Alternative Magicks: Ultra-Vancian

I'm sure my detractors will object to my ultimate intent of adding a Mana-based overlay to D&D spell-casting rules. I should stop violating the essential and dearly-beloved Vancian nature of D&D magic, and I should get off their lawn while I'm at it. Okay. Fair enough. One way to go with refining the magic system is to take the Vancian aspect and be thoroughly consistent in applying its logic. We describe the core D&D magic rules as being Vancian, but they are only selectively so. You can staunchly defend D&D's Vancian system against my incursions, but be ready to have me outflank you.

What if we turn the Vance up to eleven?

If you read the Dying Earth stories, there is a strong sense that a spell is a quasi-living entity: what we might call a memetic organism whose source of power is outside our reality. A meme in this sense would be a form of information that can exist independently and has the power to take over (or at least inhabit) minds and propagate itself under the right conditions. In a magical context, we must therefore presume that spells (as memes which can effect reality via supernatural forces) are manifestations in our dimensional plane of memetic entities existing on higher-dimensional planes.

There are several implications which follow. Spells must have wills and the ability to act on their own, and their own set of motivational parameters. Less sophisticated spells might be very simplistic in their powers and priorities (the equivalent of bacteria or flatworms): survival, propagation, growth, mind-share.

More sophisticated and powerful spells might even have intelligence and personalities of their own, following rules similar to ego defined in 1e AD&D for swords and artifacts. That little voice in your head? Yeah...that's not just an auditory hallucination, it's the Auditory Illusion spell you just memorized wanting to have a word with you about the Animate Dead spell throwing a party in the memory slot next door.

A really powerful and complex spell might be smarter and have more willpower than even the highest level caster. Trying to memorize and use such thing would be phenomenally dangerous, inviting possession and complete personality sublimation at the very least. A particularly malevolent spell could take over a caster's brain like a computer virus. It might even use its host to spread.

Magic User botnets? The wave of the future, man. Prepare to be assimilated.

(Note also that this gives a pretty good explanation for the behavior of some highly-magical monsters: they are physical thralls of powerful arcane forces which have completely colonized and changed them. Some may even be direct physical instantiations of magical forces in our reality.)

Similarly, we'd need to take into account the interactions between different spells as a caster gets them into her head. Memorize two Magic Missile spells, and unanticipated effects or an overdose might occur (much like mixing medication). The spells might not get along (put a conjuration-based spell in your head with a divination-based spell and create a memetic cage match in your brain) or could change one another with unpredictable results. More alarming still, they might start to reproduce.

Why would spell reproduction be alarming? After all, wouldn't that allow my Cleric to get infinite Cure Light Wounds by filling two spell slots?

Another reason a caster can only get so many spells into her head is that, like a pressure vessel, a mortal brain is rated to contain only so much magical force before undergoing explosive systemic failure. Exceed the maximum safety rating, and BOOM: meltdown. A 1st Level mage can certainly try to read or memorize that Trap the Soul spell he found on a scroll in the flea market, but his brain hasn't been strengthened to the point where he can safely contain it. The results could very likely be messy...and I'll just stand way over here while he reads it, thank you.

Even if he does somehow manage to get it in his head, safely getting it out again might not be so easy. 

A 2nd Level mage successfully memorizing two Shield spells may touch off a runaway Malthusian growth curve as they make new little Shield spells in the warm, dark boudoir of his cerebellum. A generation or three of reproduction, and KA-BLAM! At the very least, a runaway spell propagation in his head would be likely to over-write all his other memories and fill all his cognitive buffers with spell-related detritus. He'd be lucky to get off with simply going permanently insane. Death would be a mercy.

If there is one notion we should take away from extrapolating Jack Vance's fictional thoughts on spells and spell-casting, it is this: Magic is dangerous.

The core magic rules don't properly reflect that. Handling spells and magic should be treated like this guy treats flourine chemistry. Reading and memorizing a spell should require significant effort and precautions and even then will have the potential for catastrophic failure. The consequences of that failure should be proportionate to the power of the spell. More importantly, the consequences of succeeding might not be all that great either (once you've got a bunch of FOOF whipped up or Bigby's Crushing Hand itching at the door of your pre-frontal cortex wanting to get out, what do you do with it?). Careless casters wind up dead at the hands (figurative or literal) of their own spells. We hope the collateral damage isn't too widespread and the fallout plume blows out to sea. Scrolls and spellbooks should be treated like they contain nitro-glycerine or plutonium dust or chlorine triflouride...or worse. You certainly wouldn't want to casually carry one on your belt into a battle zone: REALLY bad things might happen to you.

All of which is perfectly true to the Vancian character of D&D magic. Some of this is not really usable in a game setting, or would be so complicated to administer that play would grind to a halt and we'd stop having fun. There are some interesting ideas for my core-rules-meddling to be found in this exploration, however. Let's list them:

1. Memorizing or praying for spells is a very dangerous and demanding task. It's not something to be done casually or in an uncontrolled environment. One does not simply whip out one's spellbook to re-memorize Meteor Swarm in Mordor (unless one happens to have one's protected stronghold there).
2. Spellbooks and scrolls are themselves very potent, dangerous, and volatile objects. Handle with care. A damaged spell book is a ticking bomb.
3. Even if conditions are right, there should be a chance for failure in learning a spell. The risks can be mitigated by lots of preparation and care, but never eliminated. Attempts that are careless, casual, or undertaken in less than ideal conditions have exponentially-increasing potential for failure.
4. If the attempt to learn a spell fails, something bad is likely to happen in proportion to how powerful the spell is and what it does.
5. A hard cap on the number and level of spells known is enforced by both a significant increase in time and effort to learn new ones and the threat of dire consequences if the limit is breached.
6. Casters will be forced to specialize in certain types of spells, since not all spells are compatible or interact in safe ways when known together at the same time.
7. There should also be a non-zero chance for any known spell cast to fail. The results will usually be unpleasant for everyone concerned. The chance for failure increases with spell level and contextual difficulty (such as combat conditions). It decreases with the experience level and ability stats of the caster.
8. Inexperienced or non-casters attempting to use higher-level spells and magic do so at very substantial risk to themselves and everyone around them, but there is the occasional (small) chance that something powerfully beneficial might result. You feeling lucky, punk?
9. Even looking at the text of a spell is enough to trigger some kind of effect, let alone reading it or trying to memorize it. Thieves in wizardly libraries had better be on their toes and keep their eyes from wandering. Nobody goes around promiscuously reading every text they find.

There are also some fun campaign ideas and milieu-flavor that might come from all this:

• Non-caster suspicion and fear of magic will be justified and very well-founded. Casters will not often be welcome among non-casters, even if alignments are shared and benefits are to be gained through the association. Even the well-meaning dabbler in the arcane or divine can cause very bad things to happen to innocent people by accident. Casters gone bad are so dangerous that they will likely be killed on sight if possible. As a result, casters will keep to themselves and take pains to disguise or downplay their spell-related activities unless they're looking for trouble. Anti-caster pogroms are not entirely unheard-of.
• On the flip side, casters who have a high-level mastery of magic and spell-casting will be legendary figures of awe and fear: much-sought-out as allies or enemies. Alliances will always be governed by convenience, not loyalty.
• There exists the potential for spell zombies: living beings who have been completely hijacked by and are now controlled by some spell or combination of spells. This would be a particular problem for schools of wizardry, which will have strong safeguards and magical hygiene policies to protect against it. Oh no, Harry! Hermione's been taken over by Wingardium Leviosa! Call Dumbledore before she levitates everything.

So, even though I'm going to be diluting some aspects of the Vancian magic system in the core D&D rules, I'm actually going to be making it more Vancian in some respects. The haters can chill.