"Miscasting Spells" rules from Through the Glass Darkly

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Axelmania
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"Miscasting Spells" rules from Through the Glass Darkly

Unread post by Axelmania »

Page 43 (Nightbane World Book 3) mentions two interesting ideas...
    chants and incantations may be mispronounced, particularly if they are obscure languages or involve apparently gibberish words
    Game Masters may require a language skill roll to successfully repeat an incantation


and then:
    Spells requiring complex gestures may be miscast by clumsy characters
    A roll against the PP attribute may be required to cast such a spell correctly


Has anyone tried using rules like this for magic in any other games? It seems like it would make magic a lot more interesting, a lot more suspenseful. Less of a "I'm pulling the trigger on my gun" and more of the mysterious force that it ought to be.

In that case, what sort of optional rules might you make to lessen the risks of such requirements? Like to get a bonus to language or PP rolls for speaking/gesturing? I was thinking perhaps if they spent more than the minimal time to do it, they might get some kind of bonus, allowing more reliable spellcasting by mages who had more time to do it.

The downside of that, aside from taking longer to get it done, is there is a longer span in which to get distracted/attacked which itself would probably cause penalties to these rolls (more than the bonus gained than spending longer on them, perhaps) and also create a chance of miscasting.
dreicunan
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Re: "Miscasting Spells" rules from Through the Glass Darkly

Unread post by dreicunan »

I have played with some folks who used those rules for non-mystic casters. There was basically a "Language: magic" skill that all non-mystic casters had...it's been a long time, but IIRC 20+5% per level was base, and only intelligence could increase the skill (no OCC granted a bonus). For each extra action spent casting the spell, you got +10% on the roll. The PP roll was similar, +1 to you PP for the purpose of casting for each extra action spent on the spell, have to roll under. I thinknthey gave a bonus to your PP for spell casting whenever spell strength increased, too.

The way they played, mystic casters could and always did silent cast - any words were for show - so they only had to worry about gestures. Heavily house ruled, clearly.
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