Grounding Your Magic

Let D&D Tropes Be D&D Tropes, But Justify Them

So, one of the first inspirations for Materia Mundi was “what if D&D-specific tropes were played straight, but justified?”

Given the peculiarities of old-school D&D’s various magic systems, starting with a justification for “Vancian”-style magic felt like a good place to start.

“Vancian”?

Calling old-school D&D magic “Vancian” might be a bit of a stretch. Yes, spell slots, memorization, and “forgetting on casting” were inspired by Vance’s Dying World setting, but D&D’s specific takes are their own unique thing. Nevertheless, we’re going to continue to call it “Vancian” out of respect for tradition.

Magic in Materia Mundi

Materia Mundi essentially has three “sources” of magic: Primal magic comes from Faerie, Divine magic comes from Shadow, and Arcane magic comes from deliberate study, working out the arcane (see what I did there?) details of how Faerie, Shadow, and the Material interact.

(Faerie and Shadow are my own terms for the feywild and the shadowfell, to avoid any potential trademark infringements.)

While the fair folk and the dead have inner reserves of power that allow them to natively channel Primal or Divine magic, mortals need to create some kind of conduit. For primal and arcane magic-users, the raw form of this conduit is called materia; it’s essentially little bits of matter infused with raw energy that “resonate” with the other realms somehow. Divine magic-users don’t need materia, but instead use their own faith to form the bridge between worlds.

Preparation

Magic in Materia Mundi ebbs and flows with the sun and moon. The most noticeable manifestation of this is at dawn and dusk — during the hour surrounding sunrise and sunset, the veils between worlds thin enough that ghosts and faeries can “cross over” much more easily. It is also during this time that spells, miracles, and glamours can be reliably prepared.

So, here is our first anchor for D&D’s magic system — magic is prepared at sunrise and at sunset, because that’s when the veil between worlds is thin enough to establish an “anchor” between a magical effect and its power source. As the veil re-thickens, this “anchor” is maintained until it channels enough power to create the desired effect, which also burns out the anchor.

This also implies that magic can be prepared at other times, but with difficulty. Running with this idea let me build a magic system with some recognizable 4E/5E elements — specifically, magic-users in Materia Mundi have a much smaller pool of “spell slots” per level, but can attempt to re-prepare those slots during a 10-minute exploration round. Preparing a spell costs both effort and time: at least 20 minutes per “circle” of the spell, with a saving throw made every 10 minutes to make sure that it’s being done correctly (otherwise those 10 minutes were wasted). Wizards use Intelligence for their saving throw, Priests use Charisma, and Druids use Wisdom.

Spell Circles

It feels intuitively obvious that some magics should be more powerful than others. Old-school D&D had six “spell levels”, with a magic-user gaining access to a new “spell level” at each odd “caster level”, and a cleric gaining access to a new “spell level” at each even “caster level”. Referring to both as “levels” creates some narrative confusion, so spells in Materia Mundi are ranked by “circles”. Since Materia Mundi magic-users have fewer spell slots, it made sense to only have three circles of magic power. This also gave me the opportunity to re-adjust a few obviously overpowered spells, by bringing them in-line with other spells of their power — the two classic examples being Fireball and Lightning Bolt, which are now third-circle spells alongside Disintegrate. By and large, though, a spell, glamour, or miracle’s circle is equivalent to half its B/X “spell level”, round up.

Grounding Preparation in the World

This still doesn’t get to the point of what “preparing a magic effect” even means, from an in-character perspective.

In Materia Mundi, wizards prepare their spells by painting them on their body. The anime Fullmetal Alchemist was an inspiration here; the idea of tattooing a “transmutation circle” on the back of your hand so that you always have access to it essentially defined the whole vibe of my wizard class.

So, wizards find materia — glowy rocks, phoenix feathers, gelatinous ooze slime, basically anything with a proper magical resonance — and they mix it into an alchemical formula called magic ink. Magic ink comes in seven colors, representing its elemental resonances — golden-brown for Earth, turquoise-blue for Water, brilliant green for Wood, cloudy blue-grey for Air, vivid red for Flame, day-glow purple for Aether, and milky-opalescent for Psyche — and each wizard spell corresponds to one of those elements. A wizard then paints the proper arcane sigils and circles onto their body to prepare the spell, usually in sections on different body parts that have to be lined up in a particular way to “complete the circle”. The magic ink serves as the spell’s “material component”, and physically completing the sigil by aligning the body parts that contain its pieces serves as the spell’s “somatic component”.

This also means that wizards can’t wear armor, or any clothing more restrictive than loose robes, because it would rub the magic ink off.

Once the “magic circuit” is complete, the spell activates, and the magic ink glows brightly and then catches harmlessly on fire, burning off. Thus, you can actually tell what kinds of spells a magician has prepared by just looking at what’s painted on their body.

This also led to a really fun idea for cantrips — which is that a cantrip is just an activation of a prepared spell at low-power, so it doesn’t burn off the prepared ink. This means that your cantrips for the day are defined by what spells you have prepared — preparing Bigby’s Hand gives you mage hand, preparing Disintegrate gives you magic missile, preparing Fireball gives you burning hands, and so on.

Druids and priests have a lot less restriction than wizards, because their magics are mostly powered from the “Other Side” — the other side being Faerie for druids, or Shadow for priests. All the priest or druid has to do is maintain a conduit to that other side, and specify what kind of magical effect they want to happen.

For priests, this means fervent prayer, while preparing a prayer strip. Prayer strips are small strips of blessed parchment with a prayer written on them and a small wax seal affixed; the prayer defines the miracle that the priest will later ask for. When the priest is ready to perform the miracle, they recite the prayer while slapping the prayer strip on the target (or, for a ranged target, throwing it at them and letting the magic guide it to the target). Once the prayer strip connects, the wax seals it onto the target and the paper strip burns away, releasing the miracle’s energy.

For druids, preparing magic means making bargains with the faeries. Small bits of materia are prepared as an offering, which resonate with the elemental aspect of the desired glamour. Unlike priests and wizards, druids don’t need to specify the exact effect they want when they prepare a spell; they only need to specify which element they want a favor from (with druids considering Aether and Pysche to be the same element, for a total of six different “elemental categories” of druid glamours). Once they’re ready to call on the faeries for aid, they pick the piece of prepared materia that they want to offer, ask for the desired effect, and the pact is complete.

Magic Items and Potions

Magic items and potions, then, are basically just wizard or druid spells woven into a material object instead of a person. Dwarves perform their magic exclusively through potions and magic items, and wizards and dwarves both can choose to create “volatile” potions and “experimental” magic items that require a spell slot of the appropriate level to keep them maintained. This allows arcane magic to be “handed out” to other members of the party, such as an enchanted arrow that casts fireball when it hits something. To go along with the three circles of magic power, magic items and potions are also divided into three ranks — common magic items correspond to first-circle effects, uncommon magic items correspond to second-circle effects, and rare magic items correspond to third-circle effects.

Putting it All Together

The result is a magic system that “feels” like a real part of the world, rather than an abstract game mechanic. When a wizard says “I prepare identify magic, invisibility, and flesh to stone”, the player now has a sense of exactly what the wizard is doing with their morning. It also gives a lot of old-school style flexibility for stunts — a warrior might decide to study Arcana just to deal with wizards, learning which parts of a wizard’s sigils are most important so they can target them directly with weapon attacks. The referee might rule that this is a stunt which makes the attack itself harder, but if it hits then the warrior gets to make an Arcana check, and if they succeed then the wizard loses a prepared spell of the warrior’s choice! Or, a thief might do the same thing as a sneak attack, forgoing the usual critical hit effect of a sneak attack in exchange for un-preparing a wizard’s most powerful spell or stealing a priest’s healing prayer strip.