Hey there everyone,
For the last four months, I’ve been building my own Champaign world from the ground up. Political strife between elementals shatters mountains and creates rivers in the desserts in the south, while in the grasslands to the east, the veil between the Waking world and that of dreams is almost unnoticeable.
I’ve got plenty of little hacks to spice up adventuring, from pools of points that are used to accomplish the impossible, to materials that can be scavenged from monster carcases to make better items.
Magic however, is just as it is. I can’t think of any way to change the base system (Which I find quite balanced, when Held up over all,) without unbalancing it. I want a little bit of verity in how magic is performed in different areas. Fluff and Flavour wise..... I’m all over it, I’ve got some mages who use complex arcane formulae, others who use magically charged thread to weave their spells, and a group of centaur necromancers who channel their magic through songs played on flutes made of willow and bone.
What I’m stuck with is the actual mechanics; I want the flavour of the magic to pour through into game play.
ON a completely different note, I was interested in somehow making some sort of pact system with spirits. Yes, I know of Binding magic, I love it, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for.
These spirits exist on some of the overlapping planes in my cosmology, they are strange, alien, and have their own motives for these deals. Some might play out like Faustian bargains, granting large amounts of power or wealth in exchange for the character’s soul (inability to be resurrected in game terms). Others might involve the opposite, great sacrifices of gold and blood in exchange for immaterial things. My challenge is like the one above... creating a concrete system that won’t break the game, while creating a system specifically for breaking Reality.
I’m going to keep thinking about this, but any help would be Greatly Appreciated.
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You might get more response by posting this in the Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew thread, if it doesn't get moved there.
To answer part of your question you might take a look at True Sorcery which converts magic into a skill system for part of your mechanics problem. Very similar to how True Name Magic was handled in Tome of Magic from WotC. An option you could play with to add more effects would be to use action points and allow the spending of action points to modify the spell. Also a possible system could be along the lines of Blood Magic, where the caster inflicts damage on themselves to amplify the spell.