My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Beyond Vancian Magic.
Knowledge is power:
To get one of the powers to do your bidding requires chanting the right incantation during a specific ritual to prepare the spell, and an action combined with a verbal trigger to cast it. The preparation of the spell and the casting can be no further than 1 day apart.
No innate power or even skill is required to cast spells. Anyone who finds a grimoire and is able to read the frantic scrabbles of the mage it belonged to can simply follow the instructions and boom: magic. Think everytime someone reads from the Necronomicon in Evil Dead movies.
A lot of media also warns not to do X or say Y while dealing with magic, so lets give each spell a taboo as well as an optional addition. Breaking the taboo creates a negative effect. You could see it as retaliation from the power asked to perform the task.
Mechanics:
At the start of the day a character can spend time and resources to prepare spells.
As a rule of thumb: when preparing spells in a well stocked environment it takes one dungeon turn to create a spell. If ingredients have to be gathered/bought it takes about an hour, though this does require that finding these ingredients is feasible. For more powerful spells, preparation time can of course be longer.
Cost depends highly on the sort of game you are running, but I would be inclined to say that in a town that probably has everything you need spells cost 1d6 x 10 gp. As with time, for more powerful spells the ingredients can be made pricier or even unavailable on the market. Go collect that dragon tongue yourself.
Finally, to prevent endless stockpiling, most spells should have an experation date. I'd probably go with one day as a general rule (use this before next sunrise), but you could do a week or a moon if that fits better.
Some spell recipes for LBB spells:
- Sleep
Preparation: In a sheepskin, soak sand in milk of poppy, while singing this incantation as a soft lullaby until the milk has been fully absorbed.
Casting: Say the trigger word and blow sand in eyes of your target to put them to sleep until next sunrise.
Taboo: Ending the sleep prematurely of one under the spell curses the killer and caster with insomnia. - Charm Person
Preparation: Mix honey, snake venom with the hair of an innocent child (babies are always safe bet if you can convince the caretakers) while speaking this incantarion as a compliment.
Casting: Drink mixture, say the trigger word and stare in the eyes of your target. As long as you maintain eye contact the creature has to do as you say. Anything that might make the target flinch (such as pain) will break the charm.
Taboo: If you touch the charmed creature the spell reverses, causing you to be charmed instead. - Light
Preparation: In a gold brazier burn petals of a sunflower, wax of a bee and the eye of a falcon. Optionally you can bind the ash in squashed glow-worms.
Casting: Smear ash in the shape of the sigil of the blind eye on a surface and speak the trigger word to cause it to emit a bright light.
Taboo: Don't mention the sun while the spell is active or it as well as any other nearby lightsource will go dark. - Circle of Protection (Protection from Evil)
Preparation: Place salt in a sack made of white silk. Hang in a fire while droning the incantarion until the silk has gone red.
Casting: Poor the salt as a line in whatever shape you desire. Once the salt is in place say the trigger word and specify the object, creature or person you want protection from. As long as the line is intact the specified threat cannot cross the salt.
Taboo: Spilling the salt is a bad omen, meaning something will go horribly wrong in the near future. - Detect Magic
Preparation: Make a candle from a wick of mage hair (anyone who has cast a spell is considered a mage) and the drippings of library candles, while reciting the incantation.
Casting: Burn the candle in total darkness by speaking the trigger word. The light shed by the candle only illuminates magical spells, magic objects and anything currently under the effect of a spell.
Taboo: A mage can only use their hair to make a candle once. Using hair from the same mage twice makes you blind to any and all magic. - Knock
Preparation: With metal of a latch or lock carve a piece of wood that was part of a door or container into a staff.
Casting: Tap the staff on a hard surface and any door or container the sound echoes off of will slam open, after which the staff splinters.
Taboo: If you close any door or lid the same day you opened them with this spell, you'll be cursed with untimely stuck doors and lids. - Invisibility
Preparation: Melt down a mirror and mix in glas-butterfly wings and phasmid legs. Store in a transparent container.
Casting: Apply liquid liberally on the entire surface area of an object or creature to turn them invisible until the liquid has dried.
Taboo: Any spell covered in invisibility liquid will never again work for the mage who prepared it. - Levitate
Preparation: Hold a dark feather in the smoke of any lit strong spirit while reciting the incantation until the feather is bleached white.
Casting: Burn the feather and inhale the smoke. As long as you hold your breath you'll continue to levitate upwards. The speed of your descend depends on the speed at which you release your breath.
Taboo: If the feather is burned without anyone inhaling the smoke, the whoever prepared the spell will be cursed with leaden feet. - Fly
Preparation: Grind up the feathers of an uncommon swift to a fine dust while chriping the incantarion. Alternatively you could just use fairy dust.
Casting: Sprinkle a good dose of the dust ontop of whomever you wish to cast it on. The more you use, the longer they'll fly.
Taboo: The spell stops working when you acknowledge that you are flying. Best to think of happy things to distract yourself. - Time Spell (Haste Spell/Slow Spell)
Preparation: Mix pulverised sand from an hourglass with morning dew drops and evening fog while chanting the incantation at varying speed. Let dry to form a piece of chalk (it is advisable to use a cast to create a useable shape).
Casting: Draw a magic circle around the desired area following the diagram below. Upon speaking the trigger word time will move out of joint, seeming to go faster inside the circle from outside while outside the circle seems to slowdown from within it.
Taboo: Never draw multiple circles inside one another, as this will fracture time and cast the spellcaster into a random point in time. - Wizard Eye
Preparation: Polish a bead of glas with a bat's wing into a perfect orb while whispering the incantation.
Casting: Throw the orb in the air while saying the trigger word. The floating orb is now like an extension of your body, another limb you can move about, and sees just like your other eyes. If you keep your eyes open while using the spell you are effectively looking at the world cross-eyed.
Taboo: Don't look at yourself while the spell is active. Every time you do you will go blind in one eye. - Dimension Door
Preparation: Take the opposite halves of two ancient keys and fuse them together into a single key using the blood of a displacer beast, while growling the incantation.
Casting: With the key, trace the outline of a door and afterwards point the key at a surface you can see while saying the trigger word. A doorway will open between the tracing and the indicated surface, allowing travel between the two points as if they were spatially right next to each other. The passage can be used until the door is closed.
Taboo: Leaving the door open when no one is using the passageway will cause the user to be cursed. Any portal they pass through will send them back through the doorway created with this spell. - Polymorph (Polymorph Self/Other)
Preparation: In a lead pan, bake part of the creature you want the spell to turn your target into, combined with meal of pupae and chimera milk (minotaur is recommended), while prattling the incantation. Tip: bake the biscuit into the shape of the creature it turns one into as a mnemonic device.
Casting: Get the creature you wish to polymorph to ingest the biscuit and say the trigger word. They'll take on all the physical characteristics of the creature baked into the biscuit but initially retain their own mind. They'll awake in their original form if they go to sleep before the next sunrise.
Taboo: If someone stays in their new form when the sun next rises they'll have forgotten their former body and their mind adapts to its current one. They are now the creature they polymorphed into. - Enlarge (Growth of Animals)
Preparation: Dissolve manure in the blood or sap of a fast growing crearure or plant while booming the inscription.
Casting: Have the creature you wish to enlarge drink the concoction and say the trigger word. They'll increase in size based on the ingredient used. Typically at least double the original size if the ingredient grows significantly faster than whatever drinks the spell.
Taboo: You cannot enlarge a creature twice. Trying to do so will cause the caster to shrink half their size each night. - Elemental Wall (Wall of Fire/Ice/Stone/Iron)
Preparation: Twist a length of rope from any fibres while singing the incantation. Once the rope is done, keep singing as you soak the rope in one of the following depending on the kind of wall you desire: ash for fire, water for ice, clay mud for stone, mercury for steel)
Casting: Once the rope is in a desired shape say the trigger word to cause a wall to rise up from the rope in the element you prepared it for. The walls will stand until next sunrise or until they are destroyed.
Taboo: Do not have rope for this spell cross over itself when you activate it, or it will turn to whatever you soaked it in, rather than the desired wall. - Conjure Elemental
Preparation: Create an effigy of the form you want the elemental to take (typically people choose animals). The effigy has to contain part of the creature who's form you'll use and a gem corresponding with the desired element.
Casting: Ensure an appropriate amount of the desired element is present. Take out the effigy and speak the trigger word. An elemental of similar shape will form and follow the commands of whomever has the effigy. The effigy and elemental are liked: destroying one will destroy the other. To safely dismiss the spell, speak the trigger word backwards once the elemental has returned to the position its body came from.
Taboo: You can only ever make one effigy of each element. Attempting to make another will cause you to become a mortal enemy of the element you've thus betrayed. - Animate Dead
Preparation: Combine the blood of one who didn't experience their death with the ashes of one who died by choice into a paste while gurgling the incantation.
Casting: Place a mark on the head of the head of the corpse you are trying to animate. After speaking the trigger word give the undead a single command. Once the command has been fulfilled the body will go limp again.
Taboo: You have to give propper burial to the bodies you've used for the spell once they have completed their task, or your body will start to decompose as if it was dead. - Disintegrate
Preparation: Distil amnesiac's tears and mix with censor's ink while silently mouthing the incantation.
Casting: Splash the liquid towards whatever you wish to disintegrate. Once you say the trigger word, anything the liquid touches for the next second will disappear from existence.
Taboo: Once the spell is prepared it has to be cast the same day or else the spell will affect the one who prepared it instead. - Geas
Preparation: Create an alloy of the seven metals and forge it in an eternal flame into a needle, while singing the inscription.
Casting: Prick your target with the needle while saying the trigger word, followed by an instruction on what rule to follow from now on. Failing to follow the rule will result in the doom of the target of the spell.
Taboo: If the rule you give is impossible for the target to abide by and live you die instead. - Invisible Stalker
Preparation: Craft a container out of coffin wood and funeral pyre ash while saying the inscription. Inside, put something close to the intended victim and lock the container with chains forged from prison bars.
Casting: Say the trigger word while opening the container. A shadow will creep out and head towards the target as the crow flies. Upon finding them, the stalker will proceed to kill them and disappear.
Taboo: If your target dies before the stalker gets to them, the caster of the spell will be its new target.
Discussion
I know I probably say this every time, but I would really like to tey this version of magic in a future game. There is an appeal to me to magic literally just being forbidden knowledge. Not innate power or aquired skill, just information kept from people because of the impact it would have on society.
For these spells I've tried to tie duration and range on concrete things in the (imagined) physical world rather than abstract unites of measurement. The one place I struggled with this is disintegrate, so if anyone has a better way of phrasing that one (or even a better different way of conceptualizing it) I would love to hear it. There is no real reason for this other than aesthetics and personal preference. I find it easier to imagine conceptually if you can cast a spell on something or someone when it is phrased in terms like these, rather than if you were to use minutes and meters (or feet if you are into that kind of thing). Folks running games on battlemats and with strict time-records kept in modern units of time would probably find my method cumbersome.
The potential worldbuilding implications of magic like this are also interesting to me. From trying to destroy all magical knowledge as a way to guarantee no one uses it agaist you, to trying to hoard it for yourself, or strictly regulating who can and can't access it (maybe through Geas?), authorities are going to have to find a way to deal with magical knowledge.
It also fits the 'prepared spells' idea you find in 0D&D which I quite like. Forcing you to think about which spells you want to prepare for the day seems like a fun little puzzle and gating the amount of spells you can prepare behind time and materials seems more fun to me as well, as it is a problem players might find interesting sollutions to work around (use the time spell first and then prepare twice as many spells in the same time for example).
I also like that this creates a fun reason for magic-users to take on apprentices. Getting them to help you prepare spells must be an immense time saver and it seems relatively easy to prevent them from actually learning spells you don't want to give them access to.
And finally, I like that this reïnforces the 'find spells in the world' trope, which I really like in my fantasy adventure games. Players could even make their own spells (in collaboration with the GM) and then quest for them, or attempt to find them in downtime activities.
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