This is an independent attempt to devise a system of magic which could feasibly exist in HW, with no intent to replace the current one.
This is not going anywhere concrete but is meant to be discussed.
Thaum: Unit of Reality
The Thaum is the measurable unit of how “real” an object is.
Reality is governed by a number of fundamental forces, the most important of which is the thaumic force. The thaumic force is that which defines how “real” an object or place is, as measured by changes in the thaumic field.
Interactions in the thaumic field allow objects and people to manipulate reality by enforcing their own reality over the current one, or making the current one sufficiently unreal that anyone can impress their will onto it and change it.
The world generally has a background thaumic level of 1 Thaum. This is referred to as the Baseline. Areas with <1 Thaum background are more malleable, and asymptotically approaching zero Thaums makes the area increasingly unreal until it effectively ceases to have any meaning and is overwritten by as low a thaumic effect as imagination.
Areas with >1 Thaum background are more “real” than other places, and this extra thaumic background can be harvested by casters to cast spells elsewhere.
All places with non-Baseline levels tend to fall back to the Baseline over time as a natural result of entropy.
Casting Spells:
Thaumic Spellcasting is the science of using a difference in thaumic levels to assert your reality over the current one. A caster will consume X Thaums of reality to manifest some effect in the world, that effect then becoming the new reality until the increased thaumic level falls back to Baseline and the effect disperses.
Thaumic Spellcasting can be done in two ways:
1: Assertion Spellcasting
2: Fabrication Spellcasting
Assertion Spellcasting
In Assertion Spellcasting, the caster has a thaumic level higher than the Baseline, and manifests effects by spending that thaumic difference to cast spells (A spell being some previously researched and understood effect which anyone can perform with practice). In effect, they enforce their will for something to exist which previously didn’t.
Assertion spellcasting relies on having a thaumic difference higher than the Baseline and enough mental strength and willpower to make a thing-that-isn’t become a thing-that-is. This involves being able to conceptualize the effect wholly in their mind and then making it exist in the world.
Assertion Casters must perform these spell assertions on the world carefully; failing to conceptualize the effect fully will cause it to immediately disperse harmlessly as it lacked cohesion to exist.
Experienced Assertion Casters may train others in the mental discipline needed to cast, as well as teach them exactly how to conceptualize these known effects. Some experts even attempt to discover new effects, meditating deeply while resting on a high thaumic level in order to try to fully visualize and realize new spells.
Most casters are Assertion Casters. It’s quite safe, and the training regimen of Assertion Casting along with its defined lists of spells ensures that they’ll always have the right tools on hand to perform a spell if necessary.
OOC:
Assertion Casting is the casting of a defined spell, and relies on rolls to guarantee the effect happens. Higher Thaumic Level of the caster will confer bonuses, as will the record of the number of times they’ve previously succeeded in casting the spell.
All manner of effects exist, some spells existing in “upgrade tree” systems such that those who specialize in that form of spell will have a better chance to cast those other spells properly. All Assertion Casters can cast all Assertion Spells, with experience being the leading factor in the spell mod.
Fabrication Spellcasting:
A poorly understood and dangerous alternative to Assertion Casting, Fabrication spellcasting involves the caster using thaumic sinks to reduce the Baseline below 1 Thaum. This makes reality around the caster less stable, allowing them to assert effects with far less mental effort than Assertion Casting. Fabrication Casting does not rely on spells, but instead allows the caster to imagine new things into existence at a whim. These Fabrications come into existence at the Fabricator’s thaumic level, allowing them to exist outside the thaumic sink they were formed in.
Fabrication casting is much less rigorous than Assertion spellcasting, and the low reality levels in the thaumic sinks allows for things that rightly shouldn’t exist. Poor conceptualizations, anomalous objects, and aberrations are all possibilities of the Fabricator spellcaster. At sufficiently close to 0 Thaums, reality becomes so dangerously malleable that invasive thoughts and subconscious whims can manifest themselves into monstrous beasts without the caster’s willingness. As the thaumic level asymptotically falls to 0, reality may become so unreal that it breaks entirely, forming null-thaum holes into other places beyond our world. From these portals unpleasant things may appear. The influence of these portals spreads slowly, reducing reality and corrupting it to that of whatever lies on the other side.
Despite the incredible risk, Fabrication Casting is a practice which allows for casters to create fantastic magical objects, such as cups that never empty, seeds which grow to trees ten times faster and higher than others, blades which never go dull, and more.
Most such objects can be made at the milliThaum level, but going lower is a seductive risk, for the lower the background the more fantastic the objects that can be made, including armor with no weight, horseshoes that allow flight, negative-arrow bows which create ammunition out of light and ice as they fire. The most exotic objects known to exist before the Wall, the point at which reality breaks, are truly alien: spears with virtual infinite length, rings which allow the wearer to teleport across continents, torches with infinite heat within the fire that carve through any material effortlessly, and immortality-granting ambrosia.
The rewards are tremendous, but Fabricators must be careful or risk being killed by their creations or worse.
OOC:
Fabricators use thaumic sinks to lower reality in their workshops. Fabrication Casting is too unstable to use in an uncontrolled environment such as a fight, since the other party’s Assertion Casting becomes more effective in lower-reality environments.
Fabrication Casting involves creating thaumic sinks out of exotic materials which lower the thaumic Baseline in the near area by orders of magnitude.
Any time the caster attempts any action, they roll a 1d100 with a negative mod of the orders of magnitude. For example, at 0.001 Thaum, they roll 1d100-3. The roll coming at 5 or less results in an undesired effect manifesting, such as the object being Fabricated exploding. A 20 or less is a simple failure, the object being Fabricated misshapen with no effects or extremely weak effects. The further into the negative the roll, the worse the effect, up to creating monsters unintentionally which immediately try to kill the caster or escape to wreak havoc. At a -100 mod, they hit the Wall and immediately die as a portal opens and sucks them in, likely destroying the workshop as well.
Making a thaumic sink is a difficult exercise, as increasingly exotic materials and arrangements must be sought and discovered. In all practicality, nobody can go below 0.001 Thaum unless they have exceptional means to discover sinks. Reaching the godlike Artifacts of 1x10^-90 or lower is basically impossible.
Artifact strength can be evaluated at the thaumic level it has, it usually fingerprinted as (1 + 1x10^sink), e.g. a 0.001 craft being at 1.001.
In Practice:
Basically all spellcasters are Assertion casters. Fabrication Casters likely won’t get further than whatever’s available in an Enchanting Table without staff approval, and really anomalous items with low ratings can exist as lore rewards and relics in the world.
Attempting to Fabricate at a very low Thaumic level is an endeavour requiring some staff player on hand, since the risks are huge and no Fabricator would do that kind of thing without loads of prep because whatever they make might try to kill them.
Assertion Casting uses defined lists which can grow as players research and submit new spells for review in transparent fashion. Through a pretty basic counting plugin their spell success mods can be recorded for each spell and spells down a particular spell’s “specialization” path of similar spells. Harvesting thaums to allow for casting is also easy: Everyone gets certain points per day, and server shops sell thaumically charged emeralds that give the option of hoarding extra thaums which the player can “consume” to recover casting. New options can later be developed and rewards of very high thaum emeralds can be given out as special treats for casters to get loads of extra casting.
Further, personal thaum charge can roll over to a certain extent, so those who can’t be online every day get an extra 20% or so (up for evaluation) if they missed a day.
People can be taught, getting a temporary increased mod when someone with a higher mod in that area /teaches them per spell they attempt to cast. As spell success is roughly cumulative, teaching confers a concrete benefit in them receiving a permanent mod by their own efforts so they’ll succeed more often on their own.
Pros:
Cons:
This is not going anywhere concrete but is meant to be discussed.
Thaum: Unit of Reality
The Thaum is the measurable unit of how “real” an object is.
Reality is governed by a number of fundamental forces, the most important of which is the thaumic force. The thaumic force is that which defines how “real” an object or place is, as measured by changes in the thaumic field.
Interactions in the thaumic field allow objects and people to manipulate reality by enforcing their own reality over the current one, or making the current one sufficiently unreal that anyone can impress their will onto it and change it.
The world generally has a background thaumic level of 1 Thaum. This is referred to as the Baseline. Areas with <1 Thaum background are more malleable, and asymptotically approaching zero Thaums makes the area increasingly unreal until it effectively ceases to have any meaning and is overwritten by as low a thaumic effect as imagination.
Areas with >1 Thaum background are more “real” than other places, and this extra thaumic background can be harvested by casters to cast spells elsewhere.
All places with non-Baseline levels tend to fall back to the Baseline over time as a natural result of entropy.
Casting Spells:
Thaumic Spellcasting is the science of using a difference in thaumic levels to assert your reality over the current one. A caster will consume X Thaums of reality to manifest some effect in the world, that effect then becoming the new reality until the increased thaumic level falls back to Baseline and the effect disperses.
Thaumic Spellcasting can be done in two ways:
1: Assertion Spellcasting
2: Fabrication Spellcasting
Assertion Spellcasting
In Assertion Spellcasting, the caster has a thaumic level higher than the Baseline, and manifests effects by spending that thaumic difference to cast spells (A spell being some previously researched and understood effect which anyone can perform with practice). In effect, they enforce their will for something to exist which previously didn’t.
Assertion spellcasting relies on having a thaumic difference higher than the Baseline and enough mental strength and willpower to make a thing-that-isn’t become a thing-that-is. This involves being able to conceptualize the effect wholly in their mind and then making it exist in the world.
Assertion Casters must perform these spell assertions on the world carefully; failing to conceptualize the effect fully will cause it to immediately disperse harmlessly as it lacked cohesion to exist.
Experienced Assertion Casters may train others in the mental discipline needed to cast, as well as teach them exactly how to conceptualize these known effects. Some experts even attempt to discover new effects, meditating deeply while resting on a high thaumic level in order to try to fully visualize and realize new spells.
Most casters are Assertion Casters. It’s quite safe, and the training regimen of Assertion Casting along with its defined lists of spells ensures that they’ll always have the right tools on hand to perform a spell if necessary.
OOC:
Assertion Casting is the casting of a defined spell, and relies on rolls to guarantee the effect happens. Higher Thaumic Level of the caster will confer bonuses, as will the record of the number of times they’ve previously succeeded in casting the spell.
All manner of effects exist, some spells existing in “upgrade tree” systems such that those who specialize in that form of spell will have a better chance to cast those other spells properly. All Assertion Casters can cast all Assertion Spells, with experience being the leading factor in the spell mod.
Fabrication Spellcasting:
A poorly understood and dangerous alternative to Assertion Casting, Fabrication spellcasting involves the caster using thaumic sinks to reduce the Baseline below 1 Thaum. This makes reality around the caster less stable, allowing them to assert effects with far less mental effort than Assertion Casting. Fabrication Casting does not rely on spells, but instead allows the caster to imagine new things into existence at a whim. These Fabrications come into existence at the Fabricator’s thaumic level, allowing them to exist outside the thaumic sink they were formed in.
Fabrication casting is much less rigorous than Assertion spellcasting, and the low reality levels in the thaumic sinks allows for things that rightly shouldn’t exist. Poor conceptualizations, anomalous objects, and aberrations are all possibilities of the Fabricator spellcaster. At sufficiently close to 0 Thaums, reality becomes so dangerously malleable that invasive thoughts and subconscious whims can manifest themselves into monstrous beasts without the caster’s willingness. As the thaumic level asymptotically falls to 0, reality may become so unreal that it breaks entirely, forming null-thaum holes into other places beyond our world. From these portals unpleasant things may appear. The influence of these portals spreads slowly, reducing reality and corrupting it to that of whatever lies on the other side.
Despite the incredible risk, Fabrication Casting is a practice which allows for casters to create fantastic magical objects, such as cups that never empty, seeds which grow to trees ten times faster and higher than others, blades which never go dull, and more.
Most such objects can be made at the milliThaum level, but going lower is a seductive risk, for the lower the background the more fantastic the objects that can be made, including armor with no weight, horseshoes that allow flight, negative-arrow bows which create ammunition out of light and ice as they fire. The most exotic objects known to exist before the Wall, the point at which reality breaks, are truly alien: spears with virtual infinite length, rings which allow the wearer to teleport across continents, torches with infinite heat within the fire that carve through any material effortlessly, and immortality-granting ambrosia.
The rewards are tremendous, but Fabricators must be careful or risk being killed by their creations or worse.
OOC:
Fabricators use thaumic sinks to lower reality in their workshops. Fabrication Casting is too unstable to use in an uncontrolled environment such as a fight, since the other party’s Assertion Casting becomes more effective in lower-reality environments.
Fabrication Casting involves creating thaumic sinks out of exotic materials which lower the thaumic Baseline in the near area by orders of magnitude.
Any time the caster attempts any action, they roll a 1d100 with a negative mod of the orders of magnitude. For example, at 0.001 Thaum, they roll 1d100-3. The roll coming at 5 or less results in an undesired effect manifesting, such as the object being Fabricated exploding. A 20 or less is a simple failure, the object being Fabricated misshapen with no effects or extremely weak effects. The further into the negative the roll, the worse the effect, up to creating monsters unintentionally which immediately try to kill the caster or escape to wreak havoc. At a -100 mod, they hit the Wall and immediately die as a portal opens and sucks them in, likely destroying the workshop as well.
Making a thaumic sink is a difficult exercise, as increasingly exotic materials and arrangements must be sought and discovered. In all practicality, nobody can go below 0.001 Thaum unless they have exceptional means to discover sinks. Reaching the godlike Artifacts of 1x10^-90 or lower is basically impossible.
Artifact strength can be evaluated at the thaumic level it has, it usually fingerprinted as (1 + 1x10^sink), e.g. a 0.001 craft being at 1.001.
In Practice:
Basically all spellcasters are Assertion casters. Fabrication Casters likely won’t get further than whatever’s available in an Enchanting Table without staff approval, and really anomalous items with low ratings can exist as lore rewards and relics in the world.
Attempting to Fabricate at a very low Thaumic level is an endeavour requiring some staff player on hand, since the risks are huge and no Fabricator would do that kind of thing without loads of prep because whatever they make might try to kill them.
Assertion Casting uses defined lists which can grow as players research and submit new spells for review in transparent fashion. Through a pretty basic counting plugin their spell success mods can be recorded for each spell and spells down a particular spell’s “specialization” path of similar spells. Harvesting thaums to allow for casting is also easy: Everyone gets certain points per day, and server shops sell thaumically charged emeralds that give the option of hoarding extra thaums which the player can “consume” to recover casting. New options can later be developed and rewards of very high thaum emeralds can be given out as special treats for casters to get loads of extra casting.
Further, personal thaum charge can roll over to a certain extent, so those who can’t be online every day get an extra 20% or so (up for evaluation) if they missed a day.
People can be taught, getting a temporary increased mod when someone with a higher mod in that area /teaches them per spell they attempt to cast. As spell success is roughly cumulative, teaching confers a concrete benefit in them receiving a permanent mod by their own efforts so they’ll succeed more often on their own.
Pros:
- Defined casting with comprehensible dice rolling system for success and easily understood spell effects players can RP out on a success
- Decentralized, no maguses required
- Teaching RP options available to make casting easier
- System allows for both spellcasting and magic item crafting with controls on both to prevent spiralling into zany-land.
Cons:
- Requires significant lore rewrites to implement
- Requires replacing current system
- Requires a plugin
