Side effects of having spells in your noggin

While you still have a spell in this system memorized, you will gain a beneficial side effect. This will totally out you as a magic user tho, so beware witch hunters.

Also feel free to ad hoc flavorful cantrips while you have a spell uncast.

Some 1st Level spells for now. Lemme know if I should do all the D&D spells. 

    Charm Person: +1 to your CHA mod. The DM rolls 2d8 for reaction rolls if you are party face.

•     Detect Magic: You can smell if a spell has been cast in the space you are in today. 
•     Floating Disc: You have an extra, orbital inventory slot.
•     Hold Portal: IBS holds no power over you. Also, you can't vomit.
•     Light (Darkness): Silver eyes like the 2nd pilot of Star Trek.
•     Magic Missile: Your compass points toward the biggest baddie of the dungeon.
•     Protection from Evil: Chance of triggering traps halved.
•     Read Languages: Everyone in the party is literate in whatever languages you are.
•     Read Magic: You can hear muttering when magical writing is in the same room.
•     Shield: +1 to your base AC.
•     Sleep: You stand a d20 over CHA chance of talking a non-hostile  to sleep. When this chance fails, you yourself pass out tho.
•     Ventriloquism: You can change your voice to whoever that you want. 

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d12 Enveloped in your Prismatic Embrace

When the living prismatic misfired spell or swarm of rainbow bats or spectrum ghost gives you a rainbow hug, roll an explosive d12 (GM decides any particulars about damage amount and save difficulties):

1: Fiery red damage.
2: Acidic orange damage.
3: Electro-yellow damage.
4: Poisonous green assault; save vs death-poison.
5: Stony blue assault; save vs turning to stone.
6: Indigo Insanity assault; save vs mania.
7: Violet Dimension assault; save vs dimensional displacement.
8: Ultraviolet Violence assault; everyone has to save each round for d6 rounds to resist the temptation to mindlessly attack you.
9: Sonic Chartreuse damage.
10: Radioactive Infrared damage (permanent damage, only heal-able after a Cure Disease is cast on you).
11: Unleveling Ulfire assault; save vs losing levels.
12: Roll again twice (these both are explosive rolls too).  

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d12 LVL 1 Wizard spells

I bet I could make like 9 more posts in this series. Can you guess which one I almost wrote "finger up the bum" for but chickened out?

Wizards have mana equal to their level, and may spend d6 HP as emergency mana. The player may entreat the DM to use a mana to boost or alter a spell in some manner, such as an extra die of effect, an extra time unit of duration, or a different kind of target or effect.

1st level spells

1. Flame control: you may start a fire, keep a campfire or torch going for LVL turns, or scald a foe with your touch.
2. Charm person: Target becomes friendly towards you, not wanting to consider harming you and now is willing to help you out as long as they don’t risk their own safety too much.
3. Detect magic: You can smell whether a close item or being is magic, enchanted, or bewitched.
4. Hodor: You instruct a door, window, aperture, &c to hold firm. The barrier will effectively resist LVL successful attempts to be knocked down.
5. Yew Pew: You need a sprig, cane, or stick. From this wand issues out a blast that does LVLd4 damage, spread out as you like amongst one or more targets (each target has one or more of the d4s rolled against them).
6. Read: You can use this spell to decipher one spell text, speed-read a mundane book, or translate one page of text from any language to a hologram projection that everyone can ooh and ah over.
7. Shield: You can pull this up immediately with a DEX check. For the duration of one battle, you have a pool of LVL d8s. Any time you take damage, roll one of the d8s and reduce the damage by that amount.
8. Sleep Dust: All within LVL yards except you have to roll a Willpower type check or fall into slumber for a turn. Sound won’t wake one from this, but a wet-willy will.
9. Seeing things: Make a sound, voice, shadow, or fleeting illusion. This spell can be cast mentally if you spend a mana.
10. Jeeves: Summon a creature to existence. It will carry something heavy for you for a session. It could carry you. Or you could tell it to do anything an octogenarian could do. If you spend a mana, it could answer a question or put forth a theory. Will that be all, sir? May I not exist now sir?
11. Summon Devil: Foolishly, you draw a pentagram and summon a being from beyond. Oh, you want to make a bargain? Too bad you didn’t etch the pentagram into something permanent, and this demon is breaking it now.
12. Ink Cloud: You fill a LVL meter sphere with darkness. Anyone wanting to hit a melee target in the sphere will need to make a WIS check first.  Arrows into the darkness will hit nothing 80% of the time and a random target in or behind it otherwise.

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Spells That Level Up the More You Use Them

So for our very hacked version of Swords & Wizardry/Crypts and Things/DCCRPG, called Crypts & Cryts, we needed a bunch of spells. I coulda use the C&Þ spell list, but it was feeling a little vanilla, and I kinda wanted unleveled spells. So at first I had a lot of PC-level based effects, but then it hit on me: Why not let the spells get more puissant the more you use and master them?  So far the Google Doc has 64 spells, and there might be room for more, but I think I can fit most high-level spells into lower ones with this method.

Here's an example of a kinda boring spell that got much better with this exercise: Stone to Mud.

Clay and Stone: You can convert LVL cubed yards of natural rock to mud or vice versa, lasting ten minutes. After you have cast this spell in ten dungeons, you can affect worked stone. 10 times beyond that and you can start to make LVL in number 1 HD mud elementals. 20 beyond that and you unlock the secret of stone golem-craft, and can up to LVL×2 HD of golems serving you. You also gain the ability to cast this spell to create out of thin air rock walls of up to LVL yards square (height times width). 5 times beyond that and you can use this spell to turn targets into statues and statues into flesh and blood creatures.

The game also lets you expand on the spirit of a spell, casting it in an unintended way, but you must cast it with disadvantage. However, if you do such five times, your twist on the dweomer becomes easier (no disadvantage) for you. For instance, maybe you could pull an Elohim with the above spell and make a new lifeform from the clay of the earth.

The whole RPG is embedded below; check it out in a browser that can handle it, or use this link. Oh, and the formatting gets really messed up by the single column that is forced by embedding. Meh. Full glory at the link.

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Why Vancian is Better Than Spell Points (and what to do about it)

First, let me lay out my credentials for my click-bait title.

Over on our Discord, (mail me if you want in on chances to play elf-games online), we have been playing a lot of Lodoss Companion, a game I translated from Japanese. It uses a stat called MP (magic points) to cast spells from. If you run out of MP, you faint.

About a couple years back I was in another RPG that uses spell points (run by Fear of a Black Dragon's Tom), Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1e. We played through the Enemy Within adventure path thing.

On the Discord, we also spent a few months going through my other big fanslation project, Double Moon. Dubmoon, being from the same publisher as Lodoss, shares a lot of its DNA, including the MP system, using Psychic Points called PPs, much to our amusement.

Finally, also on the Discord, we messed around with my hack of Arduin for a while. Uncle Dave "Killmepleasedaddy" Hargrave used a hybrid between Vancian and spell points back in the day. He also gave levels to spells because he was basically using 0DnD. I opted to just have spell points spent just be the level of the spell, let PCs cast any level of spell, and kicked Vancian restrictions out of there.

So all of these systems used points is my point. What is the problem I've noticed time and again? You are extremely incentivized to cast the same spells each combat. It was really bad in WHFRP. Once I learned Lightning Bolt, I would try to cast it each round. We could point out here that RAW material components would have ameliorated the problem, but like most groups we ditched those rules.

In Lodoss it's usually the same routine. Cast buffs on the fighter. Summon a spirit to fight. There is a bit of deja-vu each combat. My players do like the system though. One said they really dig not having to choose spells that they might use each game morning.

The Arudin games were a bit better, probably because of the sheer amount of gonzo spells the players wanted to try out. Also, without level restrictions, they could consider casting powerful, yet expensive spells.

 So, what's my solution to keep a game with spell points interesting? Well, I have a few.

• Spell points are still a thing, but whenever a player casts a spell, it is gone for the day (sneaky Vance). 
• Spell points are still a thing, but each additional time you cast a certain spell in a day costs one extra point per level of the spell (Vance tax).
  
• Use DCC-style Mercurial Magic, which may make the player prefer to cast different spells for different situations. You don't need DCC tho; I got a d60 list of crazy spell requirements and effects.
• Incentivize spell prep with Memorization Side Effects (using a Vancian hybrid or pure Vancian).
• Use those material components up. Boo. Hey, maybe have all your spell-casting based on material components to make it better?
• Seed a whole lot of situations that will require spells as tools. This one is hard to do, because utility spells are usually taken care of by equipment or the thief's abilities. 
• Spells are free-form, but you can never cast the same spell twice (the Barony/Conrad's Game method).
  

Got more ideas? That's what comments are for!

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LOTFP Summon Spell for DCC (another way)

I and others have previously explored ways to use Lamentation of the Flame Princess's summon spell in DCCRPG. This is another attempt, but this time, I'm utilizing the fumble and misfire mechanics of DCC spells. You'll probably need both Lamentations and DCC to use this spell. DCC demons don't seem to have a set way to determine Will, so I just went by HD. Also, I did away with most of that play it safe and summon a weak demon rigamarole.


Google doc link if you can't read the embedded text.
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