Alternative Magicks: Mana (Introduction)

If anybody was actually reading this thing, you might be wondering where I've been for the last week. There were all these posts and then: nothing. Sometimes life intervenes. I'm actually a somewhat busy person, and hobbies such as this one will always get bumped down the priority list when other obligations intervene.

However, since nobody seems to be reading, I'll just keeping going as I find the time.

Anyway, here we are: my thoughts on creating a mana-based overlay for the Oe/1e D&D rules. This is not a replacement for the core rules, but an extension and modification of them. As mentioned previously, we're going to keep most of how the core magic system already works. Casters can still only know those spells which they can hold in their memory at any one time, and those are limited by class and spell levels according to the current spell progression charts. No changes there.

Here's a change, though: once a spell is learned, the caster doesn't forget it by using it. In fact, forgetting it in order to learn another spell will require some substantial time and effort, becoming a lot more difficult (more about that later).

Instead of forgetting and re-learning, casting any spell under these rules requires the expenditure of a magical energy resource, which we're going to call "mana" in honor of Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away series of books.

There have been many rule sets created along these lines, and it's a popular way of running magic use in computer games (where the computer can keep track of it all for you). Most of them are designed from the ground up as "point-based" spell casting systems. Even the later editions of the D&D rules introduce entire point-based spell-like casting systems, the most well-known of which are the psionics rules (later retconned into a form of magic all to itself).

I don't want that. If I did, I'd just junk the core magic rules and replace them with psionics (a popular option for 2e, 3e and 3.5e rule-hackers). Or, I'd just chuck the D&D-like rules entirely and go back to something like GURPS or another full point-based system.

No, this is going to be an attempt to hybridize the two systems into something that retains the full flavor of Oe/1e Vancian magic (even enhances it in some ways) and yet introduces a new dimension of magic use diversity and flexibility.

Here are some of the working principles I'm adopting for this exploration: 

• All the core Oe/1e rules for magic use are retained, except that casting a spell does not cause it to be forgotten.
• The casting of any spell or use of any magical effect requires the expenditure of a magical energy resource called Mana.
• Every living thing generates its own mana as a function of its life processes. We're going to call this Basal Mana (sort of like basal metabolism, but for magic). Some creatures generate more than others or at faster rates.
• When used, basal mana will regenerate at a set rate that will vary depending on the creature's activity level (faster when resting, slower when active).
• The amount of basal mana a player character has available will be scaled to experience level so that the net effect of the number of spell levels available to cast will be roughly the same as under the core rules, though the player will be able to cast any known spell as many times as available mana allows. Memorizing multiple copies of the same spell will no longer be necessary for this reason (and inadvisable anyway, because of some of the Ultra-Vancian house rules we'll be throwing in here later).
• Magic use must typically draw in a mana source that is internal to the source of the magic (i.e. a caster, monster, or magic item/artifact). In other words, a spell-caster can only cast spells if he or she has enough basal mana available to power the spell. If the internal mana source is not renewable (as for a magic item), expenditure of mana can exhaust it permanently.
• Special spells, conditions, or knowledge may allow the source of a magical effect to draw on external mana sources, or transfer mana from one place or creature to another, but these will be rare and very risky.
• Cast spells and magic use will sometimes fail. When they do, bad things can happen. A caster can reduce the risk of spell failure by spending more mana on making it turn out right.
• Spell and magical effects can be magnified by spending more mana on them, but not in any other way. This will replace class-level-dependent spell effects entirely.
• Inanimate objects and areas have a Background Mana Level (sort of like background radiation, except not). In other words, some places are highly magical (boosting spell effects and making unusual things possible), most have a normal level of background mana, and some are like magical deserts (magic doesn't work very well there, if at all, and magical creatures find it difficult to survive). 
• High-mana environments will be sought after by highly magical creatures and others who use large amounts of magic (such as high-level casters). They will therefore tend to be hotly-contested territories.
• Arcane/Divine Beings are physical instantiations in our reality of extra-dimensional magical forces themselves, and thus draw all their power from background mana in the form of a direct connection to the plane of their origin through some means in our reality. This means that they have few limits on their magical powers and can be extremely dangerous. Without access to their mana source, however, they cease to exist or become severely weakened (at least here).
• Magical creatures have to expend some amount of mana simply to stay alive (part of their metabolism involves a magic-dependent process) in addition to fueling their magical powers, and will usually have higher basal mana levels and regeneration rates.
• Mundane creatures don't, but still generate some amount of mana anyway by virtue of being alive.
• Magic-using character classes gain increased basal mana levels and regeneration rates through training for each experience level, linking their life force with the arcane or divine mana reservoirs of the universe.
• Because they can't make their own, Magic Items must be recharged from external mana sources, sort of like batteries. This will be difficult, time-consuming, and involve some amount of risk.
• Magic Artifacts will be treated as quasi-living things, and thus do regenerate their own mana. Of course, they're rare, powerful, have wills of their own, and are extremely dangerous to handle.

There are a lot of juicy opportunities for diversity and flexibility in the way magic works entailed by all this, but it looks like it will be pretty complicated to implement. Next up, I'll explore some house rules to implement these principles in ways that don't add too much complexity and should be easy for both GM and players to work with.

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.