From: soss@unix.cie.rpi.edu (Steven Soss)
Subject: FUDGE: magic
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 15:36:53 GMT

Well, I was thinking of all the magic discussions bouncing around and
thought that maybe a system that I was using in a homebrew might fit
the bill.  So, to jump right in...

Define three magic attributes (skills?) called Power, Control, and Accuracy.
These would be rated on the scale of Terrible to Superb.

	POWER: this skill is defined as the ability of the caster to
draw upon the essence in which to power his spell.  A mage with a
superb power could summon dragons, create castles, raise entire
cities.  A poor power mage might have difficulty in levitating a
briefcase.  
	CONTROL: this is the ability to cast the spell that you wanted 
to cast.  Mastery of this skill is what makes the magic fickle or not.
A high power mage with low control might cast a spell to create a
castle and summon a dragon instead.  Or cast a fireball spell and
instead just turn the victims clothes red.  
	ACCURACY: the ability to pinpoint the target of the spell.
While a bit more nebulous than the other two skills, this is used more
when trying to pick out a unique target.  Superb accuracy might allow
a mage to pluck off the nosehairs of a nearby orc.  On the other hand,
a poor accuracy might cause a rain spell to act in the next town (or
even on the next day).

Now with these overlying skills, almost any type of mage is possible.
You can set CONTROL to a maximum of fair to allow all magic to have
some fickleness associated with it.  Or with high CONTROL, one will
get the more Merlin type mage who is assured of his spell working.
POWER is the difference between the genie in Alladin, or a typical
village witch.

When casting a spell, you can determine sucess in two ways.  The GM
assigns a task difficulty for each area of the spell (control, power,
and accuracy), and the caster rolls against his skills.  So
to pluck out our unfortunate orc's nosehairs, the GM might rule that
it is a poor power, fair control, great accuracy spell.  The caster
could either roll one time and use the results for each of his skills,
or roll each seperately.  The second way is that the GM could assign
an overall difficulty task and each skill must match that overall
difficulty to cast successfully.

Failures to cast a spell can be handled in the way that the current
FUDGE system works - a draining of some magic battery or something.

Just to ramble on a bit more, I suggest the following as modifiers to
the above skills:  any ritual or ceremony will add a bonus to the
POWER of a spell cast (this can allow for ordinary mages to cast some
extraordinary spells); by uttering the spell as a poem will add a
bonus to the CONTROL of a spell (as the magic is being focused), while
hastening a spell could add a penalty; having material components may
increase the ACCURACY (a voodoo doll can do wonders here)

While this system does not address the issue of forcing a caster to
cast varied spells (which I don't think is very necessary to begin
with - here comes Joe the Mage, watch out, he always uses a fireball -
should be a big enough deterrent), it does allow for a system to be
tailored as to how powerful and controlled magic can be.  So what do
you all think?

-Steve
Newsgroups: rec.games.design