Verb/Noun magic

[Thot]

For reasons, I have been thinking on how to make a verb/noun magic system (you know, like in Ars Magica or Mage: The Ascension) with BRP. Not in the way Magic World's "Avanced Sorcery" does it, with glyphs of power, but a bit more like in the aforementioned games. So far, I have come to the following results.

You have nouns (or power sources), like "fire" or "earth" or "demonic plane of mental corruption", or whatever. You learn each such source as a skill.

You also have verbs, (or instructions), like "damage with" or "bind with" or "move with". Each such instruction is a skill as well.

Now, when you cast a spell, you do so by defining which noun and which verb you want to use, such as "damage with fire". The relevant skills are the two skills for verb and noun. You roll for the lower of the two, and modified by factors such as casting time, targets, range, duration, and complexity of the task.

• Casting time: an hour or more, two difficulties more. 5 minutes or so, one difficulty or more. About 10 combat rounds, unmodified. About 5 combat rounds, one level more difficult. 1 combat round, two levels more difficult.
• Targets: Yourself, two levels easier. 1 meter radius, one level easier. 5 meter radius, unmodified. 15 meter radius, one level more difficult. 100 meter radius, two levels more difficult. (and if your magic system allows for effects larger than that, go on).
• Range: 1 meter, one level easier. Up to 5 meters, unmodified. Up to 100 meters, one level more difficult. Up to the horizon, or out of sight but with some object somehow connected to the target, two levels more difficult.
• Duration: No more than 10 combat rounds, two levels easier. 5 minutes or instantaneous (like hit point damage), one level easier. One day, unmodified. Up to a year, two levels more difficult. Permanently, two levels more difficult
• Strength: One point of the affected game stats (such as hit points, stat points, 5 skill points, etc.) is two levels easier. A D6 of the relevant game state is one level easier. 2D6 of the relevant game stat is unmodified. 4D6 are one level more difficult, and 8D6 are two levels more difficult. (If stronger effects are possible in the game world, go on)
• Complexity: Very simple, two levels easier. Rather simple, one level easier. Average, unmodified. Complex, one level more difficult. Extremely complex, two levels more difficult.

All the modifiers are applied, so if you want to cast an exploding D6 fireball (which is probably a bit more complex than average, so 1 level more difficult) with a 5 meter radius at a distance of 100 meters with a casting time of 1 combat round, this will in total be 2 levels more difficult.

Magic point cost is tied to difficulty: Automatic success costs 1 magic point. Easy costs 2 magic points. An average roll costs 4 magic points. Difficult will cost 8 magic points, and Impossible will cost 16 magic points.

(There might be magic items that reduce difficulty for the casting roll, but not the cost.)

This is, obviously, very crude and a first draft. I would like to read opinions about this general approach, or ideas how you would tweak or change this for interesting implications for the game world.

Edited July 18 by Thot

[Raleel]

I've been looking at doing something similar with mythras sorcery. My idea is to replicate Mage: The Ascension's magic. My current thought is to use Invocation (the roll for spell casting) as Arete and split out Shaping (the control) into the Spheres, so you might have Shaping (Time) and Shaping (Matter). 

The scope of how much you can effect is controlled by Shaping. In Mage, it's essentially all the parameters into a 5 point scale (perception, manipulation, control, command, mastery, which maps to sense, personal, others, big stuff bigger stuff). I'm thinking of splitting it out so each Shaping component has its own pool of shaping points and you build the spell like that. 

for Components, some come with spheres. Magnitude, range and duration, for example, come with prime, correspondence and time respectively. Combine is free and imposes no penalty. Particular spells come with spheres as well - animate and sculpt are going to be ties to forces, matter, and life, as they are all heavy pattern magics. 

I might suggest instead of rolling the lower of the two you have one that controls what you can do (maybe the verb) and one that controls the power (the noun maybe). 

[Thot]

My issue with two rolls is that they eat up time at the game table, and such a system is unwieldy enough even with one roll.

[Atgxtg]

It looks pretty good for a first draft.

Maybe you might want to give a free upgrade if the caster has mastered a magical skill (90% skill). So Someone who has mastered Fire could  upgrade one factor (aspect?) of his fire spell by one level for free.

Maybe the casting time and duration modifiers could be extended out further to encompass ritual magic and enchantments?  

Since you are rolling against the lower, maybe you could add in a partial success (or partial failure) for rolls that roll under the higher but not the lower. Like maybe the caster fails but doesn't have to spend any magic points. Or maybe they can keep the casting going and try again (at the next casting time increment. So if they were casting for 10 rounds but failed one roll they could continue casting for ten minutes to get a reroll with no addtional magic point cost). 

Edited July 18 by Atgxtg

[Thot]

I like the idea of a partial success, I'll have to think about that.

[Atgxtg]

52 minutes ago, Thot said:

I like the idea of a partial success, I'll have to think about that.

Some ways to do it:

• Spell fails but cost no (or only 1) magic point
• Spell succeeds but as if cast at a lower difficulty (whatever would have succeeded), with abilities downgraded (So a caster throwing a fireball 100 meters might see it fizzle out after on five, or travel 100m but only do 1D3 instead of 1D6, or only affect a 1m radius instead of a five meter radius).
• Spell succeeds but cost double magic points (assuming the caster has the magic points).
• Spell doesn't work but caster can try to save the spell by continued casting. Can reroll the next round, or at double the normal casting time, or the next time increment up n the table.

Do you have any sort of list for nouns & verbs yet?

What about adverbs? That is words that could modify the nouns and verbs?

• A hue adverb could change the color of fire to green, blue, etc.
• A speed adverb could affect the rate that a spell travels or that it affects someone. So you could get a regeneration effect by slowing a heal spell to only heal 1 point per round. A slowed movement spell might slow  an arrow in flight so that it takes longer to reach it target, or slow a falling person so they take less damage from a fall (a D&D Featherfall spell).
• An "hourly" or "daily" adverb could allow for reoccurring spells that happen at a regular interval, allowing for things like magical clocks (the animate spell on the hour hand only moves one per hour and the one on the minute hand one per minute). 
• Adverbs that reduce a spells utility might reduce the difficulty. So a 2D6 healing spell that works a point per hour (hourly) to heal someone up overnight would be a lower difficulty that one that gives them 2D6 all at once.
• Adverbs could be specialized knowledge that various mages and schools protect. So only members of a certain guild or students of a certain mage can cast green fire spells. Wizards could study to try an invent their own "Adverbs" 

 

Can caster's multispell? That is cast multiple spells at the same time by combining their difficulties and rolling against the lowest word being used? 

 

 

 

[Joerg]

Technique(s) (as in verb) and rune(s) (as nouns, or grammatically objects) is how RQG designs its spells. Whether the Monty Haul in terms of resource hogging is required for a different setting is another question.

[Raleel]

8 hours ago, Thot said:

My issue with two rolls is that they eat up time at the game table, and such a system is unwieldy enough even with one roll.

Ah, I wasn't suggesting two rolls. Just just roll the what you can do, the other is just a static number to measure relative power and ability 

[Thot]

On 7/18/2024 at 6:16 PM, Atgxtg said:

[...]

Do you have any sort of list for nouns & verbs yet?

[...]

What about adverbs?

[...]

Can caster's multispell? That is cast multiple spells at the same time by combining their difficulties and rolling against the lowest word being used?

Not a complete list of verbs, but I have all the nouns, as I am trying to convert a system that exists, but is just too detailed and complex for my taste (and probably also for BRP). The nouns are cosmologically rooted in the setting, so I won't change them. The verbs, however... so far I have "project", "make target obsessed with", "shroud target in", "inspire target with the abilities of" and "make magical item with".

Adverbs, I fear, would make the system too complex.

Multispell is something that I still contemplating, because some interesting effects I can only find by combining several spells with different nouns and verbs. But I also want to keep it at least somewhat simple.

Edited July 19 by Thot

[Thot]

18 hours ago, Raleel said:

Ah, I wasn't suggesting two rolls. Just just roll the what you can do, the other is just a static number to measure relative power and ability 

Ah, a bit like in Mythras, where the second skill just determines strength? But doesn't that take away player choice in a verb/noun system?

[Raleel]

1 hour ago, Thot said:

Ah, a bit like in Mythras, where the second skill just determines strength? But doesn't that take away player choice in a verb/noun system?

It does, but I don't think in a way that is going to hurt them overly. I think the noun represents internal power. something that is static in there until you do something. Thus, the delineation because doing something is a verb. You might have several skills in verbs, say. You might be good at "damage with" but poor with, or not even have, "move with". If you somehow acquire a different flavor of internal power (the noun), your ability to hurt with it is still there.

Now, I suppose you could allow a roll for noun, but I'd only allow that without the verb, and sort of view it as opening the box. It doesn't take any skill, but you can't control what comes out. It's the sort of thing that a powerful and untrained caster would do in extreme circumstances, and might hurt a lot of things around them.

at least, that's how I think about it. Ultimately, your system still 🙂

Edited July 19 by Raleel

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Thot said:

Not a complete list of verbs, but I have all the nouns, as I am trying to convert a system that exists, but is just too detailed and complex for my taste (and probably also for BRP). The nouns are cosmologically rooted in the setting, so I won't change them. The verbs, however... so far I have "project", "make target obsessed with", "shroud target in", "inspire target with the abilities of" and "make magical item with".

Assuming that it's not the aforementioned Ars Magica, I curious as to what it is.

3 hours ago, Thot said:

Adverbs, I fear, would make the system too complex.

Possibly. I thin it would depend on just what you can do with them. If they are just alter cosmetics but have little effect on game mechanics then probably not. If they do a lot maybe so.

 

3 hours ago, Thot said:

Multispell is something that I still contemplating, because some interesting effects I can only find by combining several spells with different nouns and verbs. But I also want to keep it at least somewhat simple.

It shouldn't be all that complex. Just add the difficulties of the two spells together. That would keep most mutispells modest.

BTW, What if the caster rolls mutispell skill before the cast roll, and successful reduces the difficulty a level? That way someone who is good at multispelling gets a benefit?

 

Delay Spell might be another one to add. It 's  like Duration, but covers how long before the spell activates.  

 

Your framework has  a lot of possibilities.

 

 

[Thot]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Assuming that it's not the aforementioned Ars Magica, I curious as to what it is.

[...]

[multispell]
 

Oh, that's not a secret. The game world in question is Myranor, a German-language continent on the world of the German RPG "Das Schwarze Auge", translated into English as "The Dark Eye" a while back (no longer active, though).  It's not the game's default continent, but one vastly larger than the default where there is such magic (which there is not on the default continent). There is now a kickstarter going to publish rules-free Myranor setting books and rule books for playing the setting and its verb/noun magic with DnD 5e, but obviously, I'd rather use the world with something… else, to stay neutral.

 

Quote

[multispell]

It shouldn't be all that complex. Just add the difficulties of the two spells together. That would keep most mutispells modest.

BTW, What if the caster rolls mutispell skill before the cast roll, and successful reduces the difficulty a level? That way someone who is good at multispelling gets a benefit?

 

"Just do this or that" is still one extra step with a special rule. It might simply be doable to cast magic on the previous magic, though (one of the cosmologically defined "elements" or nouns is magic power itself). I have to think more about all that, though. Maybe I'll just allow more verbs to be used within the same spell.

Quote

[...]

Delay Spell might be another one to add. It 's  like Duration, but covers how long before the spell activates. 

[...]

Hm. That seems less like a verb, but more like a difficulty increase to me. Like an increase in complexity.

 

Edited July 20 by Thot

[Atgxtg]

 

16 hours ago, Thot said:

"Just do this or that" is still one extra step with a special rule.

Or you could just compare the casting roll to mutltispell allong with the other words. Then it's just more of the same.

 

16 hours ago, Thot said:

It might simply be doable to cast magic on the previous magic, though (one of the cosmologically defined "elements" or nouns is magic power itself). I have to think more about all that, though. Maybe I'll just allow more verbs to be used within the same spell.

I don't think you half to, it'a sort of already baked in.. Multispells have to be compared against more words, and most of the modifiers will double (for instance healing two allies who are over 5m away is +1 level to range for each healing spell). So the difficulty (an magic point cost) should stack up quickly.Hmm, that means the negative modifiers would double too. That could be a problem. Especially for spells cast on the caster or nearby allies. 

You  might want to go with using the highest difficulty spell and then upping the complexity by one level for the additional spell. So multispelling two healing spells with no modifiers would end up at Difficult and cost 8 magic Point.

 

 

 

16 hours ago, Thot said:

Hm. That seems less like a verb, but more like a difficulty increase to me. Like an increase in complexity.

That's what I thought an adverb would be. Basically anything conditional that defines the parameters of the spell. 

So a wizard might study to find a new way to alter their spells and they get another conditional slider to play with.

BTW, can "Target" could include other shapes, such as lines? For example a lighting bolt or blast of flame might attack in a 1m wide  by 20-25m long line instead of a 5m radius.

 

 

[Mugen]

You could handle the sum of the various parameters of the spell cast as a "pseudo skill" that the caster must beat in an opposed roll to successfully cast the spell.

For instance, a very east spell would translate into a 10 to 15 pseudo-skill, while a very powerful one would have 90+. MP cost would be based on how well you beat the spell.

You could also treat "Verbs" and "Nouns" differently. Verbs could be skills, and Nouns power levels. For instance, Fire 5 and Water 2. Nouns would put limits on your spell's potency. Perhaps not hard limits : someone with Fire 5 could cast a Fire 10 spell, but the MP costs would be superior to what it would be for spells under 6.