Class rework: Magic-User

How do you fix the Magic-User? It can't be fun to have one spell and then not feel relevant once that's used.

Option 1: Barbarians of Lemuria-ify the Game

Steal everything from Barbarians of Lemuria (the best magic system, imo). Here's such a take (only magnitude 1 spells, so far).

If the result can be achieved by training and hard work, it's possible to cast as a Wild Spell (working name).

• Reach the top of a cliff
• Chop down a tree with the snap of your fingers
• Find the book where the information you're looking for is

The result is ordinary, but the method shouldn't be:

• Vines reach down and lift you up
• A whip of fire lashes out and chops the tree in two
• All the books gather in an enormous whirlwind, until the one you're looking for lands on your shoulder, like a bird.

Any Wild Spell costs 3 HP to cast. You can lower the cost by adding restrictions:

• Obvious (chant wildly, dance, etc, you're Doing Magic and everybody knows it)
• Line of Sight
• Casting Time (1d6 * 30 minutes of meditation, wild dancing (possibly naked), etc)
• Personal item (lock of hair, clothes, etc from the person)
• Special Knowledge (tedious, and long, research is necessary in order to cast the spell properly)
• Hour Power (must be cast at a specific time of the day or year: morning, midnight, sundown, solstice, etc are all perfectly valid. "Right now" is not.)
• Ritual cleansing (bathe in clear spring water, anoint yourself with essential oils, etc

A Wild Spell always costs 1 HP to cast, no matter how many restrictions are added. Remember: in my system, the party regains 1d3 HP every 10-minute break on the hour, if they have water and rations as group resources, so the cost is pretty low, still.

Furthermore, a Spell Slot spell, such as Sleep, can only be cast through the regular spell slots the MU gains as they level up; spells cast from Spell Slots cost no HP. 

Discussing this in the OSR discord, it was agreed that keeping both Vancian spell slots with the Barbarians hack was too fiddly (something I suspected when I wrote the post). We'll remove that.

I've always liked Lemuria's magic system, even if it's very much Storygame (with limits). I think this is a reasonable compromise.

BONUS: If I switch to the Barbarian hack in the current world, it would mean that spell scrolls (with stuff like Speak with Dead or similar) are remains of a past paradigm of magic, which means that MUs in Endon (Falbo) would be much more interested in spell scrolls because of how rare they are? It's a possibility.

Furthermore, spell scrolls could still be a regular reward that has no HP cost attached to it; that'd be a good reason to keep and carry them.

This requires Magic-Users to have a HP floor of 2. I'm fine with that. (Remember, death isn't a given at 0 HP in my game.)

Third (?) edit: ALSO this means that CON becomes an important attribute for wizards (you get to re-roll your Hit Die on level up, and keep the better result, so the CON bonus is important). Witches and wizards also eat a lot so they have the energy reserves to regain HP.

Vayra in the OSR discord also came up with this gem: "Also it makes sense why wizards and witches and other magic users are the ones people go to for medicine stuff. Since they have to know it all, they have to stay healthy to do magic."

I love it when rules inform the world. I wish I could come up with something similar for my Thief rework.

Option 2: Risky Casting

Each day, your Casting Value resets to 0. Casting an unprepared spell raises this value by the spell's level. When casting a spell outside those you've memorized, roll 1d20 and compare. If you roll over, the spell goes through. If you roll equal to, or under, a Chaos Burst happens instead.

If I use this system, I'm removing Sleep from the game. Casting Sleep an average of 10 times per session wouldn't be any fun for me as a GM; I also think that the goal of the game is to work with what limited resources you have, and by making the best resource (at lower levels) basically infinite, you make the game too easy.

Furthermore, with this system, we can add in FEAST OF BUKAKO spells too.

Option 3: Cantrips

Each spell you memorize unlocks Cantrips that you can cast however many times you want. Sleep would unlock Tired or Sleepy for instance; you could make someone yawn at just the right time to sneak past them. Charm Person cantrips could be making someone give you their full attention (good for when the nobles are ignoring you) or making you appear slightly more attractive to the person. Floating Disc cantrips could lighten the load of what you're carrying, but you'd still need to carry it yourself, and so on.

I've used a system like this earlier, but my mistake then was probably that the Cantrips were lost if you cast the spell. If we want to make MUs more active and have more options, maybe it should be the other way around: If you memorize a spell, it unlocks a list of Cantrips for that day. Even if you cast Sleep you still have access to the Yawn cantrip.

That sounds pretty good. I'm gonna go with that for now. If I started a new group or the current group's MU dies, I'll probably switch over to the Barbarian hack completely.