d100 - Fairy Tale Tells for the Subtly Supernatural

Just in time for Fairy Tale Friday again! Here’s a table containing more than a few Clues or Suspicious Signs that one might be dealing with someone who isn’t quite as they seem. Some are certainly more subtle than others, and a few might require creative engineering of the situation to provide the revelation. I feel that no Fairy’s Glamours should be flawless or perfect, however.

With a little bit of cherry-picking, some of these might be inspiring or useful for subtle hints concerning other shapeshifters or deceivers that cloak their True Forms, such as those more Folkloric Hags and Witches. I have previusly trod similar ground for Lycanthropes in my Encounter Activities, but I strongly feel that a breadcrumb trail of Clues for these deceptions makes for a much more satisfying reveal than simply springing it suddenly upon unsuspecting Players.

Should you wish, you could also apply these to Elf Characters for a more Fairy Tale Feel, in a similar fashion to my Infernal Features & Tiefling Traits.

d100 – What Does This Healing Magic Look Like?

It is often quite interesting to think about how some of the more frequently encountered Magics in these games might actually appear or manifest in one’s mind’s eye. Although it’s often swifter to simply throw the necessary dice and update various records, I find it far more flavorful to give some of them a bit more compelling seasoning from time to time.

As I have done in the past with the venerable Magic Missile and the stalwart Shield Spell, this Table endeavors to explore some additional ideas for rendering those commonly seen “Curative” Magics a bit above and beyond what may be a more generic “bathed in Holy/Un-Holy light” depiction. Yes, the Hit Point damage from the Wounds of a Light or Serious nature is addressed, but what is it like to witness that magical act as an outside observer, the Healer, or the unfortunate Subject of such Spells? Since most of these seem to rely on Touch to deliver, that’s been encoded in the majority of these to a degree, and several might even serve to hint at or allude to specific Domains or Deities that could be behind the granting of such Miracles. As with all my Tables, these can be tailored to taste, but I hope at least it makes some of those medicinal ministrations a bit more interesting!

d100 - Mischievous Magic: Pixie Pranks or Elfin Ensorcellments

Previously touched on briefly in my Encounter Activities of Sprites, I thought it might be fun to produce a full d100 Table of various Minor Magics of an Inconvenient but mostly Inconsequential nature. Many of these are more Petty “Curse-style” Cantrips that could be at the disposal of various Faerie Folk or mined for inspiration for the various japes and escapades that they find so droll.

Should your approach to the Elf Class hail from a more Fairy Tale direction, these might serve as a convivial compliment for them as well, a bit like my Dwarf Dweomercraft and Convenient Cantrips for the Dwarf and Magic User Classes respectfully. Most of these shouldn’t (or at least weren’t intended to) be truly capable of producing lasting harm, but they could most certainly annoy or hinder in amusing and flustering ways. Some may be permitted Saving Throw or such for foiling at the Referee’s Discretion.

I suppose with a little squinting, this Table could also serve a bit of double duty as more ideas to graft on Magical Items to make them a little more frustrating but flavorful, potentially a bit less detrimental than my prior table on those kinds of Drawbacks.

d100 - Dwarf Dweomercraft

Quite frequently, I encounter Referees unsatisfied with the perceived lack of certain Character Options or Abilities that occur when using a presentation that features Demihuman as Class. One of the often lamented “missing” archetypes is that of the Dwarf Cleric. I’m not really sure what cemented this particular combination as so essential in so many minds, but it’s definitely a frequent flier. I tend to see the Cleric Class, with its Piety, Proscriptions, and Prayers to be an incredibly Human convention and practice. Rather than just lazily grafting this onto another People wholesale and making them so much less distinctive in the process, my preference has generally been to try and invent something new instead.

The Dwarf in most of my games is much less Gimli and much more Rumpelstiltskin (and more mercurial rather than dour), but another persistent approach is to render them utterly a-magical. Spells are something that just doesn’t work for them or incompatible with their make up/nature (usually rationalized by their superior Saving Throws). But this has always been a bit at odds with the more Fairy Tale/Folkloric Model I tend to render them in. I’m stuck with the nagging suspicion that they should be Magical, but in their own singularly Dwarfin Fashion.

Ideas for giving this kind of Magic its own feel and flavor is the subject of this particular d100 table: these could be innate Magical Knacks, granted as the Dwarf becomes more experienced, acquired through Play/Adventure as a form of Character Growth (“Seek out Old Bleezlebottom if you’d like to learn the Ways of Water!”), or even something to sprinkle on flavor-wise to give other forms of Fey something fun once in awhile. The character of Magic performed by a Dwarf should differ from their Human Magic-User/Cleric and Elfin counterparts.

d100 - Magical Pools, Fountains, or Springs

In the NOTES FOR THE DUNGEON MASTER section of B1 – In Search of the Unknown, one of the pieces of lovely advice Mike Carr recommends is “A room of mysterious pools” and ever since seeing how Players interact with these in those very early games, I’ve endeavored to try to include them in my Dungeons, Hex Crawls, and other places where they might present themselves.

Sometimes beneficial, other times baleful, they occasionally result in Character Improvement outside of the standard scope of the rules, but this reward is seldom without Risk. Experienced Players are sometimes rightfully suspicious of these, so I make sure to have some “non-magical” water features crop up from time to time as well. Things seldom aren’t as they seem in the Mythic Underworld however, so the ones found in Dungeons or other Dangerous Places are often the most interesting in terms of their effects. They are always an excellent choice for those “Special” results that crop up during Random Room Stocking.

As with all my tables, these entries can be tailored to taste: perhaps you would prefer to add a Saving Throw to mitigate harmful effects (or even make Failing a Save a requirement for benefiting from the positive ones, that’s always fun!) or more randomness to the chances of applying the effect or durations intimated here. Decide if they are a “Single Use” or what could potentially occur on subsequent sips. Some become more akin to “Tools” that might be creatively used to solve problems or address challenges. Others make for memorable and more persistent changes to the Characters themselves. As with Traps and other Hazards, it’s often prudent to try to telegraph things a bit if possible, and some of these entries have that sort of minor detail included. Occasionally it might be possible to divine the nature or properties of these mysterious reservoirs in other ways (I particularly enjoy planting Rumors associated with them, and imparting the local denizens with more specific knowledge about their effects is always grand), but sometimes it’s down to just the joy of adjudicating experimentation on the Players’ part.

More potential options can always be found by re-purposing some of my other tables: Unconvetional Potions is one I sometimes use for these, and Magical Mishaps & Calamitous Curses sometimes is a good fit as well. Maybe they grant the Character daily use of a Convenient Cantrip or have side-effects akin to my Herb & Plant Generator? Being able to “Re-skin/Re-use” my prior prep in this way is something I often like to do.

d100 - Magical Hats & Helms

Another Random Table in my Series of Magic Items, this one focuses on Magical Helms, Hats, and other Assorted Headgear. It was a little tricky to try and insure that they could apply to all sorts of Head Coverings!

d100 - Potential Spell Recharge Conditions

Here’s a quick d100 table I put together of some potential Mausritter-style Recharge Conditions to the GLOG spells that have been lovingly rendered for Cairn here. These sorts of requirements could come into play with each casting or on doubles or triples (like conventional GLOG Mishaps/Dooms) or after three "charges" are exhasuted (how Mausritter handles them).

d100 – My Magic Cannot...

An interesting conversation on Twitter about ways to make Magic weilded by Magic-Users a little less reliable for a more distinctive and wonderous feel (somewhat like the Taboo System I use for Clerics) got me thinking, and before I knew it I had the makings of a Table. I had some semi-similar things (like my recent Flaws & Foibles or perhaps my Magical Mishaps & Calamitous Curses), but nothing that quite fit the bill.

Personifying the Magic made it a little easier to produce some of these entries, feel free to season that bit to taste. I’m not quite sure how I’d use them (Maybe in exchange for more Casting Ability? Perhaps every Magic User specializes or has their own personal connections?) but I’d probably try to make them meaningful in terms of interpretation.

Sure seems like several of the recent tables have been a bit Caster-centric. I really need to polish up a few more of my Fighter-friendly tables at some point 😊.

d100 - Mercurial Mentors & Weird Wizards

There is a rather lovely bit of implied world building secreted away in the Spell Acquisition process for Magic Users in B/X and OSE. Whilst I also permit transcription from Scrolls and captured Spell Books as an alternative arcane augmentation avenue, by default the only two options for expanding a Medium’s occult repertoire are Research (touched on previous posts here and here) and a mention of Mentors.

Sadly, these Thaumatological Tutors do not really receive any substantial detail, so this table aims to address this oversight. The Sorcerous Instructor can be determined alongside the Starting Spell the Magic-User begins play with, or one can simply combine results to mint new Mentors. Starting with a Name and a distinguishing Trait provides a little bit of background, may raise interesting questions, and depending on how you treat this relationship in your games might even result in an interesting NPC, Patron, Ally, or Rival through play.

If one is to rigidly interpret the Rules, I suppose each of these Spellcasters has earned the rank and title of Wizard and is at least 11th Level (the point at which Magic-Users can build Strongholds/Towers and attract 1d3 Apprentices: Another potential opportunity for NPCs if the player wasn't alone in their education and toil). I always found it amusing that unlike those earned by Thieves, these poor students are replaceable.

These individuals are responsible for imparting that single, initial Spell to their protégé, prior to the start of play. Many Referees insist on defaulting to Read Magic for this initial outlay, others roll randomly, and still others permit the player to select. My common House Rule for ages has been to grant Read Magic gratis and let them roll a d12 on the conveniently dozenal list for their second First Level spell. Should the result land on Read Magic, they may choose a Spell. It has always been my preference to make Memorization feature a choice out of the gate.

There are twelve sections of eight in this list (so I suppose one could even just roll a d12 and a d8), leaving a remainder to round out the hundred. These come with a little lagniappe should one of these fortuitous four rolls occur.

d100 - Scroll Substitutions or Strange Spell Stores

Dramatically unfurling that rolled up piece of parchment or paper to intone the Magic Words ensnared in sigils on the surface is a very lovely and iconic mental image for me. But sometimes I like to house these “single-serving Spells” in other, less traditional actions and items. These might be especially useful for Magical Traditions that encode their dweomers in ways that are not dependent on literacy or pulped wood, or just atypical treasures placed for a slight change of pace.

Standard Scroll rules would apply for these. I would personally still stick with my favorite Creation Rules from Holmes (100 gp and 1 week per Spell Level, halve time or cost with the appropriate Reagents/Ingredients).

Here’s a Hundred alternatives to consider in the place of that voluted vellum. Perhaps every caster learns a different method from their Mentor, as a sort of signature? These might also mesh nicely with my One Hundred Spellbook Surrogates & Ritual Research table.

d100 - Magical Mishaps & Calamitous Curses

Yet another table that had been languishing on the dev pile for far too long! Here we have One Hundred Magical Mishaps or Calamitous Curses to inflict upon the table. Since some games don’t have a “Roll To Cast” system in place, these could also be repurposed for all manner of other unfortunate Eldritch Events. Potion Miscibility is popular, but they may also prove useful for Failed Experiments, Scrambled Scrolls, or Grimoires Protected from Prying Eyes. Some of them make mighty fine Horrible Hexes as well, much more memorable and meaningful than a mechanical malus (that players have a remarkable tendency to conveniently forget to apply!)

Grafting on additional risk to Spell Casting is something I’ve done in the past. However, I feel it works a bit better if it’s accompanied by a correspondingly tempting reward. One that I particularly enjoyed was allowing a thrill-seeking Magic User to choose to roll a Saving Throw versus Spells after Casting, on a success the Spell is retained and they may cast it again. On a failure, the Spell is lost as with normal Vancian magics. On a 1, a Magical Mishap occurs. One can tweak the frequency of these fantastic failures to taste, or potentially even penalize the Save by the level of the Spell or number of prior retentions attempts in a given time-period. When Magic becomes predictable and repeatable, it can sometimes veer toward banality, so this at least tries to maintain a bit of that delicious wonder should one go down this route.

A small amount of effort was put into “tuning” this table a bit, so that smaller die sizes have less “consequential” impacts, so feel free to escalate these however you see fit. What happens with a d6 should be a little less severe than something rolled higher on a d30, with the more disastrous consequences generally occurring only on upper ends of the d100. Durations are occasionally included, but feel free to season those to taste, and as with all misfortunes some just might be possible to undo through additional Adventure.

d100 - Monster Parts for Magical Reagents & Research

Confession Time: I’ve always found myself to be very fond of Spell Components, even though tracking such things is often a bit too fiddly for the tastes of most tables. Rather than making them a necessary requirement to cast a given Spell these days, I find that they can still serve a purpose if used in conjunction with standard casting by boosting the effect, duration, range, or modifying other mutable parameters of an appropriate Spell. By making them desirable instead of mandatory, players seem to enjoy amassing and keeping track of them a little more. They also serve as a great hook for potential Adventure: If rumors swirl about a particularly powerful ingredient for augmenting Magical Might, some Wonder Workers will immediately start scheming towards its acquisition. Knowledge of these also makes for a handy Treasure or Reward for Referees to dispense occasionally.

Another use for these that we’ve adopted is tying these elements to Magical Research and Manufacture. I usually handle this by offering a discount on either Time or Cost if the appropriate additive is applied during the process. If Spell Acquisition in your game is limited to Mentors/Magical Research Only, this provides a pretty powerful incentive for a Magic User to consult those Tired Tomes and Stuffy Sages in order to identify that certain special something that might make this process swifter or less expensive. Some Magical Items also receive similar reductions in outlay if the proper Reagents are used during the creation process: Scrolls, Potions, Wands, and other sundry Wonders that incorporate these constituents are more easily produced.

To create some of these materials, I often use some of my generators: Magical Herbs & Plants or even feathers from one of my Remarkable Birds, but one of my favorites is having them harvestable from Monsters, because this makes them more of a byproduct of play for the entire Party and less of a goal for an individual party member.

Here’s a list of One Hundred Monsters with some of their Parts of interest, alongside some potential Thaumaturgical Interactions. As an added wrinkle, not all require butchery to acquire. The keen eyed may notice a glaring omission in the form of the Monster who directly contributes to the namesake for most of these games, but fret not: I intend to devote an entire table just to them with 100 Uses for a (Dead?) Dragon.

d100 - Spellbook Surrogates & Ritual Research

R

ounding off this little run of tables, I decided to dust off another that’s been lingering in development for far too long. I’ve always been fond of unique Magic Users, but most of the time I don’t use or create a new Class/Subclass for them. There’s a significant amount of customization that can take place elsewhere to capture a different feel for a Wonder Worker, and in addition to just modifying Spell Lists/Creating New Spells, I like to tweak their process of Preparing Spells.

These modifications are mostly cosmetic in nature and I’d assume that whatever materials or paraphernalia affiliated with these consumes about as much Inventory Space/Encumbrance as a standard Spellbook, and perhaps even possessses a degree of similar fragility. Losing a Spellbook is never fun, and I’m sure there are interesting and creative ways Players could discover that would end up with them losing access to some of these.

As I was working on this, it struck me that it might perform a bit of lovely double duty as a list of strange Rituals associated with woefully un-specified Spell Acquisition or under-detailed Magical Research as well. If the more traditonal Tome is still your personal preference, please see my previous One Hundred Grimoires Post for some ideas on how to snazz these 😊.

One Hundred Grimoires

With the defeat of every Wicked Wizard the party dutifully begins rifling through any present worldly possessions, but the savvy Magic-User will invariably turn their avaricious eyes to any tomes or codices.

It’s understandable: In some versions of the game, acquisition of these mystical texts becomes the primary way in which Magic Users expand their repertoires. When situating these Spellbooks in their respective shelves or happy hoards, considerable time and care may be given to enumerating what they contain, but sometimes only a cursory effort is devoted to describing the lore-full librams themselves.

As an unabashed bibliophile, I figured it might be fun if there were more to these tempting tomes and grandiloquent grimoires than just rattling off an iterative Table of Contents! Here are a hundred ideas for embellishing these Books a bit above and beyond just the exciting new sorceries a caster can sear into their skull:

Similar to my d100 tables for Unusual Magic Swords and Unconventional Potions, there’s a bit of potential here for the kind of creative problem solving I like to encourage in my Players. It could also be amusing to make a roll on this table part of Character Generation for new Magic Users to give them something distinctive and help foster the feeling that magic is wonderful and weird.

Magic Word Generators

Here are three Javascript Generators that use the tables in the previous post. Heavy-lifting provided by the Last Gasp Grimoire:

Generate Using Traditional(BECMI) Word Pairs

Generate Using WeirdWord Pairs

Generate Using ALL THE WORDS

Putting the User back in Magic-User

A post on Papers & Pencil’s entitled “Spell Lists Suck. Here are some Magic Words” got me thinking about different ways to handle magic. I’ve always been intrigued by eliminating/reducing spell lists (less to look up/remember or record).

The central conceit is that instead of learning spells from a list, Magic-Users learn “words” that are used to create new spells. I believe the old GURPS Magic had a Rune-Based system for noun/verb pairs for on-the-fly casting, and it always looked relatively tricky to judge without a ton of negotiation.

I do enjoy the idea of using the Magic-User’s initial spell outlay to determine the initial words known. The post postulates that new Spell Creation could be handled on a one-per-session basis, I’m inclined to agree, as adjudicating this kind of system on the fly may introduce inconsistent rulings. But spell creation by word combination “on-the-fly” is still somewhat interesting to me. I like the idea of making magic somewhat unpredictable and mysterious.

So, to have a starting point, I went through my trusty Rules Cyclopedia and assembled a d100 list of keywords from the Magic-User Spell Lists (levels one through nine). These are for a more “Traditional” magic, and after some careless and creative consolidation/culling, I managed to get the list down to 100 words. Some spells proved a little problematic (“Ventriloquism” was clumsily re-categorized as “Unseen Voice” for instance).

For a lark, I also created a second list using the unusual and interesting spells from the excellently strange Space Age Sorcery supplement. These entries work well to make Magic “Weirder” with the inclusion of all sorts of unusual words that really get the brain working when combined with each other or words from the Traditional List.

Now, I wouldn’t use these words exclusively (I love the idea of more mundane, “campsite magic” cantrip words, like “Teapot” mentioned in the post), but they are a good start for making some spells.

Here are the tables:

How would I use them? Well, I’d go ahead and follow the general advice outlined in the inspiring post and grant an initial outlay of two, standard, Vancian spells from the 1st Level Spell List for initial tinkering and combination. Maybe an extra word per point of Intelligence bonus to keep things interesting and encourage system-use from the start. Articles like “of” and “the” and targets like an implied “(self)” should probably be free.

Remixing these spells without formalizing a “new” spell should probably engender a check of some sort. Here are some ideas for this “on-the-fly” check:

• Saving Throw versus Spells (good, because it takes into account Character Level)
• Turning Check versus “perceived spell level as HD” for Spell (better because it takes into account the power of the effect and character level. Allows for a few “levels” of overcasting.)
• Ability Score Check (non-improving, and generally too tightly-bound)
• General Skill: Magical Engineering (consider giving this to Magic-User’s free, as inspired by the Magic-User “fixes” provided in the very excellent Building The Perfect Class document, a must-read for Rules Cyclopedia DMs that does a lot of crunching on the abilities and experience progression for the classes)

Consult your favorite Magical Mishap table for failures, or better yet: Use the Optional Rule below and do a word-swap.

Optional Rule:

Magic is a fickle and strange thing. Each time the user sleeps (after or before preparing spells), one of the words in their mind may mutate or change.

• You could let the caster pick a word. But if this is done before or after Spell preparation this could have an impact on spell selection/casting which might eliminate some of the mystery here. I’d lean toward making the reveal after spells are prepared if this option is used. It will still probably influence play, and could rob some agency, but an argument could be made for the Magic-User intuitively knowing that something’s not right with the magical forces trapped in their mind.
• You could randomly determine the word to be replaced and keep it secret (write it down). If you go this route, I’d recommend making the rule occur less consistently (instead of every night, it has a chance of occurring randomly, have the caster make a check).
•  Pick a word that is not “in-use” with a prepared spell. This is the one that changed, and therefore is mainly only useful for “remixing” or “on-the-fly” casting.

Roll on one of the tables and replace the chosen word with a new one. For the first two options above, any formalized spells cast using the lost word now have the new word instead. Hilarity ensues. Formalized Spells in the caster’s spellbook aren’t affected. I’d be inclined to reveal the new word to the player when the “mutated” spell is cast so they can scurry to scribe some of the “niftier” words received in this way into their spellbook as part of a formalized spell, or remix them for the rest of the adventure.

In WHITEHACK, Wise Class characters receive two words per Miracle. This makes the magic system a little more formalized, but still pretty flexible. I’d eliminate any checks associated with “remixing” or “on-the-fly” casting, because of the HP Cost associated with Miracles can already serve as a limiter.

For determining the Spell Level of formalized spells, the ACKs Player’s Companion has a nice and crunchy system for Spell Creation that I recommend perusing. I particularly like how it calls out powerhouse spells like Sleep and Fireball as the result of magical innovation and breakthroughs to set them apart in power level from other spells of their level (and even higher level spells). I think it would be important to communicate up front with players that “just because it worked this way on-the-fly” doesn’t necessarily mean that the energies/effect will function the same way when they are focused into a rigid “spell.” On-the-fly casting comes with “risk” and the trade-off for reliability may dampen the power a bit.