Halloween Time - time for some some alternate magic rules!

So Halloween is once more here.  And with it comes all manners of things.  This year its on a Saturday - the day most of us tabletop gamers get together and play games.  But it got me to thinking about alternative rules for handling magic.


HERO SYSTEM                                                                                           
Now Hero System is incredibly versatile, and the Fantasy Hero book already offers a number of versions of rules for dealing with magic.

• Environmental Magic:  Here the players do not make use of their END orMana or what ever it is you want to call it.  Instead the GM will assign an END reserve and recovery score for the area where magic is being used.  All magic users draw magic from this reserve.  If expended then the various spell casters in the area need to wait until the END there recovers.  Often the recovery should occur at minute intervals, but you can have this set to occur sooner for places that might be exceptionally strong in magic.
• Spells are Skills:  With this the player must buy their spells as skills.  The spell needs to be built with points, but the idea here is that your not actually buying the spell.  Instead your roll generates the amount of AP you can use in the spell.  You have a minimum effect you can generate with the spell (you just succeed in casting the spell).  But each additional point over the base roll needed to succeed that you meat enhances the base spell's effect by 10AP.  As such its important to figure what a single increase costs and thus you may have to exceed the base difficulty of the roll by more than one point in order to gain an increase.  On the other hand a single point could also potentially grant two increases.  This is a system that would reflect well into a Harry Potter like game setting.  The use of magic though for a Harry Potter like setting may not use END though, and there are repercussions for failing to cast a spell properly via the Side Effect limitation.
• Life Draining:  Maybe magic is rare and not something to be taken lightly for those who know a spell or two.  Instead of using END, magic uses the character's STUN.  Alternatively the character can also sacrifice BODY to cast a spell, gaining 2 STUN for every 1 BODY spent.  Thus a spell caster has the potential of knocking themselves out by using magic, or even killing themselves.
• Individual Spell Charges (D&D Style):  Spells can be built to have charges, thus you can only case a spell a certain number of times.  Alternatively you could build a multipower and apply charges to all the powers in the pool thus forcing them to draw on a shared pool of points.

D&D 5th Edition                                                                                          

So one of the things I've always hated was how D&D was how they did the spell casting.  I never liked the fact that I was limited to being able to only cast 1 spell one time, and not multiple times at the expense of being able to cast other spells.  Now in 5th Edition some classes kind of have this capacity, but at the same time its not quite there yet.

• Simple Spell Points:  Instead of granting X number of spells that can be memorized each class that allows the use of spells grants a limited number of spell points with which the character can cast spells.  Cantrips still cost no points.  Each spell uses 1 spell point to cast.  If a spell would allow you to cast it at a higher level you simply spend an additional spell point or more.  the number of spells that a person can know doesn't change however.  To determine the points take the characters governing spell casting Attribute modifier and add their Class level to it.  If Multiclassing the pool remains the same so long as the new class grants spell points.
• Spells Known:  Aside from Cantrips Spell Slots should be used to determine how many spells it is the character can memorize.  This allows the character to not have to memorize a single spell multiple times to cast it multiple times.
• Complex Spell Points:  Instead of 1 spell costing 1 point; the spell instead costs a number of points equal to its level.  In this case more spell points are needed so you may need to double the points the character gains each level.
• Harry Potter:  So something that was brought up on Facebook by someone whom contacted me was using D&D for Harry Potter like use of spells.  Here the GM may want to introduce a new skill called Spell Casting.  Instead of memorizing spells to be cast, each spell must be cast with a skill roll.  The difficulty is equal to 8 + the spells level.  If the roll fails then either the spell isn't cast or its cast but with repercussions to the caster.  Disposable spell components are overlooked in a Harry Potter spell system.  Instead casting is done with a wand.  If a spell uses disposable components You can say that the difficulty of the spell is +1 greater due to the complexity of the spell.  Aside from that one should over look the need for material components for casting spells.

Now I'd like to say that I can write up more stuff for other game systems, but the systems I play and enjoy are limited in scope.  

But enjoy and I hope you all find these alternative rules helpful.