not having magic sucks but having a good system for magic is a lot of work. my solution is placebo magic, which is regarded as legitimate and powerful but actually does little to none of what it claims to do. for example:>diviniationthe predictions are made at random, but PCs and NPCs will be sure to notice any correlation with actual events. >potionssome may be mildly effective, e.g. an energy potion containing coffee cherries among its ingredients. on the other hand, a strength potion made from an elephant penis only has a placebo effect (if a PC takes the potion, the DM makes them sound stronger but the results of the rolls are unchanged) most characters don't know which types potions are effective and which are duds.is this a good idea or not?
>>92618825Based but your players will seethe if they can't throw fireballsNot that you have players, or a game.
>>92618825Depends. If it’s a one-shot with people you will never see again, then it’s fine. Play it with any people you have any frequency of encounters with, be prepared for when they never play with you again
>>92618825Based on your description of a good magic system being "a lot of work", no, that's a terrible idea
>>92618825Feels like you get the case where PCs are wasting a bunch of time hunting elephants for not just a small bonus, but no bonus at all. Which while potentially realistic towards how animals get hunted for stupid reasons in real life, doesn't actually address any of the issues that crop up from having a shitty magic system. You've still got players looking to squeeze out a bonus by spending a bunch of time gathering up what they think are magical ingredients. If you're putting in that much work to have magic appear to be subtle and describing the various effects it would have, at that point you might as well just give the potions and shit actual effects so it's at least not a waste of everyone's time. If you want a good system for magic with less work, you just need to narrow what magic is capable of. I've seen tabletop RPGs where the only concrete form of magic is being able to possess animals, and doing so is character defining in terms of how much investment it requires. Just don't have magic do everything, and then you can have it be a lot simpler.
>>92619144Not him but I don't see how this is an issue. It's a game, if the players are having fun hunting elephants because the believe it will make them stronger how is that different from the players having fun hunting elephants because they will get a +1 modifier to some dice if they do?It's a make-believe game, it's all as real as the players believe it is, whether it gets added into a formula or not
>>92619265Because once they realise it has no tangible effect in-game there’s no point to it. They either eschew the meaningless content and pursue the tangible or they engage in the pointless content knowing it will have no positive effect later
>>92619265>if the players are having fun hunting elephantsIf the players are having fun hunting elephants, then it doesn't matter if there are even potions in the first place. The potions themselves though make it more likely that the players might try hunting elephants even if they don't think that activity is particularly fun or interesting, because they believe that the boost to strength will be useful for the parts of the game that they do consider fun. And really, is it something that's actually worth lying to the players over? If elephant potions do give some minor and temporary boost to damage, what actually changes? The players more willingly believe it because it's true, and thus are more likely to make the decision to go hunt elephants in the first place. But again, no matter what, you're still already putting in 60% of the work of an actual magic system here. There's a defined ingredient, along with some other process to make a potion out of it, and an effect that the players are told that the potion has. The remaining aspect is just what the mechanical bonus actually is and how long it lasts, so why bother excluding that? Why come up with dozens of fake spells and potions when you could just finish the system and have them be real spells and potions? That's why I'm saying that the way to avoid the work isn't to make a bunch of magic that doesn't function, and instead focus on making one specific kind of magic that does function. Come up with some system for turning the parts of animals into potions that grant you the strength or skills of that animal temporarily. That's going to be far cooler and will be far better at encouraging the players to go around hunting exotic wildlife.
>>92618825Sounds fine for a narrative system.Do it.Go have fun.
>>92618825I do this as a player sometimes.Most recently a character (pf1e shaman) who was extremely superstitious and would occasionally go to lenghts to prepare magical spells and hexes that did not exist in the game, but which she believed to work (and did not know the difference between her ancestal superstitions and the spells actually in her spell list). Naturally I mentioned to GM ooc when doing it.GM did not give any benefits for the efforts, or at least didn't tell if he did, but events did seem to go just a bit towards the intended effects that pretty soon even the cleric was partaking in my character's herbal mixtures.
>>92619131Either your magic is super handwavy (and sucks) or it involves you remaking the universe from first principles (redefining the laws of physics, then working your way up to all the other natural sciences and social sciences) which would involve a truly monumental amount of work
>>92619361>And really, is it something that's actually worth lying to the players over? If elephant potions do give some minor and temporary boost to damage, what actually changes? there's no problem with a potion actually working, but it's also reasonable to expect less advanced cultures to be wrong a lot of the time. a real-life example is the ancient chinese cultural belief of "yi xing bu xing"with potions, you can have a fairly good explanation like "oh, elephant dicks happen to have such and such stimulant in trace quantities". you can't really do this with other forms of magic, though, like diviniation or lightning curses or whatever
I'd vote for doubling down on the "this works and people think it's magic but it's actually coffee or something else normal" style stuff without ever telling your players.
