What's a good twist on mana points?
>>98243586Have it directly tied to health/exhaustion. Using magic exhausts you the same way swinging a sword would. Better get started on that cardio wand boy.
>>98243586Have it be tied to how much sperm is in your body.
Have you heard about this mechanic called "Vancian Casting"?
>>98243602Google sculptor Takashi Murakami's "My Lonesome Cowboy" to get an idea of what this might look like.
>>98243586Mana storage is in the boobs or belly.
>>98243590That sounds like psychics in sci-fi stories.
>>98243590It's alright, but I dislike it because you run into problems of "should magic be more or less efficient then just doing it yourself with your body?" and also cutting off interesting character archetypes like old and weak but cunning Wizards. Characters are too typecast into being both young, strong, fit, etc. not as much variety in stats or possible gameplay. Plus lacks mysticism.>>98243603That's the opposite of magic points.
>>98243602But then, how would female spell caster wo.........oh
>>98243586You cast from Composure stacks and make a Refresh Push after very cast. Each success buys back a stack of Composure. 1-cost spells are cose to cantrips, as specialized caster gets 1 success ~80% of the time, the higher the cost, the bigger the expected spend is. Composure stacks refresh on Downtime, but they compete for the the slots with Vitality and Ego and Provisions and other stuff. You know, classic approach.
>>98243586Mana point is already a good twist on Vancian casting>>98243602That's kinda funny, actually. It means that male magic users would need to be retensing ascetic, while female magic users would be huge sluts which surrounds themselves with a large harem of healthy males.And female magicians users would be the natural predators of male mages, whose mana production they would covet.And gay sorcerers would be the most powerful magic users of them all.It means no lesbian witches though.
>>98243586How about taking a page from occultism/New Age and having it condense into a physical substance?Something like ectoplasm, or orgone.You could gather it using different types of devices, like orgone, and perhaps control it with your mind, like ectoplasm.So magic would basically be the process of having a strong enough mind to project emotion into mana, make it follow your directives, and shape it in complex ways: harden it into a protective wall, make it explode, animate a dead body like a puppet, etc.
>>98243713>and perhaps control it with your mind, like ectoplasmGoogle sculptor Takashi Murakami's "My Lonesome Cowboy" to get an idea of what this might look like.
>>98243614>>98243715Or Oglaf's first comic
>>98243590Directly? No. Indirectly? Sure. Mages become decrepit or derranged when abusing magic so it clearly does affect their bodies and minds. The mana points are just your tolerance before getting fucked for overuse not the point where you can't cast spells. Fucking spelljunkies.
>>98243586Why does it need a twist? it's already not the standard. The standard is spell slots. Pathfinder 2e, DND 2024, SOTDL, all of them use slots and/or vancian casting.Using MP is already a twist.
Each mana point spent is one day off of your life span
>>98243619>Fat girls bragging about tit size
>>98243586>>98243590Mana is the magic that specifically your body holds. Casting is just shaping that magic before you cast it out of yourself and into the world. So mana is a part of you, like your bones or your blood, and what a player thinks of as "their mana pool" is actually the pool they've been trained to use for as long as they've studied magic. But in actuality you have way more mana than you think, it would just be dangerous to take more than you've been trained to know you have. Your training keeps you from tapping into a greater well, because doing so shortens your life and tears at your very essence.First stage of breaking this conformity is for a player to reduce their mana to 0, then they start to cast using chunks of HP. This is normal and it causes immense exhaustion, but you can work with it. Step 2 happens when they reach critical health, they have to make a choice: use the rest of your HP and go unconscious or start casting using your permanent Health pool. You can effectively use your HP value as a mana pool twice, but the second time it'll go down and never come back up. Step 3 happens when a mage is truly at the end of their rope, the third possible source of mana is found in "sacrifice". To give up an arm or a leg will permanently reduce your mana pool, but it will grant you an enormous amount of mana in the thick of it.
>>98243809Effectively, magic users would treat magic like a kids game at lower levels, but in its the highest forms they'd be thinking about how to best maim themselves or cause damage that wont stop them if they survive should they need to cast such grand spells. Casting something beyond your pool is possible, but you might have to literally give an arm and a leg to do it. A truly powerful wizard giving all of himself to cast a strong spell might literally burst into flames and be eaten by his own magic to do it giving it EVERYTHING that he has. Magic duels are rare and magic users rarely cross each other because they know full well that a fight to the death might cost them their ability to preform magic forever or somehow worse.Suddenly, living in towers and acting like hermits keeping themselves away from others makes more sense. Studying magic in grand libraries alone for decades is a means of making sure their pools are expanded enough to ensure they never need to give too much of themselves in times of trouble. Magic users would be revered for what the strong ones could do, but more than likely unwilling to help due to the danger, and thus shunned by most towns. They'd be less likely to be willing to help fight the big bad because they'll be more likely to die doing it. The ones who make it to old age are obviously the strongest, because they'd be the only ones who knew the rules well enough to survive and get better with magic. So the way most people envision magic users suddenly makes more sense.And the writing could get a lot more complex after assuming things like that. Maybe magic users are more likely to be missing limbs after war? Maybe they all assume they've got one good adventure in them, so whatever they do it needs to end in wealth and knowledge for them because they can't risk doing it twice? Maybe kingdoms conscript magic users and force them to go to war? Maybe a deal with a demon represents more safety and is thus more tempting?
>>98243648>Old and weak but cunning Wizard.>Too weak to cast big and flashy magic, but experienced enough to conserve his strength and abuse tricks and interactions between lesser spells and/or environment.A dumb zoomie caster will cast greater firebolt, an experienced veteran wizard will throw at enemy flask of oil and cast spark.
>>98243586Attach additional, varied costs to different kinds of magic.> Health for blood magic> Various gem stones for elemental magic> Divinity points or whatever that you'll be able to recharge by visiting church for divine magic> Permanent stat drops for big-ass fuck your mom spells> Souls of your fallen enemies for necromancyetc. etc.
>>98243586Whenever I've answered "how make [thing] GOOD ??" spoonfeeding threads, it's always turned out they're just looking for something they'd personally like without regards to constructive quality, so fuck your no-effort begging.
>>98243619>fantasy allows you to make what you want>retard chooses to include obesityI bet you enjoy poop, too.
>>98243623>psychics in sci-fi storiesPsychics can't be in sci-fi stories.
>>98243671Sounds like a shitty dice pool system.
>>98243784/tg/ - Everything But Games
>>98243790They brag about their asses all the time too.This fucking "body positivity" shit has made obnoxious landwhales even more insufferable than they already were, because now every summer there are tubs of lard waddling around thinking they can get away with belly shirts and bikinis.Narcissistic trash.
>>98243999I like big boobs. But it seems that you like to stick your penis in the poophole, thats why you instantly think about poop.
>>98244002You sure?
>>98243790You got a point there. But many fat girls have small boobs too. So there must be a reason why some got big ones and others not. Magic!
>>98244002newfags can't scifi
>>98243586Mana capacity is largely genetic. Most magic rituals and spells get around this by using catalysts and charging off of ambient magic fields. The strength of a mage dynasty is tied not just to technique or the level of magics they can perform, but their ability to power their magics themselves instead of having to include workarounds. The counter to this is that as more of the mage's body is specialized to produce and store mana, they become more frail. Anemia and asthma are common among the older dynasties.
>>98244066>>98244084Post factual evidence of psychic powers being demonstrated or plausible theories of their eventual use, from credible sources.
>>98244061You can have big boobs in fantasy without having dumpy obese bodies.That's what makes it fantasy.What instantly makes me think of poop is obesity being a shit fetish and the poop smell that comes from fat bitches who think they're sexy.
>>98244232you don't know the difference between hard and soft scifi?
>>98244245>hard thi-fi thoft thi-fiThere is no difference between a work that has impossible/improbable aspects and a work that has impossible/improbable aspects, so putting psychics in a work makes it fantasy.
>>98244251>retard thinks that genres are rigid boxes and not amorphous descriptors that frequently mix and intermingle
>>98244251Name a sci-fi
>>98244245Don't bother engaging with the "there's no such thing as scifi" autist.For him, even Star Trek is fantasy>inb4 BUT STAR TREK IS FANTASY IT HAS ENERGY WEAPONS EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW ONLY GUNS ARE POSSIBLE TO USE AS WEAPONSDon't care, you are objectively wrong. You completely miss what makes scifi, scifi. Plus, this is a thread about Mana.
>>98244232You seem not to understand the term fiction? In reality the ones who really believe in psychics are not a credibile source. I guess my best sources are the CIA and FBI?So i go with fictional credible sources.X-files, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men and Farscape.
>>98244270I this guy a notable character I should be aware of? I usually only browse /wip/.
>>98244239The problem is that i just wanted to make bodysize = magic storage. And i found the pic very funny. Dont take it too serious.>obesity being a shit fetishWeird, when you singularly name obesity as a fetish, i think more of vore and eating disorder. If you are so triggerable from obesity, i would have guessed you named inflation fetish. A fetish i cant understand why someone would find that erotic.
>>98244061Tit magic is tied to necromancy specifically though
>>98244262This! I rewatched some episodes of Farscape recently and there are many episodes were i think the writers had some P&P sessions they used for storylines.And i have to say that fantasy and sci-fi use the same tropes and can borrow their unique parts without problems.
>>98244317Based!
>>98243586no internal mana, cast time is converting natural mana into the spell
>>98244285He's very one-note, as far as I'm aware.This >>98244002>>98244251is basically his entire schtick: "fiction requiers a hypothesis, therefore it's all fantasy".At that point I'm wondering if Crime and Punishment doesn't qualify as fantasy too, in his mind.
>>98243586>>98243648I do a similar thing to what >>98243590is describing, but I also have a Will and Sanity pool in addition to a Health pool. You could fuel magic with any pool, and non-casters can similarly burn through their pool to excel at mundane tasks.
>>98244331Is he like the "rape the speed of physics" guy?
why are bunnies so erotic?
>>98244002Tell this to Asimov.
>>98243586not having a resource system. /thread.
>>98244005a good dice pool system, you mean.
>>98244239You can have that in real life too, dummy
>>98244251There are psychics in Star Trek, what is widely acknowledged to be THE sci-fi series.Are you saying you don't consider Star Trek to be sci-fi?
>>98243586Is this entire thread generated with chatGPT or made by the discord raiders? its feels unnatural and alien
>>98245042you've gotten so used to generals that a real thread feels fake
>>98245057i don't use generals but maybe you're right and i'm just tired
>>98243586I tried to do a mana point over spellslot/infinite magic system in the game I was running but no one liked it :(
>>98243586>good twist on mana points I averaged out the mana cost of spells and broke it down by level so each caster gets a certain number of spells of each level to cast per day. To represent the meditation and concentration required to collect the mana and fit with spell books as an important part of the world building I made it so the magic user has to preplan which of those spells at each level they have prepared that day. I call it Nacicnav Casting. Unconventional but it works great. Not sure why everyone's so on mana points.
>>98243586Vancian Magic, but with spell points instead of spell slots. That is, you prepare your specific number of castings of each spell at the start of the adventuring day, but you spend spell points instead of spell slots to prepare them.
>>98245298This would legitimately solve the dilemma I've always had of genuinely liking Vancian Magic in concept, but thinking that the actual game-mechanical execution of spell slots is the most braindead retarded abitrary/contrived bullshit ever conceived in gaming history. Bravo.
>>98243590In Riddle of Steel, using magic will age you, and you have to restrain your power to avoid turning yourself into an old man.
>>98245298So instead of having 4/4/3/3/2 spell slots you'd instead have 43 MP that lets you prepare 43 Lv1 spells, or eight lv5 spells and one lv3 spell?
>>98245403Spell point costs might not be 1:1 to spell level depending on system/edition (e.g., D&D 5E has 1st-lvl spells cost 2 sp, 2nd-lvl spells cost 3 sp, and 3rd-lvl spells cost 5 sp). But I think you pretty much got it, yeah.
>>98245403NTA, but it's probably capped by spell level so you'd have x number of 4th level spells.
>>98243590That's essentially how Shadowrun did it. Every time you cast a spell you took damage, stun damage if you cast a spell you had the proper stats for lethal damage if you cast one above your rating.
In order to cast the spell, you need to draw the power needed for it from your surroundings. Like you need a lit torch to throw the fire as a fireball.
>>98243693>It means no lesbian witches though.It means no 'gold star' lesbian witches.There would be at least a few sapphic sorceresses willing to take dick to keep their cosmic powers charged up.Whether they're uncaring, resigned, enraged, disgusted, or miserable about the process is a personal matter.
>>98244239You sound fat and unhappy.
>>98243586Sacrifices are required for every spell. Basic shit like starting a fire? You gotta kill a bug.Midlevel stuff like a barrier? Kill a dog.Big shit like a tornado? Sapient humanoid sacrifice is required.In order to get results from the sacrifice at mid-level and beyond? The being that is sacrificed must love and/or trust you completely. Strong magic users are silver tongued sociopaths that seem to be doing their best to help and please everybody, but it's a con so that when they claim "I nuked that kingdom with magic because one of their spies stabbed Timmy in his sleep" nobody even thinks that magic user killed little Timmy and take him at his word.
>>98243648>Should magic be more or less effective than doing it with your body?Genesys has a good rule for this. If an action you attempting to do could be solved with a physical action or skill, make it one rank higher in difficulty if you try to solve it with magic. If your a weak old mage, using your magic to accomplish scaling a cliff is going be easier than physically scaling but the difficulty level would still be higher.
>>98244263Haven't found one yet.It's all been fantasy.
>>98243586I use multiple mana systems.There's your basic Mana, which is a constant output, so it's basically a measure of how much magical power you can use in a single turn.There's Elbow Grease/Ki, which is Bodily Mana, it's replenished by food, and modifies abilities based on the organ you draw the energy from, or the food you use to replenish itThen there's Ambient Mana, which is used by psychics, and is different based on the surrounding souls, so it has an area-based modifier for how effective certain things are.You can use one for the abilities of the others, but it'll make them unpredictable and warp their effects. Casting spells using Bodily Mana is more unpredictable than Soul Mana, and Ambient Mana is even more unpredictable.
>>98245780Couldn't the gold star witches just drink it? Lesbians can drink sperm if it means they have magic. They could kidnap men and milking machine them against their wills forever or just cut their balls open to harvest that shit and let the man bleed to death. And depending on whether or not it still has to be live sperm it could be frozen or cooked or mixed into some kind of concoction. A hearty draught of Sperbrew could supercharge a witch on the battle field and lesbian witches might just be masters of the production and use of such potions.
>>98243586>lust provoking image.
>>98246947>Couldn't the gold star witches just drink it?>Lesbians can drink sperm if it means they have magic.I feel like if she has knowingly swallowed jizz, her gold star is gone.
OK, I got one: every character has a supply of "mental energy" similar to health or stamina, which spellcasters use for ammo, but it's also used for any mentally demanding task, like reading books that teach new skills or behaving in ways counter to one's alignment, like a Chaotic Evil character reigning in their violent tendencies. Has characteristics of a Cthulhu-esque sanity system, like stressful things such as seeing comrades get killed or encountering things that are terrifying or disgusting can also deplete it, mitigated by a mental dense stat and such. Going into negatives can result in various mental status effects.
>>98247871Hey, that's kinda what I do for my game. Minus the "losing magic points to stress" part.It has one additional advantage, it's that you can define what replenish your mental energy however you want.For some characters, it may be having a good night of sleep, or dreaming. For others, it may be to spend a lot of time reading, or going for a walk, or seeing something beautiful, or meditating.Each method coming with its own potential advantages and drawbacks.
>>98245780>>98246947How about:>There's both male and female magic, both linked to sexual energy. Sperm is just a physical representation of male sexual energy.>You can either gather your own energy, by staying chaste, or syphon off the energy of others.>Slutty female wizards lose their own sexual energy, but the amount of energy they can syphon more than compensate for it.>However only male energy can be absorbed. Female sexual energy can only be dissipated or channeled immediately after dissipation>Lesbian witches can therefore not hoard as much energy as straight ones, however they can use their own female harem as a living capacitor until the moment they need to cast a spell.Hmm not as elegant, but a lot of myth actually have distinct forms of male and female magic, so it checks out.
>>98249170Witches' magic is drawn from their breast milk.
>>98243586I love the way Unknown Armies does it:>Magic users derive their powers from an obsession: books, self-harm, TV series...>They gain magical charges, of various power levels, when they indulge that obsession.>Minor charges only require something simple, like buying a new book. Major charges require once-in-a-lifetime quests, like finding the first edition of some legendary book.On top of that, the types of spells you can cast depend on your obsession. Magic users obsessed with self-harm can resist the effects of damage, for example.I really wanted to steal this system for my own game, but it's scifi while UA is urban fantasy, so the pop-culture inspired obsessions don't work and I'm not too sure what to use instead.
>>98244407/thread.
>>98243586Runequest uses POW (Power); representing your willpower, and also body and soul's capacity to hold magical energy.POW can be transferred from a person to another person, or into a ritual receptacle, which allows for the collective casting of spells of a magnitude well beyond what an individual could accomplish.For instance, a lone sorceror might have enough juice to cast a weak spell over a moderate area.But with enough POW donors (Worshippers) he could ratchet that spell up several orders of magnitude, and extend it over a whole region.
>>98249245Wow, autism really IS magical.
>>98243619Based
>>98243586I fockin' 'ate mana as a generic magic energy so's in muh setting (no system yet, 'aven't decided) there's a general bindin' rule about spellcastin' (and martialin') which is that the limit is how much yer body can take before it starts t' break. basically it works on battletech heat rules and yer limit on performance is how close you can push the margins before yer body starts to give way. thoughts on exhaustion are nae finalized but the workin' idea is that fatigue lowers the maximum stress ye can put on yerself before castin' starts to put the hurt on ye.
Make it geographical>setting where every town/village is constructed around mana crystals that are a near infinite source of magic>Big cities have crystals that are large and powerful >smaller villages/outposts/etc have smaller weaker ones>attuning your own magic to a crystal lets you draw power from it, and recharge mana>it's effected by how close/far you are to that specific crystal>effect is powerful when you are right next to it>further away the effect is weaker, eventually losing connection to it all together>when you reach a new city/town, you can re-attune to that specific crystal as a way to recharge>this creates safe zones and dangerous areas outside>maybe some no-mans-land where there are no crystals to attune with for entire weeks of travel>maybe being attuned to certain crystals can grant you special abilities like elemental affinity/defense or the ability to cast certain other spells>add a bigbad who's attempting to steal/destroy the crystals for PLOT, destroying entire towns, and sending the civilians seeking refuge elsewhere>>98243602Could you possibly store this mana externally, by charging up some crystals with your bros?
I read a series of books where there were multiple competing forms of magic, each with different methods of fueling their spells.Wizards charged up magic power over time, so the first thing a wizard would do when taking an apprentice is make their apprentice immortal and teach them to meditate. Most of their time was spent meditating as they had no upper limit to how much energy they could retain. This also meant that the wizards at the top of their hierarchy (they were basically the world government in this setting) had the most energy as they had subordinates they could command to use stored energy for them. Think Cultivation but way less gay than what the Chinese came up with.Sorcerers were similar to wizards but were frontloaded with a finite amount of energy, as their magic literally ages them. Minor things would shave off a few hours to a day, while using powerful magic in a life and death struggle could age you decades, which was still better than getting run through with a sword. As a result, most sorcerers used their magic to supplement another mundane skill.Necromancers are all undead, created by a parent necromancer in a chain that reaches back to the first one (the origins of her power are not explained in the books I've read). Their body parts are constantly decaying and need to be replaced, making them Mages of Theseus. As long as their parts are fresh enough and they have a supply of blood they look like normal people. Necromancers are basically unkillable as long as they are not completely destroyed, and a powerful one can animate any nearby dead just through willpower. As an example of how durable they are, one of the main characters has her head cut off and thrown into the ocean. She pops up a few chapters later with a new body that she got from a hot island girl.
>>98256088Shaman commune with natural elementals and make requests or deals with them. Shamans don't actually do any magic themselves, it just seems like they do because only Shamans and summoners can see elementals.The main character is a summoner. He fuels his magic with souls of sentient beings. He mostly uses permanently enchanted items since carrying around living souls is difficult without literally dragging a crowd of people around, but killing that crowd to create a magic suit of armor works great. Some enchantments are relatively benign, but most involve spending the souls to force a demon or two into an object. Due to circumstances, he tends to have no problem fueling his magic as a lot of people want him dead, and his girlfriend tends to kill innocent women on a regular basis to source fresh blood and new parts to replace the rotting ones.The most powerful summoner in history is the setting's big bad, as he would destroy entire realities to fuel his magic.
>>98256088>>98256121All of the magic systems were roughly even in potential power, but balanced by how they get power. So if a wizard can charge 1MP per day, it would take them about 30 years to charge up 10,000MP. At the same time, a Sorcerer that is going to naturally live for another 30 years has 10,000MP, but spends one per day just by being alive.Necromancers had effectively infinite MP but could only create and command other undead, and all undead decay at natural rates if they are not topped off with parts and blood.Summoners spend souls fully, getting the full charge of magic potential of that life in one shot, so sacrificing the example sorcerer from up above would give the summoner the same 10k MP to burn, but it can not be stored and must be used or lost on the spot. Most people don't have magic potential so they supply less power, and permanent magic is far more expensive, making something like crafting a magic sword take many lives worth of energy to create.
