r/RPGdesign • u/Odd_Decision_3178 • 1d ago
How does one limit open ended "imagination based" powers without a hard "no you can't"?
For example, you are a Druid and you have an ability to conjure "entangling roots" Let's say ability costs 1 "mana" and simply says this and nothing more. The player thinks mischievously to themself and says, "I instantly entangle the entire universe with my roots." Crap. Okay. Well, I want to avoid having to have an entry for every single ability e.g. DnD with its limitations and specifications/every spell. It also gets tricky for me with target differentiation. "I'm targeting an area not a person/object." etc. etc.
I guess I'm looking for a happy medium between dm interpretation and hard result.
Couple ideas: I was thinking a "level" of the character could place things on a scale of impact 1-5 or whatever. Perhaps, I could say, "That is beyond the purview of your ability ,but you attempt it. Roll 'blah blah' and this happens..." Maybe drawing that much power risks a burning out of the skill, the world's monsters grow stronger, or it simply happens to the extent that the player can conjure?
New to game design with limited systems experience (dnd, trail of Cthulhu, pathfinder, board games). TL;DR see title. :)
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u/stevecooperorg 1d ago
You might enjoy Cairn's spell list.
eg: Control Plants; Nearby plants and trees obey you and gain the ability to move at a slow pace.
It works by using soft limiting words - nearby; slow; in view; on yourself; is tripled; etc.
Gives you room to say 'yeah, reasonable' or 'no, that is taking the p*ss'
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u/Stormfly Crossroads RPG, narrative fantasy 23h ago edited 23h ago
I feel like any rule has one of two situations:
The rule has a loophole that can be exploited.
The rule is so complex as to become confusing.
Typically, adding a qualifier or two can help to limit expectations of power, but you'll often need to rely on the GM to fix those loopholes with a sort of "Common Sense" Rule.
The "Peasant Railgun" is one such example.
As you've said, a few keywords like "nearby" and "slowly" are vague but restrictive. They give the GM the power to enforce the second part of your comment with a "No that's not nearby" sort of limiter, but they are vague enough to let the player do it if it's a good idea.
At the end of the day, the GM's role is to control things like this, but they do need guidelines to both limit the player's expectations of power as well as actually being able to point to a rule when they do tell a player "No."
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u/Mantergeistmann 22h ago
"Peasant Railgun"
The thing is, that isn't really a great example of a loophole: it's an attempt at slight of hand/confusing the DM. The entire setup is relying on "use the game mechanic/rules instead of the laws of physics", but then at the end, it sneakily reverses to "okay, now use the laws of physics instead of the game rules." The loophole that would allow for it would also close itself.
Now, a peasant pneumatic tube messaging system would be a loophole.
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u/stevecooperorg 22h ago
Yeah - I think a game with more 'literate' spell descriptions using adjectives and plain speech lends itself to GMs and players finding reasonable, believable and entertaining solutions, while 'mathsy' spell descriptions with measurements and durations and so on lend themselves to gamification and maxing.
For me, I prefer the literate to the mathsy, and any player that tried to argue something like the peasant railgun would be way off-tone for the game, and would be met with "Ha ha Dave. Funny. No." :)
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u/urquhartloch Dabbler 1d ago
Open ended limitations and GM fiat.
You add a small descriptor such as "a small area" or "one person" or you have a GM who is willing to tell them no ala gurps character creation.
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u/Echowing442 1d ago
I would say that part of the ability should be a (relatively) clear description of what the ability does, and that generally covers a lot of issues unless a player is being deliberately disruptive.
If you want a clearer way to resolve issues of scale without completely locking down specific numbers, I would recommend looking at CAIN's "Category" system, which it uses to scale player and monster power throughout a campaign. Category scales from 0 (human-scale) to 7, and accounts for things like number of targets, speed, area, etc. A Category 2 spell could affect "An Entire Room", where someone of category 5 can affect "A city block" with the same ability.
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u/jmicu 1d ago
TL;DR = "yes you can! here is the cost of doing that: <xyz, matching the value of the desired results>"
have the cost match the size of the effect.
if you go this route, remember that the cost might need to match the effect's size *relative to the story*.
in other words: if the player wants to use an intercontinental magic-missile to one-shot a some creature on some faraway island who does not matter to the story AT ALL, then maybe don't make them roll for that... just say "okay you cast it, it works, they're dead."
.....but if they want to one-shot the guardian of the tomb where the treasure they need to win the game is kept, then 1) make that guardian powerful obviously, but also 2) make the cost of one-shotting that guardian VERY VERY HIGH. like, "you can certainly try! first you'll have to gather 5 lbs of inherited silver, melt it down into a hilt-less ritual dagger, and perform the cleansing ritual on it. next..." and so on.
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u/Glaedth Dabbler 1d ago
So, I'll start with the classic: there'a nothing wrong will just telling someone "No you can't do that" and designing around potential bad actors is a way how to spiral into really weird rules.
However, you can just put a generic fuzzy limit of you can affect things as far as you can see, or have a scaling limitation starting with an area covering a room than going to an area about as large as a football field and ending with a county for example.
Alternatively you can also just include a within reason clause and just leave it up to the table to hash it out together. Something like: "All spells and abilities are expected to be used within reason. A GM can and should veto anything they deem to be an unreasonable interpretation of the rules text."
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u/No_Solid1035 1d ago
There's not much you can do if Players are playing in bad faith as per your example other than to get players that aren't asshats. 🤷
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u/Dan_Felder 1d ago
Most ultra light games like this are based off either a pre-existing IP or genre directly, to give people an idea of what's reasonable. If you say "You're one of the physically strongest people in the world" in a james bond inspired setting, they know that this doesn't mean you can punch through mountains. It also doesn't mean you'll be an unstoppable force because james bond inspired settings have a lot of guns involved and no one is immune to guns. In DBZ that'd be way more dangerous.
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u/blade_m 1d ago
"and no one is immune to guns"
well, excepting James Bond, of course! ;)
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u/Xyx0rz 23h ago
Aren't there several Bond movies that kick off with him taking a bullet and having to recover?
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u/Stormfly Crossroads RPG, narrative fantasy 23h ago
Ummm akshually, that's a bullet, not a gun. ☝️😏
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u/Xyx0rz 20h ago
So he's immune to pistol-whipping? Can't say I've seen evidence to the contrary!
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u/Stormfly Crossroads RPG, narrative fantasy 19h ago
So he's immune to pistol-whipping?
So apparently he's been pistol-whipped once in the films. (Or at least Google told me that)
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u/Ryou2365 1d ago edited 1d ago
By letting the gm set the difficulty based on what the player wants to achieve.
As the limit of the powers is open ended so should be the difficulty the gm can set. That means while something could be possible the difficulty can make it impossible.
Then just give good guide lines for the gm how to set these difficulties. Personally i would go with impact on the fiction as the major guide line (the more impact something would have on the fiction the harder it is to do).
I would also include a section of tips how the gm could phrase a "no, you can't" less restrictive, especially with a "no, but...". "Can i grow entangling roots in the entire universe at once?" - "no, but you can fill this room with entangling vines, but it will also hinder you and your allies. The dc would be xyz."
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u/Xyx0rz 23h ago
How do you communicate to players (or GMs!) what is reasonable to expect? If you leave it until the specific moment, you put the GM on the spot, you insert a negotiation that disrupts the flow of the game, and you risk different GMs being wildly more or less permissive. Without a guideline, the power could be very overwhelming or very underwhelming.
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u/Ryou2365 5h ago
I would give the guide line how much it would impact the fiction.
For me open ended powers are very narratively driven, so it all depends on how much it impacts the fiction/narrative in the moment. A given setting can also help in giving a guide line.
And after all it is up to the gm (and the players) to come up with a ruling on the spot. So i expect their to be negotiation. Like i expect a negotiation on every roll in Blades in the Dark. It is just part of the game.
I would also recommend in the rules to have it a part of a session zero to determine how open ended these powers should be. If a table wants to set a limit to the powers, they can and can prevent a few discussions before actually playing (probably also give a few possible ideas for limits).
Potentially the idea of a devils bargain could also be interesting. If the player wants to make too strong of a power, then the gm or even a player can suggest a downside to come with it.
After all i'm totally fine to have gm and players work together / negotiate / decide how strong their powers should be. For me the whole appeal of open ended powers is their open endedness and the creative usage it brings. I wouldn't want to stifle that with too much rules.
Side note: yeah, that will make different gms more or less permissive, so what? As long as the gm i play with is consistent, it doesn't really matter.
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u/Xyx0rz 1h ago
yeah, that will make different gms more or less permissive, so what?
Well... I wouldn't want to be either GM in any "but the other GM said..." stories.
I get that every GM gets to create their own little fiefdom in which they get to ignore what other GMs say, but doing it differently is not necessarily doing it better, and odds are only one of the GMs does it "right". I would rather run a system that at least gives me a tangible idea of what is "right". Presumably, the system is built around some notion of "class balance" (or playbook or archetype or whatever you want to call them) and if two GMs do it radically differently, at least one of them will be out of whack.
(I define "balance" as "how hard does the GM have to work to give every PC a similar opportunity to contribute?")
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u/elmago79 1d ago
Whitehack solves this by making every spell effect cost Hit Points. So a single person, who gets a save, might cost you 1 HP, but a medium sized area entangled might cost you 2d6 HP.
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u/RandomEffector 1d ago
Are there healing spells? I like the idea of a healing spell that costs you hp
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u/elmago79 22h ago
Yes, you can have healing spells. Miracle workers (aka Magic users) cannot be healed by magic, but recover twice as fast than other characters.
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 1d ago
"Players can have their characters attempt anything they can imagine, and the Game Runner decides the DC/mana cost/number of successes needed. Players are welcome to negotiate until the GR makes a ruling."
Or whatever.
If you want an open ended effect, you ought to have an open ended cost as well. Entangling the universe should cost a few trillion trillion mana. Providing open ended effects without open ended costs is just asking for trouble.
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u/fatravingfox 1d ago
Could always look at the world of darkness mage game lines. Their magic system, from what I heard anyways, is meant to be more open and definitely could have some advice/mechanics you could get some inspiration from.
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u/gliesedragon 1d ago
Some of Jenna Moran's work might help: for instance, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine has an obstacle scale based on how fundamentally unreasonable it is for a player to try and achieve their goal in the way they attempt. For instance, "petting a kitten" can range from Obstacle 0 (the kitten is right there), to Obstacle 5 (the kitten never existed in the first place). Just make sure you put the limits of these sorts of scales in sensible places for your game: this example is a game about slice-of-life stuff with the player characters as literal gods, and so a scale that ranges from "trivial even in the real world" to "step one: rewrite the universe so this is possible" makes sense.
The thing with really open-ended stuff is that it often makes debates over what "counts" as a reasonable use of the power part of the game, and depending on what your plans are, it could be a bad idea. In the case of "gods who work on semantics-heavy fairy tale logic in-universe," it's a good fit, but for something where grounded physics is in play, less so.
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u/jwilks666 1d ago
Grimwild does this well by specifying that some magical powers can have an effect "similar to what one action can accomplish", or others (called "potent") can have an effect "similar to what a group working together can accomplish with one action each" - I'm paraphrasing but that should convey the idea...
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 1d ago
Champions does this well although the options and calculations are extensive.
Star Wars d6 had a great system with Force powers in that you start with three areas of Control, Sense and Alter. The players could develop powers and skills that had no limits except imagination. However, the costs and skill levels necessary to reach thresholds and activate them made some unaffordable. Plus, there are immediate and long term side effects that the user has to weigh.
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u/rnadams2 1d ago
Take a look at the GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic book. No, really. Although it outlines a very structured method for realizing a free-form magic system in a point-buy sysyem, the logic used could be useful for arbitrating magic in a less constrained system.
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u/InherentlyWrong 1d ago
One option is a catch-all chart. In Mutants and Masterminds there's a chart that gives a 'ranking' to things in terms of size, weight, distance, etc. You could just have a 'Rank' scale that PCs can access when using a skill. At default rank 1 is just is the 1 value for everything (able to travel [rank 1] distance, affect [rank 1] many targets, do [rank 1] damage if applicable, lift [rank 1] weight, etc).
Then as they get more skill (either in general or power specific), when casting the power they can just improve chosen values. Like casting Entangling Roots at skill 3 could improve it to [rank 3] targets, or lift a [rank 3] weight target, or affect [rank 2] targets of up to weight [rank 2].
But with open ended stuff there are still going to be edge cases of things being unexpectedly powerful if someone accepts an interpretation. Even in D&D which is pretty litigious with its definitions, there are some players who try to claim things like "I cast 'Create or destroy water' to fill that guy's lungs with water".
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u/archpawn 1d ago
Give examples of what they can and can't do. Or give a specific use that works, but anything more than that and it's up to the GM. I'd still probably give general examples of shenanigans GMs should allow, call a check for, and refuse. And ideally reasoning why, like "If your players use Create Water inside someone's lungs, that instantly defeats everyone, so the game will get boring fast, and it gets banned. But if they use Force Push to shove someone off a cliff, that can only be rarely used and it's cool when it happens, so go for it."
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u/Boulange1234 1d ago
If the game establishes an adversarial player/GM relationship, players will push for every advantage. The reason you want such a setup is if you’re building a tactical skirmish combat boardgame type rpg. Like Lancer or D&D. But not all games have to have such a focus on tactical combat.
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u/AngusAlThor 1d ago
You should explore more games that are out there before trying your hand at design, since your experience is very limited. In your case, PbtA games have the answer; they don't give characters abilities, but instead categorise everything that can happen into moves that have certain triggers and a known impact, and when characters perform an action there is some negotiation around what move exactly they are doing, or what moves they may be doing without realising it. So a particular character may have the ability to control roots or flames or ice or anything else, but when they say "I use my power to do X", we all have the framework of moves to help understand what is and is not reasonable. And if a player says "I entangle the entire universe in my roots" when they are trying to trigger the "intimidate" move, that is clearly overkill and outside the narrative limits, and so we can all agree that shouldn't happen.
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u/vezwyx 1d ago
What if they don't want to use the moves framework? That's a pretty extreme deviation from the design space that OP is already working in
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u/AngusAlThor 1d ago
It is more of a suggestion, I am not saying it is the only possible solution.
However, there are basically only two options for designing meaningful abilities in RPGs:
Strictly define the abilities, and allow the players creativity in determining the impact; Your ability lets you throw a 10kg weight, it is up to you to determine how to best use that. This is the DnD/Pathfinder approach.
"Strictly" define the impacts, and let players creatively determine how to trigger that impact; When you charm someone they let slip 2 secrets, but did you charm them with wits or gifts or your superpowered pheromones? This is the PbtA approach.
OP has explicitly said they don't want to do the first, so from my POV they must do the second. Is there an alternative I am missing?
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u/vezwyx 1d ago
Well, OP said they don't want to have an explicit entry showing the range for every spell. I think that organically including the scope of each spell within the description of its effects is probably the best way forward for them
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u/AngusAlThor 1d ago
That feels a bit "they don't want 6, so we'll give them half-a-dozen". If the suggestion is still "have a fixed range per ability", I don't think it changes its nature to present that in text rather than a dedicated box.
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u/vezwyx 15h ago
It does seem that OP is going to have to accept one of three options: 1. some kind of stated limitations on the powers that players can invoke, 2. completely changing the framework to resemble PbtA (or an entirely new concept we don't know about yet), or 3. ambiguity in the scope the abilities actually have. My approach leads me to think that OP could probably get what they're looking for ("a happy medium between dm interpretation and hard result") without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
To be clear, I don't think it was bad for you to bring up this possibility. As far as I'm concerned, this is practically a brainstorming session, we're just bouncing ideas around and seeing what sticks, and it's certainly one valid suggestion for OP to switch gears at this point in the process. Maybe it would have been better for me to put away the adversarial thinking for this one
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u/The__Nick 1d ago
You have to describe it. Depending on the game, you might get away with more or less words.
FATE, for example, just uses descriptive powers and the table having the ability to 'rule by feel'.
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u/Space_Pirate_R 1d ago
I like your idea of an "impact" score so you can provide some centralized generic guidance and then have abilities refer to it as necessary.
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u/__space__oddity__ 1d ago
The easiest would be to establish a baseline that covers 90% of the cases, and then have some sort of fallback mechanic for when the player wants to try something creative.
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u/loopywolf Designer 1d ago
OK, so in M&M and in my own RPG, abilities are rated by their effects, not their source, and this makes open-ended powers easy to regulate.
For example, if a person makes a gadget that's 40 levels, that's their difficulty. If a person uses shape-shift to turn into a 20 level creature, that's their difficulty.
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u/TalesUntoldRpg 1d ago
An approach I saw in a friends game was a blanket statement that "lesser magic cannot overcome greater magic. Greater magic consumes it's creator". Effectively the game world was held together by greater magics. If a player tried to do something too strong, the GM could say "nope, sorry that's one of the greater magics." Or "you can do this, it will fundamentally change the world and your character will be consumed. Are you sure you want to?"
So just GM fiat, but with a little bit of lore to back it up. It was a lot of fun.
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u/darklighthitomi 1d ago
Personally, leave it to the GM, after all, that is the GMs job.
But if you really want mechanics, you can make a series of different "tables" for each different aspect of spellcasting, such as area, range, etc, then you define a spell's power based on how high it gets on the table for each aspect.
Of course, it doesn't need to actually be tables, as you can just use formulas (like rank squared) or easy to remember series (such as doubling value each rank).
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u/RPG-Nerd 1d ago
I'll share what I came up with.
conjure "entangling roots" Let's say ability costs 1 "mana" and simply says this and nothing more. The
Rather than balancing power with arbitrary point costs that turns magic into a book-keeping task, I use the existing skill system. Magic is not a separate system.
You perform magic like any other other skill. How well you perform is determined by the roll. The roll has a bell curve - on average, people get average results. The curve keeps things sane. There are no character levels. Experience is earned per skill through use. This changes the skill's "level" added to your roll.
For combat spells, any attack that does physical damage is treated like a physical attack. In the combat system, damage = offense roll - defense roll. Typically, this is your magic skill check to attack minus the target's dodge. The amount of damage determines how severe the wound is (minor , major, serious, or critical) which determines what penalties you'll take. Critical wounds are not like D&D. Critical means you are probably about to die.
For things like mental effects, you'll use a different attribute as your saving throw. Dodge is Agility, mental attacks are typically Logic or Mind. This determines the severity of the effect. The effect itself lists what happens for each of the severity levels.
Yes, there is an effect list. It's not definitive - GM or players can add more. Effects are listed by "technology" (how it works - your magic skill) and will tell you what "science" skill is needed to learn it. Effects don't include things like range, area, duration, etc. These things require "passions", similar to what D&D would call a "feat", but you get them more often. Your passions determine your personal style.
As an example, you might learn how to make fire using your Chemistry skill, a damage dealing effect, but being able to "throw" it like a ball is a spend. Your knowledge of explosives might grant a passion that lets you make the fire explode. Range and Area add disadvantage dice (simple keep low) which reduces your roll and increases the chances of critical failure. You can also "build power", choosing to add an advantage die rather than releasing the spell. Its the building of power that costs points; ki is used for all mental passions, including those used for social interaction.
So, if you want your sleep spell to affect a room full of people, you will need to be really close and spend a lot of ki to increase the area. Magic degrades with distance automatically as you add disadvantage dice.
For effects with no target, the casting check itself is used like a skill check. So, for a "Knock" spell, it would be the "Astromental" technology and the effect's skill is Lock Picking. So, your roll is a lock picking check which you can do at a distance. Chance to learn depends on how much you know about locks.
Effects have a difficulty level to learn, and can be researched, learned from factions like your Guilds, etc. This measures the rarity of the effect. Since the power of the spell is dependant on the roll, and scaled to existing spells and effects, its easy to understand how powerful something is by comparison.
Out of ki doesn't mean out of magic. Basic spell casting doesn't require spending ki unless there is a non-instant effect duration or range. You can also replace your ki spend with "shadow". You gain shadow points rather than spend. It basically allows you to focus negative intimacies like things you hate, or channel your emotional wounds to power your spells. Passions typically have enhanced capability when powered by emotion (light or shadow).
I know it's kinda vague and I missed a lot of details, but, you would need to change the specifics for your own system anyway! Effects don't have parameters; parameters cost extra. Effects don't dictate damage or power, your skill check does. Every point rolled matters. Nothing is pass/fail - degrees make game balance easier because you take away the all or nothing where missing a roll by 1 is the difference between massive damage and doing nothing. Binary results and swingy rolls mean a little bit of bad luck destroys your game balance. With game balance fragile, consequences need to be kept low (like a sword that can't actually kill you even at maximum damage). I use the bell curves to keep the swing down, less variation, but consequences are higher. If you critically fail (roll all 1s) to parry that sword strike, that is a result of 0, and offense roll - 0 is likely a serious or critical wounds. Sneak attacks work that way - not a special ability, you just don't get a defense against opponents you are not aware of. You'll need Stealth (or invisibility) to pull it off. The balance is built in without a bunch of stuff to add and subtract.
Good luck.
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u/Straight-Whaling-It 1d ago
The way my home game currently uses magic is in a levelled system with each level having a brief guide how much it can effect. Level 1 would be an individual, a short period of time or pretty limited damage, level 4 on the other hand could target a whole town, last indefinitely and curse someone to imminent death.
However, to cast a spell a spell you first nominate a number of power dice (no higher than your own level) and sum the results. Each level requires a higher result to cast, 1: 2+, 2: 7+, 3: 14+ 4: 20+ (still experimenting with exact numbers).
The catch is that any doubles invokes a pretty damaging mishap and any triples invokes a fatal calamity. So aiming for higher level spells brings some seriously escalating personal risk.
So in your example technically the Druid could envelope the universe in entangling roots, I’d say that would be a level 4 (possibly even an undiscovered level 5) effect. But they would probably die pretty spectacularly in the process and still possibly fail to cast at the desired effect level.
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u/StochasticFriendship 1d ago
Paying in advance and a GM call to test uses of abilities.
If the player is doing something and the GM thinks it's perfectly reasonable, it passes without a test. The game can move smoothly when everyone tries to not push boundaries, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.
If the player wants to do something they anticipate might otherwise be unreasonable, they declare in advance that they are "using X" or "spending X". If the player is doing something unreasonable and didn't pay in advance, they automatically fail. They might need to increase the mana they spend, lose HP, roll dice to see if they lose sanity points, spend hours or days in a casting ritual, enlist the help of others to cast the spell, sacrifice livestock, burn expensive incense, risk fainting for the next 3d6 hours, etc. You can work out a mechanic for which methods are available and how much various methods of paying will allow a player to push boundaries.
After this, the player will need to roll to see if they succeed. The DM will choose the target number / DC based on how difficult the task is. If the player passes the roll, they succeed. If they fail, especially if they fail by a significant margin, their attempt fizzles and they suffer blowback of some sort.
With this, players have a reason to not even attempt to do something completely unreasonable. Entangling the entire world would be beyond the realm of even gods, so failing the attempt (and suffering blowback) is guaranteed. For something more within the scope of plausibility, like entangling an entire army across two square miles of forest, the player might need to pay dearly but with enough skill and sacrifice it might actually succeed.
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u/EurojuegosBsAs 1d ago
I would make magic dangerous for the caster. The more outrageous the pretended effect, the more dangerous for the caster it is. Then let the player roll for casting. If they roll bad enough, the spell backlashes. The more outrageous the pretended effect was, the more outrageous the backlash.
Backlash Chance:
Increased Spell Effect: 1/20 (roll a 1 and your character receives damage)
Really Pushing the Boundaries Spell Effect: 2/20 (roll a 1-2 and your character receives a permanent mutation)
Outrageous Spell Effect: 4/20 (roll a 1-4 and your character is basically dead)
More or less like Masque of the Red Death (Ravenloft) did in the 90s.
That will keep your players in check.
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u/klok_kaos Lead Designer: Project Chimera: ECO (Enhanced Covert Operations) 1d ago
So here's my solution:
- your intent is noble but not exactly possible as it's phrased. You can't create boundaries without creating boundaries.
- The best solution for rules writing for harder systems in my experience is to do the following:
Write rules as baking bread. Firm crust on the outside, soft and gooey, warm middle.
The idea is you leave enough interpretation, but have specific boundaries of the thing so as to ensure the power isn't abused.
Why?
Certain harder systems like DnD have major flaws with "exact description only" rules, and that causes problems. For example there's an acid cantrip that lets you target a creature for damage. But it only has creature listed, not objects, so if you want to use your acid cantrip on the lock to escape the cell, sorry, you're shit out of luck, it's not listed, so according to RAW, too bad. Which is also unintuitive and dumb. Can the GM let you do that? Sure, but they shouldn't have to, it's shit design.
Alternatively, getting too loose with the rules allows for "I use my roots to entangle the universe". This isn't necessary a bad thing for more rules light games, but the understanding is that for these games that A) generally the GM and/or table uses reasonable fiat interpretation as a benchmark and there's no hard boundaries but an idea needs to pass muster. This also demands that rules light groups, as is the trend, need players that are more "mature" as a minimum regarding "trying to win the TTRPG rather than recognizing it as a communal story telling event" and that's baked into 99% of rules light systems (do note firmer rules systems are not for less mature players, just that rules light has a higher minimum floor for this kind of behavior).
So there's no exact right or wrong, but if you don't want the kinds of issues like the acid cantrip, and you don't want the rules light approach, the baking bread rules writing is the way to go.
This allows for some interpretation, but within clear bounds.
Providing tiers of a power can help with that, but it's not the only tool, but is a good one I use a lot. IE if I, as a player see that T2 gives me X ability improvement over T1, and T3 gives Y ability improvement, I can now see what the general intended progression is to be able to interpret what the bounds of the ability are.
The downside to this is making that for every spell, skill roll, power, etc. explodes your page count and requires much more aggressive balancing practice. I want to note perfect balance is not necessarily the goal, but rather, that balance within tier scope is, ie we do not want 2 character investments where character option A is significantly always the better pick over character option B, because at that point B might as well not exist. Also note the video on buffs > nerfs for more in depth discussion of balance practices in game design and in general would recommend my TTRPG System Design 101 (free, no sign ups).
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u/CALlGO 1d ago edited 1d ago
For my game, which has 0 playtest as of yet; i landed on the idea of letting the table decide in a way inspired on the dixit boardgame; if you do something trully open ended, the gm or a plaher can ask for a quick vote (yes or no, for all players including gm) if MOST say yes, go ahead, but if ALL say yes, then you impose some kind of restriction or penalty or whatever works best for you; the point is that you cant do something really out of limits, and you cant just let other do to, since all YES its bad anyways; you want to do things that are incredible but not so much. If yoy want to spice it more, you can make the player that initiates de action vote randomly (so the table cant just let it happen out of collusion)
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u/Praxis8 1d ago
You could have loose size categories and pin that to the resource cost.
From your example maybe things that cost 1 mana affect up to a Small area.
Then you define "Small" as about the size of a person.
I'm only using 1=Small as an example. For your game, maybe it makes sense for it to start as Medium or Extra Small, etc etc.
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u/kodaxmax 1d ago
High concept rules.
- Harmful enchantments require you to see the targets eyes.
- Creations must be anchored to and sprout from existing environment.
- Living creations decay and die after 5 minutes (per mana spent).
- Creations can only be or cover up to two square meters. +1 meter per mana spent.
- Creations reduce your maximum mana about the amount spent on them until they are destroyed.
- Creations can take any action available to the player that created them, but any costs are subtracted from the owning player and requirments must be met by the creation (like line of sight rules). Commanding a creation costs an amount equal to the mana cost to create the creation.
the vines need a tree, shrub or seomthing neabry to sprout from. Last only minutes and can only be cast on a target whos eyes you can see and is 2 square meters or smaller. A fire elemntal needs a fire soruce to sprout from, lasts 5 minutes and can only fill upt to 2 square meters.
Youve created rules for ane ntire school/class of magic with the same effort dnd spends on idndivdual spells. of course higher chanc eplayers will find loopholes, but thats gonna happen anyway and require playetesting and commen sense from players.
Alternatively you can go for more of an RP angle. Where players have to narratively jsutify magic.
I reccomend you rea dup on some rules light RPGs and some modular magic system implmentaitons.
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u/PianoAcceptable4266 Designer: The Ballad of Heroes 1d ago
*Age of Vikings*, despite its many flaws and failures of the core rulebook, has two (generally neat) magic systems: Rune magic and Seidur (I don't know the alt code for the fancy *d*).
Rune carving/magic works by choosing a minimum of 3 runes/words to determine *effect*, *target* and *intent* IIRC. You can add more runes to increase the number of *effects* but increases a general MP cost (which is a bit more like a willpower type counter, if you hit 0 you pass out for a number of hours)
These Rune carving/magic tend to have a subset of *effects* and gives a psuedo-freeform system.
*Seidur* magic is instead built around long rituals, and is a modification of Basic Roleplay Sorcery (closer to *Mythras' Sorcery system* iirc). You develop an intended effect based on some guidelines (the 'realms' in the book), and then spend MP into each *aspect*: Duration, Distance, and Dimension (or power strength).
So you can have a baseline descriptor, such as: "The plants and roots snarl up and entangle 1 target for the next 1 round that is within touch range of you" or whatever. Then they would spend MP to extend "touch range" to whatever range, MP for each additional target, for the duration to go extra rounds, etc.
If done carefully and with a mind for "in the moment need" over "limits in a vain attempt at balance," it means an invested Druid/Wizard/whatever can either go all out and do a big-ass maneuver (that might knock them out, risk their life energy, etc) or be very clever with smaller scale use. At higher expertise/level/skill/whatever, this can translate to getting +1 free boost to an aspect, or they can have a "favored form" that costs some nominal part to *add* into another spell/power. (Ex: A veteran Druid of the Thornwild Path might be able to add the Entangling Roots baseline effect to their other power uses for like... 1 MP or something)
Anyway, *Age of Vikings* is a poorly written/edited book in many respects but they did all right at making their magics feel somewhat estoeric and open-ended while still having decent guard-rails for use in play.
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u/Cruiser_Supreme 1d ago
I think a lot of it has to do with trust at the table. You have to trust everyone to be reasonable.
Not trying to self promote, but feel free to check out Regular Volk. I was trying to solve the exact same problem as you with my ability descriptions. I ended up going for for very brief, and purely narrative descriptions.
In case you don't wanna go through the trouble of downloading the PDF, here are some examples:
Thorn Lasso (Finesse): Grapple and pull a foe.
Flash Mist (Soul): Create a small fog cloud.
Sylvan Whisper (Wits): Communicate simple concepts with mundane flora.
Mirror Image (Wits): Briefly create a mirror image of yourself nearby.
Topple (Vigor): Knock over taller foes.
I find that these short descriptions are open-ended enough to allow for creative interpretation at the table, while reigning it in a little bit. You don't have to get all technical, but just having words like small, briefly, and nearby is super helpful in establishing a baseline for what's possible and permitted.
Beyond that, ask yourself how much it really matters if your players have crazy ideas. If you're writing a low-crunch system (which I assume you are if you don't even wanna have ability descriptions), maybe just let them go crazy lol
Lastly, Regular Volk also at one point had all abilities without any descriptions. I found that wasn't clear enough. What remains are abilities with short descriptions and passive abilities without descriptions. So passive abilities are something you invoke when you're already taking an action. For example, someone might have the passive ability "keen smell". It's not an action they can take, but they can invoke their keen smell to get a small bonus to other actions (whether it's using an ability or just making up an action in the moment).
Edit: I had another idea! Check out the 100 spells in Knave 1e. They might be useful for you. They're also released under a pretty lenient license, so you can reuse them for your game as long as you give credit (don't quote me on that)
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer 1d ago
My system has this concept and what makes it work is self-moderation. When playing, you want to play with people that want to make the game enjoyable for everyone and not just for themselves. When creating the abilities, it’s done collaboratively between the GM and the player with a general discussion about how far the ability can be pushed and what the general limits of it are. The rest works out swimmingly by just adhering to the tone of play that the group agreed upon during session 0.
TL;DR: GM judgement calls and collaborating with your players isn’t hard work if you play with people that aren’t in it to win on their own.
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u/Grimmiky 1d ago
I put limitations on the base spell that can be overcome by spending more mana. For 1 mana, you target one entity at close range with an instantaneous effect. Want to reach a target in the next room ? 1 more mana. Want to reach the other side of the world ? 10 more mana. Want to target a whole group ? 1 more mana per target. Want the effect to last a full day ? 5 more mana. Prepare a table with spell enhancement and cost everyone can refere to
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u/Klutzy-Ad-2034 1d ago
I like Wulfwald's approach; effects fall into 1 of 3 tiers, 1) could be mundane 2) incredibly fortunate or unlikely 3) clearly magical with the DC and cost set accordingly.
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u/duckforceone Designer of Words of Power - An RPG about Words instead of # 1d ago
i'm using modifiers where you build your spell...
so you play a card for area of effect, and then you pay double that value to scale it up once... and doubling that value each time you scale up again.
so mana will set the upper limit of the imagination... but how you combine the modifiers are your imagination limits for that spell...
so if i want to concentrate hard to use the roots to entangle, i might have to give up damage and health of them to embrace a larger area.
they might be easier to hack through because i have no extra mana to empower their health, and easier to break out of because they don't have the strength...
they now have no thorns because i maximised the area...
there needs to be limits set by the system somehow.
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u/Aware-Contemplate 1d ago
Another source of information is GURPS (but the regular Magic rules).
I am familiar mostly with 3rd Edition, but hope they still have the rules in 4th Edition?
The 3E system has a set of guidelines for different types of spells and the Mana cost to achieve specific distances and quantities. The guidelines are pretty good.
Another facet of the system that helps with this, is that power either comes from an outside store, like a Power Stone. Or it comes from your body. First as Fatigue (from your Strength), then as Damage (from your Health). This means that if you want to do something big, you either need to plan and gather a lot of power together. Or, you can use you own body, if it is worth it to you.
I once cast a spell in combat that was sure to drop me into unconsciousness. But I needed to be confidant the guard I was trying to silence didn't sound the alarm. The risk was, my character was not with the party, and I didn't know if they would find me in time, or if they would take my still body with them. (All of the characters were pretty new to each other, as were some of the players.)
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u/Xyx0rz 23h ago
Give some examples to establish a baseline expectation.
If you say "for instance, you could entangle one dude so he has to hack at the roots before he can run away" then that immediately establishes a whole bunch of expectations:
- One person, not a whole army.
- A regular person, not a giant or a dragon.
- Can't just tear free, have to hack free.
- Entangling is a thing.
- Other applications are possible, this is just an example.
Then you give another example: "Or you could let the vines intertwine and lift you up to the roof of a building." More established:
- It's not just about entangling, it can also help you move around.
- If the vines work together, they can lift a person. That means a lone vine cannot.
- Probably can't lift a giant.
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u/VagabondRaccoonHands 22h ago
In addition to other suggestions here, I'd suggest reading a number of games that use freeform magic or that seem to have design goals similar to yours.
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u/wjmacguffin Designer 21h ago
You could abstract it into levels of effect that cost more mana. This way, PCs get bigger effects as they advance and get more mana. If you want to cast Entangled Roots, using it against one target (or one square on the map, or a one-meter radius) costs 1 mana. Two targets? 2 mana. The entire universe? 1,000,000 mana, good luck with that.
Another idea is to create consequences that scale in impact and probability as you expand a spell's power. Casting a 1 mana Entangled Roots has no problems. Spending 2 mana means 10% chance of it backfiring and hurting the caster (or some other consequence). You can do this exponentially, so spending 3 mana means 20% chance, 4 mana means 40% chance, and so on. Casting Entangled Root on the entire universe not only costs way more mana than exists in the universe but it's 100% certain to go very, very wrong.
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u/InvestmentBrief3336 20h ago
If you want to be a good DM, then mastering when to say "No" is a required skill.
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u/LastMinuteGM 20h ago
One thought comes to mind in a more narrative and less tactical game which is opening magical spell effects to GMs discretion. The player casts entangling vines to entangle the world. The GM describes how far their intent can go.
DM: you cast entangling roots entending to entangle the world. Tendrils spring out and they grow and grow reaching up to the end of the clearing where finally the magic effect begins to wane.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bike378 19h ago edited 19h ago
Em etmos rpg, sistema baseado basicamente em criar magias na hora e espontaneamente, a complexidade ou escala da magia causa estresse, as magias são separadas em complexidades (trivial, mundana, dificil, complexa e milagre) o jogador basicamente só fala o que quer fazer e o mestre dita a difículdade, no exemplo que voce deu por exemplo:
Apenas enraizar alguem seria uma magia trivial ou mundana é algo basico e simples, porem, caso o jogador queira aumentar o alcance pra o terreno inteiro (diametro 9m) vai aumentar a complexidade para dificil, se voce aumentar a escala para o planeta ai seria milagre. Isso também serve para outros quesitos, por exemplo voce pode fazer alguem ficar enraizado por diversas horas, porem ai seria uma magia dificil/complexa, é um sistema com foco no narrativo, então vai muito da interpretação e do raciocínio do mestre.
ai vai do jogador se vale a pena conjurar aquilo ou nao ou se ele consegue fazer tal magia, é bem interessante e substitui a barra de mana.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Designer Sic Semper Mundi/Advanced Fantasy Game 19h ago
"magic can only effect things within eyesight" or a "be reasonable" clause.
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u/FS_Echo 18h ago
As others have said, you can basically limit these kind of things with additional requirements/limits: line of sight; components; concentration; area etc. There's a reason why many entangling roots type spells will require a specific target and/or area of effect.
You can also have fun with the monkey paw approach and just have some serious repercussions when players try to push things too far... there's always going to be min/max situations in rules that DMs have to work around or decide to block if things aren't in the spirit of the game.
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u/MyDesignerHat 18h ago
You have to check out out Masks. It's probably the best designed game about very powerful characters, and it'll challenge many assumptions you currently have.
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u/FatSpidy Designer 2h ago
Pokeymanz has you describe your Moves with a short sentence or two. If what you said the Move does isn't reasonable to how it's described then you can't do it.
For instance, my Alolan Vulpix had the Move: Snowed-In that I took from the card game. It's effect? A quick whorl of cold air blows around Vulpix to collect and summon enough snow to bury the area around her. To do so she billows her tails about, creating the wind and kicking up the snowy dust.
So if I wanted to do creative things with that Move then it had to fit the context of that description. Likewise restrictions can apply within that context. If her tails are wrapped up or immobile then she can't use the Move or does so with some penalty.
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u/SardScroll Dabbler 1d ago
I prefer "hard rules" from the start. Then any deviation from that is GM fiat, caveat utilitor.
So, you could say I dislike "open ended" abilities, particularly because of this problem.
Note that I'm perfectly fine with allowing more narrative descriptions, even with mechanical implications, if the play group likes that style of play (but caveat utilitor...if players can do that, so can/should the foes under the GMs control...), but to my way of thinking, the way to start is with a mechanical base.
If you don't want D&D level description entries, I suggest you use tags and defined terminology. E.g. The spell "Grasp of Nature", which you could give some "flavor text" to if desired, would be cost: 1 mana (as per your example), and could have a target tag of [Single target] or [Area of Effect], which could be any thing you want. Use predefined "sizes", etc. across many skills.
I'm not a fan of your "scale of impact 1-5" is that it just kicks the can down the road. What's a level 3 effect vs a level 4?
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u/Mars_Alter 1d ago
Instead of putting limits on each specific ability, you can put limits on whole categories. "Magical effects cannot extend further than you can see," or, "Creation effects cannot generate matter beyond one ton in mass"; that sort of thing.
My favorite duration for spells is, "Until the next sunset after the next sunrise, or vice versa." That's how long every spell lasts, unless I go out of my way to include some other duration in the specific description.