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2018/07/16 01:10:08
Subject: Uni System DnD and a magic system I made....
Hy guys. I thought i might post this out here just to see if anyone is interested in it or even if not to get some feedback on something I made a long time ago. Basically just sharing for fun.
So WAY back when 3.5 was the game to play and Pathfinder did not exist yet I was looking through other pen and paper RP systems because I was just generally dissatisfied with DnD. I didn't particularly like the level/class system of dnd. I felt like it encouraged the dungeon crawl, power gaming, more gamey side and down played the RP side of the game. Most people I talked to described their characters by race/class/and equipment/abilities instead of personality traits.
I played some white wolf, but I stumbled one day onto The Unisystem by Eden Studios. For those not familiar it's a point buy system that uses a single d10 and opposed rolls. The game had several versions including a more "lite" cinematic version that worried significantly less about the nitty gritty and more about creating big fast action and a more in depth version that got into the minutia of a characters abilities. For some basics of the system it would function like this.
2 was the human average with 5 being the practical human limit and 6 being the ACTUAL human limit (something is wrong with you if you have a 6 in a attribute).
And SKills (lets just use Swords as an example)
A 7 in a skill meant you had acheived a mastery in that skill. You could keep raising it above 7 but 7 was a benchmark for a reason that will be explained in a sec. Think of a 7 skill in martial arts being the point where you earned your black belt. Other people could still be much better then you and you still have things to learn but you have become a master.
If you want to swing your sword you rolled 1d10 + the most relevant stat + Skill. (as determined by the DM). Example, taking your time to line up a shot and snipe with a bow could be Perception and Bow instead of dex and bow. Thats a real basic version of it but it gets you the idea.
The result is compared to a chart on everyones character sheet and on the DM screen. Real simple.
So If I wanted to attack with my sword it's 1d10 + Dex + Sword and the target would make a 1d10 + Dex + sword to parry or whatever. Ties go to the defender.
A 7 in a skill was considered mastery because 7 + human average 2 = 9. A single success before any dice are rolled. (there was critical failures so you could still fail but it's not needed to understand the gist of this).
A characters Health and Stamina were calculated with their attributes (Str + Con x 4 + 15 I think? Giving Humans an average health of 21)
I REALLY enjoyed the way the Unisystem played. But I wanted to play DnD with these mechanics. I embarked on a project to port everything over. All the class abilities. All the magic. So on and So forth. The end result though was spell slots and classes didn't fit... I needed a magic system.
So I dug out my PHB and got to work. I needed a way for players to make spells that would fit with the Unisystem and cover the full range of all the things the DnD games would let players do. Lets use Wizards as the base line example.
So there would be a skill. For simplicity lets just call it Arcane.
Arcane had a number of sub skills which were the schools of magic.
When you got a point in Arcane you gained a point for each sub skill that you could then assign as you saw fit. So with 8 sub skills you had 8 points to distribute. Your max sub skill was skill +3. (I now realize this should probably have been skill x 2 so that it scaled as you improved. Again.. I made this like 10 years ago. Ive learned a lot about game design in that time.)
You rolled d10 + skill + stat to cast the spell but the maximum mana you could normally spend to build a spell was your sub skill in that school (and thus a player could specialize in certain schools at the cost of other schools.
Making a spell
Spoiler:
A spell was made up of up to 7 parts. Players spent their mana in these 7 parts to build their spells.
Damage - 1 point raised the base damage of the spells.(The Unisystem had 2 methods for calculating damage. Flat damage or rolled. Rolled was basically double the flat. So a 1 damage spell would be a d2. A 2 dmg spell would be a d4. A sword did 3 (d6) dmg).
Range - Range in the Unisystem was calculated in range bands that impacted the accuracy and damage of the shot. The range bands were Point Blank/Short/Medium/Long/Extreme Long and were calculated in yards for some reason. 1 point in range gave you short range. 2 gave you medium. 3 gave you long. and 4 gave you unlimitied as follows (If I remember correctly)
Short 1/3/5/10/15 Medium 3/7/12/20/30 Long 5/10/20/35/50
Those numbers probably are not right but it gets the idea across. A spell that does not have any mana spent on range is a touch spell.
Unlimited range was used for things like super far teleportations, opening portals to other planes, and divinations.
Duration - 1 Mana = 1 Round. 2 Mana = 2 Round or 1 Minute 3 Mana = 3 Round or 2 Minute or 1 Hour 4 Mana = Permanency.
Any spell with Permanency becomes a ritual. Rituals take a LONG time to cast. It's basically how you lay a Gaes or curse onto people or create magic items. It's also needed for Resurrections.
Area - You could choose a Cone, Line, and Sphere. How big those areas were were based on the range bands. Something like... A Line (L) used the Extreme Long range band. A Cone (C) used the Long range band but some part of it was needed to determine the width of the cone (a 8 yd cone 2 yds wide at the end). And a sphere was the Medium range band in diameter.
So an example at this point. To build the Dnd classic Fireball you needed 1 mana + in dmg 1 Mana in range and 1 mana in Area (a 3 mana spell) allowing you to throw a very weak fire ball optimally 5 yards away but up to 15 yards away that will explode in a 5 yard diameter sphere. That same spell without the range would be a point blank explosion.
Additional mana would move on to the next range. So 1 Mana sphere = 5 yard 2 mana sphere = 12 yards 3 mana sphere = 20 yards
and then each additional mana slid it over 1 range band
4 mana = 35 etc...
Targets - 1 mana = 1 additional target. This kind of allowed you to duplicate a spell to more targets. Think chain lighting. You don't have to bathe an area in damage and risk hitting friendlys but you can selectively pick the targets to be impacted by the spell.
Effect - This was a small table I printed onto a roughly playing card sized piece of card stock and laminated for my players. It listed all the things basically not covered by the other parts of a spell along with their mana costs.
Examples.
Sleep - 1 mana Mind Control - 3 Mana Teleportation - 2 mana
etc etc...
So If you wanted to put a single target to sleep with 5 mana you could give it a short range and an hour duration. Or, for 5 mana you could create a short range spherical area of sleep that lasted minutes.
Potency - Finally, potency is a magical reinforcement to the spell making it's effects harder to resist and stabilizing the spell. Every mana spent on potency adds +1 to your roll ensuring that you succeed and making it harder for your targets to resist. (Imagine a 8 mana version of that sleep spell boosted by potency.) Effectively this allowed a caster to boost the DC of a spell as they got more powerful even if they were casting more direct weaker spells, they could choose to go the extra mile and make the spell more potent.
Finally, you can choose which part of the spell to focus on for successes. For example extreme successes can add additional damage normally. But you can focus on duration so that each success adds 1 increment to the duration of the spell. A 1 mana duration spell lasts 1 round by default but with 4 successes will actually last for 5 rounds as an example.
There were other nuances, like the ritual magic I mentioned and any spell that is 10 mana or more takes a full round to cast. Some of the effects allowed you to quicken spells, silent spell, eschew material or somatic components.It was pretty much all in there.
I made a spell sheet and spent time before the first game helping players to build their first sets of spells before the game began. Within the first session the spell sheets stopped being used. Players referenced their card for spell effect costs and range bands but otherwise built all their spells on the fly.
EVERY spell in 3.5 could be replicated using these rules. I think wish got kinda iffy, but wish has always been iffy. I know it was a ritual that required permanency and infinite range along with a effect with a base cost chosen by the DM depending on the effect of the wish.
I unfortunately lost my old digital docs. They are on some hard drive somewhere I need to find. But I DO still have my printed copies of the doc I made.
Thoughts, feedback, questions?
This message was edited 13 times. Last update was at 2018/07/16 06:24:05
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
2018/07/27 17:11:51
Subject: Re:Uni System DnD and a magic system I made....
D&D is at it´s core a dungeon crawl. No edition will change this. I have played 2nd and 3rd while thoroughly enjoyed the latter. Back in the we played Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun with emphasis on the former.
Your characters lack character? Then choose GURPS. There is no other RPG to my knowledge that lets you play practically anything. You have a ton of advantages, disadvantages and quirks for your chars to choose from. You can even design vehicles, races, spells and whatnot.
2018/07/28 21:17:39
Subject: Uni System DnD and a magic system I made....
I understand what DnDs mechanics support in the past and currently. I don't have an issue with using them to do a simple dungeon crawl if a dungeon crawl is all I am after.
GURPS on the other hand is a overly complicated mess. While yes, you can make literally anything in GURPS. The unisystem has all of it's best ideas in a simple functional package thats easy to run and easy to play. Unisystem call it Qualities and Drawbacks but basically they are advantages and disadvantages.
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
