Vancian Freeform Magic

I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms.  It isn't.  You'll see.

I love the idea of free-form spell systems because they allow for endless creativity, and for me, creative problem-solving is the biggest source of fun in RPGs.  In practice though, people often come up with a few favorite spells they cast over and over.  This system was designed to prevent that by continually varying the tools in the free-form spellcaster's toolbox.

It's a noun-verb system like Ars Magicka, except the nouns and verbs are not skills you're permanently trained in.  They're lost when used, like Vancian spells, and when you get new ones you get them randomly, much like first-level magic-users in a lot of really old-school games.  There are ways to make that less random– you'll see.

Nouns and verbs are called lexestins– a portmanteau of "lex" meaning word, and sandestins, from the works of Jack Vance.

Artist: Todd Ulrich

Verbs (d20)

1. Create
2. Detect
3. Enhance (strengthen or enlarge)
4. Reduce (weaken or shrink)
5. Destroy (or damage)
6. Reshape (into something of the same type, ie reshape iron makes an iron object into a different iron object)
7. Analyze (learn about something, understand it)
8. Mend
9. Summon
10. Disguise
11. Conceal
12. Control (within the bound of whatever that object would normally do)
13. Become 
14. Move (that is, telekinetically)
15. Halt (prevent from moving or acting)
16. Combine (two or more objects into a single object; this is one where maybe you could use two nouns in a single spell)
17. Abjure (as in protect against, so abjure sword wards against swords)
18. Transform (into something else altogether, so transform iron could transform something made of iron into something not made of iron.  This is one where you could again maybe use two nouns in a spell)
19. A verb relevant to the current location, see below for details.
20. A verb relevant to your god if a divine caster, otherwise a verb relevant to the current location

Nouns (d100)

1. Heat
2. Light 
3. Sound
4. Emotions
5. Memories
6. Animals (alive only)
7. Plants (alive only)
8. Stone (includes concrete, brick)
9. Wood (dead or alive, includes paper)
10. Limbs (arms, legs)
11. Metal
12. Clothing
13. Weapons
14. Devices
15. People
16. Armor
17. Dead (pepple/animals, not including undead, includes dead animal materials like leather)
18. Undead
19. Spirits
20. Writing
21. Water
22. Kinetic energy
23. Explosives
24. Air
25. Electromagnetism (including electricity and/or magnetism, separately)
26. Robots/drones
27. Electronics
28. Building
29. Vehicle
30. Cloth (includes ballistic fibers like kevlar)
31. Glass
32. Plastic
33. Drugs/medicine/poison
34. Magic
35. Time
36. Space
37. Senses or sensory organs
38. Strength
39. Dexterity
40. Health
41. Charisma
42. Knowledge (both the attribute and general fields of knowledge, but not specific memories)
43. Perception (the attribute)
44. Willpower
45. Skin
46. Tools
47. Food or beverage
48. Thoughts
49. Fatigue (includes both fatigue and hit points)
50. Gravity

51-60 Generate 5 random nouns, referee picks one

61-70 Generate 3 random nouns, player picks one

71-90 A noun relevant to the current location, referee's choice.  So if the sorcerer is near the site of a recent forest fire they might get a fire sandestin, if they're in a carpenter's shop they might get wood or create, and so on.  

Items which have been used to accomplish great deeds can have the same effect, whether they're magical or not– a sword that has slain many foes may attract "destroy" lexestins, the toolkit of a highly accomplished eye surgeon may attract "senses" lexestins.  Sorcerers collect such items; they act something like spellbooks in other systems.  

Note that actual spellboooks have no place in this system, though grimoires are still used for rituals, which are a separate system. 

91-100– For divine casters, a noun of particular significance to your god.  For everyone else, one relevant to the location.  

Collecting Lexestins

A sorcerer or magic-user can have a maximum number of lexestins equal to Knowledge plus their Level.  A cultist, warlock or cleric can have a maximum number equal to their Knowledge plus half their level.  A half-caster class can have a number equal to their knowledge.  

By meditating for an hour after a night's rest, a sorcerer or magic-user may collect a number of lexestins equal to d6+their Knowledge modifier, plus one for every three full levels.  A cultist, warlock or cleric collects a number equal to d4+KNO mod, plus one for every five full levels. A half-caster collects a number equal to d3 + KNO mod, plus one for every six full levels.

The spellcaster can choose whether to roll for verbs or nouns.  In general, you'll want an even mix of each.

If you rest somewhere seeped in magic, like a wizard's tower, temple for a cult that has real magic, etc, you get one or two extra lexestins depending on how much magic there is nearby.

Casting Spells

Casting a spell takes a round, like in any other system.  Pick one verb and one noun to combine; you lose them and cast that spell, i.e. Create Fire.  You could maybe cast a spell with two nouns, like Transform Iron into Fire.  

All casters have a caster power that determines how strong their spells can be.  Caster power equals your level plus WIL mod for full casters, or half your level plus your full WIL mod for half casters.  Some powerful magic items can raise your caster power.

Area effect spells have a radius equal to 5 feet times caster power.

Damaging or healing spells do caster power D6's if they're single-target, or caster power/2 d4's if they affect an area or multiple targets.  If the spell takes advantage of something that already exists rather than creating the effect out of nothing– like throwing an existing fire at an enemy rather than conjuring fire out of thin air– raise the die size one step.

If you're using a system where HP doesn't scale very much, like GLOG or The Nightmares Underneath, then single-target damaging spells do 2d6+caster power, and area spells do 2d4+ half caster power.  

Buffing or disabling spells can affect multiple targets if it's a weak buff like Bless or if it only weakens targets like reducing their strength, disabling an arm, etc.  The equivalent of totally disabling spells like Hold Person, or awesome buffs like shapechange, can only affect one target.  Something like sleep that totally disables someone but can be easily cancelled, like how you can just shake people awake from sleep, can affect multiple targets.  

Spells with a duration last caster power minutes if the effect is really strong or hours if it's not as strong; go with whatever old-school spell it seems most similar to.   

If it's a touch spell, raise the damage a step, or raise the duration a unit of time– from minutes to hours or hours to days.  

Spell attack rolls and saves against spells will depend on whatever system you're grafting this onto.

This whole system requires a lot of on the spot rulings; use spells from more standard old-school systems as a guideline.  

Optional Dark and Dangerous Magic

All spells require a casting roll.  If you roll a critical, roll a d10 and a d8.  You take the d10 in damage to a random ability score; on a 7-8 on the d8 (or just an 8 with my seven-ability system) it goes to hit points.

So What Are Lexestins Anyway?

They're a sort of insubstantial, magical/spiritual/psychic symbiote.  The two types, which we think of as verbs and nouns, are the two "sexes."  It would be a mistake to call them male and female though; they don't have sperm and eggs and their reproduction is nothing like ours.  

There are known to be hundreds of noun lexestins, including many that have yet to be officially catalogued.  There may even be thousands.  It is widely suspected that there are other verb lexestins besides the eighteen that have been officially catalogued, but nobody knows for sure.  

When someone casts a spell, the verb and noun used are destroyed, and their magical essence magnified and released into the world.  This eventually coalesces into more lexestins, which is also why you can collect them more easily in places like wizard's lairs.

In other words, every time you cast a spell, two alien psychic symbiotes fuck each other to death inside your soul.  This is just one of many good reasons why people don't like sorcerers.  

Shadowrun Magic for Stars Without Number and Other OSR Games

Shadowrun is a terrible system with an awesome concept behind it, which is why at least once a month someone on r/rpg asks what the best non-Shadowrun system is for playing Shadowrun.  The most common answer– and the correct one in my opinion– is Stars Without Number. 

Now SWN has psionics rules, and the deluxe version also has some "space magic" rules, but neither quite work like Shadowrun magic does.  To summarize:

In Shadowrun, spells are level-less, so any mage can potentially cast any spell (supplements add some special exceptions because it's Shadowrun, of course they do).  When casting a spell you pick the force– the power you'l cast it at– resolve the effects, and then roll for "drain", which means you might take either stun or physical damage from your own spell.  The higher the force, the stronger the spell and the more drain you'll take.

It's not Vancian at all, and nothing I've seen in the OSR quite works that way.  Here's a Shadowrun magic hack that comes really close. 

Pick an OSR game of your choice to play "Shadowrun" with.  As mentioned, SWN is probably the best choice, but Esoteric Enterprises would work too, as would a few others.  It needs to be a game with a magic system though. 

Spells can be leveled as in most systems or level-less; this works either way.  You learn spells as normal; this just changes how you cast them. 

Step One

Pick a spell to cast.  Unlike in normal OSR systems, you can cast spells up to twice the spell level you'd normally be able to cast, so like a first-level wizard could cast level 2 spells, etc.  If using level-less spells, imagine you learn a new spell level every other character level like in most systems. 

There will of course be a cost to casting spells above your normal casting level.  You'll see...

Step Two

Resolve the spell's immediate effects as normal.  Drain comes after the spell is cast.

Step 3

Now comes the price: drain, in the form of temporary wisdom or constitution damage. 

Make a save versus magic, or a wisdom save, or in Stars Without Number, a mental save.

Now take drain.  In the five spell level system of Stars Without Number, this is d4 for a level 1 spell, d6 for a level 2 spell, and d8, 10, d12, so on.  In the nine spell level system used by most games, drain is 1/d2/d3/d4/d5/d6/d8/d10/d12. 

If the spell was a level you'd normally be able to cast– so its level was no higher than half your character level rounded up– drain causes temporary wisdom damage.  If higher, it causes constitution damage.  If you passed the save, the drain is halved, rounded down. 

Temporary WIS and CON damage lowers your modifiers as normal, potentially reducing your hit points, perception, saves vs magic, or whatever those ability scores do in your system. 

If CON goes to zero, you're dead.  If WIS goes to zero, you're just knocked unconscious. 

So as you go up in level, you can a) cast higher-level spells, b) cast higher-level spells safely, and c) pas the save more often, thus taking less drain. 

The number of spells you can cast per day (or per week since the ability damage does take time to heal) still doesn't scale as well as spellcasting ability does in most OSR games.  This works best if you can increase WIS, and maybe also CON, as you level up.  If your game of choice doesn't allow that, maybe make it so drain is completely avoided if you either pass the save by ten or more, or roll a nat 1 or 20 (whichever is good obviously) on it. 

Some Rituals

A a few things I came up with for a ritual magic system I'm working on. 

The "ritual kit" referenced below is a simple toolkit consisting of candles, magical paints, dyes, paintbrushes and small chisels/awls for engraving runes, incense, fetishes, and other occult paraphernelia.  It's not "magical" in itself, and costs twice as much as thieves tools.   

Illuminate The Things That Should Not Be

Petty ritual.  Casting time: 10 minutes Requirements: a torch, a ritual kit.

The ritualist engraves a few runes into the handle of the torch and sprinkles incense onto the head of the torch while chanting an arcane liturgy.  After the ritual is complete, the torch ignites.  The magic of the ritual remains active until the torch is extinguished or burns out, typically 2 hours later. 

While the torch remains lit, its light causes all extradimensional beings– substantial or not, disguised or not– to glow the color ulfire, which does not normally exist in this dimension. 

Anyone who views the color ulfire must save vs magic or suffer d4 temporary wisdom/perception damage.  Each person only needs to make this safe once per use of the ritual. 

The Conjoined Dreaming of Distant Planes

Potent ritual.  Casting time: 4 hours.  Requirements: ritual kit, a sapient subject, somewhere comfortable for them to sleep.  A relic or body part of a dead person who had contact with the same type of entity you're trying to contact. 

Before performing this ritual, the subject of the ritual must spend a day neither speaking, reading, writing nor hearing any language in order to cleanse the mind of human (or humanoid) thought patterns.  Once the ritual begins, they must not be spoken to, other than the chants that are actually part of the ritual. 

The subject of the ritual lies down and closes their eyes.  The ritualist paints a third eye on their forehead, drugs them and lights incense, then recites an occult chant to lull the subject to sleep.  The ritualist must declare what being or type of being they wish to contact, from what plane– an elemental from the plane of fire, the demon Bal-Korok, etc. 

While the subject sleeps, the ritualist speaks to the, using subliminal messages to guide their mind to a distant plan where the dreamer makes contact with the desired being– or at least, something like it.  The ritualist then chants the questions or type of information he wants to know.  The contacted being provides answers in the form of dreams– these dreams are always abstract and symbolic, conveying the desired information through metaphor and allegory rather than plan language.

Upon waking, the dreamer suffers d10 damage to a random mental attribute, but can save for half damage.  They must then write down everything they dreamt before they forget it.  After that, the dreams must be analyzed and deciphered to figure out their meaning.

Cast Down the Reaching Arms of the Earth

Mighty ritual.  Casting time: 3 days  Requirements: ritual kit, an isolated location within 6 miles of the target area, stones taken from the perimeter of the target area, and a person who lives in the targeted area.  That person must either be sacrificed as part of the ritual, or participate in it without knowing its true purpose.  Before performing the ritual, all participants must spend a week consuming only food from the targeted area. 

This ritual lowers the elevation of a region of several square miles– up to one square mile times the level of the ritual leader.  At the end of the ritual, the land within the target area is lowered.  Mountains may be flattened, valleys created, but the land may only be lowered as low as the elevation at which the ritual is being conducted, and it may be lowered by no more than the ritual leader's level times 50 meters. 

The ritual may be conducted underground, however. Mighty mountain fortresses have been pulled below sea level with this ritual, vibrant ecosystems destroyed by the heat and pressure of low altitudes.

The lowering takes the better part of a day– it causes an earthquake, but it's slow enough that well-built edifices won't be toppled.  Just lowered. Usually. 

Steal the Fortune of the Summer Court

Casting time: ten minutes.  Requirement: ritual kit, one live fae.

The ritualist sacrifices a fae creature and gains some small portion of the luck of faerie.  She gains a pool of three re-rolls which can be used whenever she fails a roll.  These re-rolls must be used within one lunar cycle.