Okay, so I'm creating a tabletop RPG for my little 3 players playgroup, altho I'm pretty sure I'll be playing with other people too somewhere in the future. I won't start writing an essay about the plot or anything here, but I'll give you a basic idea: 10 houses of wizards (as in family line and not a building..) end up competing against eachother to gain possession of each house's artifact to accomplish something.

Right now I'm creating the spells for the game, and I've done nearly half of the houses. Each of the houses has different theme in it which affects what kind of spells they have, and I would like some ideas from you all guys, roleplayer or not, as there sure are many spells in this system I'm creating.

Some guidelines: the players will be playing mages from houses I've already selected and planned spells for, but as I will use this system in my later games all spells should be something usable by a player. Spells have cooldowns, manacosts,range and poise damage like in dark sousl to them, but that's naturally my job to do.. If you want, you can suggest something to be a "long range spell" or something like that, of course. Lastly, spells are divided into basic, advanced and epic spells. Basic being something simple and lower cooldown, advanced something showing the houses specialties clearly and epic spells are, well, epic stuff that can be used once a day at big manacost.

So, without further ado, here are the house themes left to plan spells for:

Alchemist house: transmutation, controlling temperature, has a ball of liquid that can be morphed to pretty much everything
and is manipulated by the temperature.

Illusionist house: illusions that can deal damage, manipulating light and darkness as in phenomenons of real physics, kind of a rogue class doing light melee, abilities adding light and dark stacks to enemies and other abilities affecting the stacks somehow

Psionic house: turning enemies against eachother, all sort of attacking and controlling the enemies minds

Necromancer house: all sort of necromancer stuff e.g. exploding corpses to deal damage, cursing enemies causing negative effects to them, damaging opponents mana

Druid house: healing, confident in melee and abilities have different things in them when used at melee range opposed to range, polymorphing itself or part of itself to an animal for a moment e.g hit enemy with a claw of a bear, using nature like calling roots to hold enemies on place and so on

There are some simililarities in all houses, like each one having a shielding spell and a simple projectile spell that is usable each turn, for obvious reasons. I want ideas for things more complicated than x happens dealing y damage, but naturally within limits of a tabletop game.

I guess that's all, lets hope I didn't write too many typos. Thank you in advance for good ideas, I'll be writing stuff up on same time as I watch the thread if someone actually posts and listen to music. Cheers!

9 years ago*

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What ruleset will this use? D20? Or something more custom-built? I need to know how magic generally works in your world, as well. Is it something only the elite have, and is used sparingly, or can even a simple street urchin, with training, master the powers of the arcane. Which is more prevalent in your world, mundane, physical damage, or magical ability? Perhaps magical items are something you want to consider. Are they artifacts, or trinkets?

9 years ago
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System is something I completely figured up on my own. Using papers with squares in them for ranges and stuff. Magic is in this game tapping into your power source (mana). People are born with it, or then not. Mana is used by magic words, and this knowledge is distributed among the different houses. However, these houses do not generally take in people who are not blood related to them. Most of the people born with mana who are not in a house never get to use their abilities for anything as they can't acces the knowledge, but some of them have formed a guild of people who train to fight mages and attempt to keep balance between the normal people and the mages, using simple magic that counters other magic. The guilds leader was thrown off by the main antagonist of the game, who will be the "last boss".

There are some common magical items that last for a short time, and then items directly infused with mana like the artifacts the houses are using. They are nigh impossible to destroy, because mana wants to protect its vessel. That's why anyone born with mana is tougher than a normal human to kill, giving good reason that the mages don't just oneshot eachother in the fights. I hope this answers your questions.

9 years ago
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Sounds interesting. Could you give ideas for already decided spell cards to give an idea or do you just want general spell ideas?

9 years ago
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Well, I wish some general ideas but I want them to somehow reflect the house. I'll give an example, then: weather mage, which I've already planned spells for, has a spell which summons a cloud that follows the closest target when cast for few turns shooting lightning bolts at that target.

9 years ago
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in some ways gurps does some of this well you'd just need the well gurps basic set 1 and 2 and gurps magic but that's a minor cost and with the magic styles book and such you could do things also but then if you already have ideas not sure what to say plus getting a new sytem might not work and things but still ^^;; I like gurps

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Yeah, never used any official rule system with my playgroup so it could be bad idea ^^ And yeah, I'm having pretty good ideas but it's fun to brainstorm with other people. Also, I will be writing books sometime far into the future and this world I'm designing to this game has some pretty neat elements to use in the world for the books so far.

9 years ago
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Well, just for the fun of it:

House of "Movement" (bad name but you'll get the picture): Centers around spells of movement like moving faster, being light and as such jumping higher or even flying, teleportation and moving through "parallel dimensions" (similar to the Siren in Borderlands 1). Would not be much of damage potential at first sight, so maybe a House that specialize in avoiding confrontation or trying to use area to advantage.

House of the enforcer: Unlike other houses they can't use their spells to create something new. They just can enforce already existing effects like gravity being stronger. Like a small fire which creates heat just creating more heat. Or if someone has a bleeding wound it could increase the bleeding (would lead to interesting battles). If someone freezes they can increase the freezing feeling. I think with the enforcing and weakening gravity and increasing of bleeding wounds they have some interesting potential.

9 years ago
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I won't be adding new houses in, but the enforcer stuff sounds much like the alchemist house :p I think I'll grab the idea to do something with gravity!

9 years ago
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The Bard type house could have songs which compel people to shake their butts, or thrash about, or do a conga line. It could even require the caster to sing a line, "Come on everybody come and do the conga, you don't have control of yourself any longer!"

Could lead to some creative solutions. Archers on cliff? Play punk rock and half of them hurl themselves off while thrashing about. Or you use punk rock on a bunch of guards and they form a mosh pit and the weakest guard is trampled to death. Or you play the conga song and lead them into another room and try to lock them in. Play jazz to get people tapping their toes, which might not matter unless the toe in question is lying on the drawbridge mechanism!

9 years ago
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Heh, I'll have to remember this if I ever make a humorous game :)

9 years ago
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Illusionist/Psionic: High level 1 time use spell: Bind someone's essence to you. While bound to this person all charm/control/cc spells used against you have a chance to afflict the person you are bound to instead of you. To cast will permanently lower you charisma(or similar stat) by 2 because you take on an evil aura that also effects people's reaction to you. (All good and bad deed reactions are doubled) If the person you are bound to dies you will also lose 1 constitution permanently.

9 years ago
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Will add for psionic without the side-effects :)

9 years ago
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Frost touch: Freezes target for 1-2 turns. If target is hit by anything during frozen status, it dies. Other way, after 1-2 turns target get backs to life losing 10% of hp, but no less than some amount (so weak target could get killed). Spells may be casted upon frozen unit, so it can be buffed/healed.

Boiling Blood: Deals heavily damage to living creatures (considering that you may have undead/golems), makes them suffer for 1 turn, skipping action. Damaged may be reduced for hot-blooded creatures (like demons) or increased for cold-bloodied.

Blood Freeze: Deals low/medium damage to living creatures, makes them suffer for 1 turn, skipping action. Can cause critical damage (up to fatal) - if blood icicles strike the heart.

Blood control: Control target unit for X turns. Optional: If spell is stacked several times, unit can permanently change ownership.

Skin to armor: Transmutes skin to armor, causing pain to unit (deal X damage), reducing max hp and movement range, but greatly increases armor.

Mist: Prevents using ranged attacks or aimed spells (area damage spells will work).

Blinking light: For next 5 turns all enemies will be blind on odd turns (light) and receive increased damage, but they will see on even turns (dark). Can be countered by Light spell, or by the same Blinking light casted on "dark" turn. Of course, if inits are supposed not to have eyes or anything like this, spell won't affect them.

Mana storm: Deals damage to targets in the area, depending on their mana.

Rain: Reduces damage of fire attacks, can (with some chance) spot hidden (invisible/cloaked) units.

Stalker: With some chance makes user invisible until he deals damage. Greatly increases chance to run away.

Brain Death: Instantly kills target

Power of nature: Caster get thick hide (+armor), and sharp claws (melee weapon), but can't cast hard spells or use ranged weapons. Still, he can choose between using melee weapons and his claws. Active spell, also decreases charisma of caster, making it harder to talk with others.

Rage: Increases melee, caster can now attack only with melee, and can't fully control his actions (everyone rolls dice, the highest one gets attacked - even if it's allied).

Speed of light: Very fast unblockable melee attack on enemy, if succeded (roll a dice). If unseccessful, caster misses the target, hits an obstacle and receives some damage.

9 years ago
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Mmm, few very usable ideas there, thank you for posting! I can't believe I hadn't thought of simple thing that reduces vision of everyone so far T_T

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Tableflip spell - its effects are similar to Armageddon spell in Ultima series :)

9 years ago
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Well if no new houses, then just spells -_- :

Bound to me (version 1): The user can bind one person to him which will feel the same emotions as him (for reference or possibly usage you can check Hidan of Naruto of Meldy of Fairy Tail, they have similar abilities

Bound to me (version 2): The user can formulate a rule and a penalty for himself and his target like do not blink or you'll get blind. Spell can differ if only first one will get penalty or penalty for everytime the rule is broken during a specific time. Also you have to decide if the possible penalty increases or decreases with the difficulty of the rule (so much possibilites: do not breath, don't use your left leg, do not use spells, or even active rules, both of us have to call each other's name all 5 minutes .....)

Backstep: The user can send his memories to the past but only for 1-30 seconds which can give him an advantage in actual battles but the farther he goes back the greater are the cost and the greater the risk to create a paradox. Could also have a side effect like increased aging.

9 years ago
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Ars Magica has a pretty good list of spells/enemies that you can use as a guideline, as I am sure do most other tabletops. Third Edition PDF Download Link

9 years ago
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