Comment by 👽 TKurtBond
RPGs like GURPS, HERO System, CORPS, EABA, BESM, and OVA let you design powers for characters as a normal pat of character creation, including magic spells. OVA has a particularly interesting approach to this that is much less complicated than the others.
Other games, such as D6 Fantasy, Ars Magica, Talislanta 4th Edition (available for free lawfully from the Talislanta web site), Mage, For Faerie, Queen, and Country, and HARP Fantasy, among others, include rules specifically for designing spells.
And, of course, a lot of people just come up with some effects, talk about how powerful the spell should be, assigning it a level or a number of spell points it costs to cast it, and just kinda eyeball it.
Precis Intermedia Games sells, in their Atomik Add-Ons collection, Atomik Grimoire, which has rules for designing spells for any game system.
And some game systems, like Maelstrom and Maelstrom Domesday, use magic systems where you decide on the effect you want and the GM sets the difficulty of the casting the spell based on how unlikely the effect is — causing someone to slip on an ice path is easy, causing a fireball is really, really hard.
How rigorous do you want to be? How detailed do you want to be? How much effort do you want to put in?
Talislanta 4th edition’s spell design system is relatively simple, IIRC, and since it is free it might be a good place to start looking.
Mar 28 · 6 weeks ago
1 Later Comment
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk [OP] · Apr 09 at 20:53:
@TKurtBond - lots to think about there. Thank you.
Original Post
Homebrew magic systems? — Hey ttrpg-ers! Have any of you made up spells for your games? I mean either if you're using a homebrew set of classes, or if you're using standard rulesets. I'm asking because I'm running a campaign made of entirely homebrew encoutners, out of ICRPG, and my players have fun ideas for what kinds of characters they want to be. It doesn't fit easily into any game system's ideas of class/race progressions. So I'm finding ways for them to forge their own character...