use the explanation and fictional mechanics for Vancian magic in the way that they are intended, you have to either come up with some sort of explanation for why your magic users have spell slots, hand-wave it altogether, or come up with a new system. I like doing things the hard way. So, naturally, I revamped the system.
NOTE: I have already published my Wizard Class that uses this system.
The Reasons for the Problems
Truth is, there are a few reasons why Vancian magic doesn’t work for me:
I want something that isn’t a complete rip off of an existing famous “named” system. But I don’t mind something a little more generic, if it makes sense.
I want to be able to write stories in the setting where my D&D games take place, so the magic system should make sense from a story-telling perspective.
My particular setting is not as high-magic as the implied D&D setting. I prefer for magic to be a bit more rare, mysterious, and fantastical. Many people just say “make magic illegal in civilized areas, and make MUs super rare.” But that doesn’t actually change the amount of magic accessible to a character. I want finding a spell scroll to be a bigger deal than “cool lemme just copy this to my spellbook.”
The most common solution for people who don’t want to use Vancian casting is to switch to a mana point system. Add up all the spells slots for a given level, multiplied by the spell level, and that’s how many points you have. Casting a spell costs one point per level of the spell. This seems nice at first, but becomes a problem when you realize that casters can now just spam low-level spells over and over. Your fifth level Magic-User now can cast sleep nine times in a day. This satisfies point 1 above, and point 2 to a degree, but definitely not point 3.
The Inspiration
My solution takes from both the standard B/X magic system, and the Mage class published by Gavin Norman in the Carcass Crawler #1 zine.
For those not familiar with Gavin’s “Mage” class, he removed spell slots entirely, gave the Mage a handful of low level spells, and made them skills with a probability of success, similar to how Thief skills work. The Mage also has all the typical scroll and magic item rules. He also gives them a “light” ability, and a very mild healing ability. In addition to a natural AC boost, and some extra weapon options, that is about it for the changes. His original intent was to make a more “Gandalf” type class.
We will start with his template, because it lowers the magic level quite a bit. There are a handful of magic abilities that the Mage can access an unlimited amount of times, but they are all relatively mundane. These include things like Read Magic, Detect Magic, Open/Close. There are five total. Any extreme magical ability will come from the discovery of magic items and scrolls, and being able to cast scrolls on repeat will require a continual dedication of time and effort to copying them. This achieves all 3 of my goals, however, the mechanics are not to my liking.
Moving forward, I have changed the name of these at-will “spells” to “cantrips” in order to distinguish them from actual legitimate spells.
The Solution
I already don’t like how B/X handles thief skills (and have replaced thief skill progression with a target d20 roll which I will probably write about later,) so I also don’t really love how the Mage “skills” work. I could give it the Thief skill treatment, but I decided against it. I am not a huge fan of having each individual cantrip be a skill. I want CASTING ITSELF to be the skill. I think that accessing the ethereal realm of magic should be the concern, not the mastering of individual types of magic tricks. Sure, some cantrips are harder than others, but they are not individual skills to be mastered.
Therefore, every cantrip has a difficulty rating, but the ability to successfully manipulate magic is something that scales up as a whole over time (most casting classes have a “casting bonus” similar to decreased THAC0 or increased to-hit bonuses.) More powerful cantrips have a higher difficulty rating, and they range from a target of 17 up to 10.
Note: I have completely rebuilt the list of cantrips that Gavin uses for the Mage and Acolyte classes. Some cantrips are taken and restructured or given new parameters, but many are new entirely. I wanted some more variety and a bit more strict rules.
Times per day?
Casters typically have a casting bonus that goes up at certain levels, the same way that attack bonuses go up over time. This is added to a d20 roll and the prime requisite modifier. For example, a fourth level Wizard has a casting bonus of +2. His prime requisite is INT, and he has an INT of 14, which gives a +1 bonus. If he wants to cast a Cantrip with difficulty rating of 10, he will first roll a d20. He rolls an 11, he then adds his +2 casting bonus and his +1 INT modifier, for a total of 15. The casting attempt is successful.
Note: If a caster is guaranteed to pass a roll (e.g. total bonus of +13 on a difficulty 10 cantrip), the caster must still roll. On a natural 1, the Cantrip fails and they roll on a mishap chart.
Now, you might be asking yourself, how many times per day can you cast a cantrip? Surely it can’t be unlimited, otherwise failure would be meaningless. Sick question. The answer is half of your CON rounded down, plus your prime requisite modifier. If our caster has a CON of 11, he divides that in half and rounds it down to get 5, then adds his +1 mod. He can attempt to cast a cantrip 6 times per day, and they recover fully with a full night’s rest. If he runs out, he can cast using 1 HP per attempt (cannot be magically healed ). At subsequent levels, his casting bonus is added to his maximum daily casting attempts.
There are two reasons I chose this method to limit cantrip casting. Reason 1) It makes narrative sense. Casting takes a toll on the body, and pushing yourself too many times per day will start affecting your health. Reason 2) is that, although 6 sounds like a lot of attempts for a Level 1 caster, they are likely starting with a 40%-ish chance of success, and will therefore only be able to get off 2-3 cantrips a day. And these are typically weaker than your average level 1 spell, or they are the more mundane of the 1st level spells. They also may not recover all of their cantrips with a night’s rest, meaning they need to either rest more, or deal with being slightly less powerful than the day before.
“Magical Research” would also include the ability to create your own cantrips. The player can come up with an idea for a cantrip, and the DM will approve or deny, and establish specific parameters as well as a difficulty rating.
In order to increase customization and ensure that no two casters of the same class are exactly the same, casters do not start with access to every cantrip. They start with their (prime requisite modifier + 1) number of cantrips, at a minimum of 1, and will have the opportunity to pick up new cantrips at levels 3, 5, 7, 9, and 12.
What about Scrolls?
The casting of scrolls and the use of magic items is unaffected by this system. The only change to how scrolls work, is that they can’t be made using regular paper. All casters can cast spells of their level, halved, rounded up. The paper must be able to aid the caster in channeling magic, because the caster is never going to be powerful enough to cast full spells on his own. Paper that can be used to scribe scrolls is generally magical in nature. Leather from a hippogriff, for example, would work. The reason that scrolls do not take from the caster’s maximum
I will address my specific implementations for both the Magic-User (renamed Wizard) and Cleric (no idea what to rename it) classes, as well as the Druid, in another post.