Magic Realm: Casting Spells

Before attempting a Magic Realm game, featuring one of the magic-using characters, like the Witch, it is critical to review and understand how spell-casting works in Magic Realm.

In Magic Realm, all spell preparation and casting takes place in the Evening, during the combat stage. 

There is a specific order of play, for every game day, in the Magic Realm. 

That order of play is as follows:  (1) Birdsong, in which you write down your planned actions; (2) Sunrise, where the prowling monster roll is made; (3) Daylight, during which you complete your written actions, and monsters and natives move and appear; (4) Sunset, at which you decide the order in which combats will occur; (5) Evening, during which you engage in combat and cast spells; and (6) Midnight, where you advance the day marker to the next game day.

Characters complete their written actions during stage (3), the Daylight stage, and cast spells during stage (5), the Evening stage.  Spells cast in the Evening only affect the combat in which the Character is currently engaged, or take effect during the day(s) AFTER the spell is cast. 

For gamers who have exclusively played Dungeons and Dragons, and are used to declaring and casting spells at any time during the game with near-immediate effect, this is a hard to fathom.  Spell-casting in Magic Realm, because it cannot be initiated at any time or facilitated by an in-game Dungeon Master hand-wave, requires more planning than the equivalent actions in a traditional role-playing game. 

Hopefully our Witch example of play will help clarify the importance of planning your spell-casting in the Magic Realm.

Another critical piece of information necessary for spell-casting relates to the elements of a successfully cast spell.

There are three elements to casting a spell in the Magic Realm: one, ownership of the spell; two, the ritual to the spell; and three, mana to power the spell.  You must have all three, together, in order to cast the spell.

Every magic-using character in the Magic Realm begins with one or more magic chits, which represent spell rituals, and one or more spells.  Above, you can see a typical Witch spell combination, a Magic V4* chit, a Magic V5* chit with a black splotch (the chit has been converted to Black mana), and the Absorb Essence spell.  At the bottom of the spell, it tells you the spell ritual required (in this case a ritual V) and the color of mana required (Black).

Before the game begins (or during the game, by recording and performing a spell phase) magic chits with roman numerals I through V can be converted into a corresponding color of mana to power spells.  In the Witch's case, she has type II chits (can be converted to Grey mana) and type V chits (can be converted to Black mana) to power her spells.

As we play the Witch, we will need to be careful to manage our chits wisely, to ensure we have both the right rituals and color mana to perform her spells as necessary.

Magic Realm Example Of Play: The Witch

I posted a 28-day Magic Realm game "example of play" several months ago, using my favorite Magic Realm character, the Black Knight.

The Black Knight is an excellent choice when first learning Magic Realm, because he is an incredibly versatile martial character. 

You can dispense with his heavy armor and use his agility to amass a fortune in treasure and gold. 

Or, you can take advantage of his armor and mow through native groups and heavy monsters, in the process racking up significant fame and notoriety.

The Black Knight has no magic abilities whatsoever.  Therefore, spellbooks, scrolls and enchanted items are of little value to him, other than their gold price. 

Those items are quite valuable to Magic Realm's magic-using characters, of whom the Sorceror and Witch are my favorites.

I am going to post another Magic Realm "example of play" here, this time using the Witch character.

The Witch is very different from the Black Knight.  While the Black Knight starts the game with significant armor and arms and has a range of move and fight options, the Witch starts with no equipment and few move and fight options. 

However, the Witch does start with her black cat familiar, who acts a second set of eyes and can independently wander, search and instantly report back on the state of the Magic Realm to her mistress. 

The Witch also starts with three spells, from the black, grey, and malicious spell categories. 

For her starting spells, the Witch can choose any three of the 18 spells, below.

Of the first set of six Type II, Grey spells, none are overwhelmingly useful to the Witch.  Blend Into Background gives the Witch an extra Hide Phase, for a single day, but it costs at least three phases to cast (an Enchant Phase plus two Rest Phases) so it is only of limited value in narrow circumstances.  Fog is a nuisance spell, cast to interfere with other players' searches for a single day, but provides little direct benefit to the Witch.  Prophecy is a valuable spell, since it allows the Witch to choose what actions to take during the following day ONCE she knows what monsters are prowling, but the Witch does not have immediate access to Purple (Elemental) magic to power this spell.  Stones Fly is a VERY weak attack spell and not recommended.  Talk to Wise Bird is attractive, but again, the Witch does not have access to Gold (Fairie) magic to power it.  Finally, there is Witch's Brew, a spell that gives the Witch access to Gold and Purple magic, a handy spell but one that I don't recommend as a starting spell.

Of the second set of six Type V, Black Spells, there are several standouts: Absorb Essence and Broomstick.  Absorb Essence allows the Witch to absorb a monster she encounters, later transforming into that monster when she meets other monsters, natives and characters.  Think of Madam Mim and Merlin from The Sword In The Stone.  If the Witch absorbs a very powerful monster, like the Tremendous Flying Dragon, she becomes a formidable opponent.  Broomstick allows the Witch to quickly fly to far-flung corners of the Magic Realm,  beating the other characters to the choicest treasure sites.  Ask Demon is of questionable value; the Witch player asks another player a question about their in-game plans, which they must answer honestly with a yes or no.  Curse and Power of the Pit are nasty player versus player attack spells, but are not recommended, as they generate little reward and attract the enmity of the other characters and players.  Pentacle is a useful spell but only applies to three of eight treasure sites, none of which are particularly treasure-rich.  So, of this group of spells, Absorb Essence and Broomstick are highest on our list of suitable spells.

There are several handy spells in the third set of Type VIII, Malicious Spells.  Bad Luck can be cast on another character, making it more difficult for them to hide and search when in enchanted areas of the Magic Realm.  Not the best way to make friends at the table.  Deal with Goblins could be useful, since the Witch could hire the Goblins and use them to butcher the Magic Realm natives.  Guide Spider or Octopus is handy if the Witch stumbles on the related treasure sites, but those sites are not the richest ones, nor are those monsters the strongest ones for absorbing.  Poison is a good spell in a multi-player game, as the Witch can cast poison on her partners' weapons, making it easier for her partners to kill monsters.  For a solo Witch game, Remedy is the better choice, as it allows the Witch to rid herself of curses inflicted on her from acquiring spells.  Finally, there is Whistle for Monsters, used to attract or send monsters away.  It only works for sound chits, which represent half of the game's monster-generation, so it is not a fool-proof way of avoiding monsters.

For her starting spells, the Witch chooses Absorb Essence, Broomstick and Remedy.  This is a good choice of starting spells.  As you play the Witch, you can try other combinations, but this set of spells gives the Witch the ability to Absorb a monster for combat purposes, use her Broomstick to fly away from monsters or travel quickly across the Magic Realm, and a way to remove curses as she searches for new spells.

The Witch also chooses to start the game with two bits of grey magic (to power her Remedy spell twice) and two bits of black magic (to power her Absorb Essence and Broomstick spells).  Only chits I, II, III, IV and V can be changed into sources of color magic to power spells, so her type VIII remain as rituals, instead of color magic.

Tomorrow, we will have a look at the map of the Magic Realm, and see what the Witch has planned for her adventures.

DnD Spells: Massmorph

Messenger To Macbeth

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

MACBETH

Liar and slave!

Messenger

Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH

If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

While Shakespeare's march of Birnam Wood was an effective, if mundane, ruse, Gygax and Company give us the magical alternative:  Massmorph. 

This is yet another of the many utlility and miscellaneous spells that provide early versions of Dungeons and Dragons with their richness and depth. 

While my preference leans towards the player-created or organically-introduced spells, the existence of Massmorph and other non-combat spells within the DnD lexicon is welcomed. 

And it doesn't hurt that the apparent inspiration for this spell is found within the works of one of the greatest playwrights of western civilization.

DnD Spells: Shape Change

Shape Change is a ninth level Magic-User spell that evokes remembrances of that wonderful wizard's duel in the Disney film, The Sword In The Stone. 

Like the Magic-User spell, Gate, it's a shame this spell is reserved for high-level Magic-Users, as it would be fun to play out a wizard duel at low to mid-levels.

DnD Spells: Gate

"Jagreen Lern has succeeded in making a sizable breach in the Law-constructed barrier which has hitherto kept the creatures of Chaos from wholly ruling our planet.  He is forever widening this breach as his power increases.  This explains how he could summon such a mighty assembly of Hell's nobility where, in the past, it was hard to bring even one of the Dukes of Hell to our plane."

-- Michael Moorcock, "Stormbringer"

Few of the DnD campaigns that I participated in ever reached the player character levels necessary to access ninth level magic-user spells.  One of those spells, Gate, permits the magic-user to open a gate to another plane and entreat a powerful entity to come to the caster's aid.

I've always wanted to include scrolls with spells like this, as treasure.  To have a powerful one-shot item that the players could use, in this case, to gate in a powerful entity, would be handy for those occasions where the party is overmatched and otherwise needs some deus-ex-machina intervention by the DM to survive.

The problem is that a lower-level magic user are more apt to write the spell into their spell-book (for use when they reach the necessary level) as keep the scroll as a one-use item, thus defeating the point of scrolls as one-shot magic items.

Slapstick Humor And DnD

I'm cheating just a bit here, putting the above image and the magic user spell, Fumble, together.  The preceding Sutherland illustration appears on page 11 of the ADnD Players Handbook, while the Fumble spell description appears on page 77.  Combining them in this post helps highlight an important feature of early versions of Dungeons and Dragons: humor.

I've already spent some time on this blog discussing the illustrations of Will McLean.  Will McLean's cartoons graced the pages of the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide and early Dragon Magazines.  His style of humor was welcome tonic to the too-serious arguments over rules minutia that occurred during Dungeons and Dragon's early development.

What I like most about the preceding Sutherland illustration is the great contradiction inherent in the barbarian's fall: did he truly slip on a banana-peel, and if so, what is the point of the spell-casting wizard's inclusion in the cartoon?  Or did the spell-caster just recently summon the monkey which ate the banana and dropped the peel, which the barbarian then slipped on?

Absolutely Enchanting

Sometimes the artwork attached to an ADnD spell description is just ever so slightly incongruous.  The Dave Trampier illustration attached to the spell, Enchant An Item, is one of those situations. 

While it's true that the illustration shows an item being crafted -- one of several steps involved in making a magic item -- it would make more sense for the illustration to show the spellcaster interacting with the item, and somehow imbuing the item with the desired dweomer, rather than a weaponsmith busy with his more mundane tasks.

The last two paragraphs of this spell description fall on the next-following page in the ADnD Players Handbook, and I think it is easy to forget that the process of enchanting items came with some unpleasant risks, chief among them the chance of losing a point of constitution while casting Permanency on an enchanted item.

Does the same circumstance threaten magic-users in 3E and 4E?  I suspect, like many other game design features inherent in early versions of DnD, all of the advantages have been transferred into subsequent rule sets, while the risks have been discarded as "not fun" for the players.

Otto's Irresistible Dance

I was mentioning a couple of days ago that several spells in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons are named after famous characters from the original DnD campaigns.  Otto's Irresistible Dance is one of those spells.

The accompanying illustration by Dave Sutherland, of a capering Umber Hulk, once again demonstrates the capacity for creators of the early versions of DnD to have fun, and make fun, of themselves and the game they were playing

New school DnD, by comparion, takes itself far too seriously.

Percentile Dice Abuse

A little pet peeve of mine:  the over-use and abuse of percentile dice for results generation.

Mirror image, a second level magic user spell in ADnD, contains a system for random determination of the number of mirror images that appear when the spell is cast.  From one to four mirror images appear, depending on the result of a percentile dice throw.  A roll of 1-25 results in one image; 26-50 creates two; 51-75 summons three; and 76-100 invokes four.

Clearly, a d4 is equally suitable, and more appropriate in this circumstance.  What am I missing here?  Why bother using percentile dice for this spell?  I can see using percentile dice if, for example, you added your character's level to the roll, thus having a higher chance of more mirror images as you increase in level.  Otherwise, the use of percentiles in this instance just seems like overkill.

Structuring Resource Decks

Still giving some thought to the development of resource cards.  In particular, how to structure the decks.

It seems to me there are at least two ways to structure resource decks.

The first way is to structure the decks based on character class.  For example, developing separate decks for Magic Users, Clerics, Fighters, Thieves, Barbarians, and Witches.  Each deck would contain the cards necessary for that class, including spells, character statistics, character illustrations, abilities, treasure and equipment specific to that class, and might cover three character levels.

The second way is to stucture the decks based on type of resource.  For example, separate decks for spells, equipment, treasure, character illustrations, and so on.  So you might have a deck of weapons, a deck of first-level spells, a deck of character statistics, a deck of monsters, and a deck of magic items.

Perhaps both kinds of decks would be useful.  For example, you might want a deck of spells, but you also might want a deck that is specifically for Witches, containing all the cards you would need to build a Witch character.

DnD Spell Cards

Over the last two years, I've seen several putative variations of DnD spell cards. 

My interest in spell cards is quite simple: i've been tinkering with the idea of a card-based Dungeons and Dragons accessory, where all of your game resources are in card form, and can be swapped in and out of a three-panelled sleeved booklet, as you aquire and spend resources. 

Those card-based resources would include, treasure, magic items, spells, equipment, relationships, and other trackable items.

In addition to  the home-brew spell cards featured by several old and new-school bloggers, Wizards created a card-based accessory for 4th Edition, tied into their AEDU system, by issuing decks of powers cards.  I really loathed those cards, for a couple of reasons: one, they lacked artwork; two, the 4E powers themselves were too mechanical; and three, WOTC ignored all the other in-game resources.

On the other hand, Paizo published decks of item and treasure cards, featuring lush illustrations, but the related game mechanics were absent from the cards, as were resources like spells.

One of the things I loved about the ADnD Players Handbook was the inclusion of artwork  accompanying the spell descriptions.  Case in point is the spell, below, Dancing Lights. 

Although uncredited, I believe this spell features a Dave Trampier ilustration. It would be lovely to have the above artwork in color, though the black and white version is perfectly serviceable. 

Yes, the spell description is probably sufficiently clear that an accompanying illustration is unnecessarily decadent, but having an illustrated set of resource cards like this would be a dream come true for this old-schooler.

Wizards' Duels And Countering Spells

One of the great voids in Dungeons and Dragons is the absence of a spell-countering or wizard-dueling mechanic.

The current magical combat system is rolled in with the martial combat system, which is derived from the wargames antecedent to D&D.

Using that mechanic, spells are cast during that player's combat turn, and the effects are applied shortly thereafter (unless a saving throw negates the spell effect).

Saving throws, as a way of countering spells, is a free (to the defender) and adequate mechanic, for those spells that affect a character, but what of those spells for which no saving throw is permitted, or for spells that do not affect a member directly? Currently, there is no way to counter those spells within moments of their casting. One must wait until the next round to attempt some kind of response to the previously-cast spell. Unfortunately, at that point, it is often too late to actually counter the effects of the first spell.

Here's an alternative. Any time a spell-caster invokes a spell, any other spell-caster can use their turn (assuming they have not already taken their action) to counter the invoked spell.

In order to do so, the second spell-caster must either have memorized the same spell, or have a memorized spell sufficiently similar (or opposite) in effect that it can be used to counter the effect of the first spell cast by the attacker.

Since the second caster is reacting, in real time, to the initial spell, there is a chance that her spell-countering will fail. Rolling 2d6, the second caster must roll an 8+ to successfully counter the first spell, but that is modified (to the defender's benefit) by the number of levels the defender is above the attacker's level, and by the level of the spell being expended in that defence. I say to her benefit, because if the defender is a lower level, or uses an inferior spell, she still gets the minimum 8+ chance to counter. Call it the Harry Potter effect.

For example, the attacker, a 3rd level MU, casts darkness, a 1st level spell. The defender, a 6th level MU, uses her turn to cast a 2nd level spell, continual light, to counter. Since the defender is 3 levels higher than the attacker, and is casting a spell 1 level higher, the defender gets to add 4 (3+1) to her roll to successfully counter.

Whether or not the defender is successful, that memorized spell used for countering is gone from her memory, and she has used her turn for that round.

But what of situations where the defending MU have already taken her turn or wishes to counter multiple spells? In those cases, some alternative spell-casting cost could be imposed (for example, the MU takes d6 of fatigue damage for each additional spell she wishes to counter, should she have already taken her turn).

Spell Levels Are Broken

Why is no-one willing to admit this?

Everything else using the term "level" in Dungeons and Dragons makes sense. A third level character has three hit dice. A third level monster is typically found on the third level of a Dungeon. The third level of the dungeon is found beneath levels one and two.

So why does a third level wizard get one second level spell?

This really should not be that hard to fix. Simply take the first level spells, separate them, fairly evenly, between weaker and stronger spells (perhaps putting the combat spells in the stronger spell category) and re-label the stronger first level spells "level two spells". A first level magic user selects a spell from the weaker 1st level spell list. When the magic user reaches 2nd level, she can take a spell from either the first or second level spell lists.

Same with former second level spells. Separate them, and re-label the weaker as third level and stronger as fourth level spells. The 3rd level magic user takes a spell from the 3rd level spell list, and when she makes it to fourth level, takes one from the 1/2 list, and one from the 3/4 list.

The same applies to third level spells, which become fifth and sixth level spells, and so on, until we reach the ninth level spells, which are separated and become levels 17 and 18, respectively.

New Spell: Larodrm's Leap Of Logic

Level: 2

Components: V,S,M

Range: touch

Casting time: 1 segment

Duration: special

Saving Throw: none

Area of Effect: creature touched

The arch-mage Larodrm, known for his laziness and fear of riding beasts, created a number of leaping and travelling spells to allow him to journey long distances with minimum effort. In addition to his Leap Of Logic spell, he also created the 9th level spell, Leap Year, which allowed him to leap, continuously for a year. Behind his back, the other arch-mages derisively named his Leap Of Logic spell, *LOL*, since the sight of Larodrm's leaping never ceased to fill them with great mirth.

Larodrm's Leap Of Logic spell allows the spell-target to leap a great distance. It is similar to the first level spell, Jump, but the distance leaped is equal to the throwing range of the creature affected.

The distance that can be leaped by the target is equal to the spell target's strength, times 10 feet (or yards, if outdoors) to a maximum of 140 feet (or yards, if outdoors). In order to use the Leap Of Logic spell, the target must toss a rock (properly ensorcelled and covered with runes) at the location he intends to leap to. The spell-target then leaps to that same location. The material component is a bag of ensorcelled rocks, with runes etched upon them.

This spell is similar to the 3rd level Cleric spell, Leap Of Faith, and the 3rd level Enchanter spell, Lover's Leap. The Leap Of Faith spell requires that the arrival location is in visual range and that the departure point is prepared with symbols of the deity of the person leaping the distance. The Lover's Leap spell requires that the person leaping can see their Lover to whose location they leap. Otherwise, the range is limited to the leaper's strength, times 10 feet (or yards, if outdoors) with the same maximum distance as the Leap Of Logic, and the leaper must imagine that his lover is at the location being leaped to.