(Definitely not) a Rant about Magic in Dragonbane 

A few notes that might make magic more palatable for you c: 1) It's easiest to just think of magic as replaceable Heroic Abilities. Each spell is it's own HA and they all use the same skill as long as they're in the same school. Much like HAs there are prerequisites for picking them and prerequisites for using them. Spells just have slightly more specific prerequisites than the typical HA. 2) The anti-magic properties of metal can be thought of as only interfering with the act of casting the spell. Like a large boulder rolling down and blocking off a small creek. Carrying such items in your backpack keeps them out of the way of the stream of magical mumbo-jumbo going on in front of you. Kinda dumb, i'll admit, but at least it's easy to remember that way. 3)The difference between casting a spell with a shifts casting time from your grimoire vs just taking a shift to prepare it and then casting it is that you'd then have to have that spell on your list of prepared spells until you take ANOTHER shift to switch it out again. There are instances where you'd just want the spell for that one instance and then keep it unprepared. There's for example no good reason for you to have Permanence on your prepared list in like 99.99% of all situations, you just want to cast your spell and then cast Permanence from your Grimoire since you have literally no use for it afterwards. This option feels more like future-proofing than anything else as of right now to tbh. 4) You only lose your advancement mark in the spell school if you're trying to learn a new spell and you're just not gonna be doing that all that often. Certainly not every session, hell probably not even every other session. It's meant to pace out the speed at which you gain access to higher Rank spells since a lot of those can have game-defining consequences. Being able to revive dead players is a huge deal and should be learnt when the martial fighters are also starting to get some really powerful HA combinations. 5) It sounds from a comment you make at about the 47min mark that you think the spells you've prepared are removed from your prepared list if you use them and/or fail the roll to use them? That IS the case in a lot of old-school rpgs but for newer stuff like Dragonbane or even dnd5e that is not at all the case. You've spent 6 hours preparing that spell and you get to keep that spell permanently prepared until you yourself choose to switch it out for another. It's not true Vancian magic, not anymore. PF2e still uses Vancian magic and Shadowdark still uses the idea that if your roll to cast fails you loose the spell from your prepared list but Dragonbane is not one of those games. Just in case that was a point of confusion c: All in all, it's not actually all that complicated in Dragonbane but then again i'm the sort of person who LOVES magic in most rpgs so ofc that opinion is informed by decades of familiarity with at least vaguely similar systems and concepts. The joy of magic is seeing an entire world full of interesting problems to overcome and using your grimoire as a toolbox you can use to find a vast array of unique tools for each and every one of those problems. I can imagine that it'd be a lot to take in for the first time. The act of learning magic is honestly by far the most complicated and confusing part of the system but actually casting it is fairly straight-forward once you get some time with it. Was very interesting to see the perspective of someone sooo not used to the concept, cheers man!

Do you remember in the old day's? (dunno how it is in the new D&D like systems?) Wanting to advance a level in any class obliged you to study under a tutor of higher level for a certain amount of time spending an impossible amount of gold... Those day's every player had to go through the same process. I guess this stuck to the spellcasters? Only thing I liked about that. It gave the party downtime. Forever I have felt constricted by the rules and the amount of memorizing or looking up spells over and over again. I can remember when playing AD&D I (and my group) house ruled out all the things you mention in this video. No prep, no learning, no ingredients. That's very liberating. In my opinion. Magic should be handled as any skill with the same outcome. It all boils down to doing an amount of damage or overcoming a challenge. A lot can be handled with common sense and within the context of a game(world). So I share the same feeling. I cannot get my head around it as well. For me Dragonbane feels like another D&D clone. (Dunno the popular word for that... ) The same hitpoint attrition and the same magic system. I thought about buying it watching your solo playthroughs. I guess looking for that old feeling of sitting on the attic with my friends after school playing AD&D. But after this... Nope. I've left that behind a long time ago. It would be something like watching that classic movie you loved so much 30 years ago... After watching this video, agreeing with most you say. My question to you would be. Why stick with a magic system you clearly don't like? House rule it out! or play a system that does right to your own expectations. It makes me curious for what you will be coming up with for your own system! How will you handle magic there?

You missed a great spell where the mage creates a puff of smoke in order to make a dramatic entrance 😂 As for the complexity, I kind of like that part of ttrpg magic systems. It means that the player that wants to be a wizard has to do a bit of studying and thereby get to live the fantasy. The thing about metal is a bit silly though. If the wizard had the strength to swing a great axe i dont see why they shouldn't be allowed to do so.

I agree 100% most magic systems in games are pure crap...dragonbane borrows heavily on D&D which spell casting has always been difficult, cantrips helps a small bit, but there's a reason why warlocks/Sorcerers combinations are most popular (and banned in many D&D 5e games) the warlock eldritch blast and invocations are easy. I've yet to see a magical system that mimics a little Harry Potter, with a special individual who can channel magic through devices (wand) can do only minor tricks without any, and if really powerful relics or magical devices are found they cast powerful spells.

I think the magic thing is more based on either metal interfering with the energy created in magic and frying the holder or wearer, or in a lot of lore, cold steel and various other metals have properties that impact magic beasts or monsters. So while I agree it was largely to keep spell casters from getting OP it is consistent with games of the time. Even though it doesn't share DNA with D&D, magic users couldn't use armor or metal weapons there either. You probably already know about that, but I figured I'd throw my 2 cents in the conversation.

I think metal has a long history of distorting magic and every European fantasy rpg I've read obeys this rule. It's might come from the relationship between nature and industry. Magic comes from nature and wearing metal blocks you're connection to fey spirits. It makes sense to me because it's tradition and historical at this point but I'm sure if you want metal armor maybe enchanted metal is okay. Or if you make a pact with a dragon or demon you can use magic with metal. Or JRPG having a catalyst/ crystal allows magic. Possible it could just be a balance thing but magic is always very setting specific.

Part of the limited spells perpared in this case is that new players shouldn't be spending 10 minutes on their turn thinking about the prefect spell to cast which has probably wasted hours of my life playing D&D. With these rules the player can say "I don't know what to do". GM, well, everyone else is going to take their turn, and you look at your grimoire for the perfect spell to end the fight.

I love magic and playing mages so I’m kind of biased in the other direction! I’ve also been working on designing new magic schools for Dragonbane so I’ve been thinking about the magic system a lot. I can totally understand that it seems overly complex and difficult to remember just from reading through the rulebook, but having run and played in quite a lot of sessions of Dragonbane over the past year I find that it works really smoothly and easily in practice. It’s true that each spell has quite a few details to remember, but bear in mind that as a mage you start off only knowing 3 spells, so you’ll just be casting those 3 spells over and over again and you’ll naturally remember how they work quite quickly. There are a couple of places where I think you’ve misunderstood the rules slightly: - If you roll a dragon or a demon when rolling to cast a spell, you get an advancement mark in that skill just like with any other skill. - When you roll to see if you’ve learned a spell at the end of a session you’re not making a normal advancement roll against your skill level in your school of magic. That *would* be frustrating because assuming that your starting skill level is 12 or 14, you’d be failing to learn your new spells 60% or 70% of the time! Instead of making a normal advancement roll, you make an INT roll, with a boon. Given that mages are almost certainly going to have INT as one of their best stats, your chances of failing that roll are fairly low. As for having to have spells prepared, that’s only going to come up once you’ve been playing for quite a while. Most mages will have a base chance for INT of 6 or 7 and you start off only knowing 3 spells. Moreover, many of the higher rank spells are just improved versions of lower rank ones and basically just replace them. So if you’re an animist there’s no reason to have Treat Wound, Heal Wound, and Restoration all prepared - you only need the best version. Personally I don’t really feel the need for the way magic works in any RPG to “make sense”, but the way I think of the limit on prepared spells is that it’s less like making a pizza and more like learning a language. Once you’ve learned a language you’ll never completely forget it, but if you don’t use it and keep it active in your brain you’ll start to get rusty. Casting a spell from your grimoire is a bit like whipping out the phrase book to remind yourself of the right way to say something. Having said all that, I’ve found that in practice the rule about prepared spells has a very marginal effect on the actual gameplay so if you don’t like it I think you can safely just ignore it! I really love that you have to go and find a teacher or a grimoire to learn spells. The idea of just “levelling up” and magically (!) knowing another spell seems a bit boring to me. Finding ways to learn new spells in-game is one of the main things that motivates my characters when I play a mage and one of the main reasons I enjoy playing that kind of character so much. I'm usually the GM when I play, but in the one game where I’m a player, my character spent a whole shift in Outskirt studying a new spell with Dranath while the rest of the party were kicking their heels at the gates waiting for me so that we could head off to Riddermound. It made for some really fun roleplaying! I think your point about there being an issue with playing a mage solo is a good one though. I’ve tried to play Alone in Deepfall Breach several times with a mage character and they did tend to use up their WP and then be reduced to hitting things with a stick, whereupon they promptly died. If you want to play a mage solo (at least in the Alone in Deepfall Breach campaign) I’d definitely give them a bit of a boost at character creation - give them a few more spells and maybe an extra heroic ability. I’m currently working on writing a solo campaign called The Necromancer’s Apprentice that’s specifically designed around playing a mage, so I’ll send you a playtest copy to try out when it’s ready if you like;) In the end though, if you don’t like magic and playing a mage you can just leave the whole thing out. Apart from Dragonbane the main game I play is The One Ring, where you can’t play a magic user at all - and it really doesn't feel like there's anything missing. One of the good things about Dragonbane is that it isn’t tied to a particular setting, so you can just as well play the game in a world that doesn't have mages and spellcasting and I think it will still work just as well.

It doesn't say anything in the rules about losing a prepared spell once you cast it. Once it's prepared, it's prepared until you replace it with another spell. You only start with 3 spells, so unless you're playing a mage with low INT for some reason, casting from a grimoire isn't going to become relevant for a while as all of your spells will always be prepared until you learn more spells than you can prepare. There are only 8 spells that take longer than an action to cast. The only 3 that take a Shift are Magic Seal (Rank 4), Permanence (Rank 5), and Resurrection (Rank 3). 4 of the 5 that take a Stretch are the elemental summons (Rank 3), and the 5th lets you charge items with WP (Rank 4). I do agree that the rule about metal is a bit too restrictive and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You can't even carry a quiver of arrows and cast magic unless you use arrows with wood tips. If metal prevents magic, how does magic work against enemies in full plate? How does Enchant Weapon work? How does Magic Seal work on metal objects? If I can't even wear studded leather or carry arrows with metal tips, can I wear a magic ring or amulet if it's made of metal?

Play WARHAMMER 2ND EDITION, MAGIC IS VERY SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND, AND USE.

Thank you for your honest opinions here. In some systems/games I do not disagree, but in this case, the past of Drakar och Demoner was closely based upon/tied to Swedish DnD... thus the "Vancian" system carryover. I love Dragonlance (old school that is) and how magic works in Krynn, so I love this. But, if cognitive load is your issue here, which you said it was, a great DM help would be to craft a quick laminated card with bulleted basics of magic on it, maybe front and back, until you get it down. Also, allow your player to have to remember a lot of this and not you. Or, craft some laminated spell cards which easily possess what you need to know in digest form, for each spell. Yes, there's a slight cost to it, and I'd understand if you also said "Yes, but why pay more to do this? I've already paid for the game and all the stuff for it." That would be fair. I'm just offering a couple kind suggestions here. What I really love about Dragonbane though is that it's so easily portable/adjustable. You can (mostly) remove what you don't like, add what you want, and go on. RAW isn't absolutely necessary with it to have "your" fun. Although, for me, I really like RAW, until I've played a while and decided that I do indeed know "better" and how it can be done "better" for my table. The limit of magic for metal thing comes from older literature, I believe, that has Iron-heavy materials being bane to the energies of magic in the world (like Fae being burned by it....ala DCC, ect..). But, that does give you easy room to just use brass, copper, magical metals, magical woods, harvesting of monster hides, ect....inventive/creative ways to "get around" it. Again though, see the RAW part above. I don't know, but maybe this will help you...I do feel ya as my favorite character actually is a Mage, and this is a bit disappointing at times. Keep pushing dude. Your stuff is pretty doggone cool! 🤓👍

-I can understand the point for not liking Vancian because I don’t like that in dnd either, but when you actually play Dragonbane it is a none issue. As you mentioned you prepare as many spells as your base INT chance. But remember the higher your INT is the better you hit. It’s basically Str for fighters. So let’s say you only have a 13 INT. Well you have access to 6 prepared spells. That’s a lot in this game considering when you start you only know 3. So let’s say you are the elementist. When you start you pick a fire, air, and an earth spell. Now let’s say you learn 4 more spells (which takes a while) and want to use that 7th spell. Well in combat you are going to be frantically flipping through your spell book on the first turn and then you cast the spell on the second. It’s a thematically driven and you might not like it but the grimoire is a balancing tool and I find describing it that way helps. You could also just get ride of it and pretend your mages and sorcerers from dnd but I think a lot is centered around it which leads to your video game analogy. Each new rank of a spell basically increases the potency of the last. So let’s say you are going to prepare that Heal Wound spell. Do you really need to prepare the Treat Wound spell? They cost the same, Heal just does more. So as you learn these new more powerful spells consider it upgrading the previous. So when you learn the rank 2 spells for the fire, air, and earth spells are you going to prepare the first rank? No you aren’t. Which leaves you with 3 more spells you can prepare. -I also do not like the way metal/magic is explained in this game. If I was a writer I would’ve said something like, "wearing heavy armor interferes with your ability to gesture and cast magic freely. Because of this any armor you wear that provides a bane to some other action prevents you from casting magic." This basically mirrors 5e’s rule that using armor you aren’t proficient in prevents you from casting. They basically don't want mages to walk around in full plate armor casting huge fireballs laughing while mercing goblins. I personally would also allow mages to use weapons they have a skill with. I specifically think of Gandalf using a sword in the lotr and casting spells. The sword thing it’s too much of an issue if you have almost no armor to defend yourself with. They still in most cases have to have the STR requirement to use it which I thinks balances as well. PS: loved the laundry joke. So funny.

I don't like magic on D&D as well. On DB, I think it is better but, surely, it is not perfect. I see it as a "merging" of D&D and Forbidden Lands. However, I think it is possible to make few adjustments to fit better to one's taste.

Some thoughts (grab a coffee, lol): Why is it so complicated? I think the answer is that cognitive load (CL) can be metaphorically calculated as CL = LoC + AL. LoC is the Level of Complexity, and AL is the Aversion Level. Dragonbane’s magic system isn’t actually very complex, but you are very adverse to it. Therefore you experience an overwhelming cognitive load. But it stems more from your aversion than the complexity. Why is it so complicated? Because it’s based on Dragonbane’s skill system, but then needs to go beyond that to reflect magic being more advanced and something that “consumes” the wizard, so to speak. That’s why it takes so much time, the game tries to force wizards into only wizarding. Older versions of Dragonbane were even stricter, going so far as placing hard caps on physical skills for wizards. Why can’t it be like in video games? In most video games, the spells simply equate to damage. In TTRPGs spells generally have the potential to do much more. Spells there (at least originally) are more about problem solving. Even a fireball solves the problem of enemies having too many hit points. Vancian magic is made for old-school TTRPGs that were way more deadly, tactical, and resource-focused than most games today. Oftentimes one spell could, more or less, nullify one encounter or major hindrance. Sleep drops the orcs, Knock opens the door, Invisibility circumvents the troll, etc. The few spells are precious resources to use wisely. The players were supposed to plan, scout, gather intel and prepare, or they would likely die. In that context, preparing spells, limited spell slots, and spell ingredients, all make sense. The wizard is a very valuable (but squishy) Swiss Army knife, but because of limitations doesn’t get to do everything. Also it was most likely a tactical game played on a grid, looking up spells would be part of the game, not immersion breaking like it might be in a theatre of the mind style game. Then, as RPGs and playing them have changed, there’s been a merging of old and new. And all of it maybe doesn’t function fully smoothly together anymore. So, why prepare spells? To limit the wizard, for balance purposes. And Vancian magic does that in a way that fits in old-school TTRPGs. When I have GMed, if I’ve bothered with those rules, preparing spells has been about creating an “astral structure”, that is then activated and consumed by the casting. The whole thing where it is connected to memory, and forgetting after casting, has never made sense to me. But Dragonbane doesn’t seem to have that part anyway. The no metal rule is kind of funny. In older editions of Dragonbane the rule was “no iron” and it was hinted to be related to magnetism, but never really explained. And I’m pretty sure that was to make sense of the “wizards can’t wear armor” in D&D. And to prevent them from being effective with weapons. That of course led to wizards wearing full plate made of copper, so that’s probably why it’s now all metal and not just iron. But then all rhyme and reason gets thrown out when it doesn’t apply to your inventory. Which I guess is for the sake of player convenience. But it’s one of the dumbest rules I’ve heard in a long time to be honest. But again it’s to limit the wizard for game balance purposes and to (for whatever reason) force players into a “traditional” version of the class. As far as spell requirements are concerned, they’re part of the 5e-ifying of this edition of Dragonbane. Like adding rolls with disadvantage/advantage. It looks like a business decision, to make Dragonbane resemble 5e more, to increase the chance of appealing to people who play that game. Spell ingredients were only for rituals in the older editions. I think another reason why magic is such a complicated and time consuming thing in the game, is because it’s meant for a low fantasy setting. If every spell is like a minor miracle that makes people wide eyed or fearful. And the GM allows spells to be really impactful, then it makes sense. And that works with Vancian magic, but less so for 5e cantrips. And in that sense I think the 5e style of infinite cantrips has devalued spells, in comparison to what they were in old school games. Because GMs are often reluctant to allow players to solve things with cantrips. Because they are free, infinite, and present no roll or risk of failure. Dragonbane, historically, was not geared towards very high fantasy. In the second edition of Dragonbane there was even a roll to see if a character was able to become a wizard at all, in order to make them really rare. So, I think concepts have survived over time, but sometimes they have lost their context. All that said, play how and what you want to play. There’s homebrewing for a reason. If you want to make the magic easier, make it easier. If you want to play characters without magic, play characters without magic. I just like thinking about things, and writing really long posts, apparently 😂

Not played this myself but i have a go to method i like for similar games: -Mana pts equal to Intellect stat. -Roll INT to do magic. Reduce mana if succesful. -When out of mana. Health is consumed. -Crit fails cause backlash damage and burn mana -crit success, no mana spent and some other benefit. -no books, books are for librarians. No preparing, you can do all spells. - Only roll to cast if there is a threat, time issue or obstacle. Something like this anyway.

As a person who played the old version 20 years ago and tried Dungeons and Dragons in recent times. It was very wierd for me that people went around and killed goblins and the next day the knew completely new spells from nowhere. Totally immersion breaking for me, feels more like a video game than playing a role. It should obviously require study?

I too really think there's some bias about magic in games that it needs to be "balanced", but magic can simply be another way of solving the same problem. For example, a character wants to climb the tower, they roll Acrobatics, success, climbed the tower. A mage could cast "walking like a spider", success, climbed the tower. The same thing. The only thing I think it's needed to "balance" is if the game is about low magic and resources (like Dragonbane), and then magic don't need to have these "D&D rules", it could have some other rules. The point about metal is really good, because I too think it's absurd, there's no explanation why the mage can't use metal, but can carry metal as items. One example of rule being in accordance to the resource style of play, magic could consume itens each time it is cast, for example, food and water. So the players would need to balance this resource spending. At least in Warhammer Fantasy there's the Winds of Magic, and armor that is heavy (chainmail, plate armor, etc) restricts the flow of the winds of magic, so it increases the chance of it going wrong. That explanation is much better, making magic more "real" than simply a "game mechanic". Also, making magic "make sense" is why Brandon Sanderson's stories are very good in worldbuilding. Many TTRPGs simply copy what D&D created and that's it. It's tiring, there could be much more fantasy worlds that are really different.

For myself if a player wants to something magical that isn't a spell in the book I would just think how much willpower would that take and double it. Then I would let them spend time to turn it into a spell later.

You can hold metal items in your bag but not on your belt or held items. So if you run out of willpower you can then swing out your sword without a worry in the world.

I love the artwork in Dragonbane

There must be a lot of work to balancing magic in games. All the blue collar classes (love how you put that) are intuitively bound by the laws of physics and mundane actions. Then you get to the mage who's troupe is that they defy all of that and ultimately have no limits to what they can do. How do you balance/limit that without making it complicated? Not an easy job. I am right there with you in that i have yet to pick a magic-user, or psionic, for any of my solo games. I cant imagine facing that as a GM. Its complicated and i just havent wanted to get into the weeds of that. I can generalize what happens when a NPC uses magic, but if the PC is using it, thats even more book keeping. Dragonbane seems like a great system. I've dabbled, but put it aside until my box set arrives. I feel I need my hands on this one instead of just using pdf. Thanks for the breakdown and reflections broseph!

I'm starting a game of Dragonbane in a few days, and I'm honestly thinking about ditching the preparation aspect altogether. Vancian magic systems are absolute trash. I'm sure there are some who will complain about balance...but seriously, you don't have to forget how to sword so you can axe.

Find the teacher study with them for a week , I mean maybe from a role-playing point of view but even then is the spell worth it

I agree, I am not a fan of the Vancien (?) style of magic common in most of the major ttrpgs. I'm constantly searching for other systems; manna points, karma, etc... but haven't found one that just feels right as of yet. I play mostly solo, due scheduling and time constraints, and usually just throw a random cleric into my party of 3 so I have some healing when needed. Thank you for your input into the solo community, as for me, The Great Magic Search continues.

At least with Dragonbane, if you have a spell memorized, you can cast it until you run out of willpower. It's not fire and forget like Vance. Plus you can just read straight from your book or runes to bipass memorization anway. Magic user are changing reality with their minds so thematically and mechanically that they should take the longest to learn. You said it yourself that you're blue-collar. So, rpg terms your fighter or rouge like anyone can swing a swing a stick or break a window, but it takes a bit of training to be proficient and experience to become good. Magic users are like the doctors of fantasy worlds. So a week of studying seems similar to learning how to treat a new disease. If anything, I'd say starting to learn magic would be incredibly difficult and take longer than just learning one spell. But that's for each fictional world to decide. If it requires learning the generic school of magic first one spell at a time, becoming a magic user takes months in the game. But you put in the time and to bend reality. In Vance, it's described that each spell is like a really long math equation you repeat over and over until you speak the command word. Part of the game balance is that players can't cast infinite spells because that would invalidate other players' choice to not have magic. If you want players to change the entire world at will, Mage the Ascension is the rpg you're looking for, but then you're actually going to get masters diploma in spellcasting.

I very much enjoy DB but I would say games like S&W White Box, Cairn or Runecairn are better for solo play in my humble opinion.

I think 5e shadowrun had my fave way of doing magic mechanically

Thanks for the overview. I have also had issues using magic in ttrpg. I have always avoided mage type characters for this reason. If I remember Fiest (ian) magic showed how using pretty much only scrolls could evolve to using stuff that you learned ONCE. Also, seems strange that if a non mage learns magic they practically have to disrobe to use a spell. That would be fun in combat. Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see the exploring begin again.

The whole metal thing comes from metal hurting magical critters. Like silver on some and iron against Fey. But yeah they are using it to “balance” things.

I dislike magic systems is the majority of RPGs, when I do use it, apply a method of energy and difficulty of the spell!

Oh I get it.

With that, patiently waiting for your custom magic system bro. Low cognitive load is the goal 🎉🎉

Vancian Magic makes no sense. How many times has a D&D magic user had to tell his party "sorry can't do that. I don't have the spell memorized". What use are you! A Mage should be able to cast any spell they have access to, whenever they wish.

I agree completely, there has to be a better way.