One of the things that really turned me on on OSR and LotFP was Vaginas Are Magic. This is an alternative magic system to LotFP. Its a collection of 20 spells, and descriptions of what can happen when they go wrong. I then discovered that VaM is based on another supplement, Wonder and Wickedness. WoW doesn't have as outrageous spells as VaM, but that might be for the best. Variation and all that.
So it was an easy decision to use a magic system similar to those two.
In particular this means that it is a sort of Vancian system. Similar to that of D&D, but a bit simpler, and a bit more complex. Spells are not divided by level. You can memorize one spell per level. You can't memorize a spell unto multiple spell slots. (I don't want people to use the same spell all the time.) The more complex part is that spells can go wrong, for example if something disturbs the sorcerer during casting. In that case you are allowed to do a will check to force the spell to behave. If that fails, the miscast effect will apply. In VaM each spell have six unique miscasts, and six general, while in WoW, each spell belongs to a magic school and each school has 12 miscast effects specific for that school. I will mostly go with the WoW approach, although the spells taken from VaM (and Eldritch Cock) will of course use their individual miscasts.
Thematically I wan't to go back to more to the sources of vancian magic (which would be Jack Vance Dying Earth). This means that spells are sentient beings. Magic spirits with a will of their own. You don't prepare spells. You memorize them, making them temporarily leave their books and enter your mind. Miscasts then means that the spell is let out and out of your control.
The player characters in Arcadian Sunset are generally going to learn new spells in spell books they find. These spell books are going to be themed in the sense that all spells will belong to the same school. I plan to make a deck of cards with the spells for each school, so that I can randomize their content and never have the same spell show up twice. It will also we be really nice to just be able to hand out the cards to the players to read.
To learn a spell will require a Wits check. This one will be a sort of special check, in that I wouldn't want people to simply repeat the check until they succeeded. So instead what you would do is that every time you fail to learn a spell you write down the name of the spell on your sheet, your result, and how much advantage you had. If you then later raises your Wits to that level, you can learn the spell. Also if you get more advantage on the roll, you can reroll, and replace the written value. So learning spells is a bit complex, but I think it is needed to make it work out.
Things that would give you advantage on the learning roll would include already knowing a spell of the same school. Taking a lot of time (1 week) to study the text.
Likewise you can learn a spell from a person that knows it. But spells are semi-sentient memetic beings, they can only live in one place at a time, so if you teach someone a spell you will also forget it. Likewise if you learn a spell from a spell book it disappears from the book. And if you write it down you will forget it. You can cast spells directly from your spellbook but this will require a will save. It might even be possible to use a spell that you only have a vague memory of, but this would be at a disadvantage. At least.
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