Magical Thinking

I'm going to kick this off with a discussion of magic in fantasy role-playing, and in D&D-type games in particular.

I've never been fully satisfied with the way magic is handled in D&D. Gygax and Arneson clearly modeled the magic use system in the game on the fiction of Jack Vance. Magic users have to memorize spells once a day, and once used the spell is gone until it's re-memorized. Clerics use the same mechanics, but with prayer instead of study.

In one ear and out the other, I guess.

Magic also gets absurdly powerful at higher levels. Sure, mages are weak when they're at lower level, but above level 15 or so, magic user characters are virtually unbeatable. Once they gain a Wish spell in their top slot, they are effectively godlike. There are several threads on internet discussion boards where gamers have tried to optimize a non-magic-using character class to beat a high-level caster. The general consensus is that it can't be done.

And if the hard-core munchkins say that, you'd better believe it.

Other than avoidance via saving throw, there also isn't any sort of mechanic to allow for the failure of a spell. I've read a lot of fantasy stories involving magic, and many of the more entertaining ones contain cautionary tales of what happens when a powerful spell doesn't turn out right. Would your 20th level Wizard be so casual about throwing around Power Word: Kill spells if there was a chance the thing could backfire? I think not.

So, on one hand, we have a spell use and regeneration system that doesn't really make any kind of sense at all, memorialized with annoying and arbitrary game mechanics. Having memorized something directly applicable to your core profession and using it on a regular basis, are you likely to FORGET it any time soon? Me neither.

On the other hand, you have a source of power that has few if any weaknesses or downsides (the studying requirement is more of an annoyance than a real limitation). I know I'm generalizing this, but the broader point is hard to refute. At higher levels, non-casters should at least have a sporting chance of taking on a spell-caster and making a good account of themselves. Otherwise, the mages would quickly own or control everything in the world. (In some campaigns I've played in, this is actually part of the background for the adventuring, but it gets old fast since there's very little anyone who's a non-caster or congenitally magic-immune can do about it).

I also object to this magic system on aesthetic grounds. It's inelegant and monotonic. But maybe that's just me.

The one virtue it does have is simplicity, and that counts for a lot...maybe more than anything. If I'm going to suggest messing with it, any modification I make has to maintain a base level of simplicity, logic, and ease that is roughly comparable to the core rules. I also want to make sure that any changes don't turn this into an entirely new game. The goal is here is refinement, not a total re-write. The bathwater has got to go, but we like the baby just fine.

I also want to make sure than any modifications to the magic system reinforce other positive aspects of the game. Two of the greatest features of the Oe/1e D&D-style rules are flexibility of play and an emphasis on conserving resources. Anything that you can imagine is possible if you can articulate it to the DM, and there aren't any save points or unlimited ammo buffs.

One fictional take on magic use that has always appealed to me can be found in Larry Niven's Magic Goes Away stories. For those who haven't read them, they take place in a pre-historic earth-analog where magic is powered by a non-renewable resource called Mana. Magic uses up mana, and once the mana's gone, it never comes back. As the character Warlock says on realizing the implications of irrevocably depleting magical resources, "The swordsmen, the damned stupid swordsmen, will win after all." Aside from providing a clear balancing mechanism for a fantasy game, it's also a sobering analogy for oil dependence. No surprise that Niven wrote many of these stories in the 1970s. Imagine a Peak Mana scenario for a game campaign and you've got a rough approximation of Niven's fantasy milieu.

I'm not the only one who's speculated that a mana-based magical system would be a much more satisfying fit for D&D, but the obstacles to implementing such a thing are large.

First off, magic dependent on an expendable resource requires an accounting system. Accounting systems are notorious sources of complexity, which is what we're trying to avoid.

Second, if magic is powered by some kind of resource, wouldn't it make sense that having access to a lot of that resource could make a spell really, really powerful? Of course it would. Spell use in the core rules is limited by level and availability of spell slots. We don't want first level mages who find a way to tap into a large mana pool to start casting unlimited numbers of Wish spells. Nor do we want to regularly see high-level mages cast infinite Magic Missiles.

Third, there has to be some sort of way to interface mana rules with the existing spell-casting rules. Otherwise, we wind up having to write a whole new game system from scratch.

Fourth, and this is a bit less intangible, Vancian magic is a fundamental part of the flavor of D&D. If we get too far away from that, we're not really playing a D&D-style game anymore, and might as well be doing something else.

But there is a compelling logic to having magic use powered by some sort of expendable resource (the core rules use memory and time...we're just looking at a more logical and interesting alternative here), and it adds the potential for some very interesting diversity of effects if we can figure the mechanics out.

Before tackling the specifics of this line of thinking in detail and discussing my proposed solution, there is one more caveat I want to put on the table: Whatever I come up with for a resource-based magical system to modify the core rules, it must not substantially reduce or increase basic character spell-casting abilities. The mechanics of how spell casting works may change a lot (bringing in diversity and balance), but the net effect for how many and what kind of spells a mage or cleric may cast should not substantially change.

Therefore, some analysis is in order. The first thing to do is to find some way to quantify the status quo before fiddling with it.