Mana Dice - Magic System

Mana Dice - Magic System

     While there is nothing inherently wrong with standard DnD (Vancian-style) magic, I am personally not a fan of spell slots, spells memorized, and spell levels. My goal was to streamline magic by removing those elements and replacing them with a visual mechanic to represent just how much energy a caster has to cast spells.

     Thus, my system’s magic is based on Mana Dice.

• Magic Users have a Mana Die, starting at d6. This increases to a d8 at Level 4, a d10 at Level 7, and a d12 at Level 10 (see my Character Sheet post, under the Magic User class).
• This Mana Die is rolled each time they cast a spell; on a roll of 1-2, their Mana Dice is drained (lowered) by one step (i.e. d12 -> d10 -> d8, etc) until depleted.
• Some spells can be “powered up” by increasing the chance of Mana Drain by one point (from 1-2 to 1-3, etc).
• There are no spell levels, some are just better than others. There are also no spell slots; you may continue casting as many times as possible until you run out of Mana.

Download printable PDF version HERE! (available in color and greyscale)

Download original Excel file for editing HERE!

(I imagine he's powering up this spell by a couple damage die...)

     My goal was to keep all spells as simple as possible. In my experience, players seem daunted of playing Magic Users because spell guides are too dense with long descriptions. Hopefully I’ve made it so just by reading the name, you should know exactly what it does; also, I wanted to keep the spell description short, sweet, and to the point.
     Spells are categorized into the standard DnD “schools,” but there is definitely a lot of overlap. Many spells could be placed in multiple schools.
     When creating a first-level MU, I recommend choosing a school and still rolling randomly for your starting spells. If a player has a certain type of MU in mind, it’s easy to sort out a character-specific spell list to roll from.
   
     This magic system needs more play-testing, but so far has worked pretty well for us. Feel free to try out this system for your own games! If you do, please let me know how it goes and what changes you make!