D&D or DCC? Which magic system will reign supreme? As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Check out my other social medias and musings via the link below. linktr.ee/magicusergames
Been getting into DCC recently, myself. Have an elf who loves casting the animal summoning spell, but the mercurial magic effect is that casting the spell saps the life from a (now) dying world. So, it's like the elf is siphoning life from another world to temporarily create life in their world. The elf is frequently contacted in dreams by a powerful sage-like entity from the dying world pleading for them to stop using the spell. They *really* like spell though, and they're trying to barter with the entity to bribe them with arcane knowledge to *not* siphon the rest of the life from their world.
DCC magic is a LOT of fun! Savage Worlds (my favorite system), on the other hand, has a completely customizable, Power Point-based magic system that offers a selection of "generic" powers that the PLAYER customizes via Trappings and Power Modifiers. In Savage Worlds, "magic missile" is "Bolt." The user decides if it's fire, electricity, a stream of insects, etc. These can then have specific effects against targets with environmental weaknesses, they do damage between 2d6 and 4d6 depending on the die roll or the spending of additional Power Points. It's great stuff!
In addition to mercurial magic, there's the manifestation aspect. So your magic missile might manifest as a flock of screaming miniature eagles hurtling towards the target or your fireball might be a stream of liquid fire.
1st ! Well, I am the first to feed the algorithm. My first and second gaming shop took WotC 3e D&D and Star Wars and created a magic system of using skill ranks like Star Wars does Force powers and applied that to D&D magic. Spells are powered with temporary Hp which are recover with a short rest. Example : Fire Ball requires a Spellcraft check of DC:15 +3 for spell level minus ability modifier resulting in a roll of 17 and cost basic caster level of 5 hp. And results higher than what is needed to roll grants bonus dmg or DC to resist spell effect. Also we took Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) d10 system of Mage the Awakening and applied that to our house rules. Instead of rolling 1d20 we rolled 4d6. 1's cancel out succusses. 6 is a basic succuss. ( 4s on d6.) Reroll 10s ( reroll 6s) for chance of extra succusses or extreme failures. To add difficulty in casting Circle of Protection, caster must make Spellcraft rolls each melee round or minute and take 1d6 mental exhaustion in keeping back the fiendish outsider till the spell breaks. 2.) Other notes we ran our own sci-fi campaign using WotC 3.5e Star Wars rule book and had Force Users cast Force skill powers as magic spell slots for flavor. Stander Jedi, Dark Jedi/Sith and Force Adept classes cast Force powers as normal within a stander melee round with a simple hand gesture at more or less will. The more shaman or academic wizard types takes 1d6 +1 melee rounds per spell level to get effect after preforming a ritual. Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) Mage the Awakening is a nice book to get a different view on dice pool mechanics in running RPG magic systems. Hope you had a good holiday.
I need to check out Mage the Awakening. Been really interested in how games handle magic. A lot of them do it better than D&D. Thanks for watching and I had a great holiday!
Class level is used in Castles & Crusades for most checks. It's actually a feature of the system. If you try to make a check for something you're not proficient in (ex: a Fighter trying to sneak behind some guards), you don't add your class level to the check
To be fair... the way you described for getting the players to learn new spells in 5e is how it is supposed to work... for the most part. Divine casters like paladins, clerics and druids get access to their whole spell list, but they have to prepare their spells ahead of time. These are miracles that they've prayed for and their deity has granted them. As long as the spell is prepared, they don't need to do anything to re-prepare that spell unless they want to swap it with something else. A DM should emphasize the roleplay scene of such a character doing their daily routine of prayer alongside getting ready to travel or getting ready for bed depending on whether they prefer to pray at night or in the morning. Wizards on the other hand, only get a single new spell each level to represent their growing understanding of how to weave magic while under the duress of combat. Experimenting with various combinations of spell components. Wizards will have a small list of spells to use unless their DM actually rewards the group with spellbooks that already have spells in them, scrolls the wizard can copy into their spellbook, and especially time for the wizard to make consumable magical items such as potions and spell scrolls. Any Wizard not spending their downtime and gold making magic items isn't using their downtime in its fullest capacity. It doesn't mean that you can't use your downtime for other things, but spell scrolls are an easy way for a wizard to boost their low spell-per-day count without using any of their spell slots. Sure, creating the spell costs whatever slot you prepared the spell at for the day, but if you have a week to prepare for the adventure, any wizard should be Batman. These are things that, sadly, 5e doesn't draw a whole lot of attention towards. It states that this is how spells are supposed to be prepared and available... but few people actually seem to delve into that part of the magic system. I personally love the idea of adding the mercurial magic table to 5e and seeing how it might change the feeling of the spells, but my players already mess with the flavor of the spells enough that I simply enjoy the straightforward mechanics of the magic system in 5e.
I had a player who was somewhat reluctant to use mercurial magic. I think he was worried about his wizard being useless because of some detrimental elements he might have. I love it. I love that he had some non-combat spell that when he cast, summoned a thunderstorm that could last for days. I enjoy the heck out of DCC. I'm not a D&D fan, but this is the closest thing I find fun. My favorite magic system comes from the game Ars Magica. It's amazing. It is deeply tied to its specific setting (Mythic Europe, a fantastical Middle Ages Europe), including the use of Latin. It would be difficult to transfer it to other settings. But it's truly excellent.
Love these concepts. But the biggest issue I see is finding a player base willing to play this way. So many players are warped by 5e into demanding I-win buttons.
To be fair there's different ways to implement magic systems. Dnd though I feel is presented in a bad way and unintuitive. For example if you have a 9th level spell slot left and only that one wouldn't it reason you have the power to cast multiple 1st level spells? The warlock is the only one that really makes sense for. Yes there's all the stuff about the weave but if how it works isn't explained in the mechanics then it doesn't matter in my opinion. Imagine if in the rules of spellcasting it explains those who use magic had arcane rings that are developed inside them around a magical core. Each ring or to use a more interesting word "orbit" is a magnitude of power. There's 9 orbits and to create a mote of power on one of the orbits would take effort. The further out the orbits are the more effort it takes. Different orbits would be able to hold so many motes of power.As it's describing sigular motes of power on each orbit that explains why someone with higher spell slots can't simply cast more lower level slots How something is presented is very important and this would be a much less vague explanation of DND magic. While setting agnostic systems have their place in hobby for me I've come to find I prefer systems where the setting and lore is baked into the mechanics of the game itself. At this point I'm rambling but it's a thought I've been having that crystallized while writing the first part of this comment. Like when WOTC removed ability modifiers from races saying "well they may not be this way in your world" my first thought was "but what are they like in DND worlds?" They stripped away lore and identity. I'm making my own game system and showed two species to someone telling them nothing more than they're from the same world and from that alone tried to see how well they could guess their story in order to see how well the mechanics conveys that story
Critical miss (Fumble) tables are interesting to me. Players often hate fumble rules, storygames (e.g. Blades in the Dark) thrive on them... but they call them Consequences and have one rule that should never be broken. A Consequence should never ever make a player feel stupid. Dropping your sword, tripping over your own feet, casting a fire spell targeting yourself, ... are all examples of making players feel like bumbling idiots, especially in front of their party. And it makes them hate fumbles. If your players are like that, try putting things in front of them that are seemingly not their fault. A fire manipulation spell might for example, on a natural 1, summon a fire demon trapped within the spell, who joins the combat and is not on your side. This fumble does not make them look bad; nobody could have known there was a fire demon within the spell! But... it's something new they have to deal with. One idea for whether or not to let the player know what a natural 1 might do, is to give it a cryptic hint rather than spell it outright. "Natural 1 means living fire." Obvious in retrospect, but it keeps the player curious what will happen on a natural 1.
You are a bit wrong on how spells worked in 3/3.5 a wizard can cast any spell in their spell book which they know if they have a spell slot for it, and each time they get new spells they get to add two spells to their spell book. This is different from Sorcerer who just know the spell inherently but only know so many and don't need to prepare them.
1e ad&d had minimum number of spells per spell level. A magic user had to go through the list of spells making a percentile roll. If you fail the roll that caster cannot learn that spell, unless their intelligence is permanent increased. The caster still has to find that spell somewhere in the world. The maximum puts a cap on spells from that spell level group. Clerics have a chance to fail any spell that they cast with a wisdom of 12, or less. There is also minimum intelligence, and wisdom required to cast higher level spells. If your players are making characters that roll 3d6 down the line. No selecting which roll goes for whatever attribute that player wants. If a player spends the time rerolling all their attributes for an 18 intelligence. Only to fail by a 15% chance to learn a desirable 1st level spell. Tear up the character sheet and start over once again.
Not trying to tell you what you should or should not play, the magic system for DCC sounds really freaking cool and it'd love to try it out or implement some version of it in other ttrpgs(Dragonbane could be a really cool fit for it tbh), but some of your comments just make it feel like you don't really know 5e. Stuff like -describing only the wizard's spell prep and then acting like that's all 5e spell prep when other classes with spellcasting differ fairly substantially, -not understanding the core fantasy of a wizard and just assuming spells magically pop up in their spellbook when it's obviously a simple way to show that the wizard has been studying(since wizards are defined by needing to study to learn spells), -not understanding that yeah literally anyone can become a warlock??? like, your party's fighter can take a level in warlock at literally any point they so choose, it's not even limited to only previous magic users, -saying 5e spellcasters just always succeed in getting their spell of without having to make checks and then mentioning both types of checks that need to be made in order to see if a spell is cast successfully??? -not considering how adding class lvl to abilities would severely fuck up bounded accuracy nor that proficiency bonus is literally meant to be the answer to exactly how you could implement that idea without breaking the game Again, not saying the DCC magic system doesn't sound fucking dope. This made me super-excited to try it out. And honestly not even saying 5e is my favorite magic system or anything, i myself have quite a few problems with it and prefer other systems. But we can critique and compare systems without either misrepresenting stuff.
You DO roll for success on a LOT of spells. You cast Firebolt, you roll to hit. Sometimes, others roll to negate your spell's effects. Fighters don't roll to successfully get a second attack, or second action. They just do. But they do roll to attack or perform said action. It'd feel kinda bad if, before you attack, you roll to see if you can ATTEMPT to attack your enemy.
Early editions had no spell slots. None. There is a number of spells per spell level you can memorize. You study, memorize and use them, no "up casting" or such with spell slots.
The wizard is studying and working on the spells as they are leveling up . That's why they get to pick there spells. Also no one wants to sit there why the wizard player is describing everything they are doing to learn a single new spells.
I think each is good in its own right. Cool to hear about something different, but I personally prefer hard magic systems, and am not overly fond of unpredictable magics. I don't think unpredictability somehow makes it more magical. Magic can have consistent rules and still be awesome and wondrous. I don't think it makes much sense for high level magic users to cast, say, a cantrip, or 1st-level spell and fail it based on a random roll. I mean, maybe when you first learn a spell, you could take some time to get used to it, but if I were playing a wizard at 14th level, why would the caster fail a 1st-level casting of a spell the character has known for a long time? I do like the idea of having to go learn the spells in character, and maybe it could take a bit to master the spell, but once mastered, I think it would make sense that magical consistency would be a good reward, and could act as an indication of a casters power.
DCC is a joke! I think it all is just so stupid. I bought it several months ago and so disappointed. And you call DCC a system? No it is a total joke. In fact, the first few pages it tells you to rely mostly on what you already know from other systems. So it is just a ridiculous version of "Home Brew Rules". It is not a system but a different ideas about how to run spells in your campaign. I don't like it at all.
Been getting into DCC recently, myself. Have an elf who loves casting the animal summoning spell, but the mercurial magic effect is that casting the spell saps the life from a (now) dying world. So, it's like the elf is siphoning life from another world to temporarily create life in their world. The elf is frequently contacted in dreams by a powerful sage-like entity from the dying world pleading for them to stop using the spell. They *really* like spell though, and they're trying to barter with the entity to bribe them with arcane knowledge to *not* siphon the rest of the life from their world.
Look at how much story was produced from roll on a table! Thanks for sharing!
100% agree on 5e warlock, that's not a class, thats a backstory or a quest thing
DCC magic is a LOT of fun! Savage Worlds (my favorite system), on the other hand, has a completely customizable, Power Point-based magic system that offers a selection of "generic" powers that the PLAYER customizes via Trappings and Power Modifiers. In Savage Worlds, "magic missile" is "Bolt." The user decides if it's fire, electricity, a stream of insects, etc. These can then have specific effects against targets with environmental weaknesses, they do damage between 2d6 and 4d6 depending on the die roll or the spending of additional Power Points. It's great stuff!
In addition to mercurial magic, there's the manifestation aspect. So your magic missile might manifest as a flock of screaming miniature eagles hurtling towards the target or your fireball might be a stream of liquid fire.
Magic eagle sounds american as all hell.
1st !
Well, I am the first to feed the algorithm.
My first and second gaming shop took WotC 3e D&D and Star Wars and created a magic system of using skill ranks like Star Wars does Force powers and applied that to D&D magic. Spells are powered with temporary Hp which are recover with a short rest.
Example : Fire Ball requires a Spellcraft check of DC:15 +3 for spell level minus ability modifier resulting in a roll of 17 and cost basic caster level of 5 hp. And results higher than what is needed to roll grants bonus dmg or DC to resist spell effect.
Also we took Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) d10 system of Mage the Awakening and applied that to our house rules. Instead of rolling 1d20 we rolled 4d6.
1's cancel out succusses.
6 is a basic succuss. ( 4s on d6.)
Reroll 10s ( reroll 6s) for chance of extra succusses or extreme failures.
To add difficulty in casting Circle of Protection, caster must make Spellcraft rolls each melee round or minute and take 1d6 mental exhaustion in keeping back the fiendish outsider till the spell breaks.
2.) Other notes we ran our own sci-fi campaign using WotC 3.5e Star Wars rule book and had Force Users cast Force skill powers as magic spell slots for flavor.
Stander Jedi, Dark Jedi/Sith and Force Adept classes cast Force powers as normal within a stander melee round with a simple hand gesture at more or less will. The more shaman or academic wizard types takes 1d6 +1 melee rounds per spell level to get effect after preforming a ritual.
Whitewolf/World of Darkness (WoD) Mage the Awakening is a nice book to get a different view on dice pool mechanics in running RPG magic systems.
Hope you had a good holiday.
I need to check out Mage the Awakening. Been really interested in how games handle magic. A lot of them do it better than D&D. Thanks for watching and I had a great holiday!
@@magicusergames I would recommend taking a look at how Warhammer Fantasy handles magic. Probably one of the best I’ve seen
Class level is used in Castles & Crusades for most checks. It's actually a feature of the system. If you try to make a check for something you're not proficient in (ex: a Fighter trying to sneak behind some guards), you don't add your class level to the check
That's a great way of doing checks. Really simple and intuitive. Thanks for watching!
Big fan of the “need a tutor” style of learning spells, spell checks, and the risk reward of DCC. Always felt casting was too easy in 5e
To be fair... the way you described for getting the players to learn new spells in 5e is how it is supposed to work... for the most part.
Divine casters like paladins, clerics and druids get access to their whole spell list, but they have to prepare their spells ahead of time. These are miracles that they've prayed for and their deity has granted them. As long as the spell is prepared, they don't need to do anything to re-prepare that spell unless they want to swap it with something else. A DM should emphasize the roleplay scene of such a character doing their daily routine of prayer alongside getting ready to travel or getting ready for bed depending on whether they prefer to pray at night or in the morning.
Wizards on the other hand, only get a single new spell each level to represent their growing understanding of how to weave magic while under the duress of combat. Experimenting with various combinations of spell components. Wizards will have a small list of spells to use unless their DM actually rewards the group with spellbooks that already have spells in them, scrolls the wizard can copy into their spellbook, and especially time for the wizard to make consumable magical items such as potions and spell scrolls. Any Wizard not spending their downtime and gold making magic items isn't using their downtime in its fullest capacity. It doesn't mean that you can't use your downtime for other things, but spell scrolls are an easy way for a wizard to boost their low spell-per-day count without using any of their spell slots. Sure, creating the spell costs whatever slot you prepared the spell at for the day, but if you have a week to prepare for the adventure, any wizard should be Batman.
These are things that, sadly, 5e doesn't draw a whole lot of attention towards. It states that this is how spells are supposed to be prepared and available... but few people actually seem to delve into that part of the magic system. I personally love the idea of adding the mercurial magic table to 5e and seeing how it might change the feeling of the spells, but my players already mess with the flavor of the spells enough that I simply enjoy the straightforward mechanics of the magic system in 5e.
I had a player who was somewhat reluctant to use mercurial magic. I think he was worried about his wizard being useless because of some detrimental elements he might have. I love it. I love that he had some non-combat spell that when he cast, summoned a thunderstorm that could last for days. I enjoy the heck out of DCC. I'm not a D&D fan, but this is the closest thing I find fun.
My favorite magic system comes from the game Ars Magica. It's amazing. It is deeply tied to its specific setting (Mythic Europe, a fantastical Middle Ages Europe), including the use of Latin. It would be difficult to transfer it to other settings. But it's truly excellent.
I need to check out Ars Magica. Thanks for the comment!
Love these concepts. But the biggest issue I see is finding a player base willing to play this way. So many players are warped by 5e into demanding I-win buttons.
I agree
5e is like passing stool though a hole than the stool hole.
Great video, man! Good presentation, I like your casual vibe. and I couldn't agree more :) I love DCC's magic system. It truly feels like magic!
Thanks for watching and for the kind words. Happy new year!
To be fair there's different ways to implement magic systems. Dnd though I feel is presented in a bad way and unintuitive. For example if you have a 9th level spell slot left and only that one wouldn't it reason you have the power to cast multiple 1st level spells? The warlock is the only one that really makes sense for. Yes there's all the stuff about the weave but if how it works isn't explained in the mechanics then it doesn't matter in my opinion. Imagine if in the rules of spellcasting it explains those who use magic had arcane rings that are developed inside them around a magical core. Each ring or to use a more interesting word "orbit" is a magnitude of power. There's 9 orbits and to create a mote of power on one of the orbits would take effort. The further out the orbits are the more effort it takes. Different orbits would be able to hold so many motes of power.As it's describing sigular motes of power on each orbit that explains why someone with higher spell slots can't simply cast more lower level slots
How something is presented is very important and this would be a much less vague explanation of DND magic. While setting agnostic systems have their place in hobby for me I've come to find I prefer systems where the setting and lore is baked into the mechanics of the game itself. At this point I'm rambling but it's a thought I've been having that crystallized while writing the first part of this comment. Like when WOTC removed ability modifiers from races saying "well they may not be this way in your world" my first thought was "but what are they like in DND worlds?" They stripped away lore and identity. I'm making my own game system and showed two species to someone telling them nothing more than they're from the same world and from that alone tried to see how well they could guess their story in order to see how well the mechanics conveys that story
thank you. I was actually about to do something very similar in my own game, but I didn't know DCC had that.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Critical miss (Fumble) tables are interesting to me. Players often hate fumble rules, storygames (e.g. Blades in the Dark) thrive on them... but they call them Consequences and have one rule that should never be broken. A Consequence should never ever make a player feel stupid.
Dropping your sword, tripping over your own feet, casting a fire spell targeting yourself, ... are all examples of making players feel like bumbling idiots, especially in front of their party. And it makes them hate fumbles.
If your players are like that, try putting things in front of them that are seemingly not their fault. A fire manipulation spell might for example, on a natural 1, summon a fire demon trapped within the spell, who joins the combat and is not on your side. This fumble does not make them look bad; nobody could have known there was a fire demon within the spell! But... it's something new they have to deal with.
One idea for whether or not to let the player know what a natural 1 might do, is to give it a cryptic hint rather than spell it outright. "Natural 1 means living fire." Obvious in retrospect, but it keeps the player curious what will happen on a natural 1.
Yes, the warlock is a stupid class in 5E
You are a bit wrong on how spells worked in 3/3.5 a wizard can cast any spell in their spell book which they know if they have a spell slot for it, and each time they get new spells they get to add two spells to their spell book. This is different from Sorcerer who just know the spell inherently but only know so many and don't need to prepare them.
08:00 Altered States came to mind
1e ad&d had minimum number of spells per spell level. A magic user had to go through the list of spells making a percentile roll. If you fail the roll that caster cannot learn that spell, unless their intelligence is permanent increased. The caster still has to find that spell somewhere in the world. The maximum puts a cap on spells from that spell level group.
Clerics have a chance to fail any spell that they cast with a wisdom of 12, or less.
There is also minimum intelligence, and wisdom required to cast higher level spells. If your players are making characters that roll 3d6 down the line. No selecting which roll goes for whatever attribute that player wants. If a player spends the time rerolling all their attributes for an 18 intelligence. Only to fail by a 15% chance to learn a desirable 1st level spell. Tear up the character sheet and start over once again.
It sounds a lot like the same magic system with extra steps, tbh
Fritz lieber also had a strong effect on D&d magic. Probably as much as Vance
I have some of his work. I have not read them, yet. I've only heard good things, though.
Not trying to tell you what you should or should not play, the magic system for DCC sounds really freaking cool and it'd love to try it out or implement some version of it in other ttrpgs(Dragonbane could be a really cool fit for it tbh), but some of your comments just make it feel like you don't really know 5e.
Stuff like
-describing only the wizard's spell prep and then acting like that's all 5e spell prep when other classes with spellcasting differ fairly substantially,
-not understanding the core fantasy of a wizard and just assuming spells magically pop up in their spellbook when it's obviously a simple way to show that the wizard has been studying(since wizards are defined by needing to study to learn spells),
-not understanding that yeah literally anyone can become a warlock??? like, your party's fighter can take a level in warlock at literally any point they so choose, it's not even limited to only previous magic users,
-saying 5e spellcasters just always succeed in getting their spell of without having to make checks and then mentioning both types of checks that need to be made in order to see if a spell is cast successfully???
-not considering how adding class lvl to abilities would severely fuck up bounded accuracy nor that proficiency bonus is literally meant to be the answer to exactly how you could implement that idea without breaking the game
Again, not saying the DCC magic system doesn't sound fucking dope. This made me super-excited to try it out. And honestly not even saying 5e is my favorite magic system or anything, i myself have quite a few problems with it and prefer other systems. But we can critique and compare systems without either misrepresenting stuff.
You DO roll for success on a LOT of spells. You cast Firebolt, you roll to hit. Sometimes, others roll to negate your spell's effects. Fighters don't roll to successfully get a second attack, or second action. They just do. But they do roll to attack or perform said action. It'd feel kinda bad if, before you attack, you roll to see if you can ATTEMPT to attack your enemy.
here for warlock hate
Early editions had no spell slots. None.
There is a number of spells per spell level you can memorize. You study, memorize and use them, no "up casting" or such with spell slots.
The wizard is studying and working on the spells as they are leveling up . That's why they get to pick there spells. Also no one wants to sit there why the wizard player is describing everything they are doing to learn a single new spells.
Check out shadowrun
Not everyone likes soft magic.
And those people are wrong
I think each is good in its own right. Cool to hear about something different, but I personally prefer hard magic systems, and am not overly fond of unpredictable magics. I don't think unpredictability somehow makes it more magical. Magic can have consistent rules and still be awesome and wondrous. I don't think it makes much sense for high level magic users to cast, say, a cantrip, or 1st-level spell and fail it based on a random roll. I mean, maybe when you first learn a spell, you could take some time to get used to it, but if I were playing a wizard at 14th level, why would the caster fail a 1st-level casting of a spell the character has known for a long time? I do like the idea of having to go learn the spells in character, and maybe it could take a bit to master the spell, but once mastered, I think it would make sense that magical consistency would be a good reward, and could act as an indication of a casters power.
DCC is a joke! I think it all is just so stupid. I bought it several months ago and so disappointed. And you call DCC a system? No it is a total joke. In fact, the first few pages it tells you to rely mostly on what you already know from other systems. So it is just a ridiculous version of "Home Brew Rules". It is not a system but a different ideas about how to run spells in your campaign. I don't like it at all.