What Makes a Great Magic System?

[simply Nathan]

Things I should be able to do with magic:

- Throw a ball of flaming HP reduction at my enemies. One combat turn.

- Throw non-fire projectiles of HP reduction at my enemies. One combat turn.

- Put enemies to sleep without wounding them. One combat turn or maybe two, but that's really pushing its utility down.

- Heal wounds. One combat turn.

- Teleport myself (and in group games, the party) in a manner that skips the boring wilderness travel from Dungeon to Town so we can go back to Town and sell loot and rest up for the next adventure.

- Teleport myself (and in group games, the party) from where we are in the dungeon back to the surface in an emergency situation, even if it means leaving a bunch of loot behind.

- Teleport myself (and in group games, the party) from the dungeon's entrance to the deepest area we've been to so we don't have to wade through mountains of kobolds every time we want to slay a dragon.

It should work like this:

I declare the spell I want to cast and the subject. I pay an energy cost from a pre-determined pool (MP, ER, FP, whatever you want to call it). Optionally roll for skill/success/failure. Spell takes its effects as stated in the book; if this derails "plot", then "plot" was dumb and it's a good thing we skipped it.



TFT is missing healing because spells are cast from a pool that bleeds into Hit Points. GURPS DF is missing the teleportation variants. Most of my favorite videogames with any sort of magic in them contained the majority of these effects.

And yeah, I'm being at least partly tongue-in-cheek. I just really prefer systems that let me do these things on this timescale without hassle.