Card Based Magic System Idea
One of my favorite magic systems is a card-based system, inspired by the one in the original Castle Falkenstein. The basic idea is that the faster you cast a spell, the less predictable/controllable it is.
The gist of it works with a single deck of cards. Each suit in the deck represents a type of magic. This could be, for example, different “schools” of magic. For this example, lets say the schools are:
- earth = diamonds
- water = hearts
- fire = clubs
- air = spades
To cast a spell, you think up some effect you want, and assign it to whatever school seems like the most obvious match. Either the GM or whatever figures out a complexity for the thing you are trying to do.
You draw cards to build up power for the spell. How many cards you draw each turn depend on some trait, like your sorcery skill, or whatever.
For casting, the goal is to get cards of the right suit that equal or exceed the spell complexity. If you can do that, the spell goes off perfectly; however, you are allowed to cast the spell as soon as you have any combination of cards that sum to the complexity, if you want. If you do so, the nature of the suits actually used “pollute” the spell and cause side effects based on their corresponding school.
So, like, say you want to cast something boring, like a fireball. Say that is a complexity 15 (or whatever, just picking a number for the example). You can draw three cards each turn, say. You need 15 clubs to cast perfectly.
Say you draw 9♦, 2♣, 4♣ on your first turn. The sum of all the cards is 15, so you have just enough to cast the spell imperfectly. Do you do that and deal with the collateral effects, or to you keep weaving the spell do avoid them?
Say you cast: the spell is polluted by 9 points of diamonds (earth school), compared to only 6 points of clubs. So the GM (or whoever) has to come up with some vaguely earth-related side effect when you cast it. The imbalance is pretty bad, so maybe the result is harsh, like your leg gets turned to stone, or the targets of the fireball also get turned into living crystal, making them mostly immune to the fire. (On the other hand, you do have some clubs, so maybe it isn’t quite so bad.)
There are lots of variations to play with in this system. One is face cards. Do they count as 10 or zero? Or do they mean something else (say, attracting interest from the spirit world or something)?
Another is: you may wind up using only a few of the cards you drew. What do the “waste” cards mean? Anything? Can they be used to mitigate side effects? Make them worse?
Another is: do red/black matter?