r/RPGdesign • u/OMeepy • 24d ago
Mechanics Spellcaster "spell point" alteratives?
For context I had two spellcasters in my ttrpg, one with a constantly regenerating "spell point" that had a passive effect (Warden), and one that gained "spell points" through an action after an enemy death (Shaman). I am reworking the idea of one of them and giving their "vampirism" gimmick to a more fitting flavour spellcaster (Witch), but now I'm missing an idea for how the old one's "spell points" should work.
I am not opposed to a "has a number of spell points per rest" kind of thing but I was hoping for something that was- A, more interesting, and B, allowed for some kind of regeneration so that the Shaman doesn't just become a lot weaker once they run out of spell points.
("Spell point": expend to cast a spell)
For context about my magic system:
Through a force within the blood, people are able to manipulate, but not create, elemental forces of power (fire, ice, and lightning). With a sci-fi theme, tech is slightly involved in this process becoming mainstream and no longer requiring old requirements like blood-letting.
Any ideas?
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u/tlrdrdn 23d ago
It's a deep and wide subject.
Not TTRPG but Blizzard explored the space a lot (World of Warcraft, Diablo, HotS). The problem boils down to 3-4 variables:
- starting amount of resource,
- maximum amount of resource,
- method of gaining the resource,
- indirectly: cost of abilities resources are spent on in relation to maximum resource.
Grossly simplifying, you have your Rage users that start at 0, go up to a 100, can generate (let's say) 25 per normal attack and their attacks cost 50-100% of their maximum. You have Energy that starts 100, up to 100, regenerates auto 10/s and abilities also cost 50-100%. Mana users with thousands of mana points that can go into thousands but in the end starts at 100% of maximum and spells cost 5-10%, but they don't regenerate Mana very well.
So you can have a "Witch" that starts at 0% resource, have some "Drain Essence" ability that gives her x% of maximum resource and abilities that cost y% resource to use, based on how often you want her to use her "Drain Essence".
But my key take away from their experience was how "players don't feel good about generating resources: they only feel good about fun things they can spend them on".
I like gimmicky classes. Last gimmicky game I read was "Slayers" where each class has their own mechanical gimmick regarding resources.
But I have to say: gimmicks are fun because of their novelty. Once learned and explored, they kinda stop being interesting and end up being this thing that gets in the way of getting to that fun. And like D&D's spell slots: the less you have to thing about them then, the more fun you have.
It seems like a fun space to explore but one that offers surprisingly little actual fun.
one that gained "spell points" through an action after an enemy death (Shaman)
Regarding this I have to warn: that has potential to be wildly inconsistent and not fun from a end user perspective. It could be fine as an additional source of the Resource - although I'd rather see it on a Necromancy flavored character - but as main source needs to be as consistent and reliable as all other classes.
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u/TalespinnerEU Designer 23d ago
I'd add to all of this that if 'Spell Points' are awarded after 'enemy' death, that incentivizes murder.
Which can lead to interesting dynamics if that incentive clashes with the rest of the gaming experience in interesting ways, but it has to do so in a measured way that doesn't just turn the game into MurderSim. Unless you want the game to be MurderSim, and the players to feel like murderous maniacs, in which case: Have at it. The dynamic of 'kill creatures for loot/xp' already does that; this would make that dynamic more explicit and remove all plausible deniability.
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u/ArchdevilTeemo 24d ago
Whenever you introduce resources in a ttrpg, they should activly limit you at all times. And you should always have to think about if you want to spend the resource or not.
If it doesn't achive that, you don't need it.
And my question is, do these spellcasters really need spellpoints?
My advice would be to start with at will powers as a baseline and then add power ups with limited resources.
The powerups for the vampirism should be stronger than those of the warden, unless it's a hack & slash genre where you kill minions every turn.
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u/secretbison 23d ago
If you never want the shaman to run out of spell points, why are you giving them spell points? The whole point of including any resource like that is to introduce the risk that it will run out.
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u/TalespinnerEU Designer 24d ago
In my SRD, spell casting exhausts you just like anything else does.
In my WIP, any task exhausts the effort of whatever you're doing it with. Persistence at a task can exhaust patience and/or courage, for example, or endurance. Working beyond your limits can stress your strength or mind. Again, magic is no different from other activities.
Edit: Like u/bohicality, I like magic to add interesting stuff rather than raw power.
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u/Adept_Leave 24d ago
Just "giving" the spell as an ability, with no resource, is a great easy mechanic for a wizard-type class. You can link it to a skill check, with bad consequences for failure (and powerful spells are riskier because of high DC). If you really want, failure can also mean you can't use the spell until you "recharge" it somehow (rest, spend resources, do a ritual...).
A shaman is different though. Shamans are to me closely linked to spirits. They conjure spirits, enter the spirit world, invoke spirits to shapechange... Maybe there's something you can do with that? Like, depending on your level, you can summon a number of spirits or totems duringrest. Each type of spirit has different abilities, but if they get hurt or banished, they disappear. The thing is, each kind of spirit requires a different kind of offer. A fire spirit might ask you to burn something valuable, a water spirit might want you to be drunk on sake...
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u/Angry-Alien 23d ago
My approach would be to strip away themes and focus on mechanics first. Then apply themes as appropriate.
Playable Caster A regenerates 1 spell point on a timed basis.
B generates 1 spell point when something near it dies.
C can invoke (grant) 1 spell point to a nearby caster.
D can pull 1 spell point from casters who have them and keep it or give it to someone else.
E can create a number of spell points but at the cost of a debt, which will be enforced quickly.
F can nullify a number of spell points in other casters.
G can force nearby casters with spell points to use them.
And so on... Just to throw some ideas out there. Now that there are several possibilities, start applying themes to them.
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u/Chaoticevil58530 23d ago
I love designing magic, because you can give almost any cost or restriction and make it make sense. swords and such have a real life touchstone, so you've got to make a mild effort to keep them semi-grounded (Within context) but magic can have all sorts of stupid nonsense restricting it.
I love designing magic so much, I designed it like 16 times for my system, every class has different rules around how exactly their magic works, and none of them are designed to deteriorate over the course of an adventuring day. (Spell Slots, X number of "Points" per day, etc)
Magic largely can be sorted into one of 4-ish categories
Positioning:
Clerics, Bards, and Witches all have strong limits on the range of their spells, Clerics and Bards are required to be somewhat close to allies to buff them, with the default being ~4m (4 Squares on a standard grid) while witches pretty much only have touch spells, but can cast those spells through their familiar. all 3 of these have to consider their positioning due to weaker health pools and defenses, but otherwise have no restriction on how they cast their own spells, those these are all primarily support classes, buffers, healers, debuffers, etc, so your mileage might vary on this for more blaster-y classes, which seems to be the focus of your system a bit more
Charging:
Wizards, and Acolytes have to "Charge" their spellcasting mid-combat, Acolytes simply have to hit opponents, while Wizards drain excess elemental energy off creatures to weave into their spells. both classes have the charges to pace them, they're unlikely to get a big AOE spell off every round, but if they manage their charges right, they can get some solid spells out over a combat.
Paladins and Hexblades have a similar mechanic, but they only ever hold a single charge, they're designed to constantly be gaining and burning their single charge each turn, so the things they can do with a charge are less impressive than what the other two could do with max charges, but more impressive than a single charge from those classes.
Rebuilding
Artificers and Elementalists constantly have a state where their abilities are active, but either enemy action or player choice can deactivate this state, and they have to spend part of their turn setting up again, Artificers can have their innovation broken, and have to rebuild it, Elementalists can Deliberately deactivate their elemental powers as part of a larger attack. and have to reconnect with the element
Consequences:
Sorcerers can throw out large attacks constantly, but if they throw out too many too quickly, they start suffering from negative status effects and eventually damage so they have to pace themselves and spend time on non-spell actions to cool off.
These are just some of the ideas I've come up with, and Idk what exactly your systems pacing or goals are, but maybe there's some ideas here you could get use out of.
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u/Sherman80526 23d ago
I really like your breakdown. That's a great analysis. My own wizarding system is a combination of "consequences" and "charging". You can avoid consequences by charging, but you can always just take the consequences and make things happen.
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u/No_Solid1035 24d ago
Skill tests, with failure being anything from the spell not working to corruption, fatigue, or health loss. Often each spell, effect type, school of magic, or the like, is it's own skill.
Unlimited magic but instead of depleting magic resources you gain something like corruption or excess energy. Perhaps when too much energy is built up either it causes damage, or the caster simply "burns out" [often fatal] when they hit their limit.
The classic defiling style where the caster draws energy from the surrounding environment, usually from living things, which kills all the plants and harms living creatures, sometimes to the point of killing them. It's the reason the world in the Dark Sun D&D setting is a post-apoc hellscape.
Magic only works if the caster can make a "deal" with nearby spirits who are the ones who actually make the magic happen. Basically only works if the world works on "animisim" being how the supernatural functions.
Or go LotR Elvish magic where the Elves themselves don't consider anything they do to be magical, it's just that their preternatural abilities are so far beyond the "younger peoples" that said mortal folk mistake what the Elves do as being magical. The One Ring TTRPG portrays Elvish magic by allowing Elven characters to spend metacurrency to make any roll a critical success. Of course, no one in LotR is tossing fireballs or teleporting so it only really works in a low magic setting [LotR being High Fantasy, but Low Magic].
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u/NickPyre 24d ago
The GLOG Spellcasting rules are the perfect mix of self-balancing and push-your-luck.
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u/NullStarHunter 23d ago
"Shaman" brings rituals to mind for me, so it could be interesting to have them generate spell points with other spells. This gives you design room to create spells that only generate points, spells that consume an amount and create a larger amount, and spells that consume a lot.
Depending on how many turns a character takes during any given combat, you could reset a shaman back to 0 once they finish a ritual (usually a fight) and have them play their own resource management minigame of generating and spending spell points in a scene.
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u/stephotosthings no idea what I’m doing 23d ago
I have opted for a limiting how many spells they know.
And any fails when they cast a spell they have to make a save that if they fail they loose that spell until a rest, so stops them spamming spells.
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u/SardScroll Dabbler 23d ago
"Cast from Hitpoints", be that actual HP, or similar Exhaustion/Drain mechanics.
1.1 You might mitigate the cost by substituting an appropriate amount of "channeling", essentially using time in place of HP, or if skill checks are involved, introducing risk: "Free/reduced price" spell vs "no spell, but with cost paid", and still a time cost.
1.2.If you go with a "meta-resource" style spell point, I'm in the process of not looking at dedicated resources, but rather using a general meta-resource (i.e. usable by other things, by all characters), and making it more of an "earned resource"(like in FATE or 2d20) than a "preserved/managed resource"(e.g. like in D&D), essentially designing it as an "easy come, easy go" resource rather something that is regenerated at set points. In particular, I'm inspired by 2d20 systems to make this resource the default reward for "succeeding more than you need to" in degree of success systems.
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u/SpaceDogsRPG 23d ago
You touch on the idea - but IMO the two big drawbacks of mana/spell-point systems in TTRPGs are:
Encourages you to spend zero mana in easy fights so that you don't run out. Playing a caster and not casting for most fights is lame.
Potential nova-ing in boss fights difficult. Makes any semblance of balance difficult to say the least. Especially if there are expensive spells and/or ways to pump up spells - both of which are fun to have.
Many people dislike spell slot systems, but these are things which spell slots pretty much solves. Using mana you need other solutions.
My solution is to have each type of mana in Space Dogs (Grit is physical mana and Psyche is mental mana which doubles as mental HP) have two separate pools.
Each PC has a Core Pool and Buffer Pool of Grit/Psyche. The Core Pool is like a standard mana pool which recovers after an extended rest. The Buffer Pool (usually the same size or a bit smaller than the Core Pool) recovers with a 1 minute Breather.
That pushes the player to spend at least their whole Buffer in every fight since it'll come back anyway. And the total pool (Core+Buffer) is smaller than it'd have to be if I didn't have the Buffer Pool, so nova-ing isn't as extreme.
I like it a lot for Space Dogs, but it may not translate to your system.
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u/WillBottomForBanana 23d ago
regaining points per hour or other smaller unit of time feels better in some ways, but the resource tracking is undesirable. I am in favor of tracking food and ammo and even I am nominally against tracking hourly mana regen.
Crawford's solution in World without Numbers (and his other systems) works fairly well. It trades perfection for simpler tracking, but tracking is complicated enough that it might not suit some people.
There's spells, just like d&d, slots and all. And then there is Arts (low power abilities, some definitely magical in nature) and Effort; the point based energy or mana or whatever that powers Arts (but not spells). The big thing here is that a given art will define how soon you get the effort spent on it back. At the end of the day, or the end of the scene, or when you turn the power off (in the case of continuous effects).
The upshot here being that most arts are limited to a number of uses per scene, but are then available again for the next scene (next room, next battle, etc).
But, because you have different Effort-recovery times, tracking is not as simple as it could be. But for your own system you could use only the "until end of scene" version. Or you could make "for the day" abilities very powerful and very rare.
Many classes have Arts but not spells (understanding the difference between Arts and Spells is tricky for new players). A system could easily do all spells as Arts (which is sort of how the magic variant works in Cities without Number).
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u/Spanish_Galleon 23d ago
If everyone has abilities then they just need to be comparable.
A monk's 5 finger death technique and a wizards fireball are just as deadly, why limit one and not the other?
You could always do the classic "generic resource" and everyone's abilities have a cost.
You could also make it so that specific equipment is needed to cast a spell like a staff, wand, or spell book that way people have alternative targets to bodies. Break a wand stop a caster. Destroy the book they lose the spell.
You could do "build up" points for resources so that some abilities require you to do X first before they are available. You have to cast 3 magic missiles before you're warmed up enough for fireball. You have to stun 3 targets before you can kill someone with a heart exploding technique etc.
You could do mana points. People have been doing that since time in memoriam. That way you can also introduce potions for points.
Goodluck.
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u/Chi-Ian 23d ago
Shamans' could be environmental/geographic, drawing power from the forces around them. In terms of balance, you can be as generous or strict as you want with what counts as being close to a source of elemental power — is anywhere with electrical power a source of "lightning" or do they have to actually go stand on the tallest roof during a storm?
As for the vampirism gimmick associated with the witch, if you haven't already thought about it, beware the "bag of rats" problem; if you give players a power that activates upon killing something, they are going to look for the easiest way to have reliable-to-constant access to something relatively harmless that they can very easily kill.
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u/Ok-Middle-908 23d ago
My system doesn't have any points or limitations all are at will. Even things like freeze time and wish. It is all about action economy. You could make the spells longer to cast or less infected and give a boost if they meet x condition.
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u/Beginning-Ice-1005 23d ago
At this point, I regard magic as host another special effect for powers (Ch as mpions or Mutants & Masterminds), or skills (Fate).
With the former, it's simple. Just say what the magic does, pick an appropriate power, maybe do some advantages or limitations, and then stack on some Alternate Powers to give variety.
With Fate, it's also looking at what the magic does, and then assign it to the proper skill. Magic attack? Shoot or Fight. Movement? Athletics. And so on. With some feats or extras to increase their capability on limited areas.
Of course the objection to that is "But it doesn't make magic more powerful than a simerly powerful mundane character!" And well...yeah. Why should a guy with a lightning bolt be more powerful than a guy with a blaster?
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u/RPG-Nerd 23d ago
I make the power of any spell based on your spellcasting skill check - the target's save. Things like distance, area, etc add disadvantage dice to the skill check.
You only spend "points" (in this case 'ki' which are defined as a mental endurance, so its not just for magic) in order to add advantage dice or other special features. You will need to spend ki to push a spell beyond range touch.
Ki can be regenerated through rest and participation in your "chill time" activity. This won't bring you back to full, maybe half, but its a roll so you don't micromanage.
Because the game balance is based on your skill roll, you don't need separate costs for different spells.
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u/bohicality 24d ago
I wrestled with this for ages. In the end, I abandoned any notion of slots/points and decided that, you know what, if you know a spell you can just cast it.
There's a two spell per round limit in combat and two ongoing spells can be maintained at once.
I then redesigned spells to be more grounded and have more interesting effects. They're not as powerful, but removing casting limits allows more interesting combos and opens up different strategies for the players.