An Abominable Fancy

Here is a spell/powers list for David Black's The Black Hack , combining the level-less spell casting from  Wonders & Wickedness and my own Boring Spells . STRANGE POWERS This list was developed for my  Planetary Romance Hack , and therefore is missing some fantasy staples, like, say, anything to do with the undead. I bet you can figure something out, though. What’s Missing: Powers per Level. I assume it will be based on Usage Dice, but I haven’t settled on the exact progression. There are several schemes for Spell Casting Usage Dice out there, and I’d suggest starting with one of those, and adjusting to taste. Please let me know what you think and what improvements or adaptations could be made!

Jonathan Linneman, over on the Monstrous Matters blog, posted a really intriguing idea for a simplified magic system . He proposes a sister mechanic to Hit Dice: Magic Dice.  If you want to level up in spell casting instead of fighting, you get a Magic Die instead of a Hit Die. When casting a spell, roll a pool of 6-sided dice equal to your MD. MD pool ≥ Spell Level x 5. Success: Spell is cast. Remove one die from MD pool (minimum of 1). Failure: Spell is not cast. Add one die to MD pool. This looks great. I love the idea of taking the bookkeeping out of spell casting. I love mechanics that make failure functional. And this looks elegant. But will it actually work? I went over to anydice and looked at the numbers. I ran the Spell Levels up to 6 and the MD Pools up to 12, because my brain defaults to B/X magic. Spell Level Target MD Pool Minimum Roll Maximum Roll 1 ...