What do you guys think of free form magic? Do they make for less

>>54760147

The idea is beautiful and I love it, but it's one of those things that just doesn't really work for over-the-board play. I've seen too many games wither on the vine as any sense of immersion or progress ground to a halt as everyone has to have a discussion as to what, exactly, constitutes Forces 3 until everyone just defaults to "the DM will tell us how it goes," which is just the kiss of death. At that point you might as well put down rails.

I think things work a little better when it's in the vein of Chaos Magic: Wild Sorcery or Pathfinder's Kineticist because they do a pretty good job of encouraging you to do the vast bulk of your spell-building ahead of time so most of your table time is just casting off your pre-existing list, but they're still awkward to balance.

>>54760147
>>54760220

Ars Magicka. Just go read Ars Magicka.

I wish I could port its system to everything. I've half-assedly janked together some Ars Magicka shit for some OSR games but it's not really solid yet.

It works. It works really well.

>>54760274
What is this game about?

>>54760948
Wizards in the 13th century, but the 13th century as if medieval physics-theories was actually true. It's extremely unique, extremely well-researched, and extremely good. The magic system is something of wonder.

I'm currently working on a homebrew system that lets you create spells with discernible rules and effects. Kind of like magical legos. I don't actively work on it right now. but here and there I'll get an idea and slowly add to the game as a whole. I don't have a lot of concrete numbers to give you, but I can talk about the concepts behind it.

Combat spells cost MP, which is determined by 1 or 2 stats. You can add effects from a growing list which cost MP and stack additively. Metamagic (or altering the effects) add a multiplier to the individual effects, and all metamagic stacks additively. So lets say you wanted to cast a Fireball. At its most basic level, you just need [Projectile] and [Damage(Fire)], which should cost about 2 MP, travel 20ft, and deal 1d4 damage. You could further enhance the fireball with [Explosion] (10ft radius) and increase the die size to d8 for +2 and +2MP, or 6MP total. You could then apply metamagic to individual effects within the spell. [Range +2] for two additional increments of range (60ft total range) and add 3 additional dice for 4d8 damage for a total cost of (1*4MP range)+(2MP Explosion)+(6*3MP 4d8 damage) which would cost 24MP total.

Crafting spells in the middle of a fight would severely bog down the game, so instead you have limited spell slots that you can fill when you prepare your spells for the day like in your average DnD style game.

There are also out of combat spells which follow the same rules, but use units of time instead. Small party buffs might cast in minutes , while kingdom affecting spells might cast in years. You must spend the entire time concentrating while casting, so multiple long duration/wide affecting spell abuse isn't really possible by solo mortals. The game will also have time-crunch mechanics to further discourage abuse, but I can't really stop a DM from allowing their game to break.

From what I've listed so far, is this at least a palatable free-ish form magic system?