Fatiguing Magic
For those that aren’t interested in the why, you can juste Click here to skip to the actual house rule
I dislike when RPG system uses memory as an excuse to apply some balance on their magic system. It attacks my suspension of disbelief and affect negatively the experience I have while playing it.
The reason is quite simple :
- My memory don’t usually start to forget things I just used … It tends to forget things I rarely use …
- My memory cannot remember multiple time the same information
So when I saw that memory was used as a balancing mechanisim in The Black Hack I was a little bit disapointed. I gave the game a chance and decided that if my players didn’t mind I could get over it.
But they openly said that they think it didn’t make any sense, so now I have the right to fix it.
What would be better
So casting spells and forgetting about them as you do so don’t work with my group taste. What would now ?
The obvious alternative is to use Mana. It fit better naratively than memory and is used by numerous other RPGs. But mechanicaly it goes against the simplicity of resources management of The Black Hack. Something could be done with a Usage Dice to represent Mana, but that feels clunky.
Another way of balancing out magic spells is to use fatigue. True20 and the Iron Kingdoms RPG both uses fatigue as a moderation mechanism :
- If you cast too much spells you become fatigued and can’t cast anymore.
I personally thing that Mana system are trying to emulate fatigue. Mana represents what you can do before getting fatigued. And when you don’t have any Mana left your are too much fatigued to cast any spells.
That’s why I think that fatiguing magic is even more interesting narratively speaking. It allow a bunch of great tropes. Like :
Let’s go with that
Some considerations
Before starting to write some house rule, let’s take time to think about what that house rule shoud do.
- I’d like the house rule to stay compatible with both core and third party classes.
- The house rule has to be simple, I can’t write a 30 pages house rule for a 20 pages rule book.
So I’ll try to reuse before creating something new.
What to keep from the actual rules
From the spell casting system
MEMORISING SPELLS
Most spellcasting classes have a way to memorise spells. If I don’t want to rewrite every classes that I’m gonna use, I have to keep this mechanism.
CASTING SPELLS
The rules make a distinction between casting spells from memory and from spell book. When casting spells from memory you have a increasing chance to forget it but you can cast spells from your spell book.
Both mechanism require an Ability Test. This ability test as the advantage to include both your caster ability and the level of the spell in the calculation. But it also requires some additional bookkeeping to remember which spells were previously cast.
Rolling on the Magical Side Effects table is fun, I want to keep that.
From the Fatigue system
Fatigue in The Black Hack is only refered once, in the random encounter table.
All Characters must consume food and water or lose HP equal to their Level through fatigue
So to emulate fatigue in The Black Hack, without introducing new rules and mechanism, character should lose HP when they start to get fatigued
The final house rule
So this is what I came up with. It repalce a single section of the rule books and stays broadly compatible with third party classes and everything.
I’m gonna test it out with my group over the next few sessions.
CASTING SPELLS
A Spellcaster can spend an Action on their Turn to attempt to cast a spell or prayer from memory or by reading it from a book or scroll, when Turns are being tracked using Minutes.
To do so they must make an Attribute Test - adding the spell’s or prayer’s level to the roll. If they succeed, the spell is cast.
If they fail, the Player as to chooses between :
- letting the magical energy loose and rolling on the Magical Side Effects table (p.43 in the main rule book)
- forcing the spell to work but lose HP equal to their Level through fatigue
A Spellcaster can only cast spells with level up to and equal to their Level.
Arcane spells use Intelligence and prayers use Wisdom for all Attribute Tests.